WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says Wednesday will be “Liberation Day” — a moment when he plans to roll out a set of tariffs that he promises will free the United States from foreign goods.
The details of Trump’s next round of import taxes are still sketchy. Most economic analyses say average U.S. families would have to absorb the cost of his tariffs in the form of higher prices and lower incomes. But an undeterred Trump is inviting CEOs to the White House to say they are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in new projects to avoid the import taxes.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]It is also possible that the tariffs are short-lived if Trump feels he can cut a deal after imposing them.
“I’m certainly open to it, if we can do something,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll get something for it.”
Read More: What Are Tariffs and Why Is Trump In Favor of Them?
At stake are family budgets, America’s prominence as the world’s leading financial power and the structure of the global economy.
Here’s what you should know about the impending trade penalties:
He wants to announce import taxes, including “reciprocal” tariffs that would match the rates charged by other countries and account for other subsidies. Trump has talked about taxing the European Union, South Korea, Brazil and India, among other countries.
As he announced 25% auto tariffs last week, he alleged that America has been ripped off because it imports more goods than it exports.
“This is the beginning of Liberation Day in America,” Trump said. “We’re going to charge countries for doing business in our country and taking our jobs, taking our wealth, taking a lot of things that they’ve been taking over the years. They’ve taken so much out of our country, friend and foe. And, frankly, friend has been oftentimes much worse than foe.”
In an interview Saturday with NBC News, Trump said it did not bother him if tariffs caused vehicle prices to rise because autos with more U.S. content could possibly be more competitively priced.
“I hope they raise their prices, because if they do, people are gonna buy American-made cars,” Trump said. “I couldn’t care less because if the prices on foreign cars go up, they’re going to buy American cars.”
Trump has also suggested that he will be flexible with his tariffs, saying he will treat other nations better than they treated the United States. But he still has plenty of other taxes coming on imports.
The Republican president plans to tax imported pharmaceutical drugs, copper and lumber. He has put forth a 25% tariff on any country that imports oil from Venezuela, even though the United States also does so. Imports from China are being charged an additional 20% tax because of its role in fentanyl production. Trump has imposed separate tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico for the stated reason of stopping drug smuggling and illegal immigration. Trump also expanded his 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs to 25% on all imports.
Some aides suggest the tariffs are tools for negotiation on trade and border security; others say the revenues will help reduce the federal budget deficit. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says they will force other nations to show Trump “respect.”
Read More: These Are the U.S. Cities Most Vulnerable to Canadian Tariffs, a New Report Finds
Nothing good, according to most economists. They say the tariffs would get passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for autos, groceries, housing and other goods. Corporate profits could be lower and growth more sluggish. Trump maintains that more companies would open factories to avoid the taxes, though that process could take three years or more.
Economist Art Laffer estimates the tariffs on autos, if fully implemented, could increase per vehicle costs by $4,711, though he said he views Trump as a smart and savvy negotiator. The investment bank Goldman Sachs estimates the economy will grow this quarter at an annual rate of just 0.6%, down from a rate of 2.4% at the end of last year.
Mayor Andrew Ginther of Columbus, Ohio, said on Friday that tariffs could increase the median cost of a home by $21,000, making affordability more of an obstacle because building materials would cost more.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has suggested that tariffs would be a one-time price adjustment, rather than the start of an inflationary spiral. But Bessent’s conclusion rests on tariffs being brief or contained, rather than leading other countries to retaliate with their own tariffs or seeping into other sectors of the economy.
“There is a chance tariffs on goods begin to filter through to the pricing of services,” said Samuel Rines, a strategist at WisdomTree. “Auto parts get move expensive, then auto repair gets more expensive, then auto insurance feels the pressure. While goods are the focus, tariffs could have a longer-term effect on inflation.”
Most foreign leaders see the tariffs as destructive for the global economy, even if they are prepared to impose their own countermeasures.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Trump’s tariff threats had ended the partnership between his country and the United States, even as the president on Friday talked about his phone call with Carney in relatively positive terms. Canada already has announced retaliatory tariffs.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the tariffs were “not coherent” and would mean “breaking value chains, creating inflation in the short term and destroying jobs. It’s not good for the American economy, nor for the European, Canadian or Mexican economies.” Yet Macron said his nation would defend itself with the goal of dismantling the tariffs.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has avoided the tit-for-tat responses on tariffs, but she sees it as critical to defend jobs in her country.
The Chinese government said Trump’s tariffs would harm the global trading system and would not fix the economic challenges identified by Trump.
“There are no winners in trade wars or tariff wars, and no country’s development and prosperity are achieved through imposing tariffs,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said.
Based off Trump’s public statements, April 2 is at least the third “liberation day” that he has identified.
At a rally last year in Nevada, he said the day of the presidential election, Nov. 5, would be “Liberation Day in America.” He later gave his inauguration the same label, declaring in his address: “For American citizens, Jan. 20, 2025, is Liberation Day.”
His repeated designation of the term is a sign of just how much importance Trump places on tariffs, an obsession of his since the 1980s. Dozens of other countries recognize their own form of liberation days to recognize events such as overcoming Nazi Germany or the end of a previous political regime deemed oppressive.
Trump sees his tariffs as providing national redemption, but the slumping consumer confidence and stock market indicate that much of the public believes the U.S. economy will pay the price for his ambitions.
“I don’t see anything positive about Liberation Day,” said Phillip Braun, a finance professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “It’s going to hurt the U.S. economy. Other countries are going to retaliate.”
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s president said Sunday that the Islamic Republic rejected direct negotiations with the United States over its rapidly advancing nuclear program, offering Tehran’s first response to a letter President Donald Trump sent to the country’s supreme leader.
President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran’s response, delivered via the sultanate of Oman, left open the possibility of indirect negotiations with Washington. However, such talks have made no progress since Trump in his first term unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]In the years since, regional tensions have boiled over into attacks at sea and on land. Then came the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which saw Israel target militant group leaders across Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance.” Now, as the U.S. conducts intense airstrikes targeting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen, the risk of military action targeting Iran’s nuclear program remains on the table.
“We don’t avoid talks; it’s the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far,” Pezeshkian said in televised remarks during a Cabinet meeting. “They must prove that they can build trust.”
The White House offered no immediate reaction to the announcement.
Having Pezeshkian announced the decision shows just how much has changed in Iran since his election half a year ago after he campaigned on a promise to re-engage with the West.
Since Trump’s election and the resumption of his “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, Iran’s rial currency has gone into a freefall. Pezeshkian had left open talks up until Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came down hard on Trump in February and warned talks “are not intelligent, wise or honorable” with his administration. The Iranian president then immediately toughened his own remarks on the U.S.
Meanwhile, there have been mixed messages coming from Iran for weeks. Videos from Quds, or Jerusalem, Day demonstrations on Friday had people in the crowds instructing participants to only shout: “Death to Israel!” Typically, “Death to America” was also heard.
A video of an underground missile base unveiled by Iran’s hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard also showed its troops stepping on an Israeli flag painted on the ground — though there was no American flag as often seen in such propaganda videos.
But Press TV, the English-language arm of Iranian state television, published an article last week that included listing U.S. bases in the Middle East as possible targets of attack. The list included Camp Thunder Cove on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. is basing stealth B-2 bombers likely being used in Yemen.
“The Americans themselves know how vulnerable they are,” warned Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Friday. “If they violate Iran’s sovereignty, it will be like a spark in a gunpowder depot, setting the entire region ablaze. In such a scenario, their bases and their allies will not be safe.”
However, Tehran’s two recent direct attacks on Israel with ballistic missiles and drones caused negligible damage, while Israel responded by destroying Iranian air defense systems.
