Hello Kind and Curious Humans,
There is a ritual I have protected for most of my adult life. Every Sunday morning, before the week has a chance to grab me, I make coffee, sit down, and read the New York Times. Not the app. Not the headlines. The paper — the full, unhurried, ink-on-your-fingers paper.
I want to tell you what that ritual actually means to me, because it matters to everything that follows.
It is not nostalgia. It is discipline. In every leadership role I have held — from Gap to 20th Century Fox to Disney to Claire's — the people I respected most were the ones who thought before they spoke. Who sat with complexity before they reached for conclusions. Who understood that the speed of a reaction is almost never a measure of its quality. Reading the Sunday paper slowly, all of it, is how I practice that. It is my weekly act of intellectual humility before the world asks me to have opinions.
This week I did not stop at the Times. I read Reuters. The BBC. MS Now. And I read Fox News — not reluctantly, not ironically, but intentionally. Because I believe that how you consume information is how you lead. Slow down. Read widely. Think before you speak. A leader who only reads what confirms what they already believe is not learning. They are rehearsing. You cannot lead people you refuse to understand, and understanding starts with knowing what they are reading, how they are receiving the world, what stories are being told to the people sitting across from you — at the table, across the aisle, across the country.
What I found across those five sources this week left me quiet for a long time.
Not because any single story was new. But because of what they add up to when you hold them all at once, on a Sunday morning, with nowhere to be. I have been in leadership long enough to recognize the difference between a difficult moment and a different one. This is different. This is unlike anything I have watched unfold in my lifetime — not in the sheer volume of crises, but in the way they are interconnected, feeding each other, each one making the others harder to resolve.
Here is what I read.
UKRAINE: The Alliance Is the Story Now
We are five years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This is Russia's longest continuous major war since the 18th century — longer in tempo and casualties than the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Five years. Let that settle.
The battlefield news this month is actually more encouraging than the headlines suggest. Russian forces lost ground over the most recent measured period, a meaningful reversal from earlier in the winter. Ukraine is fighting. Ukraine is not losing. The Times and Reuters both noted that Ukrainian forces recaptured more territory in February than Russia seized — the strongest Ukrainian performance since the Kursk incursion in 2024.
But every source I read this week pointed to something more consequential than the frontlines. The United States voted against an international resolution condemning attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, joining Russia, China, and Niger in opposing the measure. Read that sentence one more time. Meanwhile, the EU renewed sanctions targeting over 2,600 individuals and entities connected to Russia's war, and the EU Council chief publicly criticized Washington for easing pressure on Russian oil exports — arguing it gave Russia more resources to continue the war.
The BBC framed this as a historic fracturing of Western unity. Reuters tracked the diplomatic contradictions without editorializing. Fox presented it as American sovereignty — the right of this administration to define its own foreign policy on its own terms. Ms. Now connected it to the human cost borne most heavily by Ukrainian women and children surviving their fifth war winter.
All of those lenses are real. Here is the one I keep coming back to: the side that does not need to win outright — the side that only needs to outlast the coalition opposing it — holds a structural advantage in any prolonged conflict. That has always been Putin's strategy. He does not need to take Ukraine. He needs to watch the West disagree about Ukraine until the disagreement becomes the story. Right now, that strategy is finding oxygen it should not have.
IRAN AND THE MIDDLE EAST: What Comes After the Strike
On February 28, the United States and Israel launched what was designated "Operation Epic Fury." Nearly 900 strikes in 12 hours targeted Iranian missiles, air defenses, military infrastructure, and leadership — killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the opening salvo. The largest American military action in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 12 hours.
Iran retaliated with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles, targeting U.S. military bases across Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE. Britain's base in Cyprus was struck. Oil prices spiked. Markets went volatile. Hundreds of thousands of travelers were stranded.
I read Fox and the BBC on this story side by side, which I recommend to anyone who wants to understand how differently two serious news organizations can frame the same set of facts. Fox led with strength, decisiveness, and the argument that Iran had been pushing toward this confrontation for years — that the window to act was narrowing and this administration took it. The BBC and Reuters led with civilian casualties, regional destabilization, the humanitarian toll, and the unanswered question of what a post-Khamenei Iran actually becomes. Ms. Now reported that one of the opening strikes killed approximately 170 people when a missile struck a girls' school adjacent to a naval base.
Every one of those things is true simultaneously.
That is not a contradiction. That is the nature of war.
I am not here to render a verdict on whether the strikes were right or wrong. What I will say is the thing I have said in every boardroom when a major unilateral decision lands on the table: what is the plan for the morning after? You can change a situation in hours. You cannot install stability in weeks or months or sometimes years. The most important question in any high-stakes decision is never just "can we?" It is always "and then what?"
As of this writing, Iran is demanding reparations and guarantees against future attacks as preconditions to ending the war. Trump has said he is not ready for a deal. The Strait of Hormuz remains a global pressure point. The region, and the markets, are holding their breath.
History will have a verdict on this moment. We are still living inside it.
THE DHS SHUTDOWN: 260,000 People Protecting a Country That Isn't Paying Them
This story has been buried under the weight of two international conflicts. It should not be.
Last Friday, the Department of Homeland Security reached its one-month mark of a funding lapse, with roughly 90% of its 260,000 employees continuing to work without pay. Those employees include every TSA agent screening you at the airport during spring break travel. FEMA staff. The Coast Guard — including personnel currently deployed in Bahrain, in a war zone. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, whose entire job is to defend our digital infrastructure from the adversaries we are simultaneously engaged with militarily.
The shutdown began after federal agents fatally shot an American citizen in Minneapolis in January. Senate Democrats refused to fund the department without accountability reforms — body cameras, warrant requirements, bans on agents wearing masks during enforcement operations. Republicans refused those conditions. The funding bill has failed to reach 60 votes three times. Congress left for a policy retreat in Florida. Spring break travelers are now waiting hours in airport security lines as TSA agents work without pay. Cities hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup have not received federal security funding.
