Donald trrump

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Deals, deals, deals vs China, China, China

How was your Liberation Month? It’s been almost 30 days since Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden of the White House and announced a shocking set of massive tariffs on the world. The event caused huge convulsions in the economic universe: trillions were wiped off the stock market and, under huge pressure, Trump did agree to a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs. After that he exempted electrical goods, though his standard 10 percent remains, and the heads of most financial analysts are still spinning trying to figure out what it all means. Yet for all the angst and the apoplexy, yesterday the S&P 500 index closed just 1 percent down from where it was at the beginning of the month.

Wednesday

Ben Domenech

Whitmer’s smart play for Trump’s voters

“I’m that same woman from Michigan,” Governor Gretchen Whitmer told Fox 2 Detroit Tuesday night, when asked about her changing relationship with President Donald Trump. Yet for progressive Democratic voters, Whitmer’s willingness to appear – reluctantly in the Oval Office three weeks ago, less so Tuesday at the Air National Guard Base at Selfridge, where Trump invited her to speak at the lectern prominently bearing the seal of the President – is viewed as anathema. Who’s right in this moment? Will Whitmer’s multiple appearances and plaudits for Trump become something she intensely regrets when the Democratic party’s presidential primaries begin apace? Or is the True Gretch author sly as a fox?

whitmer
hawley
Ben Domenech

Josh Hawley talks Trump’s first 100 days: pro-life ‘needs to be a priority’

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri has been one of Donald Trump’s fiercest allies on Capitol Hill. But since his easy re-election last November, he’s also been someone within the Republican party who demanded public commitments from Trump’s nominees on several issues of importance to him – areas of concern that include the influence of big tech, the encroaching role of China and a promise on the part of nominees with little or no record on the abortion issue to support pro-life policies. Senator Hawley spoke to me on the 100th day of Trump’s second presidency about what he’s seeing on tariffs, foreign policy and China.

Obama
David Sypher Jr.

But, Michelle: Barack deported more immigrants than Trump

Michelle Obama says Donald Trump’s immigration policies “keep her up at night.” But if immigration enforcement is a moral crisis, why wasn’t she losing sleep when her own husband deported more immigrants than any president in American history? Instead of helping the Democrats, this kind of out-of-touch moral posturing only highlights the party’s elite detachment from reality – and it’s costing them working-class voters who live with the consequences of the failed policies they are still defending.Michelle Obama may lie awake thinking about immigration enforcement. Many of us stay up worrying about what happens when our neighborhoods, wages and public schools are strained by policies designed to win applause, not provide order.

Tuesday

Cockburn

A White House Correspondents’ Dinner hangover

By now, you have surely got a flavor of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and all the accompanying parties that took place over the weekend. After all, the DC media has nothing to talk about other than itself. The President long ago chose not to attend, and that the intimation was that members of his administration should skip the “MSM” events too. There were fewer celebrities than ever – not least because the White House Correspondents’ Association got rid of the comedian who was set to provide the entertainment. The gargantuan TIME after-party – your correspondent saw the entry tally at over 2,470 when he arrived at 11:30 – smelled like feet due to the Raclette on the rear terrace.

white house
Roger Kimball

Pay no heed to the misleading Trump approval ratings

When it comes to Donald Trump and his achievements during his first 100 days, who are you going to believe, the New York Times or your lyin’ eyes?  By “the New York Times,” incidentally, I do not mean just that one woke media outlet masquerading as a source of news.  No, I take the Times as a metonym for the entire propaganda industrial complex, the giant dispenser of politically correct nostrums and seismically sensitive Keeper of the Narrative.  Thus it is that the Times is a reliable dispenser not of that sort of information we denominate “news” – that is, what is actually happening and who is involved in making it happen.