Trump’s letter arrived in Tehran on March 12. Though announcing he wrote it in a television interview, Trump offered little detail on what he exactly told the supreme leader.
“I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing,’” Trump said in the interview.
The move recalled Trump’s letter-writing to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term, which led to face-to-face meetings but no deals to limit Pyongyang’s atomic bombs and a missile program capable of reaching the continental U.S.
The last time Trump tried to send a letter to Khamenei, through the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2019, the supreme leader mocked the effort.
Trump’s letter came as both Israel and the United States have warned they will never let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon, leading to fears of a military confrontation as Tehran enriches uranium at near weapons-grade levels of 60% purity — something only done by atomic-armed nations.
Iran has long maintained its program is for peaceful purposes, even as its officials increasingly threaten to pursue the bomb. A report in February, however, by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said Iran has accelerated its production of near weapons-grade uranium.
Iran’s reluctance to deal with Trump likely also takes root in his ordering the attack that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a Baghdad drone strike in January 2020. The U.S. has said Iran plotted to assassinate Trump over that prior to his election this November, something Tehran denied though officials have threatened him.
—Vahdat reported from Tehran, Iran.
Texas has one of the strictest abortion restrictions in the country, banning abortion in nearly all situations with very limited exceptions. Since the near-total ban went into effect, several women in the state have shared stories and filed lawsuits, saying that they were denied critical care while experiencing pregnancy complications. On March 14, one of the lawmakers behind the state’s restrictive abortion laws introduced a bill seeking to clarify medical exceptions.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But some abortion-rights advocates and legal experts say the bill won’t do what it claims to, and even worry that it could open the door to prosecuting pregnant people and people who help patients access abortions.
Here’s what to know.
The only exception to Texas’ abortion ban is if a person is experiencing a “life-threatening” medical emergency “that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” But the current version of the law does not get more specific than that. Doctors have said that the near-total ban causes confusion over when they can provide treatment in urgent situations, leading to care delays or denials.
However, there is specificity over the potential severe penalties for doctors who are found to have violated the state’s ban: up to $100,000 in fines, 99 years in prison, and losing their medical license.
In the fall of 2024, ProPublica reported that three Texas women died after they didn’t receive appropriate care while experiencing miscarriages.
Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes—who has previously said that exceptions to the state’s near-total ban are “plenty clear”—said during a Senate committee hearing on March 27 that there have been “reports that some doctors and some hospitals are not following the law,” meaning that they have denied necessary medical care. He said he recently introduced a bill, SB 31, in order to “remove any excuse from a doctor or a hospital” from treating a patient experiencing medical emergencies. Republican Texas Rep. Charlie Geren has filed the same bill in the House. (Neither Hughes’s nor Geren’s office responded to a request for comment on this story.)
Read More: What Are Abortion Shield Laws?
The bill doesn’t expand abortion access in the state, but removes language from the state’s laws that requires a pregnant person to be experiencing a “life-threatening” condition for a doctor to provide care. The bill adds that it “does not require a physician to delay, alter or withhold medical treatment provided to a pregnant female if doing so would create a greater risk of the pregnant female’s death; or substantial impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant female.” It says that a patient’s emergency “need not be imminent or irreversible” for a doctor to provide care. It specifies that ectopic pregnancies are considered exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion ban, but doesn’t include exceptions for fetal anomalies, rape, or incest.
The bill also includes language that instructs the State Bar of Texas and the Texas Medical Board to hold education sessions for lawyers and doctors about the medical exceptions to the state’s ban.
The bill has received some rare bipartisan support, as well as support from both anti-abortion groups and some medical organizations, including the Texas Medical Association. Dr. Julie Ayala, an ob-gyn who practices in Texas, testified during the Senate committee hearing on March 27 on behalf of the Texas Medical Association that she believes “this bill will clear up confusion” and “save women’s lives.”
But other abortion rights advocates, doctors, and legal experts say the bill won’t do what it claims.
“It’s an attempt to add some clarity, but I think the underlying reasons that we’re seeing what we’re seeing with denials to care aren’t really changed in the bill,” says Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law with expertise in abortion. While the bill specifies some situations in which abortion is permitted, “pregnancy is complicated, so there are a lot of other scenarios that aren’t going to be enumerated in the bill where physicians aren’t going to know what to do,” Ziegler says.
The bill also doesn’t remove the severe penalties for doctors who are found to have violated the state’s near-total ban—one of the reasons “we’re seeing physicians refuse to provide care,” Ziegler says.
Read More: IVF Patients Say a Test Caused Them to Discard Embryos. Now They’re Suing
Samantha Casiano, an advocate for the reproductive rights advocacy nonprofit Free & Just, also criticized the bill. Casiano, who lives in Texas, was forced to carry her baby to term even after doctors told her at 20 weeks of pregnancy that her baby had anencephaly, a fatal birth defect, and wouldn’t survive. Her baby died four hours after being born. Casiano was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit Zurawski v. State of Texas that was brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights and made national headlines for challenging Texas’ abortion ban. The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the women at the heart of the lawsuit in May 2024, refusing to clarify the exceptions to the state’s abortion ban.
“Nothing in [SB 31] would’ve helped my situation at all,” Casiano says. “I’m just so upset that I felt like from 20 weeks to 32 weeks, I was basically a walking coffin for my daughter until I had to give birth, and then she had to suffer and be in agony. So where in that [bill] does that help my situation, or families and mothers like me? It was really upsetting and disappointing to read it.”
Dr. Austin Dennard is an ob-gyn practicing in Texas who joined the Zurawski v. State of Texas lawsuit after she was forced to travel out of state to receive care when she learned that her baby had anencephaly. Dennard says that while she believes some of the people behind the bill had good intentions, she doesn’t think the bill “is going to make a lick of difference in the real practicality of practicing medicine.” She says the bill’s language is still very confusing, even to reproductive rights lawyers she’s spoken with, adding that “exceptions don’t work” to ensure access to care.
As for the education sessions about the medical exceptions, Dennard questions who would be creating that guidance, and if it would be coming from anti-abortion sources.
“It’s extremely disappointing to me, and if anyone is celebrating, I think that they are extremely naive to think that these individuals actually really want to make a change,” says Dennard, who is an advocate for Free & Just. “It feels like a political publicity movement rather than [a] true desire to help people.”
Advocates and experts also point out that SB 31 amends a 1925 law predating Roe v. Wade. The 1925 law bans abortion and penalizes anyone who “furnishes the means for procuring an abortion,” with the possibility of up to five years in prison. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had previously tried to enforce the 1925 law after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe, but a federal judge blocked the move in 2023. Now, advocates and experts worry that the bill could “open the door” to the 1925 law being used to prosecute abortion patients, as well as people and groups who help patients access care, such as through abortion funds.
“If there is even a sliver of [a] chance that that bill could open the door to that 1925 criminalization of women and people that help you get an abortion, we have to be concerned,” says Kaitlyn Kash, a Free & Just advocate. Kash was forced to travel out of Texas to receive an abortion after learning that her baby had severe skeletal dysplasia, which impacts bone and cartilage growth, and that her baby likely wouldn’t survive.
Texas is also considering a separate bill that would allow authorities to charge people who obtain abortions with homicide, making it one of at least 10 states that have introduced bills for the 2025 legislative session that open the door for penalizing patients—a growing trend since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe.
