Europe Was Even More Humiliated Than We Thought

Reading for pleasure in America is withering: A new study shows it has dropped more than 40 percent over the last 20 years. The University of Florida and University College London surveyed data from more than 236,000 Americans and found what researcher Jill Sonke said was “not just a small dip—it’s a sustained, steady decline of about 3 percent per year.”

[BRIEF]

The Telegraph called this, and a comparable trend in Britain, a “civilizational catastrophe”: “The verdict is in: Books have lost to phones.”

And when reading goes, so does everything else. Literacy isn’t ornamental. It is the bedrock of thought, imagination, politics, democracy itself. Strip it away, and what remains? A public incapable of parsing a story, let alone a policy.

Other reports point to evidence that people are reading—the question is, reading what? Answer: trash. “According to reports, the hottest sellers are ‘the smuttiest, spiciest erotic novels’ the publishing industry can churn out,” the Telegraph wrote. “This is not a literacy renaissance; it’s a paperback version of junk food, or, maybe more analogously, internet porn.”

Our feature story this morning, by Mihailo Zekic, encourages you to buck the trend and heed the biblical admonition to “Give Attendance to Reading.”

Check out the fine print on that deal: Details of the new European Union–United States trade deal were announced yesterday, and it turns out the small print really hurts the EU.

Last month, when the deal’s outlines were unveiled, European leaders were dismayed at how much EU negotiators had caved to Donald Trump. Viktor Orban complained they’d been “eaten for breakfast.” Now that he can peruse the particulars, he may consider that an understatement.

An example: “With respect to automobiles, the United States and the European Union intend to accept and provide mutual recognition to each other’s standards.” In other words, American cars would be able to drive European streets without passing European regulations (on safety, emissions, fuel economy, dimensions, weight, etc. ad nauseam).

“We almost fell off the chair when we read this,” EuroIntelligence wrote. “This statement reads like a U.S. Commerce Department wish list.”

Note the word “intend.” In fact, this is never going to happen. European and American regulators have sparred over minutiae like specs on mirrors and bumpers and headlights for years, and have each bunkered down in their respective bureaucratic trenches. The European Commission has no authority to overrule the EU’s regulators.

So this trade deal, with all its statements of intent and expectation, is about to smack that brick wall. As EuroIntelligence said:

This is not a legal agreement. But it is written down in precise language, and will give Donald Trump political cover for reopening the tariffs if he wants to because the EU has just agreed to things it cannot conceivably deliver.

The question is, what happens when it becomes clear that the EU can’t deliver? Will Trump be content with his symbolic victory and simply move on? Or will he hold Europe to account, hike tariffs, and otherwise blow up the economic partnership?

This president clearly knows how much leverage he has because of Europe’s reliance on American defense—in a way no previous president has. In these trade negotiations, he is exploiting Europe’s weakness ruthlessly.

The upshot is, Europe isn’t going to take it lying down. Right now it is playing along because it has no choice. But you can be sure that leaders are scrambling to break Trump’s leverage and assert Europe as a power to be reckoned with. Bible prophecy warns they’re going to succeed.

Pope Leo’s first foreign trip will be to … Lebanon, the country’s top Catholic bishop told Saudi Arabia’s Al-Aqabiya TV this week. Well, almost. The pope is already planning to visit Constantinople (Istanbul), to mark the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea—sometime between now and the end of the year. He could jet over to Lebanon at the end of that trip, where he would talk more about Middle East peace and the persecution of Christians.

Lebanon’s “heavily Christian population makes Lebanon different from the rest of the Arab world,” wrote Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry. For years he has forecast, based on Bible prophecy, that Europe will build an alliance of Middle Eastern nations. “Because of its high population of Christian Arabs, Lebanon has become a linchpin” for this alliance, he wrote.

Pope Benedict was the last pope to visit the country, where he spoke out against the persecution of Christians. “A Middle East without Christians would no longer be the Middle East,” he said.

With Hezbollah’s power broken and Syrian out of Iran’s orbit, Europe is rapidly building its Middle East alliance. Watch for the pope to play an important role in that. You can learn more in Mr. Flurry’s article “The Fall and Rise of Lebanon.”

IN OTHER NEWS

Ukraine needs to be able to go on offense: President Trump called out the West’s hypocritical support for Ukraine, arguing that it has forced Kyiv to fight defensively while denying it the means to strike Russia. Western donors such as the U.S. and Germany have limited military aid to defensive use allegedly to avoid escalation, leaving Ukraine unable to inflict lasting damage on Russia. Trump posted on Truth Social yesterday, “It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader’s country. It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning!” Trump squarely blames “[c]rooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden” for the war, though Biden largely continued the flawed policies of former President Barack Obama. Germany also bears responsibility, having kept Ukraine militarily weak to preserve its relationship with Moscow. What Trump overlooks is that the war is not simply the result of Biden’s incompetence. It reflects a deeper Russian-German strategy designed to weaken the U.S. while strengthening their own positions.

Pro-Trump judge: President Trump does not have to pay a $500 million penalty levied at his New York civil fraud trial last year, the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division ruled. The penalty, given by Judge Arthur Engoron, was originally $355 million, but with interest it has grown to over half a billion. The Appellate Division stated the penalty probably violated the Constitution’s protection against overly harsh punishment. “While harm certainly occurred,” Judge Peter Moulton wrote, “it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half-billion-dollar award to the state.” Trump declared “total victory” on social media.

Anti-Trump judge: U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered Florida to stop bringing new detainees to Alligator Alcatraz, an immigration facility President Trump and the Florida government built in the heart of the Everglades. Williams, a Barack Obama appointee, also said Florida needed to dismantle portions of the facility due to environmental regulations. As Trumpet executive editor Stephen Flurry wrote in March, America’s judiciary trying to overturn every action Trump takes makes America “A Nation of 700 Presidents.”

Emigration is up: A new Pew poll suggests the U.S.’s crackdown on illegal immigration has caused America’s immigrant population to shrink by 1.4 million. President Trump promised to radically overhaul America’s immigration system, and he seems to be succeeding.