The 2028 election seems as if it is a lifetime away. Still, some Democrats are already striving for the prize of becoming the party’s presidential nominee. The problem for the Democrats is that the contenders thus far are underwhelming. Many Democrats must be thinking, “Can’t we do better?” President Donald Trump’s defeat of former Vice […]
President Donald Trump promised his tariffs would revitalize American industry. He apparently meant the lobbying industry. Had Trump’s goal been to stimulate lobbying on tariffs and trade, he could not have executed a better trade policy. As you would expect, the lobbyists who are getting the most new business are close allies of Trump and […]
Elite universities are so determined to fight the Trump administration that they’ve decided to double down on their antisemitism, and stick with anti-Israel protestors and ideological rigidity. If they hadn’t abandoned scholarly rigor years ago, they’d remember the first rule of finding yourself in a hole. Stop digging. The confrontation breaking out between universities and […]
The entire Right is being undermined by President Donald Trump. When the impact of his tariffs is felt, people won’t blame interventionism, protectionism, or economic nationalism. They will blame capitalism. Voters are already clocking that Trumponomics doesn’t work. According to YouGov, 57% of people think Trump’s actions on the economy have hurt the country, while […]
The joke about political science is that it’s not about politics, and it’s not a science. This would have surprised Aristotle, the ancient inventor of the field, and Machiavelli, its modern reinventor. Both believed politics were a means to the end Aristotle called a telos, an objective. For Aristotle, the telos was the cultivation of virtue and happiness […]
The Trump administration and its allies in Congress are attacking the Supreme Court for blocking attempts to deport illegal immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act before the alleged aliens can challenge the use of that authority in court. While the White House is right that the Supreme Court’s decision to issue such an order is […]
Thirty years ago this month, I sat in a suburban movie house and watched America’s sweetheart stumble backward into love. No, the picture wasn’t Pretty Woman, Sleepless in Seattle, or You’ve Got Mail, though those 1990s classics deserve columns of their own. Rather, it was a film that nearly fell apart before it could be […]
A friend of mine sent me a text last month. “Hope you’re doing well,” he said. “Any time for a call, just to catch up?” It’s always nice when a friend reaches out — this friend is particularly diligent at staying in touch — so we set a time for a chat the next day. […]
Some historical fiction is uncontroversial because it presents the past merely as a backdrop for a story that does not suggest new facts or challenge widely accepted interpretations. Other successful creations go the other way, dispensing with the truth so brazenly that they render caveats fatuous because their narratives aren’t so much revisionist history as […]
At a time when the president of the United States tells everyone within earshot that he wants Canada to become America’s “cherished 51st state,” it feels mildly unpatriotic as a Canadian to review a book titled Don’t Be Canada, even more so for an American publication. Yet there is no escaping the fact that something […]
America has fewer grand homes-turned-museums than Europe, for the perfectly simple reason that there have been Americans living grandly for so much less time. New York City has an unusually small number, and most of these bear no resemblance to their original uses. The Frick Collection is different. The museum, overlooking Central Park on Manhattan’s […]
In Why Time Begins on Opening Day, Thomas Boswell wrote that a ballclub’s faithful finally learn the final score is only part of what matters, that “the process, the pleasure, the grain of the game count too.” In Pittsburgh this April, the grain of the game is a 100‑mile‑an‑hour fastball that rises like a hot […]
