America

Donald Trump’s recent floated proposal to deploy the National Guard to crime-overrun blue cities like Chicago and Baltimore has been met with howls of outrage from the usual suspects. For many liberal talking heads and Democratic officials, this is simply the latest evidence of Trump’s “authoritarianism.” But such specious analysis distracts from what all parties ought to properly focus on: the well-being of the people who actually live in such crime-addled jurisdictions.

What’s remarkable is not just the specific policy suggestion itself — after all, federal force has been called in, or sent in, to assist state-level law enforcement plenty of times — but rather how Trump is once again baiting his political opponents into defending the indefensible. He has a singular talent for making the left clutch onto wildly unpopular positions and take the wrong side of clear 80-20 issues. It’s political jiu-jitsu at its finest.

Crime in cities like Chicago and Baltimore isn’t a right-wing fever dream. It’s a persistent, documented crisis that continues to destroy communities and ruin lives. Chicago saw nearly 600 homicides in 2024 alone. In Baltimore, despite a recent downtick, violent crime remains exponentially higher than national averages. Sustained, decades-long Democratic leadership in both cities has failed, time and again, to secure even a minimum baseline level of safety for residents — many of whom are Black and working-class, two communities Democrats purport to champion.

Trump sees that leadership and quality-of-life vacuum. And he’s filling it with a popular message of law and order.

Trump’s proposal to deploy the National Guard isn’t the flight of fancy of a would-be strongman. It’s federalism functioning as the founders intended: The federal government must step in, per Article IV of the Constitution, when local governance breaks down so catastrophically that the feds are needed to “guarantee … a republican form of government.” Even more specifically, the Insurrection Act of 1807 has long been available as a congressionally authorized tool for presidents to restore order when state unrest reaches truly intolerable levels. Presidents from Jefferson to Eisenhower to Bush 41 have invoked it.

Trump’s critics would rather not have a conversation about bloody cities like Chicago — or the long history of presidents deploying the National Guard when local circumstances require it. They’d rather scream “fascism” than explain why a grandmother on the South Side of Chicago should have to dodge gang bullets on her way to church. They’d rather chant slogans about “abolishing the police” than face the hard fact that the communities most devastated by crime consistently clamor for more law enforcement — not less.

This is where Trump’s political instincts shine. He doesn’t try to “win” the crime debate by splitting the difference with progressives. He doesn’t offer a milquetoast promise to fund “violence interrupters” or expand toothless social programs. He goes right at the issue, knowing full well that the American people are with him.

Because they are. The public has consistently ranked crime and safety among their top concerns; last November, it was usually a top-five issue in general election exit polling. And polling consistently shows that overwhelming majorities — often in the 70-80% range — support more police funding and oppose the left’s radical decarceration agenda. Democrats, ever in thrall to their activist far-left flank, are stuck defending policies with rhetoric that most voters correctly identify as both dangerous and absurd.

Trump knows that when he floats these proposals, Democrats and their corporate media allies won’t respond with nuance. They’ll respond with knee-jerk outrage — just as they did in 2020, when Trump sent federal agents to Portland to stop violent anarchists from torching courthouses. The media framed it as martial law; sane Oregonians saw it as basic governance.

This dynamic plays out again and again. When Trump highlights the border crisis and the need to deport unsavory figures like Mahmoud Khalil and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Democrats defend open borders. When Trump attacks gender ideology indoctrination in schools, Democrats double down on letting teachers hide children’s gender transitions from parents. When Trump condemns pro-Hamas rioters in American cities, Democrats can’t bring themselves to say a word of support for Israel’s war against a State Department-recognized foreign terrorist organization. When Trump signs an executive order seeking to prosecute flag burning, Democrats defend flag burning.

On and on it goes. By now, it’s a well-established pattern. And it’s politically devastating for the left. Moreover, the relevant history is on Trump’s side. This sort of federal corrective goes back all the way to the republic’s origins; those now freaking out might want to read up on George Washington’s efforts to quash the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.

Call it the art of the 80-20 issue. Along with his sheer sense of humor, Trump’s instinctual knack for picking such winning battles is one of his greatest political assets. And this time, the winner won’t just be Trump himself — it will be Chicagoans and Baltimoreans as well.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

QUITO, Ecuador — The United States is designating two Ecuadorean gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, marking the Trump administration’s latest step to target criminal cartels in Latin America.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the announcement Thursday while in Ecuador as part of a trip to Latin America overshadowed by an American military strike against a similarly designated gang, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua. That attack has raised concerns in the region about what may follow as President Trump’s government pledges to step up military activity to combat drug trafficking and illegal migration.

“This time, we’re not just going to hunt for drug dealers in the little fast boats and say, ‘Let’s try to arrest them,’” Rubio told reporters in Quito, Ecuador’s capital. “No, the president has said he wants to wage war on these groups because they’ve been waging war on us for 30 years and no one has responded.”

Two more gangs designed as terrorist groups

Los Lobos and Los Choneros are Ecuadorean gangs blamed for much of the violence that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. The terrorist designation, Rubio said, brings “all sorts of options” for Washington to work in conjunction with the government of Ecuador to crack down on these groups.

That includes the ability to conduct targeted killings as well as take action against the properties and banking accounts in the U.S. of the group’s members and those with ties to the criminal organizations, Rubio said. He said the label also would help with intelligence sharing.

Los Choneros, Los Lobos and other similar groups are involved in contract killings, extortion operations and the movement and sale of drugs. Authorities have blamed them for the increased violence in the country as they fight over drug-trafficking routes to the Pacific and control of territory, including within prisons, where hundreds of inmates have been killed since 2021.

U.S. strike in the Caribbean takes center stage

The strike in the southern Caribbean has commanded attention on Rubio’s trip, which included a stop in Mexico on Wednesday.

U.S. officials say that the vessel’s cargo was intended for the U.S. and that the strike killed 11 people, but they have yet to explain how the military determined that those aboard were Tren de Aragua members.

Rubio said U.S. actions targeting cartels were being directed more toward Venezuela, and not Mexico.

“There’s no need to do that in many cases with friendly governments, because the friendly governments are going to help us,” Rubio told reporters. “They may do it themselves, and we’ll help them do it.”

A day earlier, Rubio justified the strike by saying that the boat posed an “immediate threat” to the U.S. and that Trump opted to “blow it up” rather than follow what had been standard procedure: to stop and board, arrest the crew and seize any contraband.

The strike drew a mixed reaction from leaders around Latin America, where the U.S. history of military intervention and gunboat diplomacy is still fresh. Many, such as officials in Mexico, were careful to not outright condemn the attack. They stressed the importance of protecting national sovereignty and warned that expanded U.S. military involvement might backfire.

Ecuador has struggled with drug trafficking

Ecuador has its own issues with narcotics trafficking.

President Daniel Noboa thanked Rubio for the U.S. efforts to “actually eliminate any terrorist threat.” Before their meeting, Rubio said on social media that the U.S. and Ecuador are “aligned as key partners on ending illegal immigration and combatting transnational crime and terrorism.”

The latest United Nations World Drug Report says various countries in South America, including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, reported larger cocaine seizures in 2022 than in 2021. The report does not give Venezuela the outsize role that the White House has in recent months.

“I don’t care what the U.N. says. I don’t care,” Rubio said.

Violence has skyrocketed in Ecuador since the pandemic. Drug traffickers expanded operations and took advantage of the nation’s banana industry. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of the fruit, and traffickers find shipping containers filled with it to be the perfect vehicle to smuggle their contraband.

Cartels from Mexico, Colombia and the Balkans have settled in Ecuador because it uses the U.S. dollar and has weak laws and institutions, along with a network of long-established gangs, including Los Choneros and Los Lobos, that are eager for work.

Ecuador gained prominence in the global cocaine trade after political changes in Colombia last decade. Coca bush fields in Colombia have been moving closer to Ecuador’s border due to the breakup of criminal groups after the 2016 demobilization of the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Ecuador in July extradited to the U.S. the leader of Los Choneros, José Adolfo Macías Villamar. He escaped from an Ecuadorean prison last year and was recaptured in June, two months after being indicted in New York on charges he imported thousands of pounds of cocaine into the U.S.

Lee, Cano and Martin write for the Associated Press. Lee and Cano reported from Mexico City. AP writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contributed to this report.

MEXICO CITY — A day after President Trump dramatically stepped up his administration’s military role in the Caribbean with what he called a deadly strike on a Venezuelan drug cartel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is meeting the president of Mexico, who has voiced fears of the U.S. encroaching on Mexican sovereignty.

Rubio will sit down with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday to stress the importance the U.S. places on cooperating with Washington on Western Hemisphere security, trade and migration. Rubio will visit Ecuador on Thursday on his third trip to Latin America since taking office.

Trump has alienated many in the region with persistent demands and threats of sweeping tariffs and massive sanctions for refusing to follow his lead, particularly on migration and the fight against drug cartels. Likely to heighten their concerns is the expanded military footprint. The U.S. has deployed warships to the Caribbean and elsewhere off Latin America, culminating in what the administration said Tuesday was a lethal strike on an alleged Tren de Aragua gang vessel that U.S. officials say was carrying narcotics.

“Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!” Trump said of the strike, which he said had killed 11 gang members.

Rubio, defending the strike, made clear that such operations would continue if needed. Though it was a military strike, America’s top diplomat tweeted about it around when Trump announced it at the White House and then spoke to reporters about the operation.

“The president has been very clear that he’s going to use the full power of America and the full might of the United States to take on and eradicate these drug cartels, no matter where they’re operating from and no matter how long they’ve been able to act with impunity,” Rubio said Tuesday. “Those days are over.”

Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants, has spoken out against Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and other Latin American leftist governments, notably in Cuba and Nicaragua, for years and supported opposition leaders and movements there. Just before leaving for Mexico, he attended an award ceremony in Florida for a Cuban dissident who he said was an inspiration for freedom-loving people everywhere.

In Mexico, Trump has demanded, and so far won, some concessions from Sheinbaum’s government, which is eager to defuse his tariff threats, although she has fiercely defended Mexico’s sovereignty.

“There will be moments of greater tension, of less tension, of issues that we do not agree on, but we have to try to have a good relationship,” she said shortly before Rubio arrived in Mexico City on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, in a State of the Nation address marking her first year in office, she said: “Under no circumstance will we accept interventions, interference or any other act from abroad that is detrimental to the integrity, independence and sovereignty of the country.”

Sheinbaum has gone after Mexican drug cartels and their fentanyl production more aggressively than her predecessor. The government has sent the National Guard to the northern border and delivered 55 cartel figures long wanted by U.S. authorities to the Trump administration.

Sheinbaum had spoken for some time about how Mexico was finalizing a comprehensive security agreement with the State Department that, among other things, was supposed to include plans for a “joint investigation group” to combat the flow of fentanyl and the drug’s precursors into the U.S. and weapons from north to south.

Last week, however, a senior State Department official downplayed suggestions that a formal agreement — at least one that includes protections for Mexican sovereignty — was in the works.

Sheinbaum lowered her expectations Tuesday, saying it would not be a formal agreement but rather a kind of memorandum of understanding to share information and intelligence on drug trafficking or money laundering obtained “by them in their territory, by us in our territory unless commonly agreed upon.”

On the trip, Rubio would focus on stemming illegal migration, combating organized crime and drug cartels, and countering what the U.S. believes is malign Chinese behavior in its backyard, the State Department said.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

The most-followed professional sports league on Earth is increasingly an American one, but it’s not the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball. Despite their impressive strides in growing global audiences and reach, homegrown U.S. sports aren’t the world’s biggest draw. Instead, American teams are buying into the world’s most popular sport — the other football — via the global all-star English Premier League.

The Premier League kicked off its 2025-2026 season Aug. 15 with 11 of its 20 clubs under U.S. ownership (only four teams in the league are British-owned. It promises to be a crackling season.

Will thrice runners-up Arsenal (which shares owners with the Los Angeles Rams) be able to dethrone Liverpool (owned by the Red Sox’s Fenway Sports Group)? Will heavy spenders Chelsea (which shares owners with the Dodgers and the Lakers) once again vie for the league title, fresh off its improbable FIFA Club World Cup win this summer? And will San Francisco 49ers-owned Leeds United gain a permanent foothold in the league after being promoted from the lower division last season?

Perhaps the most compelling Premier League storyline is the fast-accelerating American takeover of soccer/football and what it tells us about the globalization of American culture. Suddenly, Americans are far more connected to the rest of the world than previous generations were, thanks to sport, our age’s leading pastime and most important form of media.

When I first moved to the United States as a teenager in the 1980s, Americans didn’t play much with others. We had our sports and proclaimed the winners in our domestic leagues “world champions.” Sport was the exception to the rule that all things American were the world’s cultural lingua franca. Indeed, as a result of the great 19th century footballing schism, the U.S. is the only major country where the stars of our most popular sports leagues never get to represent their country in international competition.

Tom Brady never got to wear a Team USA jersey because, well, only other Americans play his kind of football. Moreover, although a Hollywood blockbuster might make three-quarters of its box office outside the U.S., and Taylor Swift scheduled two-thirds of her Eras Tour in nations other than America, our biggest sporting production — the Super Bowl — is still watched by far more people inside the U.S. than outside it.

Yet things have changed dramatically over the past generation. It used to be common to hear sports pundits and American politicians (especially conservative ones) vilify soccer with the same xenophobic fervor reserved for such dastardly foreign schemes as the metric system and socialism. But now our “America First” President Trump is fast friends with FIFA’s leader Gianni Infantino, and Trump’s enthusiasm for the recent Club World Cup was such that he famously overstayed his welcome on stage during Chelsea’s post-match celebrations last month at MetLife Stadium.

We can thank the girls and women of America, and Title IX, for putting an end to America’s sporting isolationism, along with immigrants, who were often the first to introduce the sport across American communities, and the marketing departments and aspirations of multinational corporations.

Coca-Cola was FIFA’s first global sponsor not because it was already a powerful American company, but because FIFA could help push the brand to every corner of the world. Electronic Arts could have simply created its Madden video game for NFL aficionados, but it was its FIFA game that made it a global player (and in turn helped popularize the sport among millions of American kids).

In 2026, the men’s World Cup, which the United States will co-host with Mexico and Canada, will further ratify the end of America’s sporting isolationism. Ours is now a nation where soccer practice is a staple of most kids’ lives, the game’s best player ever joined our top domestic league (which didn’t exist until 1996), and we can watch every other league on the planet. Thanks to NBC’s masterful coverage, England’s Premier League is as avidly followed in this country as many of our domestic leagues.

It wasn’t that long ago that I could wear my Arsenal sweatshirt out and about without eliciting much of a response, but no more. A couple of seasons ago in Phoenix, I had taped a midday match to watch after work and was scrupulously avoiding any source of spoilers. Then I ran into my gym for a quick workout wearing my Arsenal cap.

“Tough loss,” the guy at the front desk said.

I guess so, but an oddly satisfying spoiler too, for what it represented.

Andrés Martinez is the co-director of the Great Game Lab at Arizona State University, a fellow at New America and author of the forthcoming book, “The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport.”

WASHINGTON — The agency that oversees Voice of America and other government-funded international broadcasters is eliminating more than 500 employees, the Trump administration has announced, a move that could ratchet up a months-long legal challenge over the news outlets’ fate.

Kari Lake, acting chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, VOA’s oversight agency, announced the latest round of job cuts late Friday, one day after a federal judge blocked her from removing Michael Abramowitz as VOA director.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth had ruled separately that the Trump administration had failed to show how it was complying with his orders to restore VOA’s operations. His order Monday gave the administration “one final opportunity, short of a contempt trial,” to demonstrate its compliance. He ordered Lake to sit for a deposition by lawyers for agency employees by Sept. 15.

On Thursday, Lamberth said Abramowitz could not be removed without the approval of the majority of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board. Firing Abramowitz would be “plainly contrary to law,” according to Lamberth, who was nominated to the bench by President Reagan.

Lake posted a statement on social media that said her agency had initiated a reduction in force, or RIF, eliminating 532 jobs for full-time government employees. She said the agency “will continue to fulfill its statutory mission after this RIF — and will likely improve its ability to function.”

“I look forward to taking additional steps in the coming months to improve the functioning of a very broken agency and make sure America’s voice is heard abroad where it matters most,” she wrote.

A group of agency employees who sued to block VOA’s elimination said Lake’s move would give their colleagues 30 days until their pay and benefits end.

“We find Lake’s continued attacks on our agency abhorrent,” they said in a statement. “We are looking forward to her deposition to hear whether her plan to dismantle VOA was done with the rigorous review process that Congress requires. So far we have not seen any evidence of that.”

In June, layoff notices were sent to more than 600 agency employees. Abramowitz was placed on administrative leave along with almost the entire VOA staff. He was told he would be fired effective Aug. 31.

The administration said in a court filing Thursday that it planned to send RIF notices to 486 employees of Voice of America and 46 other agency employees but intended to retain 158 agency employees and 108 VOA employees. The filing said the global media agency had 137 “active employees” and 62 other employees on administrative leave, while VOA had 86 active employees and 512 others on administrative leave.

Lake’s agency also oversees Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. The networks, which together reach an estimated 427 million people, date to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations designed to extend U.S. influence and combat authoritarianism.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

The Trump administration has moved to lay off more than 500 employees who work for the federally funded network Voice of America, which provides global reporting in places with restricted press freedom.

In March, Trump officials first attempted to close down some of the organization’s newsrooms. But Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia called for the network’s restoration last April, citing a law that requires the Voice of America broadcast to be continued.

Despite the ruling, Kari Lake, the acting chief executive of Voice of America’s oversight agency, posted on social media on Friday evening that 532 government positions were eliminated.

Before the downsizing, Voice of America was responsible for broadcasting news in 49 languages to 360 million people every week, including in Russia and China. Now, the network only airs programming in four languages: Persian, Mandarin, Dari and Pashto.

The layoffs “will likely improve [the agency’s] ability to function and provide the truth to people across the world who live under murderous Communist governments and other tyrannical regimes,” wrote Lake on X.

Most of the 1,300 Voice of America journalists had already been fired or remained on paid leave prior to these layoffs. Only 100 journalists and other staff members remain employed by the organization.

