Mark Twain “Dared to State Things That Others Only Thought”

I have read three of Ron Chernow’s massive biographies, the ones on Rockefeller, Washington, and Hamilton. Because they are massive, reading them takes a long time, at least for a slow reader like me. But I learned a lot that is important or useful from them, especially the ones on Rockefeller and Hamilton. Because I am an admirer of both Chernow and Twain, I look forward to also reading Chernow’s biography of Twain.

(p. C7) More than a century after his death, Mark Twain remains one of the most recognizable voices in American literature—the author of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), “Life on the Mississippi” (1883) and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884), the latter among the most consequential novels ever written in English and possibly (if you believe Ernest Hemingway) the source of American literature itself.

. . .

In his biography of the famed satirist, Ron Chernow tracks, with patience and care, Twain’s journey over nearly eight tumultuous decades. Mr. Chernow’s tale is enlivened by blazing quotes from Twain’s prodigious interviews, diaries and letters.  . . .  The quotes tend to burn a hole in the page, and it’s difficult for a biographer to recover. Mr. Chernow, whose lives of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant are revered for their sound scholarship, clear writing and strong narrative drive, weaves Twain’s sizzling remarks almost seamlessly into his own narrative.

We watch as Twain lunges from coast to coast, rolling up and down the Mississippi (as a riverboat pilot in his early days), moving from country to country, writing books and articles, investing large sums in various hair-brained schemes.

. . .

This was, in Twain’s own phrase, the Gilded Age. He admired, even idealized, those who made huge sums of money through their entrepreneurial energy and acumen. He had the same energy, but he didn’t have the right vehicles for speculation nor the business sense to make his investments pay off. As Mr. Chernow observes, Twain could well have enjoyed an easy life of writing and giving lectures, having married a wealthy woman and published several bestsellers. “Instead, he had started a publishing house and financed a typesetter”—the Paige Compositor, which was supposed to replace manual typesetting but failed spectacularly because of engineering flaws—“before he had the expertise or requisite fortune to bring them to completion.” His expenses soon dwarfed his income and he was forced to abandon his Hartford mansion, never to return.

. . .

Twain was “a man who professed to be chronically lazy,” says Mr. Chernow, yet he left behind him a vast portfolio of writings that included 30 books, several thousand magazine articles and some 12,000 letters. “Mark Twain had not only moved people to laughter and tears with his books,” Mr. Chernow writes, “but had challenged them with unorthodox views as he ventured out from his safe cubbyhole as the avuncular humorist. He had dared to state things that others only thought.” It’s because of this bravery, and his peerless gift for expression, that we still value him and will never stop reading his books, which never grow old.

For the full review see:

Jay Parini. “A Most American Writer.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, May 10, 2025): C7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 9, 2025, and has the title “‘Mark Twain’: The Most American Writer.”)

The book under review is:

Chernow, Ron. Mark Twain. New York: The Penguin Press, 2025.

Immunotherapy Can Succeed as First Line of Attack Against Solid Tumors

About two to three percent of solid tumor cancer patients have tumors with what is called “mismatch mutations.” Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering have announced success at using immunotherapy to treat patients with these mutations. Many had their tumors completely disappear. Johns Hopkins oncologist Bert Vogelstein called the results “groundbreaking” (as quoted in Kolata 2025, p. A24).

The cures matter most, but what also matters is that immunotherapy was the first line of treatment, so the patients did not have to suffer the “grisly” side effects that often come with the traditional surgery, radiation, and chemo treatments.

The upside is huge. The downside is that it only works for two to three percent of solid tumor patients, and the drug costs about $100,000 per patient.

Kolata’s article is:

Gina Kolata. “Immunotherapy Drug Spares Cancer Patients From Grisly Treatments.” The New York Times (Weds., April 28, 2025): A24.

(Note: the online version of Kolata’s article has the date April 27, 2025, and has the title “Medicine Spares Cancer Patients From Grisly Surgeries and Harsh Therapies.”)

