What Nikole Hannah-Jones Doesn’t Say

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

 

‘My daughter,” wrote Nikole Hannah-Jones in 2024, “is not worth more than any other child.”

 

This assessment was offered as part of a reflection on a New York Times essay that Hannah-Jones had written eight years earlier on the subject of choosing an appropriate school. In tandem, she imparted two other reflections: that the school she’d made such a commotion about picking was clearly “failing”; and that, regardless, she still believed she had “made the right choice.”

 

Two years later, she has changed her mind. Or, rather: Two years later, her daughter has changed her mind for her. Having eventually learned what her mother had done to her, her daughter “just shook her head, her face a mask of disbelief, and something else: betrayal,” the writer admitted this week in the Times.

 

For penning this mea culpa, Hannah-Jones has received a good deal of praise. Well, you can count me out of all that. Her actions were morally indefensible and analytically ignorant, and her supposed metamorphosis remains invisible to the naked eye. She has always been a ridiculous zealot. Now, she’s a cautionary tale, too.

 

To propose that one’s own child “is not worth more than any other” is an ugly — perhaps even an evil — sentiment. You may call me whatever names you wish in response to this assertion, but you must understand that it will not change a thing. My job as a parent is to prioritize my children. I owe it to them, and they rely upon me to follow through with that obligation. It is true that, in a detached, cosmic sense, my children are no more important than are any others. But for me? Yes, they are. They represent the primary purpose of my existence, and, insofar as it is in my power and is consistent with the law, I intend to advance their interests without apology, embarrassment, or regret. Far from representing a societal flaw or some selfish personal shortcoming, that instinct is the most natural thing in the world — which is why, historically, the only the thing that has ever been able to break it is the entrenchment of totalitarian ideology. The fanatics who “informed” on their family members during the worst days of the Soviet Union were not admirable for their commitment to the cause; they were anti-human freaks who upset the natural balance of the universe. Nikole Hannah-Jones’s sin was far lesser than theirs, but it was still a sin. Outside of a waterboarding chamber, no parent should ever say, “My daughter is not worth more than any other child.”

 

Back in 2016, Hannah-Jones’s husband seems to have reflexively understood that what his wife was proposing was madness. And yet, having been guilt-tripped, he appears to have gone along with it anyway:

 

As I told Faraji my plan, he slowly shook his head no. He wanted to look into parochial schools, or one of the “good” public schools, or even private schools. So we argued, pleading our cases from the living room, up the steps to our office lined with books on slavery and civil rights, and back down, before we came to an impasse and retreated to our respective corners. There is nothing harder than navigating our nation’s racial legacy in this country, and the problem was that we each knew the other was right and wrong at the same time. Faraji couldn’t believe that I was asking him to expose our child to the type of education that the two of us had managed to avoid. He worried that we would be hurting Najya if we put her in a high-poverty, all-black school. “Are we experimenting with our child based on our idealism about public schools?” he asked. “Are we putting her at a disadvantage?”

 

The answer, quite obviously, was yes.

 

Some readers have responded to Hannah-Jones’s admission by proposing that the fault lay not in her instinct, but in its execution. I do not think that such a clean distinction can reasonably be drawn, but I can certainly agree with the implication that this entire experiment was built on stuff and nonsense. In her original essay, she expressed a desire to avoid “segregation.” Yet she sent her daughter to a school that hosted more students of her daughter’s race than attended the ones she eschewed. Defending her decision, she explained her belief that a profitable educational environment involved sedulous parental involvement. Yet, by her own admission, she was so neglectful of her daughter’s progress that, for years, she remained unaware that she had fallen badly behind. Her New York Times biography notes that her “journalism has tended to focus on school.” Which makes it all the more shameful that she still has no idea why schools tend to fail. Like many of her colleagues, Nikole Hannah-Jones ignores the available data and instead pins the blame on funding gaps that don’t exist, racism that cannot be identified, and attitudes that nobody in our current era actually exhibits. Perhaps, going forward, she might “focus” a little harder?

