Politics

Texas Ron Paul celebrated his 90th birthday on Saturday at a freshly-built college events center in Southeast Texas. More accurately, hundreds of beaming Ron Paul fans and various libertarian podcast influencers celebrated Ron Paul’s birthday, and Ron Paul showed up to give a speech at the end. But everyone, Cockburn included, had a delightful time, full of amiable conversations, mostly modest self-promotion, and, of course, endless discussions about smashing the US financial system. “I’m so enraged by the corruption I see around me, I would have dropped dead of a heart attack by now without the influence of Ron Paul,” Clint Russell of the Liberty Lockdown podcast was saying during an afternoon of speeches and Ron Paul testimonials.

Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation whom President Trump appointed last month as temporary leader of NASA, has issued a directive to fast-track efforts to put a nuclear reactor on the moon. “To properly advance this critical technology to be able to support a future lunar economy, high power energy generation on Mars, and to strengthen our national security in space,” he says.A small nuclear reactor on the moon is a good idea, but the directive is about more than that: it is about renewing America’s leadership in space exploration that, with its magnificent achievements receding into the past, looks vulnerable. Bill Nelson, NASA’s last leader, didn't mince his words when it came to the new rivals, China. “It is a fact: we’re in a space race.

Now comes word that Attorney General Pam Bondi is opening a grand jury investigation into the attempt to falsely dragoon President Donald J. Trump with criminal Russian meddlers during the 2016 presidential election. In attempting to direct some measure of sunlight to ground that has been well trod and littered with distracting debris, the US Department of Justice will be facing a significant uphill battle. First, various government officials planted seeds of disinformation and sowed misdirection during the first Trump administration, aided and abetted by the Biden administration in subsequent years. Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017 to investigate alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and purported ties to the Trump campaign.

Mount Ararat rises over Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, its peak often lost in clouds. It is the country’s national symbol, yet it stands across the border in Turkey. That border has been closed since the early 1990s, when Turkey sided with Azerbaijan against Armenia – cutting Armenia off from its largest western neighbor and leaving it dependent on narrow trade corridors through Georgia and Iran. For three decades, the conflict shaped the politics of the South Caucasus, drawing in Russia, Turkey and Iran. The peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, signed today in Washington, represents more than the end of a long-standing territorial dispute.

Already the Kremlin is setting the terms of the forthcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff, Trump's emissary, set the meeting in motion with his mission to Moscow on Wednesday, which Trump called “highly productive.” But productive of what? Putin’s foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov stated today that it was the White House, not the Kremlin, that wanted the meeting. He went on to dismiss Trump's proposal that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could take part in a tripartite negotiation, noting that “for this to happen, certain conditions must be created. Unfortunately, such conditions are far away yet.” Those conditions remain the complete surrender of Ukraine.  The Kremlin, in other words, has a strategic plan.

The theater kids are at it again. The Texas Democratic party is engaged in yet another performative act of resistance – one perhaps less embarrassing than the likes of Representative Greg Casar's iconic nine-hour "thirst strike," but far more damaging to Texans in the moment. The decision by more than 50 Texas representatives to flee the state for the climes of California, New York and Illinois rather than confront the realities of their political margins doesn't just act as a grandstanding method of opposition to a redistricting policy that would stand to Republicans' benefit – it also is holding up the legislative response to the recent flooding disaster, something of significant need to the damaged communities.

El Salvador’s young and telegenic president, Nayib Bukele, has rewritten the rules. Term limits? Scrapped. Presidential terms? Extended. Runoff elections? Abolished. If all goes according to the script – penned and passed by his party in the legislature – Bukele will remain in power well into the 2030s, if not beyond. A decade ago, such a move might have sparked bipartisan alarm in Washington. Today, reactions are mixed – with many in the growing MAGA wing cheering El Salvador’s constitutional shake-up as a win of their own. This shift is a window into a deeper realignment in conservative foreign policy: one that moves closer to the unapologetic defense of national interest and drifts further from the spread-democracy-everywhere consensus.