The academic paper published online in The New England Journal of Medicine is:

Cercek, Andrea, Michael B. Foote, Benoit Rousseau, J. Joshua Smith, Jinru Shia, Jenna Sinopoli, Jill Weiss, Melissa Lumish, Lindsay Temple, Miteshkumar Patel, Callahan Wilde, Leonard B. Saltz, Guillem Argiles, Zsofia Stadler, Oliver Artz, Steven Maron, Geoffrey Ku, Ping Gu, Yelena Y. Janjigian, Daniela Molena, Gopa Iyer, Jonathan Coleman, Wassim Abida, Seth Cohen, Kevin Soares, Mark Schattner, Vivian E. Strong, Rona Yaeger, Philip Paty, Marina Shcherba, Ryan Sugarman, Paul B. Romesser, Alice Zervoudakis, Avni Desai, Neil H. Segal, Imane El Dika, Maria Widmar, Iris Wei, Emmanouil Pappou, Gerard Fumo, Santiago Aparo, Mithat Gonen, Marc Gollub, Vetri S. Jayaprakasam, Tae-Hyung Kim, Julio Garcia Aguilar, Martin Weiser, and Luis A. Diaz. “Nonoperative Management of Mismatch Repair–Deficient Tumors.” The New England Journal of Medicine (April 27, 2025), DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2404512.

Rice Prices Soar as Japan Government Pays Rice Farmers to NOT Grow Rice

The long-standing policy of Japan’s government is to pay rice famers to grow less rice in order to raise the price of rice, so that rice farmers will earn more. In February 2025 the price of rice in Japan rose by 81 percent and supermarkets limited how much rice consumers could purchase. The average earnings of rice farmers in 2022 was about $23,000 and was not high enough to stop the exodus of rice farmers from farming.

Maybe Japan does not have a comparative advantage in growing rice, possibly due to high land prices and worker wages. Maybe in a totally free world market, Japan would not and should not grow much rice, buying it instead from places where land and wages are cheaper. The Japanese government, and the rest of us too, should embrace laissez-faire.

Source of the Japan rice story is:

River Akira Davis and Hisako Ueno. “Japanese Rice Farmers Blame Shortages on ‘Misguided’ Government Rules.” The New York Times (Mon., March 31, 2025): B4.

(Note: the online version of the NYT article has the date March 30, 2025, and has the title “In Tokyo, Rice Farmers Protest ‘Misguided’ Rules Fueling Shortages.”)

“Republicans in Congress Have Embarked on a Spree of Deregulation”

If Trump achieves a new Golden Age it will be through his “spree of deregulation” (as the NYT labels it), not through his tariffs.

(p. 24) As President Trump moves unilaterally to slash the federal bureaucracy and upend longstanding policies, Republicans in Congress have embarked on a spree of deregulation, using an obscure law to quietly but steadily chip away at Biden-era rules they say are hurting businesses and consumers.

In recent weeks, the G.O.P. has pushed through a flurry of legislation to cancel regulations on matters large and small, from oversight of firms that emit toxic pollutants to energy efficiency requirements for walk-in freezers and water heaters.

To do so, they are employing a little-known 1996 law, the Congressional Review Act, that allows lawmakers to reverse recently adopted federal regulations with a simple majority vote in both chambers. It is a strategy they used in 2017 during Mr. Trump’s first term and are leaning on again . . .

. . .

Because resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act need only a majority vote, they are some of the only legislation that can avoid a filibuster in the Senate. This allows them to circumvent the partisan gridlock that stands in the way of most significant bills.

So far this year, Mr. Trump has signed three such measures: one overturning Biden-era regulations on cryptocurrency brokers, another canceling fees on methane emissions and a third doing away with additional environmental assessments for prospective offshore oil and gas developers. Another five, including one that eliminates a $5 cap on bank overdraft fees, have cleared Congress and await Mr. Trump’s signature.

That is a much slower pace than eight years ago, when Republicans erased 13 Obama administration rules within Mr. Trump’s first 100 days in office. Before then, the law had been successfully used only once, when President George W. Bush reversed a Clinton-era ergonomics rule.

Now Republicans are trying to go much further with the law, including using it to effectively attack state regulations blessed by the federal government. The House this week passed three disapproval resolutions that would eliminate California’s strict air pollution standards for trucks and cars by rejecting waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency that allowed them to take effect.

