2026-04-19 18:00:00
2025年10月23日，美国国会山。| 图片由Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc提供，经Getty Images授权
本月，众议员埃里克·斯瓦尔韦尔（Eric Swalwell）因性骚扰指控而被迫退出加州州长竞选。然而，这场丑闻的波及范围也波及到了亚利桑那州参议员鲁本·加尔维奥（Rubén Gallego），他原本是斯瓦尔韦尔的亲密盟友，曾支持其州长竞选、主持其2020年总统竞选活动，并投资其人工智能初创公司。如今，加尔维奥正试图与斯瓦尔韦尔保持距离，声称自己此前并不知情，也未听说过任何关于斯瓦尔韦尔不当行为的传闻。
在最近一次采访中，加尔维奥谈及了自己与斯瓦尔韦尔的关系。他提到，自己曾多次与斯瓦尔韦尔讨论相关问题，但从未发现任何实质性指控。他承认，华盛顿特区存在一种文化，许多政客可能表现出轻浮行为，但并未达到性骚扰或性侵的程度。他坦言，自己在判断上出现了失误，但强调自己更倾向于以普通人身份而非政治家身份面对问题，并表示自己与斯瓦尔韦尔不仅是工作伙伴，更是家庭朋友，曾一起共进晚餐、孩子一起参加夏令营。
加尔维奥还回应了外界对他判断力的质疑，表示自己并未将此事与2028年总统竞选直接关联，而是更关注如何成为更好的办公室主管和更称职的参议员。该访谈完整版将于4月25日播出，但Vox会员可提前观看。
This month, Rep. Eric Swalwell faced a flood of sexual misconduct allegations, pushing him to drop out of the California governor’s race. But the scandal’s blast radius has also ensnared Sen. Rubén Gallego of Arizona, a potential presidential candidate in 2028 and one of Swalwell’s close allies before the stories broke. Gallego had endorsed Swalwell’s gubernatorial bid, chaired his 2020 presidential campaign, and invested in Swalwell’s AI startup.
But now, Gallego is distancing himself from the Congress member and arguing that he had no prior knowledge of the allegations. Gallego has also denied that he heard any rumors of Swalwell’s alleged sexual misconduct.
Recently, I sat down with Gallego for an upcoming episode of America, Actually. The conversation focuses on themes that have made Gallego a national name: immigration reform, outreach to Latino voters, and his advocacy for Democrats to do more outreach to men of color. However, considering the flood of questions about his close relationship with Swalwell, and the fact that Gallego has now earned the ire of some of the voices who helped bring the allegations to light, I also wanted to ask him about his former friend and ally.
Here’s what he said. The full episode will air Saturday, April 25, but will be available earlier this week for Vox Members. Join now on Patreon and get notified when it publishes.
I don’t want to go too much longer without asking about the recent flood of sexual assault allegations against Congressman Eric Swalwell, who had called you his best friend.
You chaired his 2020 presidential campaign. You were financially involved in his AI startup. Did you have any knowledge of these allegations of misconduct or had you heard rumors of predatory behavior on the Hill? I wanted to ask you directly.
No. No clue, no knowledge of any of the allegations or predatory behavior. That was definitely not what any of us… and look, we’ve all been having conversations since we’re all actually going back…
Who do you mean by we?
Friends, members of Congress, other supporters. We’re all talking to each other to see: What did we do wrong? What did we not see?
I want to just follow up, though, because it seems as if the scale of the allegations makes that — I guess it causes a gut check on that, because it seems as if this was a known thing among some on the Hill. This seems as if, certainly, there was a community of women who were organizing around this. You hadn’t heard anything about any of that?
Not about the allegations we’re talking about, the sexual assault, the predatory behavior. You know, there is a culture in DC that certainly exists — where not just him, but many other politicians — we heard of someone that’s being, you know, flirty. But never inappropriate, never predatory, never toward staff, and things of that nature. But look, this is the kind of thing that makes all of us relook at what we have been accepting versus not accepting.
Part of the reason some of this has come back on you, though, is that you went out of your way to defend Swalwell just this month, writing recently on X that “Eric is a fighter.”
Considering now what you know, or considering that you’re saying you heard rumors about him being flirty, why proactively defend him?
Well, for two reasons: [First] because we had heard this, about him, about other politicians, for a long time, and nothing had ever surfaced, right? Number two, he knew exactly what to say to me, because I had just gotten off a very hard 2024 campaign, where I had some of the worst things said about me on commercials that my kids have to see.
And [Swalwell’s team] and some of his staff pushed that button on me. And it was a mistake. I mean, without a doubt, it was a mistake. Let’s be clear: Knowing now everything I know of, I would never have done it. But knowing now everything I know, especially of sexual assault, sexually predatory [behavior], we would not have had the relationship that we had.
There have been some that have said that this is also a question of your judgment. I wanted you to respond to that. I mean, you’ve been kind of openly embracing the question of a 2028 race. What do you say to someone who looks at this situation and sees it as a cause to question you?