After being asked by the remaining employees to ensure the administration was in line with his April ruling, Lamberth found that they appeared to be noncompliant.

Earlier this week, he ordered Lake to provide sworn testimony at a deposition and threatened to hold her in contempt for going against court orders. He also blocked the administration from firing Voice of America’s Director Michael Abramowitz, the day before these layoffs were announced.

President Trump declared Tuesday that federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., should seek the death penalty for murders committed in the capital, claiming without explanation that “we have no choice.”

“That’s a very strong preventative,” he said of his decision. “I don’t know if we’re ready for it in this country, but we have it.”

Trump’s pronouncement is about much more than deterring killings, though. With speed and brazenness, Trump seems intent on creating a new, federal arrest and detention system outside of existing norms, aimed at everyday citizens and controlled by his whims. The death penalty is part of it, but stomping on civil rights is at the heart of it — ruthlessly exploiting anxiety about crime to aim repression at whatever displeases him, from immigration protesters to murderers.

This administration “is using the words of crime and criminals to get themselves a permission structure to erode civil rights and due processes across our criminal, legal and immigration systems in ways that I think should have everyone alarmed,” Rena Karefa-Johnson told me. She’s a former public defender who now works with Fwd.us, a bipartisan criminal justice advocacy group.

Authoritarians love the death penalty, and have long used it to repress not crime, but dissent. It is, after all, both the ultimate power and the ultimate fear, that the ruler of the state holds the lives of his people in his hands.

Though we are far from such atrocities, Spain’s purge of “communists” and other dissenters under Francisco Franco, Rodrigo Duterte’s extrajudicial killings of alleged drug dealers in the Philippines (though the death penalty remains illegal there) and the routine executions, even of journalists, under the repressive rulers in Saudi Arabia are chilling examples.

What each of those regimes shares in common with this moment in America is the rhetoric of making a better society — often by purging perceived threats to order — even if that requires force, or the loss of rights.

Suddenly, violent criminals become no different than petty criminals, and petty criminals become no different than immigrants or protesters. They are all a threat to a nostalgic lost glory of the homeland that must be restored at any cost, animals that only understand force.

“We have no choice.”

The result is that the people become, if not accustomed to masked agents and the military on our streets, too scared to protest it, fearful they will become the criminal target, the hunted animal.

Already, the National Guard in D.C. is carrying live weapons. With great respect to the women and men who serve in the Guard, and who no doubt individually serve with honor, they are not trained for domestic law enforcement. Forget the legalities, the Constitution and the Posse Comitatus Act, which should prevent troops from policing American citizens, and does prevent them from making arrests.

Who do we want these soldiers to shoot? Who have they been told to shoot? A kid with a can of spray paint? A pickpocket? A drug dealer? A flag burner? A sandwich thrower?

We don’t even know what their orders are. What choices they will have to make.

But we do know that police do not walk around openly holding their guns, and certainly do not stroll with rifles. For civilian law enforcement, their guns are defensive weapons, and they are trained to use them as such.

Few walking by these troops, even the most law abiding, can fail to feel the power of those weapons at the ready. It is a visceral knowledge that to provoke them could mean death. That is a powerful form of repression, meant to stop dissent through fear of repercussion.

It is a power that Trump is building on multiple fronts. After declaring his “crime emergency” in D.C., Trump mandated a serious change in the mission of the National Guard.

President Trump with members of law enforcement and National Guard troops in Washington on Aug. 21, 2025.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

He ordered every state to train soldiers on “quelling civil disturbances,” and to have soldiers ready to rapidly mobilize in case of protests. That same executive order also creates a National Guard force ready to deploy nationwide at the president’s command — presumably taking away states’ rights to decide when to utilize their troops, as happened in California.

Trump has already announced his intention to send them to Chicago, called Baltimore a “hellhole” that also may be in need and falsely claimed that, “in California, you would’ve not had the Olympics had I not sent in the troops” because “there wouldn’t be anything left” without their intervention.

Retired Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, a former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, told ABC that “the administration is trying to desensitize the American people to get used to American armed soldiers in combat vehicles patrolling the streets of America. “

Manner called the move “extremely disturbing.”

Add to that Trump’s desire to imprison opponents. In recent days, the FBI raided the home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton, a Republican who has criticized Trump, especially on his policy toward Ukraine. Then Trump attempted to fire Lisa D. Cook, a Biden appointee to the Federal Reserve board, after accusing her of mortgage fraud in another apparent attempt to bend that independent agency to his will on the economy.

On Wednesday, Trump wrote on social media that progressive billionaire George Soros and his son Alex should be charged under federal racketeering laws for “their support of Violent Protests.”

“We’re not going to allow these lunatics to rip apart America any more, never giving it so much as a chance to “BREATHE,” and be FREE,” Trump wrote. “Soros, and his group of psychopaths, have caused great damage to our Country! That includes his Crazy, West Coast friends. Be careful, we’re watching you!”

Consider yourselves threatened, West Coast friends.

But of course, we are already living under that thunder. Dozens of average citizens are facing serious charges in places including Los Angeles for their participation in immigration protests.

Whether they are found guilty or not, their lives are upended by the anxiety and expense of facing such prosecutions. And thousands are being rounded up and deported, at times seemingly grabbed solely for the color of their skin, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguably the most Trump-loyal law enforcement agency, sees its budget balloon to $45 billion, enough to keep 100,000 people detained at a time.

Despite Trump’s maelstrom of dread-inducing moves, resistance is alive, well and far from futile.

A new Quinnipiac University national poll found that 56% of voters disapprove of the National Guard being deployed in D.C.

This week, the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. for a second time failed to convince a grand jury to indict a man who threw a submarine sandwich at federal officers — proof that average citizens not only are sane, but willing to stand up for what is right.

That comes after a grand jury three times rejected the same kind of charge against a woman who was arrested after being shoved against a wall by an immigration agent.

Californians will decide this in November whether to redraw their electoral maps to put more Democrats in Congress. Latino leaders in Chicago are protesting possible troops there. People are refusing to allow fear to define their actions.

Turns out, we do have a choice.

The US has taken a stake in Intel chipmaker as part of a push to secure domestic production and reduce reliance on China. The acquisition is the most significant intervention in private business since the 2008 financial crisis. Supporters call it a smart industrial policy that will protect jobs and national security. But critics warn that this could mark a shift in the relationship between government and private companies, raising concerns about how much control a president should have over business.

Also, Bangladesh warns it can no longer bear the cost of sheltering Rohingya refugees.

Plus, meat prices are at an all-time high.

MAGA loves a red cap and boasty T-shirt slogan, but not when it’s coming from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and it looks a lot like the gear they purchased from the Trump Store. So guess what the governor did over the weekend?

After weeks of mocking tweets from Newsom that mimic Trump’s usage of ALL CAPS, multiple exclamation points and memes picturing the 79-year-old as a ripped young man, the governor took the next logical step in his get-under-their-skin campaign and launched his own store for merch, the Patriot Shop.

“THE PATRIOT SHOP IS NOW OPEN!!!” he crowed. “MANY PEOPLE ARE SAYING THIS IS THE GREATEST MERCHANDISE EVER MADE. PLEASE ENJOY, AMERICA!”

But how will Newsom’s parody products compete with the president’s monetization of office, a grift that’s made millions selling Trump-themed sneakers, Christmas gift wrap, perfume, cryptocurrency and even guitars?

It starts with a red trucker cap, naturally. The governor’s reads “NEWSOM WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.” The product’s description includes the explainer: “Humility is overrated.”

Curiously, it was just last week when the president wore a red hat that said, “Trump was right about everything!” and told reporters, “I know Gavin very well. He’s an incompetent guy with a good line of bulls—.”

Also available on Newsom’s clapback merch site is a tank top echoing Trump’s own words about a woman who will never, ever support him: Taylor Swift. “TRUMP IS NOT HOT,” it reads in bold red letters. The product description that follows: “A simple statement of fact.”

Three hours after the launch of the shop, Newsom boasted in an X post: “WOW! $50,000 IN PURCHASES ALREADY!! THANK YOU PATRIOTS!!!” By Monday, sales had doubled, according to a follow-up post.

Fox News coverage of the governor’s latest move in his troll-Trump campaign was low wattage compared with last week, when the conservative news outlet devoted days to Newsom’s “embarrassing” social media antics. How dare he refer to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by Trump’s mean nickname, “Meatball Ron.” That’s the president’s job!

Sunday it appeared Fox was determined not to show any big feelings over Newsom’s new MAGA-inspired line of merch. Will Cain delivered the news with a halting discipline and just a jab or two, calling the governor a “shadow” of their beloved leader. Newsom’s X account still ran with it, thanking Fox News for its coverage of his new cyber store. “Thank you for the promotion of our ‘FANTASTIC’ Patriot Shop, @WillCainShow !!!!!”

The Patriot Shop also lists a “Holy Bible” signed by “America’s Favorite Governor!” for $100, but it’s marked “SOLD OUT!” It harks back to when Trump marketed his own “God Bless the USA” Bible, which included the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I guess we’ll never know what Newsom might have included in his.