Read More: Some States Consider Bills That Would Punish People Seeking Abortions
According to Ziegler, SB 31 carves out some situations that wouldn’t be considered “aiding and abetting” an abortion, but in doing so, leaves open the possibility that other situations would be. “It’s sort of a similar dynamic to what you see with the exceptions,” Ziegler says. “There’s some clarity in a few narrow situations, and then a lot of gray area and threat of prosecution in most others.” She adds that Hughes has also introduced another bill, SB 2880, which—among other attempts to crack down on abortion—would expand who could be penalized for “aiding and abetting” abortions, including people who pay for or reimburse the costs associated with obtaining an abortion.
Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in the Zurawski v. State of Texas lawsuit, was denied an abortion after experiencing a complication called preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes (PPROM) because doctors said they detected fetal cardiac activity. A few days later, she developed sepsis, a life-threatening condition. Doctors performed an emergency induction abortion, and she had to spend several days in the ICU.
Zurawski, now a Free & Just advocate, criticized SB 31 for attempting to create “blanket rules over every single pregnancy in the state of Texas, because no two are the same.”
“I like to believe—I think I have to believe—that the intent of this bill is not malicious,” she says, but she adds that Texas officials have attempted to penalize people providing access to abortion care. The Texas Attorney General’s office recently announced that it had filed criminal charges against a midwife and medical assistant, accusing them of illegally providing abortions in Texas.
Dennard says she has received pressure from some people behind the bill and other physicians who disagree with her to support it. While some doctors and legal experts have said that the clarity would make “modest but not meaningless” changes and could save some lives, advocates say they don’t believe it will work.
“We shouldn’t be begging for scraps,” Kash says.”You don’t legislate medicine.”
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Weak Hero Class 1 and the Weak Hero Class webtoon
When Weak Hero Class 1 was originally released in late 2022, the violent, coming-of-age series about a group of classmates banding together against their bullies became a word-of-mouth hit among K-drama fans. Originally released on Waave in Korea and on platforms like iQiyi, Kocowa, and Viki internationally, the show was popular among viewers who were able to access it, and found organic growth thanks to their raves on social media.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Still, because Weak Hero Class 1 was not available on streaming behemoth Netflix—which is as close to mainstream TV as we get in today’s fractured media environment—its success was limited. While Netflix has over 300 million global subscribers, Asian content-centric streamers like Rakuten Viki or the Chinese-based iQiyi, both of which offered Weak Hero Class 1 to U.S. viewers prior to its Netflix release, have roughly 95 million subscribers and 101 million subscribers, respectively. While Viki and iQiyi’s global presence is notable, currently, each streamer pulls in only a third of Netflix’s total subscribers. A Netflix success has limits too, but, as Squid Game has proven, those limits can be quite broad.
Now, Weak Hero Class 1 is available to stream on Netflix, with a second season, Weak Hero Class 2, set to premiere on the streamer later this year. We’re taking the time to break down the heartbreaking, emotionally exhausting conclusion of the first eight episodes for those who have only recently found the series. What happens to high school boys Yeon Si-eun (Wanna One’s Park Ji-hoon), Ahn Suho (Twinkling Watermelon’s Choi Hyun-wook), and Oh Beom-seok (Revenant’s Hong Kyung)? How do things go so wrong for this friend group? And who ultimately survives? For those who have been waiting for Weak Hero Class 2 since 2022, we’ll also discuss what to expect from the sequel season.
Weak Hero Class 1 is adapted from a Korean webtoon called Weak Hero, known as 약한영웅 in Korean. The comic, or manhwa in Korean, is written by Seopass, with illustrations by Razen. It was first available on Naver Webtoon in 2018, and was also picked up by Line Webtoon in 2019, where it was later translated into English. The webtoon is ongoing, and has released 199 episodes, at the time of this writing. It has also been published in volumed book format in Korea.
The Weak Hero webtoon starts where Weak Hero Class 1 ends: with SI-eun as a newly arrived student at Eunjang High School. All of what happens in Weak Hero Class 1 is told in flashback in the Weak Hero webtoon, as part of Si-eun’s grisly backstory. While the series follows the basic plot of those flashbacks, they are understandably much more fleshed out in the show. The series changes some details, and also adds characters. For example, Yeong-i (D.P.’s Lee Yeon), the teen girl who helps Si-eun take down gang leader Gil-su, is not a character in the webtoon.
In the webtoon, Su-ho is not a skilled fighter, but rather good at tests. Rather than getting beat by MMA fighter Woo-young (Melo Movie’s Cha Woo-min), Su-ho is accidentally pushed off of a school building by Beom-seok and Jeong Yeong-bin (Kim Su-gyeom). In the English-language webtoon translation, the main character of Yeon Si-eun is called Gray Yeon. Su-ho is Stephen, and Beom-seok is Bryce.
BL, or boys’ love dramas, are a popular TV format. While Thailand has become known as a global exporter of BL dramas, Korea has also released a few, including Semantic Error and To My Star. However, Weak Hero Class 1 is not a BL drama. The central relationships in the series are of friendship.
The first half of Weak Hero Class 1 is about the burgeoning friendship between study fiend Si-eun, street smart Su-ho, and timid rich kid Beom-seok. The three unlikely friends bond when they are unwillingly pulled into the systemic violence of their school and neighborhood.
While interspersed with some brutal fight scenes that don’t always go in our protagonists’ favor, the occasional feel-good friendship moments of the series’ first half make the show’s devastating second half—which sees a traumatized and self-destructive Beom-seok turn on his friends—that much more painful. “I actually think this series can be separated in half from [episodes] one to four, and then from [episodes] five to eight,” Hong, who plays Beom-seok, said at the show’s Busan International Film Festival premiere in 2022. “I think, personally, it’s like adding up two different films together.”
The drama takes a heartbreaking turn at the end of episode 4. After Si-eun, Su-ho, and Beom-seok successfully take down local gangster Gil-su, Beom-seok’s politician father, Oh Jin-won (Love Next Door’s Jo Han-chul), gets involved. He covers up the circumstances of Gil-su’s arrest to keep his son’s name out of the press. Additionally, he has his men present Gil-su to Beom-seok. They tell Beom-seok that his father has requested the teenager beat Gil-su up. Beom-seok, who as we’ve seen in the first half of the series is not a naturally violent person, refuses. When he returns home, his father beats him with a golf club. It’s implied that this is common behaviour for the parent, and that Beom-seok is regularly abused both physically and emotionally.
Jin-won is a cutthroat politician who adopted Beom-seok because he thought it would help his campaign, and he uses fear, intimidation, and violence to control his son. Because this is what Beom-seok has learned, he begins to emulate the behavior himself. Insecure and hurting, Beom-seok begins to fear that Si-eun and Su-ho only hang out with him because he bankrolls their excursions. His resentment builds, and he falls in with some of the bullies in their class. When Su-ho, who has never stood idly by when fellow teens abuse their power, calls Beom-seok and his new “friends” out for cutting the school lunch line, Beom-seok decides to use his money to take Su-ho down a peg. He sabotages the motorbike Su-ho uses for his part-time job as a food delivery worker, and hires Woo-young to beat Su-ho up.
After Su-ho almost dies, Jin-won sends his son to a new school in the Philippines. Jin-won tells Beom-seok that if he doesn’t go, he will have Su-ho killed.
The season ends with Suho in a coma, as a result of the injuries he sustained when he was beaten and kicked by Woo-young, and then by Beom-seok and his lackeys. Though Beom-seok instigated and carried out the brutal attack, he becomes distraught when he realizes Su-ho may be dying. He tries to stay by Su-ho’s side, but is dragged away by his father’s hired men.
Later, Su-ho is brought to the hospital, where he is watched over by his grandmother and friends like Si-eun and Yeong-i. Su-ho’s sorry state prompts Si-eun to go on a vengeful rampage to exact violence on anyone involved with the attack. When Si-eun returns to Su-ho’s bedside, emotionally and physically exhausted, he imagines Su-ho waking up and teasing him. However, it is all in Si-eun’s imagination. Su-ho remains in a coma.