To be a hundred percent honest, you know, I am more human first than a politician. And my judgment was off because of many reasons. But number one, because I knew this man as a family man, first. We weren’t just work colleagues. Our families ate dinner together; our kids were in camps together. And I have to learn from this, and I will learn from this.
But you know, for me, it’s not a 2028 question. It’s about what it means to be a better, first boss in my office, and also a better senator to my constituents.
2026-04-18 20:30:00
2025年12月10日，纽约市哈莱姆区举办了一场由州议员乔丹·赖特主持的职业博览会，求职者们积极参与。然而，对于Devon Fritz来说，他的中年危机来得比预期早。他在20多岁时从事税务软件编写工作，原本计划通过稳定的工作实现买房、育儿和财务安全等人生目标。但某天他计算了未来20年的职业轨迹，却感到自己完全偏离了目标，意识到尽管同事们都拥有体面的工作和待遇，但似乎没有人真正感到满足。这种对意义的迷茫或许令许多人熟悉，但大多数人最终会放下这些存在主义的疑虑，继续前行。Devon Fritz却不同，他开始寻找更有意义的职业道路，尝试在德国参与难民援助志愿工作，但发现非营利组织效率低下。后来，他在牛津的一次会议上接触到“有效利他主义”（Effective Altruism, EA）理念，该理念主张通过严谨的证据和成本效益分析，最大化个人行为对世界的正面影响，尤其强调慈善捐赠的决策应基于效果评估。这一理念深深吸引了Fritz，他随后围绕“如何建立真正有意义的职业”这一问题重塑了自己的职业生涯，并撰写了《高影响力专业人士手册》（The High-Impact Professional's Playbook），这本书是他希望在自己人生早期迷茫时就能拥有的指南。
书中提出了五个关键观点：
尽管有效利他主义常因过度理性而显得冷峻，但Fritz认为其原则对所有人皆有借鉴意义。他指出，世界充满挑战，这正是我们参与其中、贡献力量的绝佳时机。他强调，即使个人行动看似微小，但通过合理利用资源和人脉，我们仍能创造可观的正面影响。
Devon Fritz had his midlife crisis a little early.
He spent his 20s writing tax software, staying on track to hit all the life targets he’d set for himself: house, kids, financial security. And then, one day, he did the math and projected forward what the next 20 years of his life would look like. But instead of relief, “I had this weird feeling that I’d totally missed the target,” he told me recently.
“I looked around at my colleagues, who kind of felt stuck in this place,” he said. “They had gotten to this cushy job where things were good, pay was good, benefits were good, but nobody seemed happy.”
This might sound familiar. Who among us hasn’t had the occasional crisis of meaning, perhaps mentally scored to the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”? (The last part might just be me.) But most of us shake off those existential doubts and press on, for better or for worse.
Devon Fritz, however, is not like you or me. Searching for a more meaningful life and career, he tried volunteering with refugee-aid groups in Germany during the 2015 migrant crisis — only to be discouraged by how slow, unresponsive, and ineffective he found the nonprofit world.
Eventually, at a conference in Oxford, England, he discovered effective altruism, or EA. EA is built on the idea that we should use rigorous evidence and cost-benefit analysis to do the most good possible, very much including how we donate to charity. A dollar to one organization might save a life; a dollar to another might buy a commemorative tote bag. EA takes that gap in impact seriously and follows the math wherever it leads, always searching for the donation or the act that can create the most measurable positive impact, especially in terms of lives saved.
The idea clicked with Fritz, and over the next several years, he rebuilt his career around a single, very EA-inflected question: How can you build a career that really matters? The result is his book The High-Impact Professional’s Playbook, the manual Fritz says he wished he’d had during his early existential crisis. The book lays out concrete paths through which a person with a regular job can actually create outsized positive impact on the world.
What follows are five of the most useful ideas from it. And while Fritz’s framework comes out of effective altruism — which, with all its hyper-rationality, can sometimes seem cold or weird to outsiders — he argues that the lessons have value for everyone.
“Being impactful — in its best form — doesn’t tell you what to do,” he told me. “It just says do stuff. Figure out what’s good, and do something that’s really good.”
The intellectual spine of Fritz’s book is a concept called “counterfactuality,” which, I’ll admit, may make you want to stop reading now. But while it’s a 22-point word in Scrabble, counterfactuality is actually pretty simple. For any action meant to do good, ask yourself: What would have happened if I hadn’t done it? If the honest answer is “basically the same thing,” your actual impact is smaller than you think.
Haindavi Kandarpa, one of the case studies in Fritz’s book, was at Boston Consulting Group working on public health and education projects in India and Bangladesh. That sounds both important and good, but when Kandarpa asked the counterfactual question about her own role, the answer was devastating: Nothing would really change. If she wasn’t doing it, someone equally competent would have taken her slot and done roughly the same work. That realization led her to leave for a charity startup incubator.