The site also features “The Chosen One” T-shirt, featuring an image of Newsom being prayed over by notable Trump supporters Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock and the late Hulk Hogan. Trump in 2019 declared himself “the chosen one.”

Newsom has been both heralded and chided for turning the president’s bully tactics back on the MAGA elite, but if social media response is any indication, it appears to be one of the few moves from an establishment Democrat that’s energizing the base and gaining attention on a national level. His taste-of-their-own-medicine campaign gained his X press account more than 250,000 new followers in August alone. And Newsom’s change in tactics has been at the top of news feeds for a week.

It appears Trump has clearly been triggered by Newsom. At a recent White House Cabinet meeting, the president said, “You have an incompetent governor in California. Gavin. I know him very well. … He’s a nice guy, looks good. [Imitating Newsom] ‘Hi everybody. How you doing?’ He’s got some strange hand action going on.”

Newsom responded on X, “You really want to have the conversation about hands?”

In an evening social media post about a supremely partisan battle that could reshape American political power for generations, President Trump sounded ebullient.

“Big WIN for the Great State of Texas!!! Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself,” Trump wrote, of the nation’s most populous red state pushing a mid-decade redistricting plan designed to win more Republican seats in Congress and protect Trump’s power through the 2026 midterms.

“Texas never lets us down. Florida, Indiana, and others are looking to do the same thing,” Trump wrote — nodding to a potential proliferation of such efforts across the country.

The next day, Gov. Gavin Newsom — projecting a fresh swagger as Trump’s chief antagonist on the issue — stood with fellow lawmakers from the nation’s most populous blue state to announce their own legislative success in putting to voters a redrawn congressional map for California that strongly favors Democrats.

“We got here because the president of the United States is one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history,” Newsom said, couching the California effort as defensive rather than offensive. “We got here because he recognizes that he will lose the election, [and that] Congress will go back into the hands of the Democratic Party next November.”

In the last week, with lightning speed, the nation’s foremost political leaders have jettisoned any pretense of political fairness — any notion of voters being equal or elected representatives reflecting their constituencies — in favor of an all-out partisan war for power that has some politicians and many political observers concerned for the future of American democracy.

“America is headed towards true authoritarian rule if people do not stand up,” Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat from the Houston area, said Friday on a call with reporters.

The race to redistrict began with Trump, whose approval ratings have plummeted, pressuring Texas to manipulate maps to secure more House seats for Republicans so he wouldn’t face a hostile House majority in the second half of his second term. It escalated when Newsom and other California leaders said they wouldn’t stand idly by and started working to put a new map of their own on the November ballot — formally asking voters to jettison the state’s independent redistricting commission to counter Trump’s gambit in Texas.

Those two states alone are home to some 70 million Americans, but the fight is hardly limited there. As Trump suggested, other states are also eyeing whether to redraw lines — raising the prospect of a country divided between blue and red power centers more than ever before, and the voice of millions of minority-party voters being all but erased in the halls of Congress.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom answers questions on Thursday after signing legislation calling for a special election on a redrawn congressional map.

(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)

Of course, gerrymandering is not new, and already exists in many states across the country. But the bold, unapologetic and bipartisan bent of the latest redistricting race is something new and different, experts said. It is a clear product of Trump’s new America, where political warfare is increasingly untethered to — and unbound by — long-standing political norms, and where leaders of both political parties seem increasingly willing to toss aside pretense and politeness in order to pursue power.

Trump on the campaign trail promised a new “Golden Age,” and he has long said his goal is to return America to some purportedly greater, more aspirational and proud past. But he has also signaled, repeatedly and with hardly any ambiguity, an intention to manipulate the political system to further empower himself and his fellow Republicans — whether through redistricting, ending mail-in ballots, or other measures aimed at curtailing voter turnout.

“In four years, you don’t have to vote again,” Trump told a crowd of evangelical Christians a little over a year ago, in the thick of his presidential campaign. “We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”

‘No democracy left’

The redistricting war has dominated political news for weeks now, given its potential implications for reshaping Congress and further emboldening Trump in his second term.

Sam Wang, president of the Electoral Innovation Lab at Princeton University, has studied gerrymandering for years, but said during the media call with Wu that he has never received more inquiries than in the last few weeks, when his inbox has filled with questions from media around the world.

Wang said gerrymandering reached a high point more than a decade ago, but had been subsiding due to court battles and state legislatures establishing independent commissions to draw district lines.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott defends his state’s redistricting move while calling California’s “a joke.”

(Eric Gay / Associated Press)

Now, however, the efforts of Texas and California are threatening that progress and pushing things “to a new low point,” he said — leaving some voters feeling disenfranchised and Wang worried about further erosion of voter protections under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which he said the conservative Supreme Court may be preparing to weaken.

Wu said allowing politicians to redraw congressional lines whenever they want in order to “make sure that they never lose” sets a dangerous precedent that will especially disenfranchise minority voters — because “politicians and leaders would no longer listen to the people.”

“There would be no democracy left,” he said.

That said, Wu drew a sharp distinction between Texas Republicans unilaterally redrawing maps to their and Trump’s advantage — in part by “hacking” apart minority populations — and California asking voters to counteract that power grab with a new map of their own.

“California is defending the nation,” he said. “Texas is doing something illegal.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday took the opposition position, saying Texas’ new map was constitutional while California’s was “a joke” and likely to be overturned. He also hinted at further efforts in other Republican-led states to add more House seats for the party.

“Republicans are not finished in the United States,” Abbott said.

Two legal experts on the call expressed grave concerns with such partisanship — especially in Texas.

Sara Rohani, assistant counsel with the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF, said her organization has been fighting for decades to ensure that the promises of the Voting Rights Act for Black and other minority groups aren’t infringed upon by unscrupulous and racist political leaders in search of power.

“Fair representation isn’t optional in this country. It’s the right of all Americans to [have] equal voting power,” she said.

That said, “voters of color have been excluded” from that promise consistently, both before and after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and “in 2025, it’s clear that our fight for fair maps continues,” Rohani said.

Major victories have been won in the courts in recent years in states such as Alabama and Louisiana, and those battles are only going to continue, she said. Asked specifically if her group is preparing to sue over Texas’ maps, Rohani demurred — but didn’t back down, saying LDF will get involved “in any jurisdiction where Black voters are being targeted.”

Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said there are definitely going to be challenges to Texas’ maps.

By their own admission, Saenz said, Texas lawmakers redrew their maps in 2021 in order to maximize Republican advantage in congressional races — with the only limits being those imposed by the Voting Rights Act. That means in order to gain even more seats now, “they have to violate the Voting Rights Act,” he said.

Texas Republicans have argued that they are acting in part in response to a warning from the Justice Department that their current maps, from 2021, are unlawful. But Saenz noted that the Justice Department dropped a lawsuit challenging those maps when Trump took office — meaning any threats to sue again are an empty ploy and “clearly orchestrated with one objective: Donald Trump’s objective.”

Is there a legal case?

The fate of any legal challenges to the redistricting efforts is unclear, in part because gerrymandering has become much harder to challenge in court.

In 2019, the Supreme Court threw out claims that highly partisan state election maps are unconstitutional. Chief Justice John G. Roberts said such district-by-district line drawing “presents political questions” and there are no reliable “legal standards” for deciding what is fair and just.

It was not a new view for Roberts.

In 2006, shortly after he joined the court, the justices rejected a challenge to a mid-decade redistricting engineered by Texas Republicans, but ordered the state — over Roberts’ dissent — to redraw one of its majority-Latino districts to transfer some of its voters to another Latino-leaning district.

Roberts expressed his frustration at the time, writing that it “is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”

Some legal experts say the new Texas redistricting could face a legal challenge if Black or Latino lawmakers are in danger of losing their seats. But the Supreme Court conservatives are skeptical of such claims — and have given signs they may shrink the scope of the Voting Rights Act.

In March, the justices considered a Louisiana case to decide if the state must create a second congressional district that would elect a Black candidate to comply with the Voting Rights Act, and if so, how it should be drawn.

But the court failed to issue a decision. Instead, on Aug. 1, the court said it would hear further arguments this fall on “whether the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority Congressional district” violates the Constitution.

Justice Clarence Thomas has long argued it is unconstitutional to draw election districts based on racial lines, regardless of the Voting Rights Act, and he may now have a majority that agrees with him.

If so, such a ruling could squelch discrimination claims from Black and Latino lawmakers in Texas or elsewhere — further clearing the path for partisan gerrymandering.

Looking ahead

Given the intensity of the battle and the uncertainty of the related legal challenges, few of America’s top political leaders are thinking to the future. They’re fighting in the present — focused on swaying public perception.

In a YouTube Live video with thousands of supporters on Thursday, Newsom said Trump “doesn’t believe in the rule of law — he believes in the rule of Don; period, full stop,” and that he hoped it was “dawning on more and more Americans what’s at stake.”

Newsom said that when Trump “made the phone call to rig the elections to Greg Abbott in Texas,” he expected Democrats to just roll over and take it. In response, he said, Democrats have to stop thinking about “whether or not we should play hardball,” and start focusing on “how we play hardball.”

On Friday, Newsom said he was “very proud of the Legislature for moving quickly” to counter Texas, and that he is confident voters will support the ballot measure to change the state’s maps despite polls showing a sluggish start to the campaign.