 

What does Hannah-Jones believe now? She doesn’t say. By itself, this omission prevents her essay from being “brave” or “admirable” and relegates it to the status of a humblebrag. If she had right-of-center politics, the Times would undoubtedly have forced her to spell out her mistake. The confession would have been the overture; the rest of the performance would have been a detailed explanation of how exactly she was wrong, along with an exhaustive “therefore . . .” that included hard statistics, legible arguments, and the outlining of an alternative agenda. But, of course, the Times did no such thing, and Hannah-Jones has made no such effort under her own steam. Given that she has extremely strong views about what, how, and where other American children should be taught, it would be useful to know what, having watched her assumptions fail her own child, she now thinks America’s education system should look like. She isn’t going to tell us.

 

Which, I’m afraid, is entirely typical. I do not mean to be unduly waspish here, but it ought not to be a surprise that Nikole Hannah-Jones believed that her daughter was getting A’s despite doing no homework, given that getting A’s despite doing no homework is exactly how Nikole Hannah-Jones’s own career has played out thus far. Hannah-Jones is a writer who doesn’t write; a historian who knows little history; an advocate with no mastery of her brief — and for this, she has been rewarded with extravagant public-speaking fees, a cushy sinecure at the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize in commentary, two George Polk Awards, three National Magazine Awards, a MacArthur Fellowship, and at least ten years of the sort of detached, flighty, consequence-free existence that allows one to sacrifice the mind of one’s own child for a couple of mawkish newspaper pieces and the cheap mollification of one’s ego.

Canada’s EU Romance Is a Mistake

By John Gustavsson

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

 

Last week, the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, surprised the world by announcing an offer to make Canada the first “associate member” of the European Union. What makes an “associate member” is not legally defined in any of the EU’s treaties, but there is no doubt that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney appears determined to embrace the EU as he seeks to reduce his country’s dependence on the North American market. After Donald Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the 51st state, Carney’s approach may seem reasonable — and, judging from the PM’s approval ratings, Canadians are, so far, on board.

 

Yet running to Brussels would be as big a mistake for Canada as it was for Britain.

 

Whatever Canada’s new relationship with the EU ends up looking like, it will be a much cozier relationship than before. Whereas Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, never missed an opportunity to emphasize Canada as an indigenous land and apologize for the sins of the settlers, Carney seems to have rediscovered his country’s European heritage, going as far as to label it “the most European of non-European countries.”

 

On Canada Day, CBC/Radio-Canada announced that the country would compete in the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest, by far the biggest music competition in the world, with around 160 million viewers. Joining the ESC is not cheap; indeed, several countries decline to participate every year citing the cost. Fortunately, Carney had increased the public broadcaster’s budget for this very purpose.

 

In May, Carney became the first non-European leader ever to attend the semiannual European Political Community summit, an intergovernmental summit attended by leaders of 48 European countries. Last year, he signed a Strategic Partnership of the Future with the EU, covering areas including trade and climate transition, as well as a security and defense partnership. An “associate membership” in the EU — whatever that term ends up meaning — could be seen as a logical next step, fitting with Carney’s ambition to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports over the next ten years.

 

Carney increasingly looks like an insecure high schooler trying to hang with the cool kids. But, much like in high school, the cool kids are not really all that cool.

 

First, Europe struggles with economic growth. Since the global financial crisis, the wealth gap between America and the EU — and especially the western EU — has widened, as Europe has struggled with weak and inconsistent growth. Economic shocks like those brought on by the war in Ukraine and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have contributed, but taxation, an ill-conceived common currency, and regulatory policy in areas such as energy, climate, and tech, bear the brunt of the blame. It would make more sense for Canada to diversify by adding more members and deepening ties with the faster-growing Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact that has nearly eliminated tariffs among signatory countries following the United States’ withdrawal from the preceding Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.

 

Supporters of Carney’s European adventures may counter that there is no need to choose — that Canada can diversify elsewhere while still deepening ties with Europe. But it is not that simple. Brussels rarely gives deep market access without pulling partners toward its rule book. If “associate membership” turns into dynamic alignment, Canada, while still formally able to sign other foreign trade agreements, would find those deals harder to use: Goods and data would still have to clear European process rules, including rules written after the ink is dry.