A lot of the standard advice about doing good falters when faced with the counterfactual. If 500 people apply for a job at an elite nonprofit and one gets it, the actual impact of the hire is the often-small gap between them and the closet runner-up. Fritz’s paradoxical conclusion is that you can have more counterfactual impact in obscure places nobody is looking — like the charity ranked fifth on the effectiveness list, not first. That can be hard to hear, especially for high performers used to competing for every top prize, but the status hit is worth it for the sake of actually making a difference.
Unless you’re a full-time volunteer or are extremely bad at salary negotiation, you get money for your work. And what you do with that money can be just as impactful as what you did to get it.
According to a 2024 GiveWell analysis cited in his book, you can statistically save one human life if you give just $3,000 — provided it’s to the most effective charity. Switching just 10 percent of your charitable giving from a typical charity to an evidence-backed one can help up to 100 times more people or animals, all for the same cost. That is a life-saving impact.
This is the move with the lowest barrier to entry in the entire book, and the one most influenced by effective altruism. You don’t have to quit your job, move countries, or learn a new skillset. You keep doing what you’re doing but write the check — or, better, set up a recurring transfer — to an organization on a credible evaluator’s list. (GiveWell is a great place to begin.) You can start at 1 percent of income and see how it feels.
Most people don’t think of their workplace as something they can change. But if you have any influence over procurement, hiring, 401(k) match programs, charitable giving policies, or the company’s public positions, you have access to budgets and decisions that could dwarf what you can do on your own.
A mid-level manager who convinces their company to enroll in a workplace-giving program that defaults to effective charities can route more money in a single policy change than they could personally donate over a decade.
The most consistently surprising path in Fritz’s book is trusteeship and advisory work. Charities and NGOs are often filled with well-meaning people who desperately want to do good, Fritz told me, but “they don’t have anybody even thinking” about quotidian details like finance. Luciana Vilar, another case study in the book, spent years in corporate finance before joining two nonprofit boards and was routinely the only person in the room who knew how to build a real budget.
If you are a competent finance person, lawyer, HR professional, or operations manager — which includes basically anyone who has worked inside a functioning company — you probably have skills that even well-funded nonprofits are desperate for. Giving few hours of your week to board or advisory time can unlock capacity an organization can’t buy, and it doesn’t require a career switch.
Fritz’s most striking claim is that the most time-efficient path to making a difference isn’t your career or your donations; it’s the people you already know.
If an effective but under-resourced charity is trying to fill a role, and you spend an hour emailing the five people in your network who’d be a good fit, and one gets hired, the counterfactual math of what you’ve done is absurdly high. And it didn’t require you to change jobs or write a check. All you had to do was send some emails.
It’s the path Fritz himself has taken, starting High Impact Professionals, which has placed dozens of mid-career people into higher-impact roles, all while rigorously measuring its own counterfactual impact. (When a candidate in the network takes a job, they ask the employer how good the next-best candidate was. When it’s very close, they count less impact.)
The same network effects can work with donations. Fritz describes people raising $1,000 or more by posting on social media a few weeks before their birthday, asking friends to donate to an effective charity instead of sending a gift. A lot of “how can I make a difference” agonizing is really about not wanting to look at the lever that’s already in your hand.
I’ve talked to enough people lately, including myself in the mirror, to know that low-grade despair is becoming our default setting. The problems of the world feel too large, individual action feels too small, and it can feel like the honest move is to just tend your garden. But when I pushed Fritz on this, he gave me an answer I keep coming back to. “There are big problems,” he acknowledged. “But that means it’s a great time to jump in and try to solve them.”
That can sound naive — but it’s also right. A world without problems wouldn’t need any of us. The world we actually have needs all the help it can get, and the bar for being useful in it is lower than we think.
2026-04-18 19:00:00
2024年11月26日，建筑工人在美国德克萨斯州拉卡西塔-加西亚维尔地区安装边境墙。| Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images
特朗普曾将移民执法作为其总统竞选的核心议题，推动了2016年和2024年的胜利。然而，如今大多数美国人对特朗普政府处理移民问题的方式持负面看法。民调显示，自特朗普重返白宫以来，美国公众对移民的态度发生了显著变化，约一半美国人希望废除移民与海关执法局（ICE）。但公众对移民问题的真实看法是否仅限于对当前政府的不满？随着2026年中期选举和2028年总统大选的临近，两大政党将如何应对一个既认同特朗普对移民问题的诊断，又反对其解决方案的选民群体？
本期《America, Actually》节目中，我采访了两位对美国移民问题持不同观点的专家：《大西洋月刊》的普利策奖得主凯特琳·迪克森（Caitlin Dickerson）和亚利桑那州边境地区记者叶娜·库欣诺夫（Yana Kuchinoff）。迪克森指出，两党共同构建了如今被普遍认为失效的移民体系；而库欣诺夫则关注特朗普政策对亚利桑那州边境社区的影响。
关键观点：
未来挑战：
核心问题：
参议员鲁本·加利戈（Ruben Gallego）强调，应优先解决合法移民途径不足的问题，尤其是农业、建筑、餐饮等依赖无证工人的行业。迪克森认为，当前政治讨论中缺乏对这一现实的重视，即美国缺乏足够的合法移民通道，导致移民问题长期无法解决。
总结：
移民问题已成为美国政治的焦点，但公众对特朗普政策的反感与对合法移民途径的忽视形成矛盾。两党均面临挑战：共和党需重新定义移民政策，而民主党需在执法与改革间寻求平衡。解决这一问题的关键在于建立更合理的合法移民体系，而非单纯依赖边境管控。
Immigration enforcement was once one of President Donald Trump’s strongest issues, driving his victories in the 2016 and 2024 presidential contests. But these days, most Americans seem to hate just about everything Trump’s administration has done to actually address the issue.