Before Beom-seok leaves the country, his father makes him visit his old school to say goodbye. It is an opportunity for Jin-won to gain political capital as a good father. When Si-eun comes into the school, looking to pummel anyone who played a hand in Su-ho’s injuries, Beom-seok is the final target on his vengeance list. But, when push comes to shove, Si-eun can’t hurt the person he once thought of as a friend. Perhaps he sees the defeated agony in Beom-seok’s eyes. Perhaps he is just tired. Whatever the motivation, Si-eun spares Beom-seok, though it may not feel like mercy to Beom-seok.
While Beom-seok goes to a new, presumably fancy school in the Philippines, Si-eun begins student life again at Eunjang School. It is the only school that will take him after he is thrown out of his former school for beating up his fellow students and after Jin-won makes sure he is blacklisted at other schools. Eunjang is much rougher than Si-eun’s previous school. Because of Si-eun’s delicate appearance, he is once again targeted as a potential victim by a class bully. In this case, the bully is Choi Hyo-man (Crash Landing on You’s Yoo Su-bin). Si-eun grips his pen, his weapon of choice, and stares Hyo-man down. Here we go again.
In a mid-credits scene, we hear the voice of a man with a tattooed hand. He is looking at a photo of Si-eun on his phone, identifying him as the kid who beat up MMA figher Woo-young, and who recently transferred to Eunjang. Apparently, “the alliance” was considering recruiting Woo-young for their group. “What should we do now?” the man asks ominously before the scene fades to black and the credits continue rolling. This is most likely teasing the appearance of webtoon character Na Baekjin, or Donald in the English-language translation, the leader of The Alliance and the story’s main antagonist.
In the webtoon, The Alliance, also known as the Yeongdeungpo Union, are a gang made up of students from five different schools, including Si-eun’s new one. Each school, other than Baek-jin’s Yeo-il High School, has a leader who reports to Baek-jin.
As Su-ho does not appear for most of the Weak Hero webtoon, other than in flashbacks, it is unlikely he will play a major role in Weak Hero Class 2. There’s always a chance for a surprise cameo that deviates from the source material, but Choi Hyun-wook is not currently listed as a Season 2 cast member.
Similarly, if Weak Hero Class 2 follows the webtoon, Beom-seok will not be in Season 2. Hong Kyung is not currently listed as one of the cast members.
While Choi and Hong may not be returning for Season 2, Park Ji-hoon will be reprising his central role as Si-eun (aka Gray). Joining him in the cast include Twinkling Watermelon’s Ryeoun as Park Hoo-min (aka Ben Park), Uprising’s Lee Min-jae as Go Hyun-tak (aka Alex Go), and XO Kitty’s Choi Min-yeong as Seo Jun-tae (aka Eugene Gale).
On the antagonist side, Melo Movie’s Lee Jun-young stars as Geum Sung-jae (aka Wolf Keum) and D.P. Season 2’s Bae Na-ra stars as big bad Na Baek-jin (aka Donald Na). Choi will continue his Weak Hero Class 1 final scene performance as Choi Hyo-man (aka Colton Choi).
While Netflix has not yet given a specific release date for Weak Hero Class 2, they have announced that the series will be out sometime in Q2.
When asked about how the series’ new platform will impact the story, Weak Hero Class 1 creative director Han Jun-hee told Korean media: “Weak Hero is still the same work. The only change is the platform. There are no other changes,” said Han. “There are concerns about the different mediums and running times, but we don’t approach it differently just because the platform is different.”
Two of the Trump Administration’s top intelligence officials defended the use of a group chat for high-level military planning during a contentious Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday, as Democrats questioned the national security implications of discussing sensitive war plans on a commercial messaging app.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The hearing, which had been previously scheduled, came a day after a bombshell report by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, National Security Adviser, and other top officials had used the unsecured platform to coordinate U.S. military strikes in Yemen, and had mistakenly included a journalist in the conversation. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, both of whom appeared to have been participants in the Signal group chat according to The Atlantic’s report, were hammered by Senate Democrats, who decried the episode as reckless. While Gabbard declined to confirm her involvement in the chat, she and Ratcliffe ultimately insisted that no classified information was shared.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s ranking Democrat, pressed Gabbard and Ratcliffe on how the incident occurred and why senior officials felt comfortable using an unsecured platform to discuss U.S. military action in Yemen. “If this were a military officer or intelligence officer, they would be fired,” Warner said, condemning what he described as “sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior” by the Administration.
Gabbard, who repeatedly dodged questions on whether she was the user identified as “TG” in the chat, eventually asserted that the discussion was permissible under internal protocols. “There was no classified material that was shared,” she said, echoing a similar defense offered by the White House. In his article, Goldberg wrote that the chat contained information about weapons packages, strike timing, and target details for an active military operation—the March 15 U.S. air assault on Yemen’s Houthi militants.
Ratcliffe maintained that “Signal is a permissible work-use application” for the CIA and that it was loaded onto his computer shortly after he was confirmed as the agency’s director. “It is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate for work purposes, provided, Senator, that any decisions that are made are also recorded through formal channels. So those were procedures that were implemented,” Ratcliffe said, claiming that any formal decisions were recorded through official government channels.
Gabbard and Ratcliffe agreed to comply with an audit of their communications in response to questioning from Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, who pressed them on their claim that they did not participate in classified discussions on Signal. “To be clear, I haven’t participated in any Signal group messaging that relates to any classified information at all,” Ratcliffe said. “Senator, I have the same answer,” Gabbard said. “I have not participated in any Signal group chat, or any other chat on another app that contained any classified information.”
The Signal group, convened by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and other senior officials, along with Goldberg, who was mistakenly included in the thread.
“This sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for him is entirely unacceptable,” Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, said to Ratcliffe. “It’s an embarrassment. You need to do better.”
Republicans on the committee largely sidestepped the controversy during the hearing, which was intended to focus on “worldwide threats.” None of them asked about the chat scandal, instead focusing their questions on cartels, illegal immigration, and China.
The White House has sought to downplay the incident, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisting on social media that “no war plans were shared.” In an NBC interview Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump dismissed concerns about Waltz or the larger scandal, calling it his Administration’s “only glitch in two months” and expressing continued confidence in his national security team. “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said.
Hegseth, for his part, pushed back on the original article, telling reporters Monday that “nobody was texting war plans.” In an interview with CNN, Goldberg refuted that claim. “That’s a lie,” he said. “He was texting war plans, he was texting attack plans.”
Goldberg chose to withhold operational details and the name of a CIA official he says was mentioned in the chat in order to protect the safety of intelligence officials and military personnel—but he could be motivated to release more from the messages now that Trump Administration officials are both insisting no classified information was shared, and refuting his reporting that the conversation did not involve war plans. Asked if Goldberg could be held legally liable if he decided to publish the messages, FBI Director Kash Patel, who was sitting beside Gabbard and Ratcliffe, refused to answer: “I’m not going to prejudge the situation, and that legal call is ultimately for the Department of Justice,” he said.
The controversy underscores broader concerns about security protocols in the Trump Administration. Former officials and intelligence experts have warned that using any unclassified messaging service to coordinate military operations represents a major breach of standard protocol, even if it’s a platform like Signal that is encrypted. Those concerns came to a head during the hearing when Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, pressed Ratcliffe on the severity of the mistake. “This was a huge mistake, no?” Ossoff asked. “No,” Ratcliffe replied. The exchange quickly grew heated as Ossoff and Ratcliffe talked over each other. Ratcliffe later conceded that adding a journalist to the chat was an “inadvertent mistake,” which did not appear to satisfy Ossoff. “There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error,” he said.
