Javier milei

Javier Milei, Argentina’s self styled “anarcho-capitalist” President, defied pessimistic poll predictions on Sunday to win in the midterm elections and save his radical economic reforms. With almost all the votes counted, Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party had won nearly 41 percent of the national vote, while the main left-wing Peronist opposition Fuerza Patria party netted just over 31 percent.  Up for grabs in the election were 127 of the 257 seats in the lower house of Congress, and 24 out of 72 seats in the upper house Senate. The LLA won 64 lower house seats and 12 in the Senate, enough for Milei to overcome an opposition veto against his most radical measures.

Was there a plot against President Trump at the United Nations? Upon his arrival, the escalator apparently stopped working. Next his teleprompter failed. Small wonder that Trump was in less than a concessive mood as he delivered his speech denouncing the UN itself as a colossal failure. The result was the kind of talk he would give to a political rally – except it was to an unreceptive, if not hostile, audience. Throughout, Trump made it clear that his estimation of his abilities is very different from his view of the UN. “I’m really good at this stuff,” he declared. “I’ve been right about everything.” As for everyone else: “Your countries are going to hell.

Charlie Kirk’s senseless murder on a Utah college campus yesterday led to an instant and disgusting avalanche of celebration from a small minority on the extremely online left. But Kirk’s friends and allies also rallied to pay tribute to the slain conservative activist. They know what we lost. President Trump gave a four-minute message from the Resolute Desk and Truth Social, “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!

A landslide election defeat for Argentine President Javier Milei’s Libertad Avanza party has made money markets doubt whether he will be able to push through his radical economic reforms.The Argentine peso lost 5.6 percent to the dollar and the Merval stock index plunged by 13 points on Monday after the flamboyant President’s party trailed the leftist opposition Peronist party of former President Cristina Kirchner by 13 points (47 percent to 34 percent) in local elections in Buenos Aires province – which, with 40 percent of the country’s voters, is the country’s biggest and most populous area.Bond markets also reacted negatively to the shock result, posting their biggest daily falls since they recommenced trading in 2021 after a debt reconstruction deal.

The trial of Brazil’s former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro on charges of plotting a coup to topple the current President Lula da Silva is entering its final stages.Bolsonaro, 70, and seven co- defendants are accused of conspiring to oust Lula, the veteran left-winger who narrowly beat him in the 2022 Presidential election. The Supreme Court in Brasilia will consider its verdict this week. If – as expected – the court convicts Bolsonaro, the ailing ex-President is looking at a lengthy jail sentence, and may die in prison as a result. Bolsonaro has been in poor health since he was stabbed in the abdomen in an assassination attempt while campaigning during his successful bid for the presidency in 2018.

After nearly two decades of reign over Bolivia, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party was banished at the ballot box on August 17. Its fall is a dramatic political realignment to the right for Bolivians, and a rare opportunity for the United States to reform relations with a geopolitically critical nation. As one expert, Leonardo Coutinho, told us, “The Trump administration can not only contribute to the restoration of democracy but also play a central role in dismantling a fully functioning narco-state.” Despite its 25 percent inflation rate and a 93 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, Bolivia is rich in natural resources, boasting some of the world’s largest lithium reserves, making it an attractive target for both American and Chinese grand strategies.

Bolivia is to be treated to a nail-biting run-off this autumn between two conservatives in the race to be the next president after the spectacular collapse of the socialist movement that has dominated the landlocked state for the past twenty years. A presidential race between two right-wingers is unusual in Latin America whose countries in recent years has been largely run by democratically elected leftists after the fall of the brutal military dictatorships that ruled so many states in the 1970s and 1980s. The second round of Bolivia’s presidential race will be decided on October 19th between the veteran former President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, 65, who gained 26 percent of the poll, and his center-right rival Rodrigo Paz Pereira, 57.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk settled their week-long feud this morning — through their shared love of eliminating government waste. How cute! The spat began during last week’s cabinet meeting when Musk and Rubio clashed over their different approaches to cutting the US Agency for International Development. The New York Times reported that Musk called out Rubio for firing “nobody,” arguing that he was unwilling to dismiss large groups of employees. Rubio responded by saying that more than 1,500 State Department officials had retired early or accepted redundancy offers under his leadership, the Times reported.

There were high hopes when Donald Trump announced plans for a Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE) in mid-November. Led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, DoGE was portrayed as a gift to smaller, more efficient government advocates through fewer regulations and a restructured government. “It will become, potentially, the Manhattan Project of our time,” boasted Trump at the time. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of DoGE for a very long time.” Trump seemed to picture Musk and Ramaswamy as a two-headed monster, ripping to shreds bureaucracy through “advice and guidance” along with an “entrepreneurial approach to government.

In the 1830s, the English-born American artist Thomas Cole painted an ambitious sequence of five large rectangular canvases delineating “The Course of Empire.” He began with “The Savage State,” which depicts the rude life of humans before the advent of letters, domestication and permanent architecture. “The Arcadian or Pastoral State” is marked by harmony and some early accoutrements of civilization. “The Consummation of Empire,” at fifty-one inches by seventy-six inches, is a third larger than its fellows. Here we see a sun-drenched landscape transformed by a panoply of classical architecture counterpointed by bustling commerce and a triumphal, if overripe, stateliness. Next comes “Destruction.