Polls show Americans have shifted dramatically on immigration since Trump returned to office — and about half of all Americans now want to abolish ICE, the deportation force Trump has empowered since returning to office.
But what do Americans really think about immigration, beyond their feelings about the current administration? And as we build toward the 2026 midterm elections (and eventually the 2028 presidential elections), how will both parties wrestle with an electorate that has often seemed to agree with Trump’s diagnosis of a problem while also rejecting his proposed solutions?
In this week’s episode of America, Actually, I talk with two people with different perspectives on America’s immigration conundrum. Caitlin Dickerson, Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter at The Atlantic, has reported on how both parties have helped build the immigration system that they now agree is broken. And Yana Kuchinoff, a reporter with Arizona Luminaria and corps member with Report for America, has followed how Trump’s actions have roiled local communities she covers on the Arizona border.
Here are some takeaways from the episode that stuck out, and read on for an excerpt from my conversation with Caitlin.
The data: Gallup found last year that the share of Americans who want immigration reduced had dropped significantly, from 55 percent in 2024 to 30 percent today. The same poll also found a record-high 79 percent of US adults say immigration is a good thing for the country, suggesting that Trump’s enforcement actions have had the opposite effect on the electorate.
The quote(s): “Obviously there’s a lot that is novel that Donald Trump is doing on interior enforcement of our immigration laws right now. But if I think about your question, most of what we’re seeing and most of the issues, frankly, that the public is taking with the current system come from many, many presidents ago.” —Caitlin Dickerson
“When I was covering the election in 2024, the concerns about border security and people’s feelings about what was happening were really big, emotional talking points. But I think some of the enforcement in the Tucson-area communities is a lot less abstract.” —Yana Kuchinoff
What comes next: The shift in sentiment on immigration has already impacted the landscape for this year’s midterm elections. Trump’s approval rating with Latino voters has cratered since returning to office, and Democratic wins in special elections across the country (including recently in New Jersey) have capitalized on that vulnerability.
But the biggest tests for both parties on the issue will likely come next year, as the presidential race begins in earnest. Republicans have let Trump (and his adviser Stephen Miller) define their immigration policy for a decade, and have unanswered questions on where they stand on issues like H-1B visas, avenues for legal immigration, and ICE’s massive credibility loss among the general public. Democrats have big questions, too, which mostly center around finding a middle ground between embracing enforcement efforts and spearheading a broader immigration reform bill in Congress.
Below is an excerpt of my conversation with The Atlantic’s Caitlin Dickerson, edited for length and clarity. You can watch America, Actually on YouTube or find it wherever you get your podcasts.
It feels like the Democrats’ one principle around immigration is: we don’t like what Donald Trump does. Why do you think this has remained broken for so long? I mean, why not fix something?
There are a few different theories as to why Democrats have really not shown leadership on this issue. One is this idea that you’ll hear Democrats talking about: They feel like the party is fighting scared.
Democrats are always susceptible to this criticism that they’re soft on crime, that they’re open to lawlessness, that they are prioritizing DEI and people of color over public safety. And so immigration very much falls into that kind of easy beating that they can take on a campaign trail.
And forces Democrats to have to—
Come from a defensive crouch.
Come from a defensive crouch and show this ability to have a [stronger] image.
I think another, probably more important and of course, more cynical issue is, it’s just politics.
Donald Trump saw a very clear upside in focusing on immigration for himself from his earliest campaign rallies, and he smartly intuited, these people are going to show up and vote for me if I keep talking about this. And he has continued to talk about it.
Look at the calculation on the Democratic side: Democrats aren’t sticking their neck out for a population of people who by nature cannot vote for them.
Not only can this constituency not vote, but Americans generally tend to really underestimate, I think, how interconnected we all are with the immigration system. That is being challenged right now.
What do you mean?
People are seeing that they personally are affected by this deportation campaign. Even if it’s not someone in their family who’s being arrested, because their kid is scared, because their kid’s friend got arrested, or their kid’s friend’s parent got arrested. People aren’t showing up for church. Their employees aren’t showing up for work. Their patrons aren’t showing up to buy things from them.
The interconnectedness is becoming more clear now, but generally speaking, I think what holds Democrats back is if you have two years or four years, or maybe six years, depending on how long you might have the advantage in Congress to push forward just a couple of priorities, why are you going to focus on one that Americans tend to think of as for those people over there?