Some Democrats have called for resignations in the wake of the reporting. Warner, the intelligence committee’s vice chair, has said both Waltz and Hegseth should step down.
“Putting aside for a moment that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system, it’s also just mind-boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line, and nobody bothered to even check,” Warner said, referring to Goldberg having been included in the discussion. “Security hygiene 101: Who are all the names?”
Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and a former Air Force Brigadier General, stopped short of calling for resignations, but made clear late Monday that he believed the officials on the group chat acted recklessly.
“I will guarantee you, 99.99% with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones,” he told CNN. “So I just think it’s a security violation, and there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff within hours of the actual attacks on Yemen or the Houthis.”
On Thursday, Second Lady Usha Vance will be visiting Greenland along with a U.S. delegation. The trip, the White House says, is meant to “celebrate Greenlandic culture and unity” with Vance scheduled to visit historical sites, learn about Greenlandic heritage, and attend Greenland’s national dogsled race. Trump’s national security advisor, Mike Waltz, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are also expected to make a visit.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But the visit has been condemned by Greenland’s leaders, especially as the Trump Administration has continued its brazen push for control of the region. In a speech at the joint session of Congress on March 4, President Donald Trump spoke of the importance of letting the people of Greenland determine their own future before admitting, “We need it really for international world security, and I think we’re going to get it one way or the other.”
The trip also comes as Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, is facing a new future in the face of climate change. Rising temperatures are accelerating the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. The impact, coupled with warming oceans, has altered the area’s ecosystems and food security.
On the surface, it seems these changes may be opening up new economic and strategic opportunities—ones the U.S. and others may want to tap. But the reality is more complicated than that.
“There’s a perceived military benefit and there’s a perceived economic benefit,” says Paul Bierman, professor of natural resources at the University of Vermont. Greenland is strategically located in the Atlantic Ocean between the U.S., Russia, and China, and contains a trove of natural resources—minerals, oil, and natural gas—that is largely untapped. But Bierman adds: “I actually think both of these [ideas] are false.”
There are 31 million barrels of undiscovered oil in East Greenland, according to a 2007 U.S. Geological Survey study. And Greenland is home to minerals like lithium, niobium, and zirconium, all of which are useful for the production of batteries, electronics, and electric cars. But experts say that accessing these resources is not as easy as it sounds.
The reason much of the resources remain untapped is in part because they are not easily accessible. Greenland has a limited road network and a population of less than 60,000—and a large portion of the region is built on permafrost, which presents building challenges. “It’s a tricky ground to create infrastructure on,” says Asa Rennermalm, professor at the Department of Geography at Rutgers.
Climate change has spurred hopes of a mineral gold rush—as the receding ice could make accessing these natural resources easier. Many areas of Greenland, however, are currently closed off to extraction. In 2021, the territory’s parliament voted to stop oil and gas exploration due to environmental concerns, and also banned uranium mining that same year.
Greenland’s changing climate also holds potential for the U.S.’s artificial intelligence ambitions. During a Feb. 12 Senate hearing on the acquisition of Greenland, Rebecca Pincus, director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center, spoke of the potential for the melting ice sheet to provide the energy for hydropower-fueled AI data centers.
Melting sea ice could open up a new trade route—one which President Trump seems to be vying for control over. “What we’re seeing globally in the Arctic is a dramatic decrease in the coverage of sea ice,” says Bierman. “And so as the Arctic Ocean has less and less sea ice, it potentially is open to vessels that are not icebreakers to get through.”
Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien has said that Greenland’s location is critical not only in its relation to China and Russia, but also as an alternative shipping route as climate change makes the Panama Canal more unreliable. Prolonged drought, exacerbated by climate change, has lowered water levels in the canal, making it harder for ships to pass through.
“[Greenland is] strategically very important to the Arctic, which is going to be the critical battleground of the future, because as the climate gets warmer, the Arctic is going to be a pathway that maybe cuts down on the usage of the Panama Canal,” O’Brien said in an interview with Sunday Morning Futures in December.
China and Russia launched a joint shipping corridor along the Arctic Sea in 2023—that year alone, 80 voyages reached Chinese ports through the route. “We have a lot of our favorite players cruising around the coast, and we have to be careful,” Trump told NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte earlier this month, referring to the potential security risk that open Arctic waters might pose.
Experts say that the Trump Administration’s focus is nearsighted—and ignoring a much bigger issue. The Arctic is warming at a rate three to four times faster than the rest of the world—and Greenland’s ice sheet lost 2.5 million liters (over 660,000 gallons) of fresh water per second last year.
The melting ice sheets are not going to make resource extraction any easier. “There’s this fantasy that the ice sheets are going to melt away overnight, and all these new exotic minerals are going to appear where they used to be a thousand feet of ice,” says Bierman. “That’s not going to happen.”
Ice melt caused by climate change can trigger landslides, which can damage mining infrastructure in seconds. “It’s going to destroy the port infrastructure, or, if you’re unlucky enough, destroy your mine,” says Bierman.
What’s more, if Greenland’s ice sheet were to melt completely, it would raise global sea levels by 23 ft. “Even just a fraction of that is going to have huge impacts on global sea level rise,” says Rennermalm.
It will radically change the rest of the world—coasts from Mumbai to Mar-a-Lago could be underwater. “If we don’t take care of that ice sheet. There are estimates in the many trillion dollars of economic losses if that happens, and that’s going to eclipse any critical minerals,” says Bierman. “That to me is the piece that doesn’t fit in the four year political cycle.”
President Donald Trump has made good on his promise of revoking security clearance for former President Joe Biden. Issued late on Friday night, a memo titled “Rescinding Security Clearances and Access to Classified Information from Specified Individuals,” laid out Trump’s instructions for Biden, several members of the Biden Administration, and other political rivals to have their security clearances rescinded.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Trump determined it was “no longer in the national interest” for said individuals to still hold “any active security clearance” or “unescorted” access to government facilities. “This action includes, but is not limited to, receipt of classified briefings, such as the President’s Daily Brief, and access to classified information held by any member of the Intelligence Community by virtue of the named individuals’ previous tenure in the Congress,” the memo reads.
The action was applied to Biden and “any other member of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s family.” Joining the former President on the list was his former Vice President, and Trump’s one-time opponent in the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris. Trump’s 2016 opponent and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also listed, alongside former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former National Security Advisor Jacob Sullivan, and former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
In addition, New York Attorney General Letitia James and the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg—both of whom prosecuted Trump—as well as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Republicans and former Representatives who served on the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, were added to the list of people who will have such privileges rescinded.
The memo also includes whistleblower lawyer Mark Zaid and Fiona Hill, Trump’s former Russian analyst who testified during Trump’s first impeachment hearing. Norman Eisen, an attorney leading various lawsuits against the Trump Administration, and former National Security Council official Alexander Vindman also joined attorney Andrew Weissmann and Alexander Vindman, the former Director for European Affairs, on the list. Vindman responded to the memo via social media, saying: “I’m not a weak-kneed billionaire or a massive spineless law firm, so I don’t care what noises Donald Trump makes about a security clearance that hasn’t been active for five years.”
Some of the names included in Trump’s memo had also seemingly already had their security clearances revoked earlier this month by the newly-instated Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
Security clearance, according to the State Department, is a determination of whether an individual has access “to classified national security information.” For some government employees, levels of access to this information is determined by their job functions via a formal security clearance process and vetting actions.
For the President, Vice President, and members of Congress, their election alone affords them major security clearance privileges, rather than vetting.
