This week in the saga

Thursday evening a three-judge trade court rules that the emergency statute he built the whole board on does not authorise any of it, and the tariffs are void. An appeals panel stays the ruling within the day, so nothing changes and everything does: the instrument the term runs on has been told, in writing, that it may not exist. His reply runs two thousand words and ends up somewhere unexpected — at the society that recommended his judges, and at the man he says controls them. Four minutes later, in a post of four lines, the richest man in the world is given a send-off: tomorrow is his last day, but not really, he will always be with us. Friday morning he explains what the pause was for. China went cold turkey, he saw it happening, he did not like it — for them, not for us — and he made a fast deal to save them, and then they violated it, so much for being Mr. Nice Guy. Friday evening steel doubles to fifty percent from a stage in Pittsburgh. Monday a man burns people at a hostage vigil in Colorado. Monday evening, one line about uranium that nobody reads twice, and should have.