Yep.
Not for us. Even if the public is sympathetic to the issue, it’s not going to be number one or number two on their list of concerns.
[Sen. Ruben] Gallego has talked about the need to embrace practical [reforms] rather than something like the dramatic step of abolishing ICE. I wanted to know, from your perspective as someone who has done kind of systemic work, what is the biggest gap you see in the political conversation about immigration that could be really tangibly impactful for folks’ lives?
Something that Gallego has been one of the few people to talk about, I think, is largely absent from the conversation and pretty key to how stuck we are. We don’t have a lot of legal pathways to the United States and we especially don’t have legal pathways to the United States for the jobs that we tend to rely on undocumented workers for.
Construction, restaurant work, hospitality, domestic work. These jobs are dominated by immigrant workers and by and large, do not have visas available to do them. I mean, we now have a couple hundred thousand guest worker visas for agriculture. We have millions of agriculture workers in the United States, and so [Gallego] actually has talked at different times about a need for legal pathways and balancing that with border security. I think that’s smart because historically, when you’ve seen these attempts at cracking down on the border, they’ve never been able to overpower the draw on the other side.
2026-04-18 06:10:00
2026年4月16日，特朗普总统在白宫南草坪登上“海军陆战队一号”直升机前，走向媒体发表讲话。本文出自《Logoff》每日简报，旨在帮助您了解特朗普政府的动态，而不让政治新闻占据您的生活。欢迎阅读《Logoff》：伊朗称霍尔木兹海峡已重新开放，但和平协议尚未达成，仍有许多未解之谜。目前已知的信息如下：霍尔木兹海峡的情况如何？周五，伊朗宣布至少在当前美伊停火协议有效期内重新开放霍尔木兹海峡，该协议将于下周到期。伊朗外长在宣布这一举措的推文中提到，周四在黎巴嫩达成的停火协议是其重新开放海峡的原因。这为正在进行的美伊谈判带来了积极信号，据NPR报道，此举可能迅速影响美国汽油价格，同时油价也有所下降。然而，仍有许多障碍需要克服。首先，特朗普总统表示，他打算在达成协议之前维持对霍尔木兹海峡的封锁。这意味着尽管海峡可能重新开放以允许大量商业船只通行，但伊朗的石油可能仍无法出口。此外，霍尔木兹海峡是否真正开放仍存疑问。据BBC报道，虽然伊朗此前曾提供两张看似开放的海上通道地图，但目前追踪数据显示，仅有少数船只实际通过。部分问题可能源于伊朗在海峡中布设的水雷，其中一些水雷据称无法定位或清除。和平协议是否接近？目前尚无定论。特朗普称美伊已就伊朗核材料（他称之为“尘埃”）达成协议，但据路透社周五报道，仍存在重大分歧，尤其是在伊朗核计划方面。本周三是当前停火协议的最后期限，但若谈判仍在继续且海峡保持开放，这一期限可能被延长。## 以上即为本期《Logoff》的全部内容。读者们，简报提醒：我将在周一休假，但该简报仍将由我的同事为您正常发送。现在，是时候下线了：我从一篇出色的体育文章中了解到一种新运动——“Uppies and Downies”，这是一种带有卡文球（Calvinball）无规则特点的中世纪原始橄榄球游戏。您可以在此阅读完整文章（附赠链接）。祝您周末愉快，我们周二再见！
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: Iran says the Strait of Hormuz is open — but there’s no peace deal yet, and there are plenty of unanswered questions. Here’s what we do know:
What’s happening with Hormuz? On Friday, Iran said that it was reopening the Strait of Hormuz for at least the remainder of the US-Iran ceasefire, which is currently set to expire next week. In a post announcing the move, Iran’s foreign minister cited Thursday’s ceasefire in Lebanon as a reason for the reopening.
It’s another positive sign in ongoing US-Iran talks, which have yet to produce a deal, and it could have a quick impact on gas prices in the US, NPR reports, as oil prices also fall.
But plenty of hurdles remain. For one, President Donald Trump says he intends to keep the US blockade of the strait in place until a deal is reached. That means that while the strait might be reopened to much commercial traffic, Iranian oil likely won’t be able to get out.
There’s also the question of how open the strait really is, Friday’s announcement aside. As the BBC reports, while Iran has previously shared a map with two ostensibly open maritime routes, trackers suggest that few vessels have actually passed through so far. Part of the problem might be the naval mines Iran has laid in the strait, some of which it reportedly cannot locate or remove.
Is a peace deal close? No one seems to know. Trump has suggested that the US and Iran have reached an agreement on Iran’s nuclear material (Trump calls it “dust”), which he wants removed from the country. But Reuters reported Friday that there are still “significant differences” preventing a deal, including around Iran’s nuclear program.
We’re likely to learn more about where things stand this weekend, as talks continue. Right now, the two countries are staring down a Wednesday deadline, after which the current ceasefire expires. However, if negotiations are ongoing and the Strait of Hormuz remains open, it’s not hard to see that deadline getting extended.