 

Nowhere is this more dangerous than on climate policy. Whereas Carney has begun the process of rolling back his predecessor’s unrealistic goals, the EU is still charging full steam ahead, even implementing climate tariffs (the “carbon-border adjustment mechanism”) on its trade partners. That the EU climate regime is not exactly suitable for an oil-, gas-, and minerals-producing country should go without saying.

 

It may seem counterintuitive that Europe would ever try to force its environmentalism on Canada, seeing as how Canada’s minerals and natural gas — two sectors that EU rules could devastate, if applied to Canada — are part of what makes the country attractive to the EU. But in Brussels, the link between overregulation and underinvestment is not properly understood. Sure, policymakers want rare earths and natural gas — but since that’s never stopped them from overregulating those industries almost to extinction in Europe, Canada should not assume it will get a free pass. The mere threat of future regulatory alignment with the EU could deter investment into Canada’s extractive industries.

 

For Canada’s tech sector, the EU poses an even bigger threat. The EU prides itself on a “regulate first, ask questions later” approach that has strangled innovation in the union. If Canada is pushed to adapt EU tech regulations, the effect would be even worse than in Europe, since geographical proximity means Canada’s tech sector competes with the U.S. and Silicon Valley more directly than Europe’s does.

 

The same is true for the auto and chemicals industries as well as many other sectors, and geographical proximity makes it easier not just for businesses but also for skilled Canadians in affected sectors to move to the United States, something more and more of them are already doing.

 

Carney may feel emboldened by polls showing that large majorities of Canadians favor closer ties with the EU, with one poll even showing 57 percent would support full membership. But the idea of greater integration with the EU and the reality of such a path are starkly different. Brits once overwhelmingly voted in favor of EU membership, but decades of clashes between Britain’s Anglo-Saxon worldview and Brussels’s continental ways eventually led to a bitter divorce. And more than a European nation, Canada — with apologies to Quebec — is first and foremost a British nation, and that is something Carney ought to consider before he traps his country in a union that neither he nor his voters fully understand.

 

Of course, Trump was wrong to ever suggest that Canada should become America’s 51st state. It would be nothing short of tragic if Canada, in its rush to safeguard its sovereignty, merely ended up giving it away to another foreign bidder.

The Media’s Weird Obsession With Israel

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

 

No one likes to think they’re being hysterical. And nothing makes hysterical people angrier than being described as such. So, let me offer my apologies in advance for what follows.

 

Jeremy Musighi, an independent researcher, recently released a study analyzing 14.7 million news articles published across 65 languages over the last decade. He found that, in 2024, news outlets published “more than twice as many stories about Israel as about all 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined.”

 

Given that many countries focus on Israel to distract from their own problems, that’s not that shocking. But Musighi also found that, “On American cable news, Israel was the most-mentioned country—ahead of Iran, Russia, Ukraine, China. On the BBC’s news channel, 1 in every 17 broadcast minutes mentioned Israel.”

 

One might argue that given Israel’s recent actions, it earned such coverage. But Israel gets wildly disproportionate coverage in peacetime, too. In 2019, long before the war in Gaza, “1 of every 112 news articles on Earth—from all the world’s outlets minus Israel’s—was primarily about Israel. 1.8 million international articles mentioned it.”

 

Now, I have reservations about Musighi’s methodology, given how media outlets recycle and syndicate content. But rather than wade into the statistics, for argument’s sake let’s just cut all of his findings in half. That would still be hard to defend rationally.

 

Also, this says nothing of the quality of the reporting. If it was objective, the quantity wouldn’t matter much. But a sizable portion is objectively anti-Israel, often taking Hamas’ claims at face value. When Hamas shrieked that Gaza was on the brink of famine, the Western press breathlessly repeated the claim, which was utterly false.

 

In a recent interview on Taqarrab, an Arab-language podcast, acclaimed photo “journalist” Motaz Azaiza admitted that he refused to publish images of Hamas abuses—to protect the abusers. The New York Times’ Nick Kristoff launched weeks of coverage with the claim that Israelis train dogs to rape Palestinians. American media covered the controversy over rapper Macklemore’s criticisms of Israel as though he were a free speech martyr.

