“Leslie Begay sets aside the last few bites of his BLT. It’s something he does every meal as an offering for the person who gave him his lungs, he explains at a family-run diner in Gallup, N.M. Every morning and evening, Begay prays for the person whose organ donation, four years ago, saved his life. He doesn’t know their identity. … He is the only person he knows who got a double lung transplant. When his friends, coworkers and family members got sick, they died. They moved heaven and earth to get what they wanted when they needed it. But they will not move heaven and earth to clean up the mess they left behind.” (12/01/25)
“A year ago, to the day, I wrote a column (‘Americans really need to relax and stop taking national politics so seriously’) in which I argued that modern Americans are far too concerned with politics and too emotionally invested in what politicians say and do. … Relax, I said. Everything will be fine, I assured the toiling peasants from my ivory tower, naive and jolly, hands brown but never soiled. That is at least how many of our readers received it. … we are now seeing how wrong I was – Trump’s second term has been an ugly disaster. We have acquired a self-inflicted wound in the form of a global trade war. This administration is spreading medical misinformation, weaponizing the Department of Justice, destroying the separation of powers, and blatantly selling political favors. Ex high school benchwarmers are roaming the streets abducting mestizos.” (11/30/25)
“The Mamdani-Trump meeting was the embodiment of what I’ve long predicted and feared. The populist right swept away conservatives’ traditional belief in limited government and market-based reform — and replaced it with a cultural agenda fueled by anger and dependent on the wiles of a Dear Leader. It’s been successfully politically (although not economically and it’s dangerous to the health of our democracy). It was only a matter of time before Democrats gave up on their flaccid approach and embraced left-wing populism in return. This is the dictionary definition of the Horseshoe Theory, where extremes on the right and left are not divided at the far ends of a long line but at the ends of a horseshoe. Populists on both sides believe in an activist government, although they have different motivations. As fundamentally collectivist, both movements are remarkably similar.” (11/28/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
“The Trump administration has literally killed more than 80 suspected drug smugglers by blowing their small boats out of the water since September, but this week the president has reportedly decided to pardon one of the biggest cocaine traffickers of them all. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, then join the club.” (11/29/25)
“What work does democratic perform in the phrase democratic socialism? It’s a fig leaf intended to conceal what would presumably be repugnant to most people: the coercive regimentation inherent in socialism, whether international (Marxist) or national (fascist). Socialism has a nasty record dating back to 1917, so socialists have felt compelled to clean up its image. Democracy is supposed to do the cleaning up. But does it? Could it? Before we get to that, we should remind ourselves that no single conception of socialism exists.” (11/28/25)
“To be unmasked as an Epstein crony is about the most embarrassing revelation for a public figure one can imagine at this moment, and sure enough, former treasury secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, who exchanged scores of emails with the convicted pedophile, has seen his reputation shredded. … Summers has withdrawn from the Center for American Progress, the Yale Budget Lab, the board of directors of Open AI, the Center for Global Development, the Brookings Institution, and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and has taken a leave of absence from Harvard. … Why has there been no similar accountability for another of Epstein’s pen pals — Steve Bannon?” (11/30/25)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“The first lesson was that Ukraine was stronger than Russian or American authorities expected. Most commenters expected Russia to win rapidly, not unreasonable given the relative size of the two countries’ population and economies. They didn’t. It took longer to learn but the second lesson was that so was Russia. Their military performance was not impressive but neither sanctions nor the cost of three and a half years of a very bloody war seems to have had much effect on the economy, the conditions for Russian civilians, or Putin’s hold on power.” (11/28/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Trump has bizarrely announced that the airspace over Venezuela is ‘closed’, posting the following on Truth Social on Saturday: ‘To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.’ It isn’t even clear what precisely the president means by this. Are they about to start shooting down Venezuelan aircraft like they’ve been blowing up boats? Are they preparing for a ground invasion? Whatever it is, things are looking ugly. Washington is banging the war drums trying to justify regime change interventionism in Venezuela under the ridiculous claim that it’s about fighting drug trafficking just as Trump announces that he will pardon former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, who the US convicted of drug trafficking charges just last year.” (12/01/25)
“Some liberals assume that supporters of President Trump will allow the president to get away with anything and everything. It’s a fair assumption, considering that despite his record-low approval ratings, most Republicans still look at his job performance favorably. But a new study shows that most Republican voters have little to no appetite for an authoritarian leader. Fewer than 30 percent of Republicans support giving Trump broad authority, including the power to bypass Congress, to achieve his goals, according to a report released last week from the Johns Hopkins University Agora Institute, where I am a visiting fellow. … Despite Trump and many of his most diehard supporters often proclaiming that voters gave the president a mandate to do whatever he wants by any means necessary, the data suggest that the facts couldn’t be further from the truth.” (11/29/25)
“The signs of lame duckery grow as Trump’s popularity dips. His party was trounced in the off-year elections this month. Inflation, which he promised to whip, has not abated. Prices remain high. Consumer confidence has plummeted. Health insurance premiums are about to skyrocket. The Supreme Court does not appear to be looking kindly on his tariff schemes, nor on his plan to end birthright citizenship. Lower courts have defied him at almost every turn, most recently tossing out the absurd criminal indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James. Now members of his own party are beginning to stand up to him.” (11/30/25)