Hi readers, a quick programming note: I will be off on Monday, but this newsletter will be in your inbox like normal in the trusty hands of one of my colleagues.
Now, to log off: I learned about a new sport — “Uppies and Downies,” a sort of medieval proto-rugby with Calvinball characteristics (i.e., no rules) — from this excellent Athletic article, which visits a town in northwestern England where it’s still played. You can read the full piece here with a gift link.
Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you back here on Tuesday!
2026-04-17 22:50:00
美国参谋长联席会议主席丹·凯因将军在2026年4月16日于弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿的五角大楼举行的记者会上展示了一张地图，显示美国海军对霍尔木兹海峡的封锁。该海峡是连接海湾产油国与全球市场的关键通道，其关闭已持续超过一个月，导致全球能源生产受阻，并推高了汽油、柴油、化肥、塑料等众多商品的价格。许多美国人担心，能源成本上涨可能只是开始，而与伊朗的冲突也可能进一步推高食品价格。然而，3月份的消费者价格指数（CPI）显示，食品价格与2月份相比并未上涨。此外，据报道，美国与伊朗于周五达成协议，将在停火期间完全恢复霍尔木兹海峡的通行，但永久和平协议尚未达成。这引发了一系列问题：美国的食品消费者是否已脱离风险？是否能避免因战争导致的食品价格飙升？如果周五的协议只是虚假的曙光，而和平谈判最终破裂，又会发生什么？
为探讨这些问题，我本周采访了普渡大学农业经济学家肯·福斯特。他指出，尽管伊朗战争尚未导致食品价格明显上涨，但这种上涨可能只是暂时的平静，而非真正的结束。能源冲击需要时间才能传导至整个供应链，许多在战争初期离开霍尔木兹海峡的石油和天然气运输目前才刚刚抵达港口，而食品生产商大多基于战前能源价格签订合同。例如，依赖柴油运输的食品，其柴油成本尚未完全反映在价格中。此外，供应链中的中间商（如制造商）可能在短期内吸收部分成本，但零售商由于竞争压力，通常不会立即调整价格。
尽管如此，近期生产者价格指数（PPI）数据显示，食品供应链的中间环节价格在3月份已比去年同期上涨6.2%，比2月份上涨2.4%。不过，由于数据仅在冲突开始后10天内收集，因此尚不能据此判断趋势。如果冲突持续，肥料成本可能成为新的压力源，尤其是在2027年作物周期中。相比之下，北美农民在战争爆发前已购买了大部分肥料，因此影响较小。但若冲突延长，包装材料（如塑料和泡沫）的高能耗成本也可能推高食品价格，因为这些材料在食品运输中至关重要。
福斯特认为，冲突持续时间越长，分销商和加工者就越难以将成本吸收而不完全转嫁给消费者。他指出，历史上能源冲击对食品价格的影响通常较为缓慢，且价格回落的速度更慢。因此，即使当前价格尚未明显上涨，若未来出现食品通胀，其影响可能持续较长时间。此外，与过去如乌克兰战争等农业冲击相比，当前的能源冲击更为广泛，且中东地区并非主要粮食出口国，因此情况有所不同。福斯特强调，若要避免严重的食品通胀，冲突必须尽快结束，但具体何时出现转折点仍难以预测。
The aorta of the global energy economy has been clogged for more than a month now.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway connecting the Gulf oil producers to global markets — has throttled worldwide energy production and driven up the prices of gasoline, diesel, fertilizer, plastics, and myriad other commodities.
This has led many Americans to fear that their rising energy bills are just the beginning — and that America’s ongoing conflict with Iran could push up grocery prices too.
And yet, that foot still hasn’t dropped. According to March’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), food prices were no higher last month than they had been in February.
What’s more, on Friday, the US and Iran reportedly reached a deal to completely reopen the Strait for the duration of their ceasefire. A permanent peace agreement, however, has yet to be negotiated.
All this raises the questions: Are American grocery shoppers out of the woods? Will we be spared a war-induced spike in food prices? And what would happen if Friday’s news proves to be a false dawn — and peace talks ultimately break down?
To explore these questions, I spoke with Ken Foster this week, an agricultural economist at Purdue University. Our conversation has been edited for concision and clarity.
The war with Iran has yet to produce any discernible increase in food prices. Should that ease fears that Americans’ grocery bills are about to skyrocket? Or is this just the calm before the storm?
So, it takes time for an energy shock to work its way through the supply chain. Many oil and gas shipments that left the Strait of Hormuz at the start of this conflict just recently reached the ports that they were headed for. And many food producers are operating on contracts that are based on prewar energy prices. For example, think of all the food products that are transported by trains or trucks that run on diesel. Most of that diesel is pre-priced. So the impact of rising diesel costs may not work its way into that part of the supply chain for weeks.
Intermediaries in the supply chain — manufacturers, etc. — are also going to absorb some of that if they can, at least in the short run. They can’t absorb it forever, but they’ll try for a while. And then, retailers are hesitant to change their prices, due to competition.