 

In fairness, a lot of coverage is driven by news, like when the United Nations condemns Israel, which it has done 187 times since 2015—nearly six times more often than it has condemned Russia, and 17 times more often than Iran or North Korea.

 

Founded in 1948, modern Israel is middle-aged as countries go.

 

Look at a list of 195 countries in order of their founding dates, and Israel ranks somewhere between the 85^th- and 90^th-oldest (if we acknowledge biblical Israel, then it’s the fourth-oldest nation in the world). And yet many talk about Israel as if it’s a sort of recent mistake, easily remedied, like outgoing mail that hasn’t been picked up yet.

 

Israel is only slightly older than modern Tibet, which was, according to the Chinese government, “liberated” in 1951. Many Tibetans use the term “occupied.”

 

We don’t hear much about “occupied Tibet” from people fixated on the evils of occupation. Nor do we hear about China’s system of apartheid—another charge casually hurled at Israel. Nor do we hear about China’s genocidal policies toward the Muslim minority Uyghur population in Xinjiang. The charge of cultural genocide is irrefutable, but there’s also strong evidence of more literal genocide thanks to the regime’s violent and coercive reproduction policies, slashing birthrates in half.

 

Nor do we hear much about China’s policy of settler colonialism in Tibet and Xinjiang, where Han Chinese are incentivized to migrate as part of the regime’s policy of “sinicization.” I think China’s pretty powerful, but criticizing Israel, according to the popular online streamer Hasan Piker (who will not condemn China), is “speaking truth to power.”

 

To that end, we hear a lot about Israel’s occupation, settler colonization and genocide. We don’t have the space to contend with all of these charges, so for the sake of brevity and reasonableness let’s concede, for now, the first two. Besides, it’s the false genocide charge that fuels anti-Israel obsessions more than any other. The claim is more than 40 years old. And yet, since the founding of Israel, the Palestinian population has grown more than fivefold.

 

When you hear that Israeli genocide proves Israelis are the “new Nazis” keep in mind that the Holocaust killed 2 out of every 3 European Jews.  

 

A new documentary, Naza, that purports to prove that Israel is committing genocide bases its claim on the fact that Israel goes to great lengths to track collateral damage. Never mind that there’s no such thing as collateral damage when you intend genocide.

 

It should take the average reader five minutes to read this column. When Naza debuted at the Venice Film Festival this month, the audience’s standing ovation lasted five times as long. That, I’m sorry to tell you, is a sign of hysteria.

Don Jr.’s Wedding Trap

By Shane Harris

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

 

If you were a Russian intelligence operative trying to penetrate the American president’s inner circle, you could hardly have done much better than Umar Kremlev did last May. Kremlev, a boxing promoter from outside Moscow, rented a private island in the Bahamas for Donald Trump Jr. to host his uber-luxe wedding celebration. Four of President Trump’s children, along with their spouses, were sequestered with Kremlev and a gaggle of other Russians during a party that went on for three days, according to an investigation by ProPublica published last week.

 

The guest list of family and close friends included the president’s two sons-in-law: Jared Kushner, one of his key interlocutors with Moscow, and Michael Boulos, whose father is a senior adviser to Trump on Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs. A VIP party like that is what spies call a target-rich environment. “It’s an intelligence service’s dream to have so much time with these people, when alcohol is flowing and people’s guards are down,” Marc Polymeropoulos, who used to oversee the CIA’s clandestine operations in Russia, told me. When foreign agents gain access to such a setting, he said, “they are building relationships, gaining assessment data on targets, and perhaps even setting future contact, all precisely part of the recruitment cycle.”

 

Kremlev shelled out for one night on a private island, as well as a fireworks display, which together can cost upwards of $170,000—a pittance, given the potential payoff. The president, who didn’t attend the wedding, defended the gift, claiming that he, too, had thrown wedding parties for people. “With all of that being said, I understand that Don’s paid him back,” Trump told reporters on Friday, although he didn’t say how much money his son planned to reimburse the Russian. The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Robert Garcia of California, has started an investigation. And yesterday, a Republican senator, John Curtis of Utah, called on his colleagues to investigate the wedding reception and issue a subpoena for Trump Jr.