. . .

Republicans, . . ., argue that the scope of their review prerogatives should not be determined by unelected bureaucrats.

“It’s members of Congress — not the G.A.O., not the parliamentarian — who decides how we proceed under the C.R.A.,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, said in a speech on the House floor.

For the full story, see:

Maya C. Miller. “Republicans Use an Obscure Statute to Roll Back Biden-Era Regulations.” The New York Times, First Section. (Sun., May 4, 2025): 24.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version has the date May 3, 2025, and has the title “Republicans in Congress Use Obscure Law to Roll Back Biden-Era Regulations.” The online version says that the print version of the article in the New York edition was on p. 20 of the First Section. But in my National edition of the print version the article was on p. 24 of the First Section.)

Girls Who Are Skilled in Both STEM and Non-STEM Fields, Usually Prefer Non-STEM Fields

Gender discrimination is not the only explanation for there being more men than women in STEM jobs, according to the research summarized in the passages quoted below.

(p. C3) Scores of surveys over the last 50 years show that women tend to be more interested in careers that involve working with other people while men prefer jobs that involve manipulating objects, whether it is a hammer or a computer. These leanings can be seen in the lab, too. Studies published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2016, for example, found that women were more responsive to pictures of people, while men were more responsive to pictures of things.

Consistent with what men and women say they want, the STEM fields with more men, such as engineering and computer science, focus on objects while those with more women, such as psychology and biomedicine, focus on people.

Given the push to get more people—and especially more girls—interested in STEM, it is worth noting that talented students of both sexes tend to avoid a career in math or science if they can pursue something else. STEM jobs aren’t for everyone, regardless of how lucrative they may be.

A study of more than 70,000 high-school students in Greece, published in the Journal of Human Resources in 2024, found that girls on average outperformed boys in both STEM and non-STEM subjects but rarely pursued STEM in college if they were just as strong in other things. A study of middle-aged adults who had been precocious in math as teens, published in the journal Psychological Science in 2014, found that only around a quarter of the men were working in STEM and IT.

Large-scale studies around the world show that women are generally more likely than men to have skills in non-STEM areas, while men who are strong in math and science are often less skilled elsewhere. But while everyone seems to be concerned about whether girls are performing well in STEM classes, no one seems all that troubled by the fact that boys are consistently underperforming in reading and writing.

For the full essay see:

Hippel, William von. “Why Are Girls Less Likely to Become Scientists?” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 8, 2025): C3.

(Note: the online version of the essay has the date March 6, 2025, and has the same title as the print version.)

Hippel’s essay, quoted above, is adapted from his book:

Hippel, William von. The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness. New York: Harper, 2025.

The academic study published in the Journal of Human Resources and mentioned above is:

Goulas, Sofoklis, Silvia Griselda, and Rigissa Megalokonomou. “Comparative Advantage and Gender Gap in Stem.” Journal of Human Resources 59, no. 6 (Nov. 2024): 1937-80.

Ramaswamy “Mapped Out” Plan to “Dismantle Much of the Federal Government”

If you choose to submit a suggestion to the deregulatory “suggestion box,” you need to do so by May 12, 2025 for the suggestion to be considered. I apologize for not getting this information out earlier–I only read yesterday the article quoted below.

(p. A1) . . . at the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates radio and television broadcasting and satellite communications, President Trump’s appointees published a seemingly exuberant notice asking for suggestions on which rules to get rid of, titled “DELETE, DELETE, DELETE.”

Across the more than 400 federal agencies that regulate almost every aspect of American life, from flying in airplanes to processing poultry, Mr. Trump’s appointees are working with the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting initiative headed by Elon Musk and also called DOGE, to launch a sweeping new phase in their quest to dismantle much of the federal government: deregulation on a mass scale.

Usually, the legal process of repealing federal regulations takes years — and rules erased by one administration can be restored by another. But after chafing at that system during his first term and watching President Joseph R. Biden Jr. enact scores of new rules pushed by the left, Mr. Trump has (p. A17) marshaled a strategy for a dramatic do-over designed to kill regulations swiftly and permanently.