Still, there may be some early signs that the energy shock is entering supply chains. This week, the government released new Producer Price Index (PPI) data. That report breaks the intermediate part of the food supply chain into four stages — the first being close to the farmer, the last being right before goods head to retailers. And it showed that prices at Stage 1 were 6.2 percent higher in March than a year earlier — and 2.4 percent higher than they were in February. Though, I’d be careful reading too much into those numbers, as the data was collected on March 10, so just 10 days into the conflict.
Is a substantial jump in food prices later this year already inevitable? Or could one be averted if a deal to reopen the Strait holds?
At this point, I would avoid using the word “substantial.” If we see a return to something approaching normal shipping through the Strait, then we probably will avoid big shifts in food prices.
But if the war persists past a certain point, the impact on food prices could compound, due to fertilizer costs. In North America, farmers generally purchased their fertilizer for the 2026 crop before the war started. So it hasn’t been as big a factor here as in Asia. But if the war starts edging into the 2027 crop year, then the impact of fertilizer kicks in and food inflation compounds.
If fertilizer is unlikely to drive food prices higher in the near term, what could?
Well, energy prices impact manufacturing, transportation, and infrastructure costs. And then there’s the packaging side.
If you think about our food today, we have such great packaging, which reduces food waste. But it is very chemical-heavy. There’s a lot of plastics, a lot of foams. They’re very energy-intensive. And that’s where we’re going to see pressure in the next three to 12 months, if the conflict continues.
So how quickly does the conflict need to wrap up in order for Americans to avoid substantial food inflation? Is there an inflection point?
Eric, if I could answer questions like that, I would’ve retired a long time ago. All I can say is that the longer the conflict lasts, the more difficult it is for distributors and processors to absorb this into their margins and not pass it fully on to consumers.
How much precedent do we have for this sort of disruption? Obviously, shocks hit the agricultural economy routinely — there are droughts and crop failures. But how much does this sort of crisis differ from those?
Crop issues are typically localized or focus on a few commodities. So, when they pass through the supply chain, consumers can substitute: If beef gets more expensive, they can eat more chicken. In an energy shock, there’s nowhere to hide. It passes through to the whole food economy.
As for precedents, we had the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which put some strain on energy, but also fertilizer and crops. Fortunately, none of the countries in the Middle East that are currently involved in this conflict are large food exporters. And the current energy shock is much larger already. So it’s not a perfect analogy.
You’ve written that, to the extent that we do see food price increases from this, they could last for a long time. Why is that?
Risk aversion, mainly. Producers and retailers don’t want to be the first to cut prices. And they don’t want to pull back and then find themselves in a loss position.
Historically, we’ve seen that food prices are slow to rise in cases like this, but even slower to taper off on the other end. Often, prices don’t decline at all; they just stop growing as fast. So, if we do see food inflation spike, consumers could feel the consequences long after the shock is over.
2026-04-17 19:00:00
2023年，抗议者在美国国会大厦外集会，反对现场娱乐票务行业。纽约联邦陪审团本周裁定，Live Nation（美国顶级演唱会中间商）构成非法垄断。尽管这一判决并非新鲜事，但其标志着美国演唱会行业问题的凸显。文章探讨了演唱会票价高昂的原因，以及该判决可能带来的影响。
Live Nation自2010年与Ticketmaster合并后，已掌控美国演唱会市场、场馆管理、艺人经纪及活动推广的大部分份额。据诉讼指控，截至2024年，其在演唱会推广市场占60%、票务市场占70%的份额，并管理着全国80%的顶级场馆和超过400位艺人，通过独家合同限制了竞争。陪审团认定，该公司平均每张票多收1.72美元，并指出Ticketmaster的软件问题曾导致演唱会门票销售受阻，例如泰勒·斯威夫特2023年“Eras Tour”期间的系统故障。
尽管判决可能不会立即降低票价，但长期来看可能削弱Live Nation在市场中的主导地位。此案始于拜登政府时期，主张拆分该公司，但特朗普政府曾撤诉并达成初步和解协议。然而，超过30个州继续推进诉讼，最终导致陪审团裁决。法官Arun Subramanian可据此对Live Nation施加罚款或要求其调整业务模式，例如补偿消费者或出售部分场馆。
拆分Live Nation可能有助于恢复市场竞争，为小型场馆和票务公司创造机会，从而降低票价并提高行业员工薪资。但即使拆分，Ticketmaster和Live Nation仍可能因规模庞大而继续影响票价和供应。此外，演唱会票价上涨也与供需失衡有关，顶级演出门票需求远超供应，导致主次市场价格均飙升。例如，2000年至2023年，百大音乐巡演门票均价从40.74美元涨至122.84美元，远超通胀水平。
为解决票价问题，有建议提出提高门票原价以抑制黄牛囤积，或增加普通观众的门票供应，限制二级市场的投机行为。部分州已尝试立法，而去年通过的 bipartisan 法案也要求提高附加费用的透明度。特朗普政府也曾签署行政命令，要求联邦贸易委员会打击票务转售商。然而，这些措施短期内对消费者购票帮助有限。尽管如此，各州总检察长仍称此判决是“历史性胜利”，对抗垄断行为具有重要意义。
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Live Nation will have to face the antitrust music, a federal jury in New York ruled this week, declaring that America’s preeminent concert middleman is an illegal monopoly. This was not news to those of us who’ve attended a concert in the past, oh, dozen years. You could score a ticket to Celine Dion’s comeback tour with all the money I’ve tithed to Live Nation in service fees and charges.
