Moore Swings at the StoryMaryland Gov. Wes Moore is not ignoring questions about his past. He is attacking the people asking them. On MS NOW with Jen Psaki, Moore pushed back on reporting from The Baltimore Sun about inconsistencies in his military service claims. Instead of staying on the facts, he said the outlet was no longer Maryland's paper of record and called it "the paper of the right wing." That is a familiar move in modern politics: when the questions get uncomfortable, blame the newsroom, the owner, the weather, or President Trump if he is nearby. It saves time, if not credibility.https://twitter.com/PsakiBriefing/status/2041705624564547722?Ownership Became the New AlibiMoore and his allies also leaned hard on the fact that The Baltimore Sun is now owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose executive chairman, David Smith, is seen as friendly to Trump. His press secretary, Ammar Moussa, took the same route on X and called the reporting "faux-journalism." That is a bold line from a public office that would probably prefer fewer questions, not more. But ownership does not answer the main issue. If the reporting is wrong, show the proof. If it is right, the party labels on the masthead do not make…

Chagos Deal Goes On Ice The British government has put its Chagos Islands handover plan on hold, at least for now. The proposed deal would have shifted sovereignty of the archipelago to Mauritius and then kept the Diego Garcia military base under a long lease. That is a neat little lesson in modern statecraft: announce a complicated transfer, wait for the security crowd to raise a hand, then discover that geopolitics does not improve just because a memo says "decolonization." Trump's Pressure Changes The Mood The pause followed pushback from the Trump administration, which argued the move would weaken a key Western outpost in the Indian Ocean. Trump reportedly called the idea a mistake and, in classic no-filter fashion, described it as "an act of great stupidity." The White House view was simple: Diego Garcia matters, and handing over sovereignty while trying to lease the base back looked less like strategy than a very expensive surrender document. Why London Backed Away For London, the deal was supposed to cut off a legal fight with Mauritius and settle a long-running colonial dispute. Instead, it became another case of officials betting that a costly compromise would be easier than a court battle.…