Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest. He lives in Washington DC
So much for ‘Minnesota nice’, the phrase that Midwesterners like to use to describe their calm dispositions. Three gunshots – fired point-blank in the gelid snows of Minneapolis by a federal immigration officer at Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old white woman and American citizen – have plunged the North Star State into renewed political turmoil.
There was no dancing, let alone prancing, in the Brooklyn courtroom as former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was arraigned on four charges, including narco-terrorism and weapons trafficking, following his capture by American forces on a military base in Caracas on Saturday. Instead, Maduro, whose terpsichorean moves to a musical remix of his ‘No War, Yes
The US launched a military operation in Venezuela, targeting the regime in Caracas and detaining President Nicolás Maduro, who has been transferred to New York where he faces charges of narcoterrorism. Donald Trump has described the move as a decisive defence of American interests, but critics point point to the double standards when it come
In Ukraine, as elsewhere in Europe, Donald Trump’s new national security strategy is being met with a mixture of incredulity and incomprehension. ‘What does it actually mean?’ a general who advises Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked me on Tuesday as we met in the presidential administration building in downtown Kyiv. It’s not an easy question to answer. Is it
President Donald Trump dozed off during his cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Who could blame him? Listening to Secretary of State Marco Rubio drone on about Russia would prompt souls less hardy than Trump to catch some shuteye. What should be keeping Trump awake, or at least uneasy, is the shaky state of the American economy.
Doge has been Doge’d. Elon Musk’s once fearsome US Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) has been shut down eight months before its contract officially ends in July 2026. What was supposed to be an organisation that exploded traditional ways of running the federal government has turned into a damp squib. Doge was established by President
The contrast could hardly have been starker. As Donald Trump palled around with Mohammed bin Salman in the newly gilded Oval Office, Congress was voting on a transparency act that would further expose Jeffrey Epstein’s grave misdeeds. Trump, who had worked overtime to try and quash the vote, was in his element with the Saudi crown prince. Transparency? Not a bit
The main thing that has made the Epstein files seem politically (as opposed to morally) significant is that Donald Trump remains obsessed with preventing them from seeing the light of day. He thus devoted much of Wednesday to importuning Republicans such as Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert not to back their release. ‘Only a very bad,
No sooner did Democrats in the American Senate reach a deal to end the federal government shutdown than a frenzy of liberal pearl clutching ensued. The Democrats should have held out longer, they argued. Healthcare subsidies could have been rescued. Donald Trump’s approval ratings were plunging. Golly, maybe the Democrats could even have driven the
Nancy Pelosi’s career ends as it began. She entered Congress in 1986 during the Reagan administration and is ending it under the most influential Republican president since the Gipper. On Thursday she released a six-minute video announcing her retirement in 2027 from Congress, the latest octogenarian to depart it. No sooner did she announce that
Sorry, Volodymyr. There won’t be any Tomahawk missiles headed to Ukraine now that president Vladimir Putin of Russia has talked on the phone with president Donald Trump, who called their session ‘very productive.’ What it will produce remains an open question. But it does seem to have resulted in a decision to hold an upcoming summit
Freddy Gray speaks to Jacob Heilbrunn, a longstanding friend of Americano to discuss James Comey, violence in Washington and Tucker Carlson’s new series.
Charlie Kirk was shot on stage yesterday, speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University. The Turning Point USA co-founder was announced dead by the President of the United States. ‘The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of
Oops. The White House is claiming that President Trump directed the ubiquitous Steve Witkoff to warn Qatar that Israel was going to strike Hamas headquarters in Doha. But Qatari officials denied that they received any such warning. ‘What happened today is state terrorism and an attempt to destabilise regional security and stability, and Israeli Prime
It was back to black for Volodymyr Zelensky. After the Trump White House asked whether he was going to wear a suit for his Oval Office meeting, the Ukrainian president showed up in a dark military-style jacket, pleasing his hosts to no end. Even Brian Glenn, boyfriend of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and reporter for
Over the weekend, the US conducted strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran is weighing a response, and Trump has raised the possibility of a change in leadership in Iran. To discuss what comes next and why this move seems to counter everything we know about ‘America First’, Freddy Gray is joined by editor of the
That was fast. In the space of a few weeks, President Donald J. Trump has gone from being the idol of the Republican isolationists to the hero of the hawks. Only a few days ago, the Wall Street Journal editorial page was complaining that ‘Maga isolationists want the President to pressure Israel to stop the war before Iran’s nuclear
Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokesperson, was flummoxed. ‘I just heard this from you,’ she responded after a reporter told her at a briefing session that President Trump has appointed Marco Rubio to replace Mike Waltz as his acting National Security Advisor. But this isn’t his final Waltz. Waltz is now headed to the United
On Monday, the liberal outlet National Public Radio reported that Donald Trump’s administration was looking for a replacement for Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. This report may in fact have helped shield Hegseth from being sacked for having arranged a second Signal chat group about impending war plans for Yemen that apparently included his wife, Jennifer,
Liberation Day? Pshaw. President Trump may be gloating about imposing sweeping tariffs on America’s allies and adversaries abroad, but he is beginning to face blowback at home for his strange farrago of policies that are upending the federal government and threatening to plunge America into a self-induced recession. First Senator Cory Booker raised the flagging
