Nobody can argue with the first “B” of the OBBBA, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which has just passed the Senate. The flagship legislation of Donald Trump’s second term is certainly big. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder—and to many, the bill looks very ugly. It is likely to widen America’s budget deficit, slow long-term economic growth and hurt the poorest Americans.

Elsewhere, we examine a curious dichotomy in the rarefied world of highly paid software engineers in Silicon Valley. For the lucky few—machine-learning whizzes—the rewards are becoming stratospheric. But their achievements in AI are taking work from less fortunate software developers. The superstars’ boom is their bust.