Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: It's Giorgia's party

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.

We begin today with Mark Landler and Steven Erlanger of The New York Times reporting on the opening day of the 50th Group of Seven summit being held in Apulia, Italy.

Except for Ms. Meloni herself, every one of the leaders is arriving at the meeting beleaguered, embattled or endangered — an ill-starred convergence that speaks to the political tremors rattling across the West. It also doesn’t bode well for the results of a gathering that already faced vexing challenges, ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine to China’s global economic competition. [...]

A surge in populism could divide the Western leaders on some issues and play to advantage of their biggest rivals on others. Far-right parties tend to be more hostile to free trade but friendlier to China and less supportive of harsher sanctions on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. These are all issues that will loom large when the leaders sit down on Thursday in the coastal town of Fasano.

The Biden administration has pushed Europe to impose higher tariffs on China’s exports of electric vehicles, batteries and semiconductors, as it did in May. It is trying to drum up support for secondary sanctions on Russia, a major escalation of pressure that would go after companies that do business there.

Other leaders invited to the G7 summit include Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Pope Francis.

Ellen Nakashima and Michael Birnbaum of The Washington Post report that the U.S. has signed a 10-year security pact with Ukraine.

The deal aims to commit future U.S. administrations to support Ukraine, even if former president Donald Trump wins November’s election, officials said. It will be a framework for a long-term effort by the United States to help develop Ukraine’s armed forces, which have innovated on drone warfare and other cutting-edge techniques in the fight against Russia, but are also desperately outgunned and in need of modern weapons.

Officials said that they hoped the agreement would transcend political divisions within the United States, but acknowledged that Trump or any future president could withdraw from the legally binding executive agreement, because it is not a treaty and will not be ratified by Congress. Nor does it make any new commitments about Ukraine’s prospects for joining the NATO defense alliance, which remain distant.

Through his executive authority, Biden has taken steps to combat “junk fees” — hidden fees that make everything from airline bookings to concert tickets more expensive than their sticker price, but also just feel like shady corporate attempts to get the better of consumers. He has also required companies to provide more transparency in their pricing.

His administration has also tackled monopolies like it’s the Roosevelt era, filing a flurry of sweeping lawsuits against major companies, including four Big Tech companies, on the grounds that they are harming competition in their industries and, therefore, American consumers.

Though those lawsuits have yet to be decided, they have already put companies on watch and, if successful, could create new legal precedents that would protect consumers well after Biden leaves office. That’s important because any actions he takes through executive authority could be easily overturned if former President Donald Trump wins the election.

Mariel Padilla of The 19th News reports about the Southern Baptist Convention endorsing a statement that it stands in opposition to IVF.

The resolution on IVF states that “though all children are to be fully respected and protected, not all technological means of assisting human reproduction are equally God-honoring or morally justified.” It cites the number of embryos generated in the IVF process — resulting in freezing, stockpiling and sometimes destroying the excess — and asks families to use other reproductive technologies, or to consider adopting children or unwanted frozen embryos.

But the resolution is not binding. While the denomination has come out forcefully against abortion and criticized the use of embryos in research, in the past, it has had little to say about IVF, a procedure that has been widely accepted by the American public. [...]

The IVF resolution came after a highly anticipated vote on how the denomination planned to address the ordination of women. With the rejection of the proposed amendment, much remains the same: The denomination can’t tell independent churches whom to appoint as a pastor, but they have the authority to say which churches are allowed in the convention. It’s a power the convention exercised last year when members voted to oust five churches, including Saddleback, a California megachurch, for ordaining three women pastors.

Margaret Sullivan of the Guardian says that Jeff Bezos needs to step in and save The Washington Post again. From itsele

When Jeff Bezos bought the Post in 2013, it was struggling financially, and its future was uncertain. The billionaire’s ownership not only restored the paper to profitability for several years, but allowed it to regain its prominence. While setting an ambitious tone for technical transformation, he properly kept his hands off the journalism, letting legendary editor Marty Baron do his job.

It worked. The Post made money, boosted digital subscriptions and nimbly took advantage of technology. Fast Company magazine, twice over the past decade, named the Post the most innovative company in media.

More importantly, the Post staff did essential journalism and hewed to standards of integrity. Despite the complaining one hears about how no one covered Donald Trump until it was too late, the Post did, with two of its top reporters even producing a book, Trump Revealed, well before the 2016 election. [...]

But now, all of that is facing an existential threat. And Bezos is very much in charge of how that will play out. He has a decision to make every bit as consequential as his original purchase (for the bargain price of $250m).

Finally today, Meron Rapaport of +972 Magazine point out that no one in Israel; not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Benny Gantz, or Defense Minister Yoav Gallany have a viable “day after” plan for the war in Gaza.

Gantz, who joined the government and war cabinet after October 7 as a minister without portfolio, has been urging Netanyahu for months to lay out his “day after” plan. The prime minister, who has a personal and political interest in prolonging the war, has so far refused to produce one; instead, he has only repeatedly insisted that he rejects both the continued existence of a “Hamastan” and its replacement with a “Fatahstan” run by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Yet Gantz doesn’t have a viable plan either. His proposal — replacing Hamas with an “international civilian governance mechanism” that includes some Palestinian elements, while maintaining overall Israeli security control — is so far-fetched that its practical significance is to continue the war indefinitely. In other words, exactly what Netanyahu and his far-right allies want. [...]

So why does the Israeli right see the fundamentally incoherent proposals of Gantz and Gallant as an existential threat? The answer goes far deeper than disagreements over the question of Gaza’s “day-after.” What Gantz and Gallant are implicitly acknowledging, and Netanyahu and his allies refuse to admit, is that Israel’s decades-old “separation policy” has collapsed in the wake of the October 7 attacks. No longer able to maintain the illusion that the Gaza Strip has been severed from the West Bank and thus from any future Palestinian political settlement, Israel’s leaders are in a bind.

Have the best possible day everyone!