David French, who would know, compares the authoritarian streak of MAGA to a river; when it is stopped by a dam, it seeks a way around it. What does that mean for Trump and ICE?
It means the spectacle of dominance in Minnesota will end, but it will be revived in a blue state that creates a more popular target. Bet on California, Pennsylvania, or New York, the last being the most obvious choice.
On the Trump private army called ICE.
Its tactics you’d hardly call nice.
A new shutdown looms
Over Trump and his goons.
Screw me once, that’s on you, but then twice?
Reining in ICE is an objective worthy of a shutdown. The cause appears to be popular, and the Democrats’ demands are reasonable. Recent history shows us, however, that shutdowns have negative side effects, and the blue team wants to avoid another “defund the police” episode. So how does this end?
Both sides will be motivated to settle. There will be a brief shutdown, followed by a compromise, followed by repeated attempts by ICE to avoid the new restrictions.
Trump and Rubio are predicting the implosion of the Cuban regime following the loss of its last major benefactor. We’ve been hearing that prediction for 60 years, however. Is this the time it comes true?
Life in Cuba is even more wretched than before. If misery alone caused communist regimes to fall, however, the USSR would have died in the 1920s, and Mao’s government would have collapsed during the Great Leap Forward. Obviously, the answer lies elsewhere.
The regime will fall when the leadership doubts the merits of the system, loses its taste for repression, and tries half-measures of reform. That’s what happened to the USSR.
Trump clearly believes that AI is the solution to all of our economic problems. It will create millions of new high-paying jobs, and he will get the credit. Are his hopes likely to be realized?
For his plan to work, the full benefits of AI will have to be realized during his remaining term, and must be felt, not just by capitalists, but by ordinary workers. While it is early days, there is no evidence for the latter as yet, and the former is highly improbable.
Oren Cass is kind of the intellectual godfather of Trump’s tariff scheme. Cass would like to see it morph into a more permanent and predictable system, of course, but he still believes it will lead to an American manufacturing renaissance even in the absence of supporting evidence. He is also taking a victory lap on inflation even though it remains stubbornly high.
But Cass isn’t on Team Trump when it comes to bank deregulation. In a column in the NYT, he longs for the days when bankers actually made loans to create new and expanded businesses instead of facilitating share buybacks and destructive mergers. He does everything except call bankers vampire squid. There is little in the column with which Bernie Sanders would disagree.
Trump has made freeing bankers from the chains forged during the Great Recession one of the pillars of his program. Don’t expect Scott Bessent to be calling Cass for advice anytime soon.
Trump posted some sort of a video which portrayed him as the king of the jungle and the Obama as apes. A strong response to this obvious manifestation of racism was not slow in coming; for once, it included prominent Republicans as well as Democrats. The administration responded first by defending the video, then by removing it, and finally by blaming an unnamed staff member.
Trump, of course, never apologized, because he views apologies as a form of weakness. In other words, Trump means never having to say you’re sorry.
Trump is using the regulatory and financial power of the federal government to gain as much control over the economy as possible. He can then use that power to enrich himself and his friends and punish his enemies. Since the system he envisions (to say nothing of the aesthetic) resembles that of Saudi Arabia, some commentators have called it “royalism.” Is that accurate?
No, because Putin and Orban have done the same thing. A system that runs on services and patronage is properly described as “feudal.” It is the foundation of organized crime, among other things.
Crypto is crashing. When the losses start filtering through the system, the results won’t be pretty, and Trump will catch plenty of blame, just as I predicted months ago.
In addition, we learned today that Trump is demanding that Penn Station be named after him in order to keep money flowing for the big tunnel project. Need I say more?
Trump has now signed an agreement liberalizing trade with Argentina. Viewed in isolation, and as a purely economic measure, this is a positive development, even if American ranchers will hate it. Hey, they voted for the guy, so they are getting what they deserve.
But Trump is not a free trader, and this deal isn’t really about trade; it is another gesture of solidarity with a friendly right-wing South American regime. The problem is that the real prize in South America is Brazil, which is not run by right-wingers. This kind of gesture is likely to push Brazil further into the arms of the Chinese. Then what?
My readers will know that I have focused mostly on Hegseth and the military when discussing the dangers to liberal democracy. But what about ICE? Could it be used as a modern equivalent of the SA?
Based on the resources given to it, the nationalist tone of its recruitment efforts, and its behavior in Minnesota, the answer is yes.
Ross Douthat has no illusions about Trump. He knows the man’s foibles as well as we do. But he still holds out hope for the administration, partly because he thinks that a wrecked America could evolve into something more reactionary-friendly, and partly because he approves of Trump’s efforts to weaponize government against secular culture.
Douthat thinks Trump is blowing it with overreach. He has already lost the country. He relies on executive orders, which can be quickly rescinded by his successor, rather than legislation. His legacy, as a result, will be one of failure.
Is Douthat right? If you assume Trump plans to keep American liberal democracy in place, yes. But if the great man intends to use ICE and the military to destroy the system and make himself a true authoritarian, public opinion will be irrelevant. At least for awhile.
In the pre-Elon days, Twitter was a sandbox for the woke left. The right scoured it for absurd positions, publicized them, and unfairly tarred the entire blue team political class with them. Today, of course, the far right, including Musk himself, dominates X. As a result, the left has the opportunity to tie extremist opinions to Donald Trump and the mainstream of the GOP.
Trump provides us with plenty of unfiltered material on his own, but every bit helps. The blue team needs to take full advantage of this situation while it lasts.
Fifty percent of American voters despise Donald Trump, and always have. Roughly forty percent would follow him off a cliff. That leaves the ten percent that decide elections; their votes are dictated by their perceptions of the state of the nation. What should the Democrats do about them in 2026 and 2028?
They are currently leaning against Trump. Just don’t do anything to convince them that Trump, for all of his chaos, is still the lesser evil. That means keeping the wokeness and weakness to a minimum.
America has been ethnically and religiously diverse since the middle of the 18th century. How can we make a single nation out of such a wide range of cultures?
The MAGA answer to that is simple; WASPs made America great, so they get to run the place, and everyone else should just shut up and accept their subordinate status. But what is the blue team’s response?
America is united by freedom, the rule of law, and limited government, of course. The American dream is a collection of hundreds of millions of individual dreams.