Trump
James Johnson

The polls are wrong (again) on Trump

“Trump has lowest 100-day approval rating in 80 years,” screamed ABC News at the start of this week. The ABC News/Washington Post poll, conducted by Ipsos to mark Trump’s 100th day in office, was one of a handful that have shown Trump’s approval rating dipping below 40 percent for the first time. There is just one problem: the pollsters who are showing the worst numbers for Trump are the ones who got the election most wrong. Take the ABC/WaPo/Ipsos poll, that showed Trump on 39 percent approval. In their final poll of the 2024 cycle, they found a three-point lead for Kamala Harris. Ipsos’s other poll for Reuters had a two-point advantage for Harris nationally. Trump ended up winning the popular vote by one and a half points.

foreign
Ben Domenech

A mammoth 100 days of Trump’s America First foreign policy

One hundred days into the second Donald Trump presidency, his presence in the Oval Office represents the largest sea change in US foreign relations since the end of the Cold War.  Within the space of fewer than four months, Trump has forced Ukraine to deal with reality, by delivering hard truths about what ending the war will require. He has deployed J.D. Vance to shock the international system, with tough messages to our allies in Europe and Asia. Trump’s declaration of a litany of cartels as foreign terror organizations has kicked off a redirection of our relationship with Mexico, Panama and the Western hemisphere. His close relationship with Israel, a clear break with Joe Biden’s approach, has shifted expectations for the Middle East.

switzerland
Urs Gehriger

How Liberation Day rocked Switzerland

When President Donald Trump gathered the world’s media to the White House Rose Garden to unveil America’s “Liberation Day,” Swiss viewers were cautious but optimistic.  Administration insiders had assured us that we had nothing to fear. During Trump’s first term in office, Switzerland had been the port in the storm of European opinion. As outsiders to the European Union, we were able to forge our own relationship with the American superpower. Our small alpine nation, with its population of 9 million, rose from the eighth largest foreign direct investor in the United States to the sixth. Swiss companies, like Nestle, Stadler and Novartis, ramped up their American operations, generating profits and jobs for both countries.

hadron
Daniel McCarthy

Trump is a Large Hadron Collider

By conventional measures President Trump’s first 100 days back in office have not been a success. He hasn’t (at time of writing) restored peace for Europe’s frontier with Russia or tamed inflation in America’s supermarkets. Instead, he’s given the stock market a shock the likes of which it hasn’t felt in decades and blown up some apartment buildings in Yemen. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has taken apart entire federal agencies, but the very small-government conservatives and libertarians who might be expected to be enthusiastic about this are instead signaling that they were pretty comfortable with the way Washington was – or at least that they don’t want those ways changed unless they’re done by the most proper possible playbook.

globalization
Travis Aaroe

Who cares about globalization?

Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” was the culmination of a 30-year insurgency against the global economic system. It was the most fiscally significant event since lockdown. By the fiat of the President, tens of trillions of dollars were on the move; stock markets trembled; and the US-China relationship – the material basis of globalization – seemed at risk of permanently freezing over.  Yet just under a week later, tariffs were to be displaced in the news cycle by the case of a deported "Maryland man," Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and his possible gang affiliations. Only one of these events would prompt five Democratic lawmakers to drop everything for an urgent trip abroad.

Monday

Stephen L. Miller

The media must admit to covering up Biden’s decline

When it comes to the many forthcoming books about President Joe Biden’s decline, only one question matters: what role did the national news media play in assisting his White House in the cover-up? It’s a question that, if early snippets and sample releases are anything to go by, will remain largely ignored by the authors and their colleagues in media. A number of reporters are releasing volumes about Biden’s conspicuous cognitive decline, that many of them supposedly only became aware of on the debate stage last June. Many of these journalists actively worked to smear anyone who had noticed the former president’s state of mind, including right-leaning commentators and Republicans, as far back as 2021.

Biden
Joy Reid
David Sypher Jr.

No, Joy Reid: Rome didn’t fall due to a lack of ‘diversity’

Former MSNBC host Joy Reid recently delivered a peculiar history lesson to her social media audience. In her mind a reproach to Donald Trump, Reid warned that the Roman Empire “died because it wasn’t diverse enough,” implying that sticking with “just white folks” leads to inevitable civilizational decline. If history were written by cable news soundbites, we might soon learn that Napoleon lost Waterloo because he lacked a DEI department.In reality, Rome didn’t fall because of a lack of diversity. Nor is Europe today crumbling because of too many white people. Societies fail for many reasons, but skin color has never been one of them.