The verdict is an important recognition, however, that all is not well on America’s concert scene. So this morning, we’re taking a look at why live music got so expensive — and how this verdict could change things.
Before we get into the issues in the case, let’s tackle the marquee question: No, this verdict won’t (immediately, or even necessarily) lower ticket prices. The court hasn’t assessed penalties yet. And Live Nation has already signaled it will likely appeal. But the case could still, over time, chip away at Live Nation’s dominance in the live music market.
A lot of it. Too much of it, according to this verdict. Since 2010, when Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged, the combined company has dominated not just ticketing, but venue management, artist management, and event promotion in the US.
This lawsuit alleged that Live Nation controlled, as of 2024, about 60 percent of the market for concert promotion and 70 percent for ticketing. It also operated almost 80 percent of the country’s top arenas and managed more than 400 artists, locking both performers and venues into exclusive contracts that made it hard for alternatives to compete.
As Emily Stewart wrote for Vox in 2023, companies with this much market power don’t really need to compete on price or quality. Just look at the sorry state of concert tickets.
Live Nation has taken particular heat over the service fees it tacks onto ticket prices, which vary by venue and event but always seem a little too high to be fair. The federal jury in New York found that the company had overcharged customers $1.72 per ticket, on average.
Ticketmaster’s glitchy software has also drawn scrutiny — most visibly, and controversially, before the start of Taylor Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour. Widespread site outages prevented many US fans from securing concert tickets, and, well…if there’s one fan base you don’t want to cross, it’s probably Swift’s.
Swift is just one of many, many touring artists who’ve complained about Live Nation and Ticketmaster over the years, typically accusing the company of making their tours inaccessible to fans. In 2022, the country singer Zach Bryan even dropped an album titled All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster. (Despite that, only one artist testified during the trial: Ben Lovett, of Mumford & Sons, who is also a venue operator.)
That remains to be seen. This lawsuit began under the Biden administration, which argued it was “time to break [Live Nation] up.” The Trump administration has taken a different approach, withdrawing from the suit and inking a tentative settlement deal in early March. But more than 30 states continued the case, without the Department of Justice, hence Wednesday’s verdict.
Judge Arun Subramanian can now impose financial penalties or mandate changes to Live Nation’s business. The company could be required to reimburse some consumers, for instance, or to divest some venues. In an “ideal scenario,” one antitrust policy analyst told my colleague Alex Abad-Santos in 2022, a judge would unwind the merger that created Live Nation 16 years ago. But no major American company has been broken up as a result of antitrust litigation since AT&T in 1984.
Live Nation would presumably argue that splitting it up achieves nothing at all. In a statement to Rolling Stone earlier this week, the company said that “there is no evidence in the record that Live Nation or Ticketmaster drives higher ticket prices or that breaking up the company would lower them.” One common justification for vertical mergers, like the Live Nation/Ticketmaster behemoth, is that they create efficiencies that benefit consumers.
Antitrust experts are skeptical, however, saying those benefits rarely pan out. They argue that breaking up Live Nation would disrupt its web of exclusive contracts, restore competition, and give smaller venues and ticketing companies a chance — potentially lowering ticket prices and raising wages for workers at both venues and ticketing services.
A split wouldn’t solve everything, though. On their own, Ticketmaster and Live Nation are still big enough to exert considerable influence over ticket prices and availability. (In fact, both were subject to complaints on those scores before they merged into one company.)
Live Nation’s dominance also isn’t the only reason that concerts have gotten so expensive. As Whizy Kim wrote for Vox in 2024, the demand for top concert tickets far outstrips supply, driving up the cost of tickets on both the primary market and the (booming, often predatory) secondary market. By one calculation, the average ticket price for a top-100 music tour skyrocketed from $40.74 in 2000 to $122.84 in 2023, well outpacing inflation.
Kim proffered one counterintuitive solution: Make tickets even more expensive at their initial point of sale. Raising their face value undercuts scalpers, who jack up prices even higher on resale.
Other solutions might include releasing more tickets to general fans instead of holding reserves for presales or VIPs and restricting or regulating the secondary market. Some states have attempted to legislate these issues, while a bipartisan bill that overwhelmingly passed the House last year would mandate more transparency around added charges. Last March, President Donald Trump also signed an executive order directing the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on ticket resellers.
Alas, none of that will help you if you’re trying to catch some live music this weekend. But take solace in the fact that concertgoers just scored — in the words of many gloating state attorneys general — a “historic” win over the rogue forces of monopolization.