If you’ve turned on a television lately, chances are you heard a catchy jingle. One GLP-1 medication’s now-famous chorus, “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic,” illustrates how direct-to-consumer drug ads have become part of our cultural wallpaper. But while these jingles are catchy, they are now under the federal microscope. In its latest 2027 budget request, the […]
Last year, Washington demonstrated that political prisoners are a convertible currency. After visits and calls from President Donald Trump’s envoys, Alexander Lukashenko released dozens of them in two batches — and sanctions on Belavia, the Belarusian state airline, came off in return. Whatever the merits of that trade, its lesson traveled. In Tbilisi, the man […]
Critics of last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) argue that the Trump administration is stripping vulnerable households of crucial benefits, citing a $187 billion reduction in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding over the next decade. Since the OBBBA’s passage last summer, the number of food-stamp recipients has declined by over 4.1 million […]
President Donald Trump has learned something the ayatollahs have known for 47 years: Revolutionary regimes don’t fold at the negotiating table. Despite Iranian promises at the negotiating table, the Strait of Hormuz is still a chokepoint, Iran is firing at tankers, and nobody in Tehran has renounced the nuclear program. The optimism of June has […]
Although the process of extricating the U.S. from various open-ended, cold war legacy security commitments shrouded in ambiguity is chaotic — more enraged bull in China shop theatrics than dispassionate Bismarckian realpolitik chess — President Donald Trump is rediscovering the vital national interests of the United States, and fundamentally restructuring U.S. grand strategy to refocus […]
As large-scale hostilities between the United States and Iran resume, it’s time to ask hard questions about America’s Middle East basing footprint. Seven Americans have died on U.S. military bases during the Iran war. Not on the front lines, on installations that were supposed to deter Iranian aggression and instead became its targets. The conflict […]
A former student of mine lives in Santa Clara County, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a median household income of $205,500 for a family of four. I’m happy his life has worked out so well — his talented wife is an executive at a major tech company, and he runs […]