At Mr. Trump’s direction, agency officials are compiling the regulations they have tagged for the ash heap, racing to meet a deadline next week after which the White House will build its master list to guide what the president called the “deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.”

The approach, overseen by Russell T. Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, rests on a set of novel legal strategies in which the administration intends to simply repeal or just stop enforcing regulations that have historically taken years to undo, according to people familiar with the plans. The White House theory relies on Supreme Court decisions — some recent and at least one from the 1980s — that they believe give them the basis for sweeping change.

. . .

The specifics of the new approach coalesced in the days after the election, when Mr. Musk teamed with Vivek Ramaswamy, the Trump ally who co-founded the Department of Government Efficiency. As Mr. Musk pushed the DOGE team to quickly fire workers and eliminate government offices, Mr. Ramaswamy mapped out a more detailed plan to use a pair of recent Supreme Court rulings to seek out old regulations that, under the new decisions, could now be legally vulnerable.

One of those rulings, in 2022, limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. The other, in 2024, ended a precedent known as Chevron deference in which federal agencies were given wide legal latitude to interpret laws.

Together, the Supreme Court’s actions served to limit the broad regulatory authority of federal agencies, and Mr. Ramaswamy asserted that they could justify permanently erasing many rules that had been adopted before those precedents.

The mission has gained steam since the inauguration under the direction of Mr. Vought, who took over the planning after Mr. Ramaswamy left the Department of Government Efficiency to run for Ohio governor.

Mr. Trump ordered agency heads in February to work with DOGE teams to identify rules that impede technological innovation, energy production, and private enterprise and entrepreneurship, among other issues, giving them a 60-day window to prepare their target lists.

Mr. Musk, meanwhile, developed an artificial intelligence tool intended to comb through the 100,000-plus pages of the Code of Federal Regulations and identify rules that are outdated or legally vulnerable in the wake of the two Supreme Court decisions, according to two people familiar with the matter. It is not yet clear whether the tool has succeeded in its assignment, one of the people said.

. . .

Mr. Vought is seeking public input. He posted a call for ideas on the Federal Register, the government portal where the public can comment on proposed regulatory changes, adding a deregulatory “suggestion box.”

For the full story, see:

Coral Davenport. “Behind The Rush To Discard Rules And Reshape Life.” The New York Times. (Thurs., April 17, 2025): A1 & A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version was updated April 16, 2025 and has the title “Inside Trump’s Plan to Halt Hundreds of Regulations.”)

“Deregulation on a Mass Scale”

The NYT article that I refer to in my Facebook post above is:

Coral Davenport. “Behind The Rush To Discard Rules And Reshape Life.” The New York Times. (Thurs., April 17, 2025): A1 & A17.

(Note: the online version was updated April 16, 2025 and has the title “Inside Trump’s Plan to Halt Hundreds of Regulations.”)

(Note: the title of this entry is a quote from p. A1 of the article.)

If you choose to submit a suggestion to the deregulatory “suggestion box,” you need to do so by May 12, 2025 for the suggestion to be considered. I apologize for not getting this information out earlier–I only read yesterday the article quoted above.

Vinyl LP Records Have Been Mostly Replaced, but in Kansas Not Completely Destroyed

In my Openness book, I argue that Schumpeter’s phrase “creative destruction” misleads by overemphasizing the extent of destruction in the process of breakthrough innovation, so I prefer to call the process “innovative dynamism.” A new innovation is often better than the old in many, but not all, traits. A minority of people who put heavy weight on the traits where the old product is better, will still prefer the old product. If the minority is large enough, and willing to pay enough for their preference, then there will be enough demand for the old product to remain in production, rather than be fully replaced (i.e., destroyed).

Illustrating my point, The New York Times ran two full pages on Chad Kassem, a Kansas entrepreneur who is working hard, with some success, at making higher quality vinyl LP records. He has 114 employees and annual revenue of over $1 million.

He is even introducing incremental innovations to the old product: (p. 6) “Kassem hired veterans of the record-making business and indulged their ideas for modernizing a process that (p. 7) had barely changed since the 1970s. Among other innovations, they introduced computerized controls and found ways to regulate the fluctuating temperature of vinyl in the presses.”

