A court blocked President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. The ruling came after several lawsuits argued President Trump exceeded his authority, leaving trade policy dependent on his whims. Mr. Trump says he has the power to act because the country’s trade deficits amount to a national emergency. The U.S. Court of International Trade found the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the use of tariffs. – The Associated Press

Elon Musk is leaving the Trump administration. After spearheading efforts to reduce and overhaul the federal bureaucracy, the billionaire entrepreneur posted Wednesday about his decision on X, his social media website. Mr. Musk’s departure comes one day after he criticized the centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s legislative agenda, saying he was “disappointed” by what the president calls his “big beautiful bill.” – AP

Germany moved to back Ukraine. Amid global uncertainty, Europe was eager for the country to take on leadership after February’s election. New Chancellor Friedrich Merz seems determined to deliver emphatically. His top priority: shoring up support for Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Berlin Wednesday, and Germany promised Ukraine a €5 billion package of aid and the joint production of weapons systems, including long-range missiles. – Staff

The U.S. will revoke the visas of some Chinese students. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the move includes those “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” The announcement adds to the uncertainty for America’s international students, who have faced intensifying scrutiny from the Trump administration. – AP

A sexual abuse trial raised questions in France. Surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec was sentenced to 20 years in prison Wednesday for raping and abusing 299 patients, most of them minors, between 1989 and 2014. The case represents the largest of its kind in France’s history. It comes less than a year after Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging and sexually abusing his wife for a decade, and luring dozens of others to do the same. Both cases have raised questions about the 20-year maximum for sexual abuse crimes, which opponents call too lenient. – Staff

The EU lifted economic sanctions on Syria. The European Union seeks to support the country’s recovery after the toppling of former president Bashar al-Assad. It said it will keep sanctions related to Mr. Assad’s government while also introducing new ones against those connected to a wave of violence in March. – Reuters
Related Monitor story: Last month, we reported on how a $4 bicycle repair signaled hope for Syria’s postwar economy.

Harvard agrees to relinquish early photos of enslaved people. The images will be transferred to a South Carolina museum devoted to African American history. The settlement ends a 15-year legal battle to release the 19th-century daguerreotypes, made by an early photographic method. – AP

Israel has begun easing its blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza. On Monday, trucks began rolling into the besieged Palestinian enclave with essential supplies. On Tuesday, Israel began distributing food through a controversial U.S.-backed mechanism. But U.N. officials say these steps are “vastly insufficient” and “a distraction from what is actually needed.” International aid organizations remain sidelined, and Gaza residents say their social fabric is unraveling as people scrounge to feed their families. 

Amid a separation-of-powers battle between President Donald Trump and the federal courts, Congress is putting forward an audacious proposal. An overlooked provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the House of Representatives would strip the power of the courts to hold the executive branch in contempt. It’s unclear whether the provision will be included in the final bill that is sent to the president after it clears the Senate. If so, it would likely be challenged on constitutional grounds. For now, it stands as a bold escalation. To some analysts, it represents an institutional effort to shift the balance of power away from the courts and toward the presidency.

Before middle school history teacher Ashley Kannan’s first class begins one morning, a girl tears up over a social media post. He quietly talks to her. At lunchtime, his room fills up with students escaping the cafeteria. Later in the afternoon, he chats with them one-on-one as they complete assignments about the Holocaust. A veteran educator of 28 years, Mr. Kannan says that post-pandemic, direct instruction doesn’t work. Students zone out. But they open up when he meets with them individually. He worries the education system isn’t designed for their needs. “Nuance and complexity is being put to the side for simplicity,” he says.

At the 2025 Architecture Biennale in Venice, an exhibition of traditional folk architecture puts war and resistance on display. The work of Tamara Kosmina, a Ukrainian architect and ethnographer, provides a lens for understanding resilience amid the Russian invasion of her country. 

The artificial intelligence industry was jolted May 22 when a leading company, Anthropic, announced that its latest model resorted to self-preservation in a test run. Much of the shock was simply that the new digital assistant, Claude Opus 4, used blackmail against a fictional character in a particular scenario in order to avoid being shut down. It was like a tingling plot twist in a sci-fi flick.

Yet just as jolting was that Anthropic was so open about Claude’s failure to operate with a level of moral intelligence that its inventors sought to build into it.

The transparency was intentional. Anthropic foresees the reality of ethical AI as dependent on the values of both researchers and users who demand qualities like transparency and trust in AI. The company’s motto for training AI systems is “helpful, honest, and harmless.” And it shares its safety standards and results of new models.

“We want to make sure that AI improves for everybody, that we are putting pressure on all the labs to increase that in a safe way,” Michael Gerstenhaber, Anthropic’s AI platform product lead, told Fortune.

Some AI experts predict that the race to produce the best in AI performance will be won by those who also build the best protections of individual rights and ethical values – and who can also collaborate on such safeguards.

“It’s important to discuss what a good world with powerful AI could look like, while doing our best to avoid the above pitfalls,” wrote Anthropic’s chief operating officer, Dario Amodei, in an essay last year titled “Machines of Loving Grace.”

“Many of the implications of powerful AI are adversarial or dangerous, but at the end of it all, there has to be something we’re fighting for ... something to rally people to rise above their squabbles and confront the challenges ahead.

He added: “Fear is one kind of motivator, but it’s not enough: we need hope as well.”

“Basic human intuitions of fairness, cooperation, curiosity, and autonomy are ... cumulative in a way that our more destructive impulses often aren’t.”

Like a rocket launch gone haywire, the test run for Claude Opus 4 was an eye-opener. Yet the critical thinking and everyday virtues of humans were able to catch the problem. Such skills and integrity keep humans in charge and able to steer AI toward an intelligence as good as its creators.