A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, conducted for The Times, found 48% of voters said they would cast ballots in favor of temporary gerrymandering efforts, though 20% were undecided.

Asked if he is encouraging Democratic leaders in other states to revisit their own maps, Newsom said he appreciated both Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signaling that they may be willing to do just that.

“I do believe that the actions of [the California] Legislature will inspire other legislative leaders to … meet this moment, to save this democracy and to stop this authoritarian and his continued actions to literally vandalize and gut our Constitution and our democratic principles,” Newsom said.

In Nicholas Boggs’ lively and vigorously researched biography of James Baldwin, the great writer’s search for the source of his art dovetails with his lifelong search for meaningful relationships. Black, gay, born without the benefit of money or guidance, repeatedly harassed and beaten in his New York City hometown, Baldwin physically removed himself from the turmoil of America, living abroad for long stretches to find proper distance and see his country plain. In “The Fire Next Time,” “Another Country” and “Giovanni’s Room,” among other works, Baldwin gleaned hard truths about the ways in which white people, white men in particular, deny their own sexual confusions to lash out at those who they feel may pose a grave threat their own machismo codes and their absolute dominion over Black Americans. In his novels and essays, Baldwin became a sharp beacon of hard truths.

Baldwin was reared in an oppressive atmosphere of religious doctrine and physical violence; his stepfather David, a laborer and preacher, adhered to an quasi-Calvinist approach to child-rearing that forbade art’s graven images in the home and encouraged austerity and renunciation. Books, according to Baldwin’s father, were “written by white devils.” As a child, Baldwin was beaten and verbally lashed by his father; his brief tenure as a religious orator in the church was, according to Boggs, a way to “usurp his father at his own game.” At the same time, Boggs notes, Baldwin used the church “to mask the deep confusion caused by his burgeoning sexual desires.”

As a child, Baldwin is marginalized for being too sensitive, too bookish, a “sissy.” At school, he finds mentors like Orilla “Bill” Miller and the Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen, who introduced him to Dickens and the 18th century Russian novelists. When his stepfather loses his job, it is down to Baldwin to support his mother and eight siblings. Taking a job at a local army base, he is confronted with virulent race-baiting from his white supervisor and co-workers.

Baldwin leaves Harlem behind shortly thereafter and falls into the artistic ferment of Greenwich Village in the ‘40s. He shares ideas about art, music and literature with a fellow budding aesthete named Eugene Worth until he jumps to his death from the George Washington Bridge in the winter of 1946. His death “cast a pall over Baldwin’s life,” Boggs writes, “but it would also play a major and enduring role in his development as a writer.” Baldwin, who had developed strong romantic feelings for Worth but never made them plain to his friend, makes a promise to himself, vowing to adjoin his private life as a gay Black man to the public life of an artist, so that “my infirmities might be forged into weapons.”

Beauford Delaney, a respected painter and Village fixture, becomes Baldwin’s lodestar and encourages him to confront his sexuality head-on in his art. What that art might entail, Baldwin doesn’t yet know, but it would have something to do with writing. Delaney would become a lifelong friend, even after he began suffering from mental deterioration, dying after years of hospitalization in 1979.

Baldwin’s life as a transatlantic nomad begins in 1948, when he arrives in Paris after winning a scholarship to study there. More importantly, he meets 17-year-old Lucien Happersberger, a Swiss painter, and a relationship blossoms. Happersberger shares deep artistic and sexual affinities with Baldwin, but Lucien is also attracted to women and becomes a kind of template for Baldwin’s future partners, most notably the Turkish actor Engin Cezzar, that he would pursue until his death in 1987.

Baldwin held these romantic relationships in tantalizing suspension, his love affairs caught between the poles of desire and intimacy, the heat of passion and long-term commitment. The love triangles these relationships engendered became a rich source for his fiction. Boggs asserts that many of the author’s most enduring works, including “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and his breakthrough novel about gay love “Giovanni’s Room,” sprang from these early, formative encounters. “The structure of a not fully requited love was a familiar and even eroticized one for Baldwin,” Boggs writes, “and would come to fuel his art.”

Away from the States, Baldwin was freed “from the trap of color,” but he was pulled ever deeper into the racial unrest in America, taking on journalism assignments to see for himself how systemic racial oppression worked in the Jim Crow South. In Atlanta, Baldwin meets Martin Luther King Jr., who invites him to Montgomery to witness the impact of the bus boycott. Entering a local restaurant, he is greeted with stony stares; a white woman points toward the colored entrance. In Mississippi, he interviews NAACP organizer Medgar Evers, who is busy investigating a lynching. Baldwin notes the climate of fear among Black citizens in the city, speaking to him like “ the German Jews must have talked when Hitler came to power.”

Nicholas Boggs tracked down a previously unwritten-about lover of James Baldwin for his new biography.

(Noah Loof)

These eyewitness accounts would feed into Baldwin’s impassioned essays on race such as “Down at the Cross” and his 1972 nonfiction book “No Name in the Street.” For Boggs, Baldwin’s nonfiction informed his fiction; there are “continuities and confluences between and across his work in both genres.” The throughline across all of the work was Baldwin’s ire at America’s failure to recognize that the “so-called Negro” was “trapped, disinherited and despised, in a nation that … is still unable to recognize him as a human being.”

Baldwin would spend the rest of his life toggling between journalism and fiction, addressing racism in the States in articles for Esquire, Harper’s and other publications while spending most of his time in Turkey and France, where a growing circle of friends and lovers nourished his muse and satisfied his need for constant social interaction when he wasn’t wrestling with his work, sometimes torturously so. Boggs’ book finds Baldwin in middle age poised between creative fecundity and despair, growing frustrated with America’s failure of nerve regarding race and homosexuality as well as his own thwarted partnerships. Despite a powerful bond with Engin Cezarr and, later, the French painter Yoran Cazac, who flitted in and out of Baldwin’s Istanbul life across the 1970s, the picture of Baldwin that emerges in Boggs’ biography is that of an artist who treasures emotional continuity but creatively feeds on inconstancy.

In fact, Cazac had never been cited in any previous Baldwin biography. Boggs discovered him when he came across an out-of-print children’s book called “Little Man, Little Man,” a collaboration between Cazac and Baldwin that prompted Boggs’ search. After following a number of flimsy leads, he finally finds Cazac in a rural French village, and they talk.

The novels that Baldwin penned during his last great burst of productivity, most notably “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “Just Above My Head,” have been maligned by many Baldwin fans as noble failures lacking the fire and dramatic power of his early work. Yet Boggs makes a strong case for these books as successful formal experiments in which Baldwin once again transmuted the storms of his personal life into eloquent indictments of systemic racism. The contours of Baldwin’s romantic engagement with Cazac, in particular, would find their way into “Beale Street,” the first time Baldwin used a female narrator to tell the story of a budding young romance doomed by a gross miscarriage of justice. Boldly experimental in both form and content, “Beale Street” and “Just Above My Head” were, in Boggs’ view, unjustly criticized, coming at a time when Baldwin’s reputation was on the decline. Only novelist Edmund White gleaned something special in his review of “Just Above My Head,” Baldwin’s final novel, finding in his depictions of familial love a Dickensian warmth which “glow with the steadiness and clarity of a flame within a glass globe.”

A literary biography needn’t be an artful accretion of facts, nor should it traffic in salacious gossip and cheapen the subject at hand. Boggs’ even-handed and critically rigorous biography of James Baldwin is guilty of none of these things, mostly because Boggs never strays from the path toward understanding why Baldwin wrote what he did and how his private and public lives were inextricably wound up in his work. Boggs has dug much deeper than his predecessors, including Baldwin’s biographer David Leeming, whose book has been the standard bearer since its 1994 publication. “Baldwin: A Love Story” is superlative, and it should become the new gold standard for Baldwin studies.

Weingarten is the author of “Thirsty: William Mulholland, California Water, and the Real Chinatown.”

For President Trump, it’s all about appearances.

He’s busy with so many makeovers: The Versailles-ification of the Oval Office, which seems to sprout more gold leaf and ornamentation every time Trump assembles the media there. The paving of the Rose Garden, now Mar-a-Lago Patio North, crowded with white tables and yellow umbrellas just as at his Florida retreat. The estimated billion-dollar conversion of a Qatari luxury jet built for a king, more in keeping with Trump’s tastes than the “less impressive” Air Force One. Even a new golf cart, the six-figure armored Golf Force One. And, assuming Trump gets his way, as he mostly does, he’ll break ground soon on a $200-million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a veritable Hall of Mirrors nearly doubling the footprint of the White House.

The president has $257 million from ever-compliant Republicans in Congress to transform the nearby Kennedy Center into the “Trump/Kennedy Center,” as Trump immodestly suggested on Tuesday. (Meanwhile, the purported populist president has canceled grants to local arts groups across America and seeks to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, which underwrites cultural events in every state.) Even the medallions for the annual Kennedy Center Honors winners are getting a makeover — from Tiffany & Co., natch. Trump, having made himself the Kennedy Center chair after a first term in which he skipped the honors shows by popular demand, was there on Wednesday to announce the 2025 honorees.