 

Kremlev, who did not respond to a request for comment, has been sanctioned by Ukraine but not by the United States. He owes his position, and apparently his wealth, to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Current and former intelligence officials in the U.S. and Europe who have spent their career working against Russia told me that his gift to Trump’s son should be viewed as the continuation of a long-standing state effort to influence and potentially compromise people in the president’s orbit.

 

Kremlev, born Umar Lutfulloyev, grew up in a suburb of Moscow and has family roots in Tajikistan. After a few criminal convictions for extortion and battery in the early 2000s, he got into the boxing business. At age 28, Lutfulloyev changed his name to Kremlev, which essentially translates to “the Kremlin’s man.” Around this time, he joined the Night Wolves—ostensibly a patriotic biker gang but really more of a paramilitary and propaganda arm for Putin. The Russian president has previously mounted a bike and joined the gang on rides in the Crimean peninsula, an occupied territory of Ukraine. In 2014, following Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Night Wolves, whose members allegedly “conducted intimidation and criminal activities” in the country.

 

It was in the Night Wolves that Kremlev met Alexey Rubezhnoy, a former member of the FSB, Russia’s main security agency. Rubezhnoy is the current head of the Presidential Security Service, in charge of physical protection for the famously paranoid Russian president. According to Proekt, an independent Russian media outlet that specializes in investigative reporting, Rubezhnoy put Kremlev in position to take over the International Boxing Association, which now serves as an instrument of Russian soft power and a focal point for the Russian government’s rhetorical attacks on LGBTQ people and transgender athletes. Rubenzhnoy also lobbied Putin to nationalize a chain of car dealerships and for Kremlev to lead the company, Proekt reported. The 43-year-old Kremlev is frequently described in the press as an oligarch, a broadly applied term that, if it means anything these days, describes someone who owes his fortunes to the leader of Russia.

 

Kremlev is just the kind of person the CIA would want to recruit because of his proximity to Putin and Russian state leadership. Yet there he was, ingratiating himself with Trump’s eldest son, who is also a close ally of Vice President Vance and one of the most influential figures on the American political right.

 

“Espionage is a people business, and access is its holy grail,” John Sipher, a former CIA officer who worked in Moscow and spent his career focused on Russia, told me. Trump Jr.’s Russian guests, he said, had “myriad opportunities for cultivation and exploitation. A shared contact, stray comment, or a business proposition or follow-up meeting can provide information and access that may be leveraged in countless ways.” From the point of view of the U.S. government, which tries to prevent compromising encounters with politically influential Americans, “this is the stuff of counterintelligence nightmares,” Sipher said.

 

***

 

Kremlev’s past and his current connections are well known to the U.S. government and its partners. The Ukrainian government has sanctioned him, citing his close relationship with Putin, Rubezhnoy, and Russian security agencies. Kremlev is also heavily involved with Healthy Fatherland, an organization run by his wife’s twin sister, which Ukraine has sanctioned for its alleged role in the kidnapping and “rehabilitation” of Ukrainian children. A Ukrainian intelligence official told me that its domestic security agency has a thick file on Kremlev. In 2021, for reasons that remain unexplained, U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied a waiver for Kremlev to enter the United States.

 

Before Kremlev took over the boxing association, it was run by Gafur Rakhimov, an Uzbek businessman whom the Treasury Department publicly identified as an organized crime figure in 2012 because of his alleged membership in Brother’s Circle, a Russian criminal network involved in international heroin trafficking. Treasury sanctioned him again five years later for providing material support to another notorious group, Thieves in Law, which originated in Stalinist prison camps in the Soviet Union and is akin to the Italian Cosa Nostra. Rakhimov’s career is a manifestation of the blurry lines in Russia between organized crime, international sports, and the state security apparatus.

