“On Tuesday, New York, the largest city in America, has an opportunity to elect Zohran Mamdani, a young man, a democratic socialist, an immigrant (at age seven), a Muslim, a progressive, and someone hated by Donald Trump. And no wonder, since he’s the antithesis of Trump. No wonder he brings fear to the reactionary forces largely represented by the president and his supporters. Zohran Mamdani is one of nearly 3.1 million immigrants now living in New York City, close to one-third of its total population. Its inhabitants are 30.9% White, 28.7% Hispanic or Latino, 20.2% Black or African American, and 15% Asian. There are also 800 languages spoken in New York City …. That fact does anything but warm the hearts of reactionary folks, since many of them worry about what’s known as ‘replacement theory,’ an idea created by White nationalist Republican strategists to scare the hell out of their base.” (11/03/25)
“The whole premise of a mother-may-I approach to licensing activities like owning and carrying firearms is that the powers that be will honor the documents of those lucky enough to receive permission after agreeing to pretend that their rights are privileges. If, instead, officialdom laughs at the licenses it issues and penalizes people foolish enough to take them seriously, there’s no point submitting to the humiliating process of begging indulgence from government officials to begin with. This brings us to the trend of Chicago police arresting legal gun owners, even though they possessed and showed documents allowing them to own and carry firearms.” (11/03/25)
“The whole world knows what Trump’s sycophants won’t tell him: His confrontation with China has ended up demonstrating Chinese strength and American weakness. Now, I am not a mercantilist. Trump may imagine that the world economy is a zero-sum game, where one nation’s gain is another nation’s loss. But it isn’t. China’s astonishing rise since the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping hasn’t made America poorer. If anything, the rapid ascent of a nation of 1.4 billion people from desperate poverty to middle-income status (per capita, China still lags America and Europe) has made us richer, expanding world markets and providing us with manufactured goods that would be far more expensive to produce at home. But China’s rise has created geopolitical problems.” (11/03/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“U.S. officials continue to pursue some key foreign policy objectives that are utterly detached from reality. Such behavior perpetuates a trend that has characterized Washington’s behavior during much of the 20th century and into the 21st — and that has proved to be both embarrassing and counterproductive. Two egregious examples of such ‘magical’ thinking stand out: the belief that Ukraine can prevail militarily against Russia and the assumption that North Korea can be pressured to give up its nuclear weapons.” (11/03/25)
“If you suggest to a careless person that they should care about something terrible that is happening, they’ll often tell you that you scolding them that they ought to care is the reason they think the terrible thing is good, actually — which gives away the fact that they knew about it all along, but I find a careless person generally doesn’t care about that revelation of their motives, because not caring was always their goal, so they don’t actually care how it is they manage to achieve the goal of not caring, and they don’t care if their previous reason for not caring doesn’t work anymore. They tell you you’re shaming them. And I get it. Who wants to be shamed? But more people should be more ashamed, I think.” (11/03/25)
“If one theme unites the Roberts Court’s work in administrative law, it is a counter-reformation that recenters the Constitution’s basic architecture for the administrative state. Congress is to legislate; the president and his subordinates are to execute within a hierarchical, accountable executive; and courts are to exercise independent judgment in interpreting the laws. That settlement, grounded in the Constitution’s Vesting Clauses, animates a series of linked doctrines returning power to the institutions to which the Court believes the Constitution originally entrusted it. The Roberts Court’s vision for the separation of powers points toward a stricter nondelegation doctrine. Delegation is Congress’s practice of permitting agencies to regulate conduct under broad authorizations that allow the executive substantial policy choice.” (11/03/25)
“During my final overseas CIA assignment as a station chief in a South Asian war zone, our team was ruthlessly focused on detecting and preempting terrorist threats long before they could inflict harm on the U.S. homeland. We conducted plenty of clandestine operations unilaterally, but we also worked in close partnership with the host government’s intelligence service. We did not always agree on everything, but we enjoyed a robust exchange of intelligence on our mutual adversaries, shared analytical judgments and collaborated on a number of joint tactical counterterrorism operations. On one occasion, our CIA team successfully found and fixed the location of a senior al Qaeda terrorist on the FBI Most Wanted list for having planned terrorist attacks. We shared our sensitive intelligence with the host government, whose military launched a well-planned raid and killed the al Qaeda terrorist during a firefight.” (11/03/25)
“Nuclear weapons have made the world safe for hypocrisy and unsafe in every other respect. Astride the nonsense that is nuclear apartheid – the forced separation of the states that are permitted to have nuclear weapons and those that do not – sits that rumpled, crumpled creature called the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). For decades, the nuclear club has dangled an unfulfilled promise to eventually disarm their arsenals by encouraging non-nuclear weapons states to pursue peaceful uses of the atom. Preference, instead, has been given to enlarging inventories and developing ever more ingenious and idiotic ways of turning humans, and animal life, into ash and offal.” (11/03/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jennifer Kavanagh
“On September 30, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth summoned nearly 800 of America’s military generals, admirals, and senior enlisted officers to Quantico, Virginia on short notice. Though the unprecedented event was written off by many as a political stunt, a month later, it is clear the gathering was more important than many realized. Of particular note were the speeches delivered by Hegseth and President Donald Trump which offer the clearest articulation yet of how the Trump administration thinks about and hopes to use military power.” (11/03/25)