The New York Times article is:

Ben Sisario. “In a Digital World, Pursuing an Ideal Of Perfect Vinyl.” The New York Times, Arts&Leisure Section (Sun., March 9, 2025): 6-7.

(Note: the online version of The New York Times article on the resilience of vinyl was updated March 7, 2025, and has the title “The Wizard of Vinyl Is in Kansas.”)

My book mentioned in my initial comments is:

Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Tim Friede’s “Daredevilry” in Taking 650 Venom Injections and 200 Poisonous Snake Bites to Help Create a Universal Antivenom “for Humanity”

Back during Covid, over 38,000 adults volunteered to participate in a “challenge” clinical trial of the new vaccines, but such trials were not allowed. In a challenge trial each participant receives the vaccine and then is exposed to the disease. Phase 3 trials for efficacy can be completed much more quickly, with many fewer participants, and at much lower costs, if the trials are “challenge” trials.

We allow people the freedom to dangerous actions for fun or excitement, or to help humanity, like Tim Friede (below) injecting snake venom and letting snakes bite him. Why then did we not allow challenge trials with the Covid vaccine?

Note on another issue, that the researchers are planning in their next step to test their antivenom on dogs who are bitten by snakes. This is a good example of my ideal use of dogs in medical research–where the trial aims at benefits for both the humans AND the dogs.

(p. A1) Over nearly 18 years, the man, Tim Friede, 57, injected himself with more than 650 carefully calibrated, escalating doses of venom to build his immunity to 16 deadly snake species. He also allowed the snakes — mostly one at a time, but sometimes two, . . . — to sink their sharp fangs into him about 200 times.

This bit of daredevilry (one name for it) may now help to solve a dire global health problem. More than 600 species of venomous snakes roam the earth, biting as many as 2.7 million people, killing about 120,000 people and maiming 400,000 others — numbers thought to be vast underestimates.

In Mr. Friede’s blood, scientists say they have identified antibodies that are capable of neutralizing the venom of multiple snake (p. A19) species, a step toward creating a universal antivenom, they reported on Friday [May 2, 2025] in the journal Cell.

“I’m really proud that I can do something in life for humanity, to make a difference for people that are 8,000 miles away, that I’m never going to meet, never going to talk to, never going to see, probably,” said Mr. Friede, who lives in Two Rivers, Wis., where venomous snakes are not much of a threat.

. . .

“This is a bigger problem than the first world realizes,” said Jacob Glanville, founder and chief executive of Centivax, a company that aims to produce broad-spectrum vaccines, and lead author on the study.

Dr. Glanville and his colleagues found that two powerful antibodies from Mr. Freide’s blood, when combined with a drug that blocks neurotoxins, protected mice from the venom of 19 deadly snake species of a large family found in different geographical regions.

This is an extraordinary feat, according to experts not involved in the work. Most antivenoms can counter the venom from just one or a few related snake species from one region.

The study suggests that cocktails of antitoxins may successfully prevent deaths and injuries from all snake families, said Nicholas Casewell, a researcher at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in England.

. . .

There were other mishaps — accidental bites, anaphylactic shocks, hives, blackouts. Mr. Friede describes himself as a nondegree scientist, but “there’s no college in the world that can teach you how to do it,” he said. “I was doing it on my own as best I could.”

Two teams of scientists sampled Mr. Friede’s blood over the years, but neither project led anywhere. By the time he met Dr. Glanville, in 2017, he was nearly ready to give up.

Dr. Glanville had been pursuing what scientists call broadly acting antibodies as the basis for universal vaccines against viruses. He grew up in a Maya village in the Guatemala highlands, and became intrigued by the possibility of using the same approach for universal antivenom.

. . .

The researchers next plan to test the treatment in Australia in any dogs that are brought into veterinary clinics for snakebites. They are also hoping to identify another component, perhaps also from Mr. Friede’s blood, that would extend full protection to all 19 snake species that were subjects of the research.

Mr. Friede himself is done now, however. His last bite was in November 2018, from a water cobra. He was divorced — his wife and children had moved out. “Well, that’s it, enough is enough,” he recalled thinking.