According to Congress, there are three different levels of security clearance, including “confidential,” “secret,” and “top secret.”
Former Presidents and other previously-serving officials are often given access to classified information as a courtesy, even after they leave office. In 2021, though, Biden took away Trump’s security clearance—citing what he said was Trump’s “erratic behavior” around the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Trump had earlier announced his intention to revoke Biden’s security clearance on Feb. 7, posting on his social media platform, Truth Social, about his decision. “There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information. Therefore, we are immediately revoking Joe Biden’s Security Clearances, and stopping his daily Intelligence Briefings,” Trump said. “I will always protect our National Security — JOE, YOU’RE FIRED.”
Meanwhile, on March 17, Trump announced he was revoking Secret Service protection for Biden’s adult children, and earlier this year, the Administration reportedly took away security details for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
A lawsuit filed late Friday accuses the Trump Administration of unlawfully shutting down the Voice of America and asks a federal court to restore the outlet that for decades has supplied news about the United States to nations around the world — including many that lack a free press of their own.
The case, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, was brought by Voice of America reporters, Reporters Without Borders and a handful of unions against the U.S. Agency for Global Media and Kari Lake, the failed Arizona candidate who is President Trump’s representative there.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“In many parts of the world, a crucial source of objective news is gone, and only censored state-sponsored news media is left to fill the void,” the lawsuit said.
Lake has described the broadcast agency as a “giant rot” that needs to be stripped down and rebuilt.
Voice of America dates to World War II as a source of objective news, often beamed into authoritarian countries. Funded by Congress, it is protected by a charter that guarantees its product pass muster for journalistic rigor.
The lawsuit charges that the Trump Administration has effectively shut it down unlawfully in the past week. Republicans have complained that the news source is infected by left-wing propaganda, a contention its operators say isn’t backed up factually.
“The second Trump Administration has taken a chainsaw to the agency as a whole in an attempt to shutter it completely,” the lawsuit said. There was no immediate response Friday to a request for comment from the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America and a handful of sister networks.
In an interview with Newsmax earlier this week, Lake described Voice of America as “like having a rotten fish and trying to find a portion that you can eat.”
In a post on X, she said the Agency for Global Media is “a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer — a national security risk for the nation — and irretrievably broken. While there are bright spots within the agency with personnel who are talented and dedicated public servants, this is the exception rather than the rule.”
Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders in the United States, said his organization was compelled to act to protect Voice of America and the broader press freedom community.
At VOA’s sister operation, Radio Free Asia, unpaid furloughs took effect on Friday for roughly 240 people in the operation’s Washington office, or 75% of the staff members, spokesman Rohit Mahajan said. Radio Free Asia has also moved to cancel freelance contracts with people who helped the agency gather news overseas.
Radio Free Asia also expects to file a lawsuit to keep congressionally-appropriated funding flowing, Mahajan said.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty filed suit on Tuesday, asking the U.S. District Court in Washington to compel the U.S. Agency for Global Media to make its next payment. RFE/RL currently broadcasts in 23 countries across Europe and Asia, in 27 different languages.
In its lawsuit, the organizations called the denial of funding unprecedented and said it has already forced operations to be significantly scaled back. “Without its congressionally appropriated funds, RFE/RL will also be forced to stop the vast majority of its journalistic work and will be at risk of ceasing to exist as an organization,” they argued.
There really is no such thing as a dumb comedy. Making people laugh isn’t easy. There are tricks you can use, but no proven formula. The things we laugh at often reach us in a place beyond language, which is why talking or writing about comedy is so difficult. To explain why a gag is funny is to crush its soufflé evanescence.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Because our taste in humor is as specific as our taste in clothes or food or fragrance, people often express distaste for jokes about bodily functions. Even so, sometimes those same people laugh at toilet humor: it’s about all the things that unite us as humans, as Chaucer knew. We laugh at things—a play on words, a gesture, a guy falling into a hole—for reasons that we ourselves often don’t understand. That’s the mystery, and the glory, of what we call, only for lack of a better term, dumb comedy. To laugh at something we can’t articulately defend is freeing, reminding us that not everything needs to be overthought, fretted over, justified. It sets us free, if just for a moment, from both ourselves and the often overwhelming challenges of the world around us.
What, exactly, constitutes a dumb comedy? In all honesty, your guess is as good as mine. In drawing up this list of 15 of my favorites, I automatically tossed out two of the greatest comedies ever made, Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, only because for every elemental, dumb gag these movies contain (Gene Hackman’s blind hermit setting the thumb of Peter Boyle’s monster on fire—bliss!) there are at least two more that are dazzlingly cerebral: I’m thinking of Blazing Saddles’ Cleavon Little leading his fellow railroad workers in a smooth-as-silk version of Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You,” a gag so exquisite, and so brilliant within its context, that it’s on a plane of its own. Similarly, Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap is hilarious and sometimes gorgeously dumb, but in its unalloyed greatness, it’s also a movie no one is embarrassed to like.
So in drawing up this list, I focused on movies that have over the years caused friends and acquaintances to say, “Really?” when I profess my love for them. Some contain diarrhea jokes. Others are lewd and crude and yet, against my better judgment—because who needs any more self-judgment?—I laugh. Some are kind of dorky; others are raunchy. Two of them feature made-up languages, each with their own lustrous logic. If you watch all of these 15 films, here and there you’ll come across a gag or a word that, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, we now deem inappropriate or offensive—but please allow that we can’t divorce any work from the context of its time, and it can’t hurt to be reminded of how the culture changes around us, only because we change it. Basically, these are 15 movies that, in their sensational, dazzling dumbness, make me laugh for reasons I can’t explain. Your favorites will be different—but maybe you’ll find something here that has thus far eluded your dumb-movie radar. If not, please don’t set my thumb on fire.
Read more: The 100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades
Again, there’s no hard and fast definition for what constitutes a dumb comedy. Maybe all it really means is a movie with a supreme sense of the absurd, whose jokes and physical gags reach us in a place beyond rational thought. Duck Soup may not be the first real dumb comedy, but it’s a superb early example of sustained, unhinged genius, from a family comedy act that, by the time of the movie’s release, were already superstars who had been honing their brilliantly cracked aesthetic for decades. In Duck Soup, Groucho Marx plays Rufus T. Firefly, a wily wisecracker who suddenly becomes installed as the leader of a tiny and very broke nation, Freedonia. Chico and Harpo Marx appear, respectively, as Chicolini and Pinky, spies from the neighboring country of Sylvania; they’re part of plan to take over the struggling country. Zeppo Marx also appears, in a straight-man role, as Rufus’ secretary. Though Duck Soup is often lauded as a satire of the vagaries of international geopolitics, its greatness doesn’t depend on justification from serious beard-strokers. In the film’s extraordinary mirror sequence, Groucho, dressed in a nightgown-and-tasseled-nightcap combo, struts, squints, and twirls in front of a mirror he knows is broken, amazed to see his own reflection looking back at him—only it’s really Harpo, in an identical getup, mimicking his every move with gonzo-balletic precision. If you’re looking for one scene to show how so-called dumb comedy demands precision and creativity, not to mention a love of the ridiculous, this is it.