 

The U.S. designations, as well as concerns about the International Boxing Association’s ties to the Russian banking system, prompted the International Olympic Committee to block the association from organizing the sport at the 2020 Tokyo Games. In 2023, USA Boxing withdrew from the IBA, which Kremlev now ran, citing his governmental ties as well as the association’s financial dependency on sanctioned companies. Gazprom, a Russian state-owned energy corporation, had been its largest sponsor.

 

What Trump Jr. knew about Kremlev’s history is still unknown. When reporters pressed his father, the president suggested that his son “didn’t do a background check.” Within the West Wing, another tough headline elicited some groans and eye rolls, as well as quiet acknowledgment that the ProPublica report would, yet again, spark questions about the relationship between Russia and the Trumps.

 

For an administration that is generally neither moved nor shamed by questions about ethics, the wedding party triggered a response, albeit a mild one. “I mean, just how dumb can you be?” one outside Trump adviser asked my colleague Jonathan Lemire, on the condition of anonymity so as to not alienate the president's family. One Republican who has been disappointed with the president’s consistent deference to Putin at the expense of Ukraine grimly noted that the wedding had been a savvy play by Moscow to further engender goodwill with the first family. They took this as proof, if any more was needed, that Trump would likely never back Kyiv in the war.

 

Maybe Trump Jr. didn’t know much about Kremlev. But Russians have long seen Trump Jr. as a conduit to his father, and they have tried to exploit him for political and business purposes.

 

Back in 2006, Trump Jr. and his sister Ivanka went to Moscow to cultivate potential business contacts. During that trip, a real-estate developer reportedly arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s chair during a tour of the Kremlin. By his own account, Trump Jr. traveled to Russia half a dozen times over the next year and a half. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” he said at a real-estate conference in New York in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” which he also called a “scary” place to do business.

 

In 2013, Trump Jr. was the main negotiator on behalf of his father’s company with Russian figures who wanted to construct a Trump-branded tower in Moscow. The deal didn’t materialize, but it laid a foundation for future contacts between the presidential campaign and the Russians that emerged three years later. During the 2016 presidential election, Trump Jr. took a meeting in Trump Tower in New York with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who offered incriminating material about Hillary Clinton. When Trump Jr. learned that the Russian might give him dirt on his dad’s opponent, he memorably told an associate, “I love it.” But Veselnitskaya didn’t deliver, and the meeting, in retrospect, looks more like an effort to bring the future president around to pro-Kremlin foreign policy.

 

When exactly Trump Jr. and Kremlev first met is unclear. The Russian claims it was a couple of years ago. What’s known for sure is that they appeared together on a panel last September at an IBA event in Istanbul. Trump Jr. criticized transgender women and recalled his childhood love of boxing. An appearance onstage by the president’s son and a Russian who’d been sanctioned by Ukraine would not have escaped Moscow’s attention. It was the beginning of an apparent friendship that led to Kremlev subsidizing Trump Jr.’s wedding fete less than a year later.

 

***

 

Kremlev wasn’t the only Russian heavyweight at the party. He was joined by Alexander Lagutin, whom ProPublica described as a businessperson who served in top roles at a Russian defense contractor and a state-backed energy company. Also at the wedding party was Elena Sobol, whom ProPublica called Kremlev’s right hand at the IBA. Sobol didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Lagutin couldn’t be reached.

 

The attendance of what ProPublica described as a “large contingent” of Russians at a wedding party of only about 50 people was conspicuous. “‘What are they doing here?’ one person recalled thinking,” according to the news organization. After the story was published, Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina, acknowledged Kremlev’s largesse, describing it in a social-media post as “an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend.” “It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from,” they wrote. “Friendship doesn’t require a political motive.”

 

Maybe not. But former intelligence officers told me they believe that it’s no mystery why Kremlev was willing to foot the bill for his friends’ big day. “Money motivates—and that generosity can be a means of buying access, cultivating obligation, stealing secrets, and securing influence,” Steven Cash, a former CIA officer who was also the director of the Counterintelligence Program at the Department of Homeland Security, told me. “When the president’s family accepts lavish benefits from someone close to Putin, private financial interests become a national-security concern.”

 

Kremlev knew what he wanted when he paid for the party. The worrying question now is what Trump Jr. might give him in return.