He misses the snakes, he said, but not the painful bites. “I’ll probably get back into it in the future,” he said. “But for right now, I’m happy where things are at.”

For the full story see:

Apoorva Mandavilli. “Man of 200 Snake Bites May Be the Antivenom.” The New York Times (Saturday, May 3, 2025): A1 & A19.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 2, 2025, and has the title “Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 200 Times.”)

The academic article in the journal Cell mentioned above is:

Glanville, Jacob, Mark Bellin, Sergei Pletnev, Baoshan Zhang, Joel Christian Andrade, Sangil Kim, David Tsao, Raffaello Verardi, Rishi Bedi, Sindy Liao, Raymond Newland, Nicholas L. Bayless, Sawsan Youssef, Ena S. Tully, Tatsiana Bylund, Sujeong Kim, Hannah Hirou, Tracy Liu, and Peter D. Kwong. “Snake Venom Protection by a Cocktail of Varespladib and Broadly Neutralizing Human Antibodies.” Cell 188 (2025): 1-18.

Muriel Bristol Was Allowed to Act on What She Knew but Was Unable to Prove or Explain

Muriel Bristol knew that tea tasted better when the milk was poured in first, than when it was poured in after the tea. She knew it but couldn’t prove it and didn’t know why it was true. The world is better when more of us, more often, can act on what we know, but what we can neither prove nor explain. Too often regulations restrict the actions of entrepreneurs to what they can prove and explain, e.g., in the firing of employees.

This slows and reduces efficiency and innovation (not to mention freedom).

(p. C8) [Adam] Kucharski, a mathematically trained epidemiologist, says that the rigor and purity of mathematics has imbued it with extraordinary rhetorical power. “In an uncertain world, it is reassuring to think there is at least one field that can provide definitive answers,” he writes. Yet he adds that certainty can sometimes be an illusion. “Even mathematical notions of proof” are “not always as robust and politics-free as they might seem.”

. . .

. . ., proving what is “obvious and simple” isn’t always easy. Kucharski offers the delightful example of Muriel Bristol, a scientist who always put the milk in her cup before pouring her tea, because she insisted it tasted better. In the 1920s, a skeptical statistician designed a blind taste test to see if Bristol could distinguish between cups of milk-then-tea and cups of tea-then-milk. Bristol got all of them right. In 2008, the Royal Society of Chemistry reported that when milk is poured into hot tea, “individual drops separate from the bulk of the milk” and allow “significant denaturation to occur.” The result is a burnt flavor. Eighty years after Bristol was statistically vindicated, she was chemically vindicated too.

For the full review see:

Jennifer Szalai. “Proving It Doesn’t Necessarily Make It True.” The New York Times (Saturday, May 3, 2025): C8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed name, added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 30, 2025, and has the title “Just Because You Can Prove It Doesn’t Make It True.”)

The book under review is:

Kucharski, Adam. Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty. New York: Basic Books, 2025.

Democratic Donor Warren Buffett Praises DOGE

(p. A1) . . . at the end of Saturday’s Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, the Oracle of Omaha dropped a bonbshell before a gathering of some 17,000 shareholders: that he’s set to step aside as Berkshire CEO, with vice chairman Abel taking his place.

. . .

(p. A4) It was little surprise that the very first question from moderator Becky Quick of CNBC in the Saturday [May 3, 2025] Q&A had to do with tariffs.

. . .

While critical of Trump’s tariffs, Buffett had little bad to say about Trump’s budget and program-slashing Department of Government Efficiency.

He called the current 7% gap between the federal government’s revenues and expenditures unsustainable. Whether that’s two or 20 years “it’s something that cannot go on forever,” he said. And if it isn’t brought under control, he said, it risks rampant inflation.

“I think it’s a job I don’t want, but it’s a job I think should be done, and Congress doesn’t seem to be doing it,” Buffett said.

For the full story, see:

Cordes, Henry J. “Buffett to Step Down as CEO of Berkshire.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, May 4, 2025): A1 & A4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the article has the title “Warren Buffett stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO at end of year; shareholders react.”)