A Week in Which Laws Signed Themselves Out of Existence

1. THE LAW THAT LASTED TWENTY-NINE DAYS

On September 18, Donald Trump signed a bipartisan sanctions bill into law — named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Ukraine's most stalwart defenders in Washington before his death on December 3. The law mandated a 500% tariff increase on Russian goods and a 100% increase on imports from Russia's top energy customers. On the night of October 17, with the law due to take effect on Sunday, Trump signed three separate executive orders waiving its key provisions, citing the «national interest» — a phrase that, in the current context, is doing the work of an entire legal department. Congress watched a law it passed get suspended by the man who signed it, which is one way to govern, technically speaking.

2. 1,800 SQUARE KILOMETERS OF IMAGINATION

Russia's military announced this week that it had captured over 1,800 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory and nearly 100 settlements since the beginning of September. Ukraine's response was a single word — «illusion» — which is short, accurate, and somewhat more efficient than issuing a counter-briefing. The gap between what Russian military statements claim and what independent observers can verify has grown wide enough that the claims now function less as battlefield reports and more as a separate literary genre.

3. DIESEL WITH A SIDE OF SANCTIONS RELIEF

Days before the executive orders arrived, Trump announced the United States would begin importing Russian diesel — framed as a measure to reduce American fuel prices ahead of the November midterm elections. Analysts noted that Russian firms stood to gain the most from the arrangement, while the effect on U.S. prices was expected to be modest. The plan drew a bipartisan backlash from Congress, which is notable because bipartisan agreement on anything currently requires a near-extinction-level event. When the thing that unites lawmakers across the aisle is the same president's trade policy, the policy has achieved something rare.

4. THE SPEED TEST THAT BECAME A DIPLOMATIC INCIDENT

Zelenskyy announced this week that Ukraine conducted a test showing Starlink speeds were being throttled within the country while operating normally in other European nations. He described the restrictions as a «planned operation» — which is either a damning technical finding or the most low-key accusation ever leveled at a satellite constellation. At a moment when the U.S. executive branch is suspending sanctions against Russia, the idea that a private satellite service is simultaneously throttling internet speeds in an active warzone is the sort of detail that belongs in a thriller novel, except the publisher would send it back for being too convenient.

5. EXPLOSIONS NEAR THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ, AND AN LNG SHIP THAT DECLINED TO INTRODUCE ITSELF

Reports emerged of explosions in the Kuhestak coastal area of southern Iran, near the Strait of Hormuz, while separately, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations reported an attack on an LNG tanker off Yemen — without naming the ship or specifying its port of registry, which is an unusual level of anonymity for a vessel that was just attacked. The Red Sea corridor continues to function as the world's most reliably dramatic waterway, where the news cycle produces maritime incidents the way other regions produce press releases. The Strait of Hormuz, for its part, remains open — though at this pace, «open» is doing a lot of work as a descriptor.