Sunday

Neal Pollack

The Trump White House is The Real Housewives of Pennsylvania Avenue

In the latest episode of “As the Trump Turns,” Elon Musk and Secretary Treasury Scott Bessent, two incredibly powerful billionaires, got into a White House screaming match over who gets to be the acting commissioner of the IRS. According to Axios, Bessent accused Musk of going behind his back to get Trump to appoint Musk’s favored candidate. Musk “clapped back,” calling Bessent a “Soros agent,” and accusing him of running a “failed hedge fund.” “Fuck you!” Bessent screamed. “Say it louder!” shouted Musk. There were no reports of anyone ripping down drapes or tossing a champagne glass in anyone else’s face. But this is how Donald Trump runs his White House.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC (Getty Images)

Saturday

Emily Smith

The Met Gala flirts with MAGA

The Met Gala, hosted by the almighty Anna Wintour, will see the world’s most fashionable float up the red carpet on May 5 in New York City. The throngs of designers, models, influencers and celebrities who manage to get the golden-ticket invitation must dress in a style inspired by the theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” This theme is inspired from Monica Miller’s 2009 book, “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.” Dandyism, we’re told, has its origins in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in the 18th century when slaves were dressed up in an extravagant fashion to please their master’s aesthetic.

met gala

Friday

Charles Lipson

Another spring, another round of anti-Semitism on campus

The weather is growing warm, which means anti-Semitic demonstrations are blooming at elite universities. The hatred of Jews is no longer hidden, as it was in the days when Jewish enrollment was quietly limited by quotas. Now, it is displayed openly by a campus coalition led by hardline American leftists (students, faculty, and administrators) and Muslim students, some from America, some from the Middle East.  Their hatred is screamed at Jewish students and pro-Israeli speakers—and then at anyone who dares support them or simply demands the basic right to speak or be heard. Any support for Israel is damned as “genocide” and then shouted down, shamed, or worse.

campus

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Harvard’s intricate China ties

Scratch almost any major US political story and sooner or later you’ll hit a big red nerve that belongs to the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Tariffs, energy, TikTok, the border, Fentanyl, Greenland, Panama, the Gulf of America – on all these subjects the Trump administration is, one way or another, trying to limit Beijing’s power in the West. And Donald Trump’s "war on Harvard," it turns out, is no exception. It’s clear that the President is pushing against anti-Semitism and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion madness on America’s most famous campus, as well as in countless other colleges and universities.

Harvard
Immigration digital
Kevin Cohen

Trump’s impressive, unsettling digital fortress

Forget the towering slabs of steel and concrete sprawling across the southern border. Quietly, beneath the tangible symbols of Donald Trump’s immigration clampdown, another revolution has taken hold. A revolution of invisible digital watchtowers, wires and algorithms – that is as impressive as it is unsettling.The curtain shielding this vast expansion of America’s digital surveillance technology has, thanks to recent disclosures, been drawn back to reveal at its core a controversial and critically influential digital engine churning through data.Enter Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. DoGE has recently launched a master database targeting undocumented migrants, WIRED reports.

Food dye
Neal Pollack

RFK Jr.’s hill to dye on?

If you’re to believe media accounts of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s extraordinary Tuesday press conference, the Health and Human Services Secretary has “banned” eight toxic colored dyes from American food products. Milder accounts say that the agency has ordered Big Food to “phase out” these dyes by the end of 2026. No one legitimate will argue against food-dye restrictions and anyone who does is either reflexively anti-Trump to an absurd degree or is a paid food-industry shill. But the problem is that there were no food-industry shills present at the press conference. RFK Jr. has essentially asked the food companies to do the right thing by American consumers – by self-deporting. “We don’t have an agreement,” RFK Jr. said. “We have an understanding.

Wednesday

Teresa Mull

How America can develop its own rare earth elements industry… safely

Give a country rare earth elements and it’ll have fighter jets, missiles and warships for a day. Force a country to extract and process its own rare earth elements and it’ll be safe from relying on countries run by unstable dictators forever.  Such is President Trump’s sensible line of thinking as he keeps up America's trade war with China. As China imposed export licensing restrictions on seven rare earth elements, or REEs, last week, Trump signed an Executive Order “launching an investigation into the national security risks posed by US reliance on imported processed critical minerals and their derivative products.” The administration is now pursuing a deal to procure REEs from Ukraine.

rare earth elements