 

 

America’s Allies Are No Longer Waiting for Trump to Leave

By Vivian Salama

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

 

In 1917, as Canadian troops fought at Vimy Ridge in northern France, Lieutenant Leslie Miller collected acorns from the battlefield and carried them home to Ontario. Saplings from the resulting oaks were sent back to France about a century later, and became a living link between the two countries. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recounted that story in Strasbourg last week to the European Parliament as he proposed an alliance that went far beyond trade to encompass defense, energy, critical minerals, and artificial intelligence.

 

The pitch was part of a broader transformation under way among America’s allies. For years, the strategy among U.S. allies was to wait President Trump out. Now many are preparing for a world in which the United States is no longer indispensable—not simply during Trump’s presidency but afterward as well, regardless of who occupies the White House. They are building military capabilities, diversifying trade, developing new domestic industries, and forging relationships that reduce their dependence on Washington.

 

This isn’t a coordinated revolt against America or a wholesale turn toward China. Most U.S. partners see Washington as an essential partner and don’t fully trust Beijing. But nations that were once firmly in the American orbit are concluding that they cannot rely on the U.S. to provide the same leadership, markets, technology, and military protection that it has for decades. And that, foreign officials told me, is true no matter who wins the presidency in 2028.

 

The shift may be the most consequential legacy of Trump’s foreign policy. Since his first term, he has demanded that allies become more self-reliant. In his second term, Trump has accelerated the emergence of a world in which American influence is less central—and China has more room to maneuver. Beijing benefits if Europe, Canada, Japan, or South Korea becomes more willing to engage and less certain that Washington is the power around which all strategic decisions must revolve. And the shift undercuts the delicate strategic balance Washington seeks with Beijing itself—an issue Trump will confront when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.

 

The changes are already visible, including in rising European defense spending, Canada’s commercial outreach to China, and Japan’s efforts to become a larger arms supplier. Taken together, these trends point to a reordering of the international system that stretches far beyond Trump. “Trump brought with him an earthquake, but we’d be foolish not to prepare for aftershocks,” a senior European official told me. “The fact is, we’ll be setting ourselves up for failure if we assume that everything will go back to the way it was after Trump leaves office. The world is changing, and we can see very clearly now that America is changing too.”

 

That belief is altering the calculations of governments that spent decades organizing their security and economic policies around the United States. What was once viewed as institutional hedging until the 2028 election has morphed into a longer-term effort to build alternatives. This theme of finding alternatives to Washington has become so prevalent that it’s likely to dominate discussions at the United Nations General Assembly this week.

 

Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative in the Biden administration, told me that she and other senior officials were sent on an “apology tour” following Trump’s first term to convince allies that the America they knew had returned and that President Biden was committed to protecting the relationships. (The reference was a throwback to the Barack Obama–era “apology tour,” as some later called it when he traveled the world after taking office to apologize for past American actions, military interventions, and foreign-policy decisions.) But the message dissipated over the next few years amid the political divisiveness in the U.S., Tai recalled. Foreign diplomats relayed to her and other top Biden officials a nervousness “that what you kind of hoped was an aberration is actually going to come back,” she told me. With Trump’s second term, “everything is more over the top than even in the first administration,” Tai said. “The insults are more insulting, the jabs are drawing more blood, and my gut is that there is not a second time for America to declare that it’s back.”

 

***

 

Whether the next president is a Democrat or a Republican, allies see cause for concern. Officials from countries around the world have told me that they worry that Vice President Vance’s vision of a less interventionist America could become a lasting conservative doctrine. “Our real fear is that after Trump comes J. D. Vance, and he has made clear that he is not a friend of Europe’s,” one senior European official told me. Others see calls from the Democratic Socialists of America to “defund the Department of War” as evidence that skepticism about America’s traditional global role is no longer confined to one side of the political spectrum. Progressive Democrats are also embracing tools championed by Trump, including certain tariffs and other protectionist measures. As president, Biden kept most of the tariffs Trump imposed during his first term, even as his “America Is Back” mantra sought to reassure allies they still had America’s support. A dramatic reset of U.S. relations with allies appears unavoidable.

