“Dear President Trump, Of all the wrong ideas you hold in your heart — that tariffs are paid by foreigners, that good looks are the chief credential for cabinet offices, that the 2020 election was rigged, that allies are bloodsuckers we’d be better off without — perhaps the most gobsmacking is your cherished notion that people respect you when they kiss your ass. Sorry, that’s not true. They despise you on two levels. On the first level, because you’ve managed to get elected president, you do have leverage that nearly everyone must grapple with in some fashion. … The second level of contempt arises from the knowledge — recognized by the whole world, Mr. Trump, except you — that your extravagant need for attention and praise is evidence of your emotional stuntedness.” (12/30/25)
“On Christmas Day 2025, President Donald Trump declared that the United States had launched a salvo of Tomahawk missiles against the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in northwest Nigeria. In a Truth Social message from his Mar‑a‑Lago club, he boasted that ‘ISIS terrorist scum’ were being bombed for ‘slaughtering Christians’ …. Trump’s message played to a familiar trope in American politics that persecuted Christians abroad must be rescued by U.S. firepower. This narrative, however, ignores the realities of the Sahel. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) notes that although Boko Haram and its ISWAP offshoot are vicious toward Christians, most of their victims are Muslims because the insurgency takes place largely in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north. Attacks on mosques have become more common than attacks on churches since 2015.” (12/30/25)
“Mamdani’s promise was that, as mayor, he would defeat high prices. But many of Mamdani’s signature ideas are variations on price controls. Take a deeper look at his policies, and it becomes clear that he ran against prices, period. It’s not surprising that a self-declared socialist would make price controls a central part of his economic program. The conceit at the heart of socialism is that when it comes to the economy, politicians and bureaucrats know best. But prices, when they are allowed to work, are signals that provide decentralized information. Price controls don’t solve economic problems; they disguise them, making it harder to know what’s happening. Prices are messages, and Mamdani wants to shoot the messenger.” (for publication 2/26)
“In the annals of modern international relations, few moments carry as heavy a legacy as the speech given by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003. With solemn authority, Powell presented what he called ‘facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence’ regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The world watched. The Security Council listened. The invasion of Iraq soon followed. Yet nearly every core assertion Powell made that day collapsed under post-war scrutiny. Iraq, it turned out, had no active WMD program. The biological labs, the chemical weapons, the nuclear revival – none existed. The damage, however, had been done: hundreds of thousands of lives lost, regional instability that persists two decades later, and a critical blow to the credibility of the international system.” (12/29/25)
“Niccolo Machiavelli and Carl Schmitt are most often regarded as the two crucial modern authors to whom we can attribute our strong concept of the political. Both thinkers present politics as an agonistic struggle for power, and even in certain cases an irreconcilable antagonism between factions. No doubt, modern competitive democracy is itself based on a powerful concept of conflict and rivalry. This is the precondition for claiming that voters will receive well-defined alternative visions of how to handle common affairs, to have real choices. However, it is difficult for everyday thinking to understand why conflict would be necessary and unmanageable in the conduct of the affairs of the political community.” (12/30/25)
“For most of my career, the biggest threat to free speech on campus came from inside higher education: the on-campus left (students, yes, but more importantly administrators) using the power of investigation and discipline to punish ‘wrongthink.’ The right pushed, too, but those pushes overwhelmingly originated off campus. This makes sense, given that there simply aren’t that many conservatives in the student body, on the faculty, or — least of all — among administrators in higher education. In 2025, what changed was the balance of power and the source of the pressure. The federal government and state governments, using the levers of state power, are now the leading forces behind attempts to punish campus speech.” (12/30/25)
“Across Europe, gay voters are moving rightwards. Britain has not quite caught up yet, but it will. The only question is whether the Conservatives or Reform UK will be the ones to benefit. I was reminded of this recently, while hosting a fundraiser for LGBT+ Conservatives at the Savile Club in London. Conservative MP Katie Lam was speaking, and she made a remark that would once have been uncontroversial, but now feels borderline taboo. LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage, she argued, are the product of particular cultures. Britain and the West built the legal and cultural framework that made LGBT equality possible. It did not happen by accident.” (12/30/25)
“Every accusation is a confession. This is clearly true of the Trump administration’s insistence that Venezuela operates as a ‘narco-state,’ exporting terrorism to the U.S. via fentanyl, now labeled as a ‘weapon of mass destruction.’ The charge is not only false, given that virtually no fentanyl enters the country from Venezuela, but transparently political and pretextual. This hypocrisy was made unmistakable with Trump’s recent pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in 2024 in a U.S. federal court on drug trafficking charges. … This accusation collapses further when placed in broader historical context. For decades, the most powerful state actors facilitating and protecting narcotics trafficking have not been Washington’s adversaries but Washington itself.” (12/30/25)
“Just saying the words ‘Letters of Marque’ is to conjure the myth and romance of the pirate: Namely, that species of corsair also known as Blackbeard or Long John Silver, stalking the fabled Spanish Main, memorialized in glorious Technicolor by Robert Newton, hallooing the unwary with ‘Aye, me hearties!’ Perhaps it is no surprise that the legendary patois has been resurrected today in Congress. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has introduced the Cartel Marque and Reprisal Reauthorization Act on the Senate floor, thundering that it ‘will revive this historic practice to defend our shores and seize cartel assets’. If enacted into law, Congress, in accordance with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, would license private American citizens ‘to employ all reasonably necessary means to seize outside the geographic boundaries of the United States and its territories the person and property of any cartel or conspirator of a cartel or cartel-linked organization.'” (12/29/25)
“Trump did not begin with as strong a hand for authoritarian consolidation as many thought. Orban, for example, came to power with a tidal wave of popularity, into a unicameral parliamentary system overseeing a unitary government. Trump, by contrast, won narrowly in 2024. … Still, there was no question that he and his people were going to try to consolidate an authoritarian regime, whatever hand they were dealt, the second they were able to take the White House again. And try they have. … But so far, it has been a failure, one that has backfired on them rather than strengthening their position. Trump’s narrow support among the public has vanished.” (12/30/25)