Fox framed this as Democrats weaponizing national security for political leverage during a period of elevated threat. Democrats argued they were refusing to fund enforcement without the basic accountability measures that every professional law enforcement standard already requires. Both frames contain real arguments. Both sides bear real responsibility.
But here is the part that is not arguable, from any angle: 260,000 people are going to work every day to keep this country safe, and this country is not paying them. They did not create this standoff. They are absorbing it. That is not a political position. It is a human one. And it is wrong.
THE SAVE AMERICA ACT: When the Name and the Impact Are Two Different Things
Trump has made this his singular domestic legislative priority — publicly refusing to sign any other legislation until it passes. The bill requires every American to present a passport or birth certificate in person to register to vote. The stated purpose is preventing noncitizen voting.
We do not have to speculate about what this looks like in practice. Kansas ran this experiment. Before its documentary proof requirement, noncitizen registration represented 0.002% of registered voters. After the law took effect, it blocked roughly 31,000 eligible citizens — about 12% of all applicants — from registering. The solution to a problem that barely existed created a barrier affecting one in eight eligible voters who tried to participate.
More than 21 million Americans lack ready access to a passport or birth certificate. The impact falls disproportionately on younger voters and voters of color. Married women with name changes face mismatched records. Rural voters who rely on mail registration would be effectively shut out. Election officials who make an honest administrative mistake could face criminal penalties.
Fox covered this as a commonsense protection of American elections. The Times, Reuters, BBC, and MS Now all focused on the documented evidence that the law would disenfranchise far more eligible citizens than the noncitizens it claims to address.
I spent decades in executive leadership. There is a principle I applied in every room I ever ran: when your proposed solution causes more harm than the problem it was designed to fix, one of two things is true — you have not done your homework, or the solution is doing exactly what it was actually designed to do.
Naming things honestly is a leadership practice. This one deserves its honest name.
ANTISEMITISM: The Canary That Each Generation Ignores at Its Peril
Across every source I read this Sunday, I found evidence of something that should concern all of us, regardless of politics or background or identity.
Since October 7, 2023, there has been a serious, documented spike in antisemitic incidents across the United States — on campuses, in communities, in the everyday spaces that rarely reach front pages. This week, two men speaking Hebrew at a restaurant in San Jose were violently assaulted, with their attacker shouting antisemitic slurs connected to the Iran conflict. The war arrived in a California dining room. That is not a metaphor. That happened.
There is a reason antisemitism is called the canary. Every generation that has dismissed its rise as a fringe phenomenon, as someone else's problem, as politically inconvenient to address, has eventually had to reckon with what that silence made possible. The hatred does not stay contained. It never has.
Radical Kindness is not selective. If it only extends to people who resemble me, or agree with me, or move in my circles, it is not a value. It is a preference. And I refuse to let it be a preference.
Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem. It is a human problem. And silence on it,from any of us, is a form of permission.
ANTI-LGBTQ+ LEGISLATION: 738 Bills and the Strategy Behind Them
In 2026, 738 bills are under consideration across the country that would negatively impact transgender and gender nonconforming people. This is the seventh consecutive year of record-breaking anti-trans legislation.
The coordination behind this effort is not incidental. Conservative legal organizations circulate model bills that are replicated across multiple states with minimal changes — a deliberate, funded, long-term strategy that has escalated every year since marriage equality became the law of the land.
On March 10, the Florida House passed what advocates are calling the most extreme anti-diversity bill in the country — legislation designed to intimidate cities and counties that recognize and support their LGBTQ communities. The bill's own sponsor said on the floor that "Florida is where DEI goes to D-I-E." In Kansas, a sweeping bathroom ban combined with restrictions on transgender people's ability to update gender markers on identity documents passed through a supermajority legislature that is actively overriding the governor's vetoes. Another bill moving through Florida would expand the state's "Don't Say Gay or Trans" law into government workplaces and many private businesses — and would shield employees from accountability for intentionally bullying transgender colleagues.
Read that last part carefully. Not preventing bullying. Protecting the right to do it.
I am a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community. I say that once, and then I say this: this is not about identity politics. It is about whether every human being gets to exist fully, safely, and with dignity in the country they call home. That answer should not change depending on what state someone lives in. It should not require a court to protect it every single session. And it should not take courage to say out loud.
I have been in rooms my whole career where I was not supposed to be. I have never stopped showing up. I do not intend to start now.
WHAT ALL OF IT ADDS UP TO
I started this Sunday the way I always do. Coffee. The paper. An hour of quiet before the week arrives.
I ended it with a full page of notes, a heaviness I could not shake, and a clarity I was not expecting.
Here is the thread that runs through every story I have laid out above. Ukraine. Iran. The DHS shutdown. The SAVE America Act. The rise in antisemitism. Seven hundred and thirty-eight bills. Every single one is, at its core, a story about power being used to create fear. To diminish. To exclude. To consolidate control at someone else's expense. The geography changes. The actors change. The specific mechanism changes. The pattern does not.
That pattern does not correct itself. It has never corrected itself. It stops, when it stops, because people who have voices chose to use them. Because people with platforms refused to treat their silence as neutral. Because leaders decided that saying the hard thing clearly was more important than protecting their own comfort.
I read five news sources every Sunday so that I can understand the world I am asking people to lead in. That obligation does not end when I close the paper. It begins there.
We are in a genuinely different moment. It asks something of all of us. And the first thing it asks is that we pay attention.
The second thing it asks is that we speak.
Leave your corner of the world better than you found it.
All Pride, No Ego. — Jim