Writer-director Carl Gottlieb’s Caveman is one of the hidden treasures of the dumb-comedy genre, lesser-known but beyond exquisite in its prehistoric dumbness. Ringo Starr is Atouk, a scrawny cave-guy striving to win the heart of buxom cave lady Lana (Barbara Bach—she and Ringo met and fell in love on set), who already belongs to the hulking bully Tonda (played by onetime pro football player John Matuszak). Atouk’s pal Lar (a young, hunky Dennis Quaid) tries to help; meanwhile, Shelley Long’s sweet cavegirl next door, Tala, pines away, longing for Atouk to notice her. The dumb gags in Caveman are nearly as ingenious as the invention of fire: Atouk and Lar figure out the secret to walking upright by cracking each other’s backs—who knew? (Delighted with their chiropractic discovery, they mock the still-stooped Tonda behind his back, with nothing but a series of grunts and gestures.) The “Colonel Bogey March”—also known as the theme from Bridge on the River Kwai—tootles as a group of cavedudes try to roll a giant dinosaur egg down a ridge. Gottlieb (also a co-writer on The Jerk, another great dumb comedy) devised a brilliant made-up cave language, used throughout the movie (you’ll have to watch to find out what zugzug means). It also features a great assortment of goofy-scary stop-motion prehistoric creatures. Gottlieb and his cast sustain the proceedings beautifully—Caveman is a delight from start to finish.
Before Adam McKay took a swerve, for the worse, to make instructional comedies about capitalist greed and climate disaster—pictures that, though their heart might have been in the right place, were just preaching to the converted—he gave us the glorious dumb classic Step Brothers. John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell star as Dale and Brennan, two fortyish dudes, both still living at home, who become part of a blended family when Dale’s dad (Richard Jenkins) and Brennan’s mom (Mary Steenburgen) marry and move in together. For Dale and Brennan, it’s hatred at first sight. Dale forbids Brennan to touch his beloved drum kit; Brennan responds by rubbing a NSFW part of his anatomy along the skins. Eventually, these two discover they have more in common than they thought. (Both, it turns out, are longtime somnambulists, leading to a chaotic sleepwalking episode that feels like a nod to the sublime insanity of Dr. Seuss’ The Sleep Book.) Somehow McKay keeps the movie spinning even after Dale and Brennan stop bickering and start sticking together: Adam Scott, as Brennan’s snobby, overachieving brother, makes a terrific common enemy. An unhinged work that endures.
In this spinoff of a sketch from The Chris Rock Show, written and directed by Louis C.K., Lance Crouther plays rapper, Blaxploitation luminary, ladykiller, and all-around cool guy Pootie Tang, a laid-back superstar who has built his fortune from speaking a gibberish language that may not make literal sense, though as one character says, even when you have no idea what he’s saying, you always know what he means. As he promotes his sure-to-be-a-hit action movie Sine Your Pitty on the Runny Kine—in which he shows his prowess at repelling bullets with both his belt buckle and his hair braid—Pootie runs afoul of evil white multi-industrialist Dick Lecter (Robert Vaughn). Pootie has used his massive influence to get kids to eat vegetables instead of junk food, taking a bite out of Lecter’s fast-food enterprise. White-devil seductress Ireenie (Jennifer Coolidge) is sent in to trick Pootie into signing a contract that will weaken his wholesome influence over America’s children. In the end, Pootie prevails, and it all makes a certain kind of sense. Crouther, largely a writer and producer, is superb—it’s a shame he hasn’t spent more time on the other side of the camera. Rock plays multiple roles; J.B. Smoove and Wanda Sykes round out a fantastic supporting cast. Louis C.K. may have fallen from grace, but don’t let that keep you from this dumb-comedy gem. Sadatay, my brothers and sisters.
Cameron Diaz plays wily golddigger Elizabeth Halsey, marking time as a middle-school teacher until she can marry her rich-guy fiancé. When he picks up on her avariciousness and gives her the gate, she’s forced to return to her old job—but it doesn’t pay well enough to finance the boob job she desperately wants. (She’s sure bigger breasts are the path to landing a rich husband.) Elizabeth routinely shows up for class hungover and bleary-eyed; her pedagogy consists of turning on an inspirational-teacher movie—one week it’s Stand and Deliver, the next, Dangerous Minds—and plunking her head down on the desk. Diaz makes a great bad-gal educator, a deadpan, checked-out chick strutting around the school halls in her Louboutins until she can land something better. This isn’t one of those characters, so common in woman-centric comedies, who’s made relatable via some pathetic backstory, like a failed baking business or a sob-story divorce. Elizabeth stands tall in those skyscraper heels, and if she’s moderately redeemed in the end, she apologizes for nothing.
Read more: Thank God Cameron Diaz Is Back
At the time of its release, fancy people who considered themselves film aficionados moaned that Dumb and Dumber was the beginning of the end of civilization. Far from it: it takes balls and brains to make a movie this soulfully, unrelentingly crass—as well as, ultimately, sweet—and Peter and Bobby Farrelly did it. Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey play Harry and Lloyd, two numbnuts losers stuck in a crappy apartment in Providence, R.I. (whence the Farrellys themselves hail). Though Harry and Lloyd are broke, they dream of opening a pet store together. (They’ve already got the name: I Got Worms, because one of its chief offerings will be worm farms.) As these two bumble toward their future, Lloyd confidently dispenses misinformation—asserting, for instance, that the Monkees were a huge influence on the Beatles—and Harry dopily puts the moves on Lloyd’s crush (played by ace straightwoman Lauren Holly). What everyone remembers most from Dumb and Dumber is the climactic explosive-diarrhea scene. But the affection the Farrellys have for their flawed protagonists gives the movie a kind of cracked sweetness, and sometimes a movie’s tone counts for just as much as its accomplished use of poop jokes.
Read more: 25 Years Later, Dumb and Dumber Is More Than Just the Gold Standard for Toilet Humor
Malcolm D. Lee’s Undercover Brother—written by John Ridley, who also created the Internet series on which the movie is based, and who would go on to win an Oscar for his 12 Years a Slave screenplay—is almost too smart to be considered dumb. This is a Trojan Horse movie: its gags are so recklessly, joyously ridiculous that it might occur to you only later how effectively they skewer all sorts of racial stereotypes and assumptions. Eddie Griffin is marvelous as Undercover Brother, a sharp and utterly groovy detective who, with his precisely manicured Afro and meticulously tailored snakeskin threads, is a sight to behold in early-21st-century America. But he’s got a mission: to help the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D, a secret network of Black operatives fighting for justice, bring down a nefarious underground group led by The Man, who seeks to control the minds of all citizens. The gags are both ingenious and hilarious: At one point, two cheerful, robotic white newscasters evaluate a Black presidential hopeful (Billy Dee Williams) by praising his attributes. “He’s so well spoken!” one says. The other notes how well he’s doing in the polls—“And not just in the urban areas!” The supporting cast includes Denise Richards, Chris Kattan, and the ever-fabulous Aunjanue Ellis, as Sistah Girl, the most efficient spy in the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. It doesn’t hurt that Danielle Hollowell’s costumes, a riot of supple leather jackets and voluminous bellbottoms, are exaggerated and chic at once. Undercover Brother has style to burn.
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A comedy about enduring friendship between women that ends with its two ditzy heroines cheerfully folding scarves in their own newly opened boutique: what’s not to love? Mira Sorvino’s Romy and Lisa Kudrow’s Michele are Los Angeles roommates and longtime friends who have reached their late twenties with little to show for the 10 years since they’ve graduated from high school in Tucson. Before going back for the reunion, knowing they’ll have to face the girls who bullied them, they scheme to make themselves look more successful than they are. (On the drive from L.A. to Arizona, they stop at a diner in their chic black jacket-and-mini-skirt suit combos and ask the incredulous waitress if she has a “businesswoman’s special.”) Kudrow and Sorvino’s BFF chemistry and superb, loopy timing are the movie’s secret weapons. When Kudrow’s Michele boils over with anger at the now-married-and-pregnant mean girls who made her and Romy so miserable in high school, it’s not what she says but how she says it that matters. She looks them squarely in the eyes and levels her deadpan curse: “I hope your babies look like monkeys!” It’s nuts. And hilarious.
