As we approach the 100th day of the second Trump administration, the apparent division between MAGA populism and DOGE libertarianism remains one of the major stories of this new era. The MAGA firebrand Steve Bannon and the DOGE impresario Elon …
Trump will make China great again
Although the White House insists it used a sophisticated formula to calculate its ‘Liberation Day’ tariff list, and even showed us its maths, can it really be a pure coincidence that if you type “What would be an easy way …
Trump’s tariffs are the end of globalisation
When regimes end, they end in phases. Communism died over a period of 10 years, starting with the strike at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the great symbolic episode, and the …
Trump is neglecting moderates
President Trump’s first two months back in the Oval Office have been a whirlwind of unprecedented executive action. This has predictably ignited forceful reactions from Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media, attacks which nevertheless have yet to significantly …
Will Liberation Day transform the world?
“My philosophy, Mr President, is that all foreigners are out to screw us and it’s our job to screw them first.” With these words, the US Treasury Secretary convinced the President to deliver a colossal shock to the global economy. …
Columbia’s compromise with Trump
Before his election victory last year, Donald Trump’s plans for education were striking in their vagueness. Rather than publishing detailed policies, he promised to make universities “patriotic” and “sane” after years of liberal excess. Since his return to the White …
Cuomo’s Covid misrule killed my parents
On 25 March, 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, a single piece of paper, a directive signed by Andrew Cuomo, then the governor of New York, brought about thousands of deaths in nursing homes and similar care facilities. …
The flaws in Musk’s Mars mission
In his speech to Congress last month, President Donald Trump promised to “lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond”. His claim is not serious, as Trump is far too busy …
Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ will fail
President Trump has dubbed 2 April, when his new tariffs go into effect, “Liberation Day”. While many investors, financial analysts, and consumers are in panic mode, Trump’s pitch to the industrial working class remains blunt: over the last half century, …
Will AI drones fill the DOGE void?
Elon Musk’s DOGE has introduced some novel mental states into various parts of the American polity. Among its supporters, one finds both triumphalism and confusion. Among its opponents, one finds outrage, or sadness, or alarm, or all of these things …
Why Trump can’t beat the Houthis
Donald Trump took to Truth Social last week to give Iran a violent warning: “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN. …
The lost innocence of Grey’s Anatomy
I first heard about Grey’s Anatomy on the school bus. I’m turning 32 this week, and Grey’s is turning 20. It was the spring of 2005, when ABC launched this two-decade medical drama about the life and times of Dr. …
The lost New York of Henry James
It begins with a house. It is as though there cannot easily be a book unless there is first a house. It was the house that seemed to come before the word. And if the house is lost or gone, …
Why I’m boycotting AI
I went cheerfully through college listening to music on old file-sharing programmes while everybody around me had switched to iTunes. While the rest of the student body scrolled the web on WiFi, I dorkily plugged in an ethernet cable anytime …
Trump’s fantasyland America
Donald Trump is a great uniter, bringing together the most delusional elements of American life. Attacks on his administration’s reactionary turn are, of course, accurate. But it is far wiser to see his cabinet as a crackpot coalition. Served by …