Let’s pause here to consider just how Fox News and MAGA World would react if the president overseeing all this extravagance were named Biden, Obama or Clinton.

These preoccupations of the reality-show president are a metaphor for something much bigger, however — Trump’s virtually unchecked makeover of the entire U.S. government as well as its major institutions of education, culture, law and more, all in service of the appearance of gilded grandeur and raw power: His.

Consider recent events. After federal data showed worrying job losses in recent months — not a good look for the self-styled economic wizard — Trump fired the wonky bureaucrat who runs the Bureau of Labor Statistics in favor of a MAGA flunky disdained by economists of all stripes for his bias and ignorance. Only the best.

Cultural gems — eight Smithsonian Institution museums — are in for a Trumpian overhaul. “White House to Vet Smithsonian Museums to Fit Trump’s Historical Vision” was the Wall Street Journal headline this week. So Trump, the historical visionary who once seemed to think abolitionist Frederick Douglass was still alive and whose Homeland Security Department this week seemingly promoted a neo-Nazi book on its social media account, will curate American life and history for posterity. What could go wrong?

Though Vladimir Putin refuses to compromise or cease firing on Ukraine, making a mockery of Trump’s talk of brokering peace on Day 1, Trump plans to reward the war-crime-ing global pariah on Friday with the ultimate recognition: a summit on American soil. After all, a summit gets so much more media attention than a mere private phone call. So what if nothing comes of it, as with Trump’s first-term “summitry” with Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. It’s the televised power struts that count.

Want to look tough on crime? Trump the performance artist has militarized the nation’s capital just as he did Los Angeles, declaring a crime emergency in a city where crime is at a 30-year low. (As with the jobs numbers, the White House disputed the crime data.) The president called up 800 National Guard troops and myriad federal agents to patrol Washington, a power he declined to use for three long hours on Jan. 6, 2021, when the city actually did face rioting. Trump is so into scene-setting that he’d rather put FBI agents on the D.C. streets than leave them to their behind-the-scenes work on counterintelligence and anti-terrorism.

I don’t feel safer.

This isn’t just an anti-crime show for Trump, however. He says it’s also about beautification. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” he posted on social media. This from the president who was untroubled by his supporters defiling and defecating in the Capitol on Jan. 6. As a longtime resident, I don’t recognize the dystopian city he describes; as a citizen, I’m offended.

And of course Trump’s power play is also about fundraising. What isn’t about money for him? In an email solicitation on Tuesday, he boasted to would-be donors that he’d “LIBERATED” the capital from “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum.” You know what’s really scummy? Constant money-grubbing.

Washington and Los Angeles likely are just dry runs for Trump’s future shows of force. He’s repeatedly threatened similar crackdowns in other Democratic-run cities. And on Tuesday, the Washington Post broke the news of a Pentagon plan for a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” with 600 National Guard troops on permanent standby to deploy at Trump’s command. All of this is of dubious legality, but when has that stopped him?

Whether the subject is crime, tariffs, immigration, whatever, Trump just declares an emergency to supposedly justify his aggrandizement of power. Never mind that each emergency reflects a problem that’s long-standing and not a crisis. Absent these declarations, Trump would have to govern with Congress and pass legislation to try to actually solve problems, as the framers intended. That means time, tedium, policy details and compromise — hardly the stuff of a camera-ready wannabe action hero/strongman.

Say Trump’s orchestrated gerrymandering in Texas and other red states doesn’t work in the 2026 midterm elections and Democrats take control of the House. It’s not hard to imagine him declaring an emergency and sending in the military to seize voting machines. Trump was restrained from issuing just such an order after the 2020 election.

Yes, he’s a busy man. But you know what Trump hasn’t done? Release the Epstein files. Wouldn’t be good for appearances.

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President Javier Milei of Argentina has proposed a new $1m initiative to strengthen relations between Latin America and Israel, ahead of an anticipated visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Monday, the Genesis Prize Foundation — a group that offers an annual award to members of the Jewish community — announced that Milei, its most recent winner, would use his prize money to launch a new nonprofit, the American Friends of the Isaac Accords (AFOIA).

“AFOIA is a vehicle to promote Milei’s bold vision and encourage other Latin American leaders to stand with Israel, confront antisemitism, and reject the ideologies of terror that threaten our shared values and freedoms,” Genesis Prize co-founder Stan Polovets said in a news release.

The statement explained that the new nonprofit was inspired, in part, by efforts under United States President Donald Trump to normalise relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

During Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, countries like Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel in a series of deals known as the Abraham Accords.

Milei’s efforts, meanwhile, come as Israel faces growing condemnation in Latin America over its war in Gaza, which United Nations experts have compared to a genocide.

Countries like Colombia and Bolivia have severed diplomatic ties with Israel since the start of the war in 2023, and Brazil recently became the latest nation to join a case against Israel brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice.

“The Isaac Accords aim to mirror the success of the Abraham Accords by fostering diplomatic, economic, and cultural cooperation between Israel and key Latin American nations,” the news release said.

Pushing against a regional trend

The nonprofit will initially focus its efforts on three Latin American countries: Uruguay, Panama and Costa Rica. The news release credits regional analysts as saying those countries are “primed for enhanced cooperation with Israel”.

“These nations stand to benefit significantly from Israeli expertise in water technology, agriculture, cyber defense, fintech, healthcare, and energy,” it said.

But the Isaac Accords nonprofit ultimately aims to expand its mission to Brazil, Colombia, Chile and potentially El Salvador by 2026.

Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, applauded the establishment of the nonprofit and praised Milei as “setting an example for his neighbors in the region”.

But he acknowledged that several high-profile Latin American leaders have spoken out against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

“Given the hostility toward the Jewish state from some nations in the region, support of Israel by Latin American countries which are now on the sidelines is very important,” Danon said in the release.

Top leaders like Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have forcefully denounced the human rights abuses unfolding in Gaza, where more than 61,500 Palestinians have been killed and many risk perishing from hunger.

The enclave is under an Israeli blockade that restricts the amount of food, water and essential supplies reaching residents. Last month, the UN warned of “mounting evidence of famine” and “catastrophic hunger” in Gaza.

“We cannot remain indifferent to the genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza, the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians and the use of hunger as a weapon of war,” Brazil’s President Lula told the BRICS economic alliance in July.

Milei embraces Israel

But while left-wing Latin American leaders like Lula take steps to distance themselves from Israel, Milei, a libertarian, has taken the opposite approach.

In June, for example, Milei confirmed his intention to move Argentina’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by 2026, despite conflicting Israeli and Palestinian claims on the city. Trump made a similar decision in 2018.

Milei has also praised Israel for its human rights record, including in a social media post this past May honouring the 77th anniversary of its establishment in 1948, which resulted in the mass displacement of Palestinians.

“I congratulate the State of Israel on its short but glorious 77 years of existence,” the Argentinian president wrote. “Like Argentina, Israel is a beacon of FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY.”

Milei, a Catholic, has even expressed interest in converting to Judaism, which would be a first for an Argentinian president.

His selection as the 2025 Genesis Prize winner is considered a first for a non-Jewish person, and it is tradition for winners to give the cash award to a cause they support.

But Milei’s pro-Israel stance has prompted public backlash in Argentina. On Saturday, thousands of protesters flooded the streets of the capital Buenos Aires to condemn Israeli actions in Gaza.

“We not only demand the opening of borders and the entry of humanitarian aid: We support the fight for a #FreePalestine. Zionism is not Judaism,” one group involved in the protests, JudiesXPalestina, posted on social media.

A test for the International Criminal Court

Many demonstrators also voiced opposition to reports that Netanyahu would visit Argentina in the coming weeks.

The Israeli prime minister’s arrival would test Argentina’s commitment to the International Criminal Court (ICC), of which it is a member.

In 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, on the basis that there are reasonable grounds to believe they had overseen war crimes in Gaza.

The ICC, however, relies on member countries to carry out such arrests. Argentina’s decision to welcome Netanyahu may therefore be seen as a rebuke to the court’s authority, further weakening its power.

Do undocumented immigrants count as people?
Anyone watching as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents increasingly bypass due process to detain and deport unauthorised immigrants might assume the Trump administration’s answer is a resounding “no”. Now, regardless of deportation policies, the approximately 11 million unauthorised immigrants in the United States could soon disappear, statistically at least, if Republicans have their way.

President Trump recently instructed the US Department of Commerce to prepare for a new census that excludes undocumented immigrants. This marks the latest and boldest attempt by Trump and his congressional allies to alter how the census accounts for unauthorised immigrants. Although not explicitly stated, Trump may be trying to push this off-cycle census through ahead of the 2028 presidential election or even before next year’s midterms, which he appears intent on influencing.

Assuming Trump was being literal in his social media declaration that “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS,” millions could effectively vanish from the official population count. If this incomplete census were used for congressional apportionment, it would reduce representation in Congress and the Electoral College for states with large numbers of unauthorised immigrants.