Few movies have blended toilet and stoner humor as deftly as Danny Leiner’s Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. The gags here are perhaps best appreciated as Zen koans, jokes that hit you sideways rather than head on. But Harold & Kumar is about something else, too: the experience of kids of immigrants who are expected to do well and make their parents proud, even as they assimilate within American culture. No, wait: make that even as they help shape American culture, of the stoner variety or otherwise. John Cho’s Harold, an analyst with a big investment firm, and his roommate, Kal Penn’s Kumar, a potential med student, are both bright enough to more than get by—which is how they manage to spend most of their time hanging out and getting high in their Nowheresville, N.J., apartment. A commercial for White Castle’s irresistibly greasy sliders inspires a road trip that involves an encounter with a crazed raccoon, a trip to the Princeton campus to buy more pot, and a jail stint. Harold & Kumar was hilarious upon its release, and it still is—though in an America that seems to have forgotten its genesis as a nation built by immigrants and outsiders, even the movie’s loosest, goofiest jokes carry a slight sting. A lot can change in 20 years.
From the late 1970s through to the 1990s, the team of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker put their stamp on a distinctively zany type of movie comedy, pictures that sat right at the Venn diagram center of surrealist logic and inane humor. Of the best of them, it’s hard to choose between Airplane (1980) and The Naked Gun—but for the purpose of this list, The Naked Gun won in an admittedly unscientific coin toss. Leslie Nielsen is dimwitted but sexy cop Lt. Frank Drebin; Priscilla Presley is luxe bombshell Jane Spencer, assigned by the villainous Vincent Ludwig (Ricardo Montalban) to lure Frank into a trap. She falls for Frank instead; they go on a daylong date, capped off by a movie that sends them out of the theater laughing their heads off—a pan to the theater marquee reveals that it’s Platoon. That’s just one example of the ZAZ mystique, a way of taking the dumbest possible jokes, the ones that really shouldn’t work, and making them soar.
Anna Faris plays Shelley, a saucer-eyed Playboy bunny banished from Hef’s mansion for turning an unforgivable 27. With no place to go, she stumbles onto a college campus and, having just come from living in a community of women, thinks a sorority might be just the place to land. The first one she approaches snobbily rejects her. But the far less together young women at a much less glamorous house, Zeta Alpha Zeta (might those ZAZ initials be a subtle Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker tribute?), adopt her as their house mother. She gives them makeup tips—“The eyes are the nipples of the face!”—and advises them on how to attract boys. (One of the sweet ZAZ sisters is played by an unsurprisingly charming Emma Stone.) If that sounds retrograde, note that the young women of The House Bunny, including Shelley, eventually come to acknowledge that what’s inside matters more than the package it’s wrapped in. But the movie’s lesson goes down easy, thanks largely to Faris, who breezes through the movie like the spiritual heir to Marilyn Monroe, with a little Brigitte Bardot and Dolly Parton tossed in. The House Bunny came and went in late summer 2008, but it deserves a place with the dumb-comedy classics.
Two supremely adorable slacker-metalheads are close to flunking out of high school in 1988 San Dimas, Calif. They’re saved by a messenger from the future (played by George Carlin), who takes them on a time-travel journey that will not only help them pass history class, but also save their band, Wyld Stallyns, which is the key to a future utopia. Admittedly, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is probably sweeter than it is dumb: William “Bill” S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) are such naively winning characters—played by charming actors with wonderfully elastic timing—that audiences at the time fell in love with them instantly, and their appeal has only grown over the years. How could anyone not love the way they commune with Socrates by serving up top-40 radio philosophy? (“All we are is dust in the wind, dude.”) Wyld Stallyns forever.
As the simpleton Navin Johnson, Steve Martin sets the tone for Carl Reiner’s The Jerk in the movie’s opening minutes, beginning the sad, sorry saga of his life with the words “I was born a poor Black child…” Few movies open with so great a blurt of dumbness. We see the whiter-than-white Navin at home with his family, a brood of Mississippi sharecroppers who love him as if he were their own. When his mother (played brilliantly by Mabel King—the family is all straightforward warmth, with no irony in sight) breaks the news to him that he’s adopted, his eyes register shock and dismay. “You mean I’m going to stay this color?” he blurts out, before bursting into tears. Navin’s dumbness only escalates: he leaves home, reluctantly, to make his way in the world, getting a job with a gas-station owner (Jackie Mason) who takes Navin’s idiocy in stride and even seems to appreciate it. Navin becomes the boy-toy of a motorcycle daredevil (Catlin Adams), only to have to break free when he falls in love with the winsome Marie, played by the almost criminally adorable Bernadette Peters. As the two dine at a fancy restaurant (an unequivocally dumb invention has made him a millionaire), he calls the server over to register a complaint about the meal Marie has ordered. “Waiter!” he hisses, “There are snails on her plate!” It’s idiotic. It’s sublime.
A broken-hearted teenager (Scott Mechlowicz), his not-so-vaguely sleazy yet still mildly charming best friend (Jacob Pitts), and a set of twins so dissimilar they’ve been dubbed the “worst twins ever” (Michelle Trachtenberg and Travis Wester) trek from Ohio to Europe the summer after their high school graduation and raise holy hell at the Vatican and elsewhere. EuroTrip is in many ways your standard 2000s raunchy teen comedy, rife with hormonal ribaldry and topless cuties. But there’s still something innocently silly about it—you might be tempted to take offense at its clumsily stereotypical American’s-eye-view of Europeans, but it’s all in good fun, and no one is more guileless or doofier than its four midwestern protagonists. The gags include some mild incest jokes, a pope’s mitre set aflame, and Fred Armisen as an Italian gent who can’t keep his hands to himself but also can’t stop apologizing (“Mi scusi, mi scusi!”). EuroTrip may be dumb as hell, and occasionally tasteless to boot, but few teen comedies are this endearing.
It has become a cottage industry among self-proclaimed tasteful people to declare how un-funny they find Jerry Lewis. But sorry, not sorry: I’m with the French. If his persona could sometimes be annoying, he was also an outright genius, both a rubbery master of physical comedy and a walking treasury of squeaky, inventive voices. The years of his partnership with Dean Martin was perhaps his finest era—they made a sensational team, and at the height of their popularity, from 1946 to 1956, they were essentially the Beatles of their day. Hollywood or Bust was directed by ’50s madman Frank Tashlin, whose comedies were like ebullient clashing plaids. Martin, a straight man nonpareil, plays Steve, a slick gambler on the run from his bookie; Lewis is Malcolm, a nerdy movie fan who has just won a convertible in a raffle. The problem is that Steve thinks he’s won the car. They end up sharing it on a madcap road trip to Hollywood, along with a hamburger-chomping Great Dane named Mr. Bascomb—with his slurpy lips and regal A-frame ears, he’s one of the greatest canine sight gags ever. The mournful footnote to Hollywood or Bust is that off-set, the friendship between Martin and Lewis had already broken down irrevocably. They were barely speaking to each other during filming, and the movie was released four months after they permanently ended their partnership. Lewis never saw the completed film; he couldn’t bear to watch it. In Dean & Me: A Love Story, Lewis’ remarkable memoir about his and Martin’s time together, Lewis says that long after Martin’s death, in 1995, he continued to dream about him at least twice a week. And until his own death, in 2017, Lewis always referred to Martin as “my partner.” Hollywood or Bust is the comet’s tail of their time together, a great dumb comedy that also reminds us how fleeting our time on this Earth really is. Laugh while you can—and never apologize.
