New Attacks in Hormuz
Plus: a different type of pizzagate, Kevin Warsh as the new Jerome Powell, and more...
The Strait of Hormuz sees more attacks: "In the latest incident on the trade route, an Indian cargo vessel carrying livestock from Africa to the United Arab Emirates was sunk on Thursday in waters off the coast of Oman," reports Reuters. All 14 crew members were rescued. But in a separate incident, "British maritime security agency UKMTO reported on Thursday that 'unauthorised personnel' had boarded a ship anchored off the coast of the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah, and were steering it towards Iran." Japanese and Chinese tankers have successfully brokered deals with Iranian authorities to pass through this week, with Chinese shipping companies in particular becoming rather obsequious toward Iran in a bid to ensure safety.
For a while during the war, an average of eight ships had been passing through the strait daily, down from a daily average of 130 prior to tensions escalating. Now, it's rebounded a bit: roughly 30 ships have passed through between Wednesday evening and now. But Iran is very much in control, and one must curry favor with it to guarantee safe passage. President Donald Trump's attempt last week to shepherd ships through fell flat and was paused indefinitely.
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Now Trump's strategy appears to hinge on getting China "to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they're doing now," Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters aboard Air Force One as they traveled to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.
But "this is not how President Trump wanted to arrive in China," notes The New York Times' David E. Sanger. "When he delayed his long-awaited trip to Beijing by six weeks, Mr. Trump was betting he would arrive in Beijing this week having forced the Iranians to capitulate to his demands. He anticipated that by now the shattered Iranian leadership would have agreed to turn over its nuclear stockpile, forgo its atomic ambitions and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The message to President Xi Jinping would have been clear: Chinese declarations of a superpower in decline were premature."
None of this ended up happening. Instead, Trump's "Project Freedom" failed; war in Iran has been sort of stopped, but with very few American objectives achieved; and the Strait of Hormuz is mostly controlled by Iran, with Chinese shipping vessels able to get through by allying more closely with our adversaries (at least for now). It's also a bit awkward for Xi: He has not come to Iran's aid in a significant way. His global ambitions appear to be at least part bluster.
It's not clear how Trump hopes to influence Xi. He's brought his CEO buddies (Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook, and Goldman Sachs' David Solomon) to the summit with him. China hawks have mostly disappeared within the administration. He doesn't have a ton of leverage, and the chief negotiator leading up to the Beijing summit has been Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, not Marco Rubio, signaling the degree to which tariffs are the primary focus. There had been thought that Trump would take this moment to try to begin negotiations on nuclear weapons control, but China signaled that "there is no reason to enter negotiations with Washington and Moscow until Beijing has an arsenal comparable to those of the two other powers" and that a new accord would be a non-starter. So now Trump needs to figure out what the future of the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz looks like, and it's not clear that China will be any help at all. Good luck.
Scenes from New York: I'm still in Texas, but I must interrupt our programming with an urgent update on how the state might ruin New York pizza.
Before Gov. Kathy Hochul is a bill, already passed by state legislators, called the Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act, which would ban potassium bromate, propylparaben, and Red Dye No. 3 from food. But bromated flour is a big part of why New York pizza and bagels are so good: It makes dough springy and stretchy, making the finished product light and airy. Almost all commercial bakeries use it.
"Bromate, when applied within the prescribed limits (15-30ppm), is completely used up during the bake leaving no trace in the finished product," notes King Arthur, the baking company (not the man). "However, if too much is used, or the bread is not baked long enough or at a high enough temperature, then a residual amount will remain." Regulators are worried specifically about links between bromate and cancer, since scientists in the '80s linked the ingredient to tumors in rats, and are now seeking bans akin to those already found in the European Union and Canada. Some bakers have already switched over, but unbromated flour is about twice as pricey as its equivalent, creating a less-consistent product.
If I can choose between dying at 75 after a lifetime of pizza eating and dying at 80 or 85 having been deprived myself of one of life's great pleasures, I know exactly what I'd choose. (And I'm reminded of the great line from Girls, yelled by Jemima Kirke during a brutal fight with her husband-for-three-weeks: "I am going to look 50 when I'm 30! I am going to be so fucking fat, like Nico! And you know why? That's because I'm going to be full of experiences.") Whether it's cancer or obesity, something's gonna get us all at some point. I'm not sure the state should ruin all that is good and holy in an attempt to extend the lives of its subjects.
QUICK HITS
- The Senate just confirmed Kevin Warsh as the new chair of the Federal Reserve. We'll see what Warsh is like in practice, but he seems pretty likely to do whatever Trump asks.
- The president "has green-lighted the sale of advanced AI chips to Beijing, even as Congress warned about espionage risks," notes Politico. "He signed off on a deal to allow Chinese-founded TikTok to continue operating in the U.S., despite intelligence concerns. And his National Defense Strategy abandoned tough rhetoric on China for a more conciliatory tone as the administration focuses on protecting the homeland."
- I can't believe it took me until now to realize that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a children's book on St. Francis of Assisi. I like that our favorite bear-dumping-in-Central-Park/divorced/addict/affair-having falconer now in charge of massive swaths of the health bureaucracy takes his patron saint so seriously.
- Very cool:
In adults, limiting smartphone functionality to texting and calls and blocking all social media and mobile internet for 2 weeks significantly improved attention, self-reported well-being and mental health. 90% of participants experienced a benefit. pic.twitter.com/fkkbx780hz
— Diana S. Fleischman (@sentientist) May 13, 2026
- There's a lot of parenting discourse happening now, set off by a new mom talking about whether she could leave her baby asleep in their Japanese lodgings and go down the block to a restaurant, bringing the monitor with her:
Also, there's a lot of grey area that we're not prepared to deal with. Do these people think cps should be called on a 6-year-old who walks to the nearby bodega by himself? What about the 8-year-old using the subway or bus on his own? What about the mom who hires a 12-year-old to… https://t.co/1gmAPM8Jmm
— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) May 13, 2026
In very Aella fashion, the mom in question has started polling followers on where they draw the lines:
parents: imagine you're good friends with the neighbors 2 doors down. would you put your baby down for the night and go neighbor's house for a drink if you brought the baby monitor?
— Romy (@Romy_Holland) May 12, 2026