The immediate partisan impact is unclear. According to the Pew Research Center, if non-citizens had been excluded before the 2020 election, California, Florida and Texas would each have lost one congressional seat and Electoral College vote, while Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio would each have gained one. Political gerrymandering would likely shape who benefits from redistricting. Republicans are already aggressively redrawing maps in states like Texas, with possible retaliatory moves in California and other Democrat-led states. Beyond electoral shifts, the broader goal appears to be marginalising undocumented people and punishing “sanctuary” jurisdictions. This reinforces the Republican narrative that Democrats deliberately tolerate illegal immigration for political gain.

Legally, how to count unauthorised immigrants depends on interpreting the Constitution, the framers’ intent and the scope of executive authority in conducting the census. Non-citizens have historically been included in the count, and the Supreme Court has never ruled directly on excluding them. However, with a conservative supermajority on the court, there is a real chance the justices could allow it – either by reinterpreting the Constitution’s language or deferring to the executive branch.

Even if Trump fails to push through a new census, his administration could still suppress the count by other means. During his first term, he tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The Census Bureau stopped collecting this data from all respondents in 1950 and removed the question entirely by 2000, instead gathering it through separate surveys such as the American Community Survey. Many feared its return would deter participation from undocumented, and even legal, immigrants, leading to an undercount. The Supreme Court blocked the effort in 2019, citing insufficient justification. But it left the door open to future attempts with more credible rationales.

Socially, the question of how to count non-citizens recalls earlier and sometimes shameful practices in the United States. For much of its early history, significant groups were denied full recognition in the political system despite living in the country. The Constitution’s original enumeration formula stated that state populations would be calculated “by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.”

Slave and free states struck the infamous “three-fifths” compromise, counting enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for congressional and Electoral College apportionment. Meanwhile, “Indians not taxed” were excluded altogether, as most Native Americans were not considered US citizens despite residing within the country’s borders. They were instead seen as members of sovereign nations – such as the Cherokee, Creek or Iroquois – even as their land, rights and dignity were stripped away. Only with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 were Native Americans granted birthright citizenship and formally included in the population count.

These examples show two marginalised non-citizen groups, enslaved Black people and Indigenous Americans, treated in opposite ways: one partially counted, the other excluded. With history offering no clear precedent, today’s debate raises valid questions about how non-citizens, including the undocumented, should be represented. One view holds that because only citizens vote, non-citizens should not affect apportionment. The opposing view argues that excluding undocumented immigrants worsens their vulnerability and denies their very existence, even as government policies directly affect their lives.

Unauthorised immigrants both use and support public systems. While they are barred from most federal benefits such as Social Security and Medicare, they still access emergency healthcare, school meal programmes and limited housing support. They also factor into education and policing budgets in the communities where they live. At the federal level, immigration policy disproportionately affects states where undocumented residents make up a larger share of the population. At the state level, policies must be shaped with their presence in mind. For example, California now offers food assistance to all elderly residents regardless of immigration status.

Undocumented immigrants also contribute to public finances, paying nearly $100bn annually in federal, state and local taxes. This includes more than $30bn for programmes they largely cannot use, such as Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance. In 40 of 50 states, they pay higher state and local tax rates than the wealthiest 1 percent. States’ economic contributions to the federal budget are directly influenced by these residents. It makes sense, therefore, to acknowledge them through accurate enumeration.

The Trump administration is instead enforcing a skewed, incomplete and politically motivated interpretation of its constitutional duties regarding census-taking and apportionment. This approach could also affect other debates with far-reaching implications. The Department of Justice is urging the Supreme Court to fast-track a ruling on Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship. This is another area where the Constitution appears clear. The 14th Amendment affirms that anyone born in the US is a citizen, with few exceptions, such as the children of diplomats. Trump is also seeking to expand the grounds for revoking naturalised citizenship, a penalty currently applied only in rare cases that usually involve fraud.

A narrower definition of who “counts” in the census could fuel arguments for a narrower definition of who counts as a citizen. Similarly, a policy of excluding non-citizens could encourage efforts to strip citizenship from naturalised or US-born residents in order to exclude them as well.

The presence of millions of undocumented immigrants reflects an immigration system that has failed under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Until meaningful reform is enacted, pretending these individuals do not exist is a misguided, politicised and harmful response to the reality of their lives within US borders, regardless of how they arrived.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Marta scored two late goals as Brazil defended their Copa America Femenina title with a penalty shootout victory over Colombia.

A pulsating final in Quito, Ecuador, saw Colombia take the lead three times only for Brazil to peg them back on each occasion.

Real Madrid forward Linda Caicedo gave Colombia a first-half lead with a low, close-range finish, before Angelina equalised from the penalty spot in first-half stoppage time.

Brazil defender Tarciane scored a bizarre own goal when her attempted back pass went straight past goalkeeper Lorena, before Amanda Gutierres controlled a cross with her chest and volleyed into the bottom corner to level the score once more.

Chelsea’s Mayra Ramirez thought she had scored a late winner for Colombia, but late substitute Marta rifled in a superb equaliser from long range in the sixth minute of injury time.

The 39-year-old retired from international football after Brazil won silver at the 2024 Paris Olympics, but manager Arthur Elias recalled her to his squad for pre-tournament friendlies in May.

Six-time Fifa Player of the Year Marta gave Brazil their first lead of the day midway through extra time when she connected with a teasing cross, only for Colombia midfielder Leicy Santos to curl a free-kick into the top corner and force penalties.

Both sides scored four of their opening six penalties – Marta had the chance to win it but saw her effort saved by Katherine Tapia.

The shootout went to sudden death with Brazil goalkeeper Lorena saving from Jorelyn Carabali to secure victory.

“I think women’s soccer has been growing a lot. I think the trend is for it to be more competitive. Everyone here deserved a match like this. Congratulations to Colombia too,” Brazil’s Amanda Gutierres said.

“This means a lot. I think it’s Brazil’s job – it’s that mentality of never giving up. That’s a source of pride for Brazil. I think it means a lot to Brazilians.”

WASHINGTON — For weeks, President Trump was promising the world economy would change on Friday with his new tariffs in place. It was an ironclad deadline, administration officials assured the public.

But when Trump signed the order Thursday night imposing new tariffs, the start date of the punishing import taxes was pushed back seven days so the tariff schedule could be updated. The change in tariffs on 66 countries, the European Union, Taiwan and the Falkland Islands was potentially welcome news to countries that had not yet reached a deal with the U.S. It also injected a new dose of uncertainty for consumers and businesses still wondering what’s going to happen and when.

Trump told NBC News in a Thursday night interview the tariffs process was going “very well, very smooth.” But even as the Republican president insisted these new rates would stay in place, he added: “It doesn’t mean that somebody doesn’t come along in four weeks and say we can make some kind of a deal.”

Trump has promised that his tax increases on the nearly $3 trillion in goods imported to the United States will usher in newfound wealth, launch a cavalcade of new factory jobs, reduce the budget deficits and, simply, get other countries to treat America with more respect.

The vast tariffs risk jeopardizing America’s global standing as allies feel forced into unfriendly deals. As taxes on the raw materials used by U.S. factories and basic goods, the tariffs also threaten to create new inflationary pressures and hamper economic growth — concerns the Trump White House has dismissed.

Questions swirl around the tariffs despite Trump’s eagerness

As the clock ticked toward Trump’s self-imposed deadline, few things seemed to be settled other than the president’s determination to levy the taxes he has talked about for decades. The very legality of the tariffs remains an open question as a U.S. appeals court on Thursday heard arguments on whether Trump had exceeded his authority by declaring an “emergency” under a 1977 law to charge the tariffs, allowing him to avoid congressional approval.

Trump was ebullient as much of the world awaited what he would do.

“Tariffs are making America GREAT & RICH Again,” he said Thursday morning on Truth Social.

Others saw a policy carelessly constructed by the U.S. president, one that could impose harms gradually over time that would erode America’s power and prosperity.

“The only things we’ll know for sure on Friday morning are that growth-sapping U.S. import taxes will be historically high and complex, and that, because these deals are so vague and unfinished, policy uncertainty will remain very elevated,” said Scott Lincicome, a vice president of economics at the Cato Institute. “The rest is very much TBD.”

The new tariffs build off ones announced in the spring

Trump initially imposed the Friday deadline after his previous “Liberation Day” tariffs in April resulted in a stock market panic. His unusually high tariff rates announced then led to recession fears, prompting Trump to impose a 90-day negotiating period. When he was unable to create enough trade deals with other countries, he extended the timeline and sent out letters to world leaders that simply listed rates, prompting a slew of hasty agreements.

Swiss imports will now be taxed at a higher rate, 39%, than the 31% Trump threatened in April, while Liechtenstein saw its rate slashed from 37% to 15%. Countries not listed in the Thursday night order would be charged a baseline 10% tariff.

Trump negotiated trade frameworks over the past few weeks with the EU, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines — allowing the president to claim victories as other nations sought to limit his threat of charging even higher tariff rates. He said Thursday there were agreements with other countries, but he declined to name them.

Asked on Friday if countries were happy with the rates set by Trump, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said: “A lot of them are.”

Thursday began with a palpable sense of tension

The EU was awaiting a written agreement on its 15% tariff deal. Switzerland and Norway were among the dozens of countries that did not know what their tariff rate would be, while Trump agreed after a Thursday morning phone call to keep Mexico’s tariffs at 25% for a 90-day negotiating period. The president separately on Thursday amended an order to raise certain tariffs on Canada to 35%.

European leaders face blowback for seeming to cave to Trump, even as they insist that this is merely the start of talks and stress the importance of maintaining America’s support of Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has already indicated that his country can no longer rely on the U.S. as an ally, and Trump declined to talk to him on Thursday.

India, with its 25% tariff announced Wednesday by Trump, may no longer benefit as much from efforts to pivot manufacturing out of China. While the Trump administration has sought to challenge China’s manufacturing dominance, it is separately in extended trade talks with that country, which faces a 30% tariff and is charging a 10% retaliatory rate on the U.S.

Major companies came into the week warning that tariffs would begin to squeeze them financially. Ford Motor Co. said it anticipated a net $2 billion hit to earnings this year from tariffs. French skincare company Yon-Ka is warning of job freezes, scaled-back investment and rising prices.

It’s unclear whether Trump’s new tariffs will survive a legal challenge

Federal judges sounded skeptical Thursday about Trump’s use of a 1977 law to declare the long-standing U.S. trade deficit a national emergency that justifies tariffs on almost every country.

“You’re asking for an unbounded authority,” Judge Todd Hughes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit told a Justice Department lawyer representing the administration.

The judges didn’t immediately rule, and the case is expected to reach the Supreme Court eventually.

The Trump White House has pointed to the increase in federal revenues as a sign that the tariffs will reduce the budget deficit, with $127 billion in customs and duties collected so far this year — about $70 billion more than last year.

New tariffs threaten to raise inflation rates

There are not yet signs that tariffs will lead to more domestic manufacturing jobs, and Friday’s employment report showed the U.S. economy now has 37,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than it did in April.

On Thursday, one crucial measure of inflation, known as the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, showed that prices have climbed 2.6% over the 12 months that ended in June, a sign that inflation may be accelerating as the tariffs flow through the economy.

The prospect of higher inflation from the tariffs has caused the Federal Reserve to hold off on additional cuts to its benchmark rates, a point of frustration for Trump, who on Truth Social, called Fed Chair Jerome Powell a “TOTAL LOSER.”

But before Trump’s tariffs, Powell seemed to suggest that the tariffs had put the U.S. economy and much of the world into a state of unknowns.

“There are many uncertainties left to resolve,” Powell told reporters Wednesday. “So, yes, we are learning more and more. It doesn’t feel like we’re very close to the end of that process. And that’s not for us to judge, but it does — it feels like there’s much more to come.”

Boak writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday plans to reestablish the Presidential Fitness Test for American schoolchildren, a program created in 1966 to help interest young people in following healthy, active lifestyles.

Children had to run and perform sit-ups, pull-ups or push-ups and a sit-and-reach test, but the program changed in 2012 during the Obama administration to focus more on individual health than athletic feats.

The president “wants to ensure America’s future generations are strong, healthy, and successful,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, and that all young Americans “have the opportunity to emphasize healthy, active lifestyles — creating a culture of strength and excellence for years to come.”

In a late afternoon ceremony at the White House, Trump intends to sign an order reestablishing the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, as well as the fitness test, to be administered by his Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The council also will develop criteria for a Presidential Fitness Award.

In 2012, the assessment evolved into the Youth Fitness Program, which the government said “moved away from recognizing athletic performance to providing a barometer on student’s health.” Then-First Lady Michelle Obama also promoted her “Let’s Move” initiative focused on reducing childhood obesity through diet and exercise.

Reinvigorating the sports council and the fitness test fits with Trump’s focus on athletics.

The Republican president played baseball in high school and plays golf almost every weekend. Much of the domestic travel he has done this year that is not related to weekend golf games at his clubs in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia was built around attending sporting events, including the Super Bowl, Daytona 500 and UFC matches.

The announcement Thursday comes as Trump readies the United States to host the 2025 Ryder Cup, 2026 FIFA World Cup games and the 2028 Summer Olympics.

The Youth Fitness Test, according to a Health and Human Services Department website last updated in 2023 but still online Thursday, “minimizes comparisons between children and instead supports students as they pursue personal fitness goals for lifelong health.”

Expected to join Trump at the event are several prominent athletes, including some who have faced controversy.

They include Trump friend and pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau; Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker; Swedish golfer Annika Sorenstam; WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, the son-in-law of Trump’s Education secretary, Linda McMahon; and former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor, a registered sex offender.

The NFL distanced itself from comments Butker made last year during a commencement address at a Kansas college, where he said most of the women receiving degrees were probably more excited about getting married and having children than entering the workforce and that some Catholic leaders were “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America.” Butker also assailed Pride Month and railed against Democratic President Biden’s stance on abortion.

Butker later formed a political action committee designed to encourage Christians to vote for what the PAC describes as “traditional values.”

Sorenstam faced backlash for accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after rioters spurred by Trump’s false claims about his election loss to Biden stormed the Capitol in Washington.

Taylor, who has appeared on stage with Trump at campaign rallies, pleaded guilty in New York in 2011 to misdemeanor criminal charges of sexual misconduct. He was sentenced to six years of probation and ordered to register as a sex offender.

Price writes for the Associated Press. AP writer John Wawrow in Buffalo, N.Y., contributed to this report.

MAGA has a problem, in the form of Donald Trump. Put simply: MAGA wants to define what MAGA (or “America first”) means, and Donald Trump wants it to mean whatever he says at any given moment.

I should offer a little definitional clarity and political nuance. Make America Great Again means different things to different people. The Trump coalition is not monolithic, it contains factions that do not necessarily consider themselves to be MAGA. But as shorthand, MAGA is an identifiably distinct bloc on the right, and it’s the dominant faction in the broader GOP coalition. Its internal diversity notwithstanding, it still has a worldview or ideology. And the MAGA faithful are increasingly frustrated by the fact that Trump doesn’t always share, or prioritize, that ideology.

They believed that if you could just “let Trump be Trump” he would follow their conception of MAGA. In Ronald Reagan’s first term, many movement conservatives were frustrated by what they perceived as the Gipper’s drift toward centrism. They blamed moderates in the administration. “Let Reagan be Reagan” became a rallying cry on the right.

“It’s a piece of conventional wisdom on the new American right that Donald Trump struggled in his first term because he hired the wrong people — old-think Bush Republicans, figures like Rex Tillerson and Steven Mnuchin, who didn’t have a populist bone in their bodies,” the news website Semafor’s Ben Smith offers in an astute analysis.

As a result, Smith continues, “Trump’s most passionate supporters weren’t going to make that mistake again. They created initiatives like American Moment, Project 2025, and others aimed at grooming and credentialing a cadre of MAGA appointees. When Trump took office, the America Firsters moved en masse into the Department of Defense. Big Tech avengers seized the antitrust apparatus. Conspiracy-minded podcasters took over the FBI.

“And yet — just as Trump often ignored his conventional advisers in the first term, he’s stunned loyalists by sweeping aside this carefully assembled apparat in 2025.”

Trump said as much to the Atlantic magazine last month: “I think I’m the one that decides” what “America first” means.

“It turns out that personnel isn’t policy,” the executive director of the American Conservative, Curt Mills, “glumly” told Smith. The idea that “personnel is policy” is another Reagan-era mantra; put Reaganites in important positions and you’ll get Reaganite policies. Putting Trumpists in powerful positions doesn’t yield the same results.

Immigration hawks have been panicking over the president’s suggestion that farm and hotel workers should be excluded from his deportation schemes. As Trump told Fox News, “I’m on both sides of the thing.” Foreign policy “restrainers” were beclowned by his support of Israel’s strikes on Iran and his apparent about-face on helping Ukraine.

On China, Trump’s been a hawk as promised, except when he hasn’t, allowing NVIDIA to sell chips to China, and ignoring the law by refusing to sell or shutter TikTok.

Then there’s the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco, which has bedeviled Trump for weeks. It’s intensity and durability can best be explained by the fact that it divides those who define Trumpism as loyalty to Trump and those who believe that loyalty would be, must be rewarded by a cleansing of corrupt globalist elite — or something.

In short, there is no “Trumpism” that is an analogue to Reaganism. Reaganism is a philosophical approach. What defines Trump’s reign is better understood as a psychological phenomenon both as an explanation of his behavior and of his fans’ cultish and performative loyalty. To the extent Trump has a philosophy it is to follow his instincts, which are most powerfully informed first by his own ego but also the dramaturgy of professional wrestling, reality TV and Norman Vincent Peale’s prosperity gospel.

He’s said many times that he considers unpredictability a virtue in itself, which by definition means he is going to disappoint anyone who expects philosophical coherence. When Trump was a bull in a China shop, the people most excited by the sound of breaking vases and dishware assumed there was a broader method to the madness. But now the same people are learning that Trump won’t be saddled by his fans any more than he is by norms.

This was always going to be the case (as I noted in 2017), but what adds to MAGA’s frustration is that anyone can see and copy the bull-handling techniques that are most likely to work. Compliment him, call him “daddy,” celebrate his genius and expertise, and you too can manipulate him with at least moderate success.

Perhaps most significant, it’s becoming clear that a movement defined by loyalty to a mercurial personality is bound to split apart once that personality leaves the stage — if not sooner.

X: @JonahDispatch