 

Even more moderate Democrats are moving toward a foreign policy closer to “America First,” reflecting growing skepticism of overseas interventions and a desire to prioritize domestic needs. Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive and a potential 2028 presidential contender, told me that the U.S. needs an economic agenda focused on rebuilding America’s manufacturing base through an industrial investment bank, expanded trade schools, and investment in hollowed-out communities—though, he added, it would be a mistake for allies to discount the U.S. as a partner in the post-Trump era. He favors keeping overseas markets open and using tariffs selectively.

 

But what once appeared to allies like temporary political turbulence is now looking like a more lasting change in Washington’s priorities. Just ask the Canadians. For decades, Washington and Ottawa have been the closest of allies. Although they have been frequently at odds over trade, their militaries have operated together, their intelligence services have cooperated closely, and their economies have been deeply integrated. Yet Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada would be better off as part of the U.S., while imposing and threatening tariffs on Canadian goods. Last month, his administration imposed 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian products.

 

Carney, who has called for what he calls “middle powers” such as Canada to become more self-reliant, has responded accordingly. In January, he traveled to Beijing—the first visit for a Canadian prime minister since 2017—and announced a new strategic partnership focused on trade, energy, and agriculture. Canada subsequently secured renewed Chinese-market access for canola, seafood, and beef and set a goal of increasing exports to China by 50 percent by 2030. Canada also became the first non-European country to participate in the European Union’s new Security Action for Europe defense-financing program, giving Canadian companies access to European defense contracts and deepening military ties.

 

Earlier this month, the EU proposed making Canada its first “associate member,” a status that would reflect the closeness of the relationship and give Ottawa—as well as, perhaps, other nations—an alternative to the U.S. and China. Trump has taken notice of their deepening ties, but in ways one imagines Carney might see as a form of respect. The president recently told reporters, “A lot of people say, Who’s the toughest one to deal with? Is it China, sir? Is it China? Is it Vietnam? I said, No, actually, it’s Canada. Canada has felt emboldened.”

 

***

 

The American decision to pull back from its alliances has created opportunities for China, particularly in the Pacific region. The U.S. has few allies stronger than Australia, which during the Biden administration agreed to a deal with the U.S. and the United Kingdom to receive a supply of nuclear-powered submarine technology. But China is Australia’s largest trading partner, and the Australian government has been trying to bolster its relationship with Beijing in other areas as well, including energy and climate. “The United States—not by accident or circumstance, but by design—has become a less dependable ally,” former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told my colleague David Frum in a recent interview. America’s “traditional allies have got to hedge.”

 

Japan, meanwhile, has eased its arms-export rules. The country has largely isolated itself from global arms markets since the end of World War II, and the shift has sparked interest in countries around the world that have long relied heavily on U.S. weapons sales. Japan and South Korea, longtime rivals, have also been drawing closer to each other as they confront both a powerful China and the unpredictability of the Trump administration.

 

That unpredictability was on display with recent annual joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea. Known as Ulchi Freedom Shield—the name evokes a seventh-century Korean general celebrated for repelling a Chinese invasion—the exercises have been held for decades. But hours before this year’s exercises were due to begin, Trump blindsided officials by announcing on social media that he was ordering a substantial pullback in U.S. participation. He argued that the drills were costly and sent a signal that was “totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea. Trump continues to praise the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, despite the leaders’ failure to reach a rapprochement during Trump’s first term.

 

U.S. and South Korean forces, as well as those from other countries, were confused about how and whether to proceed with the exercises. They ultimately went ahead but on a much smaller scale, with the 11-day schedule cut to five and major field-training activities scaled back. “It was an absolute clusterfuck,” a U.S. official told me as the mess was unfolding. In the meantime, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has moved aggressively to deepen ties with Beijing. His January state visit to China included a summit with Xi and a business forum attended by about 600 Korean and Chinese business leaders. Fourteen government-to-government memorandums were signed during the visit. With Seoul stuck on Trump’s bad side, that may be just the beginning.

 

Experts told me that even if these countries don’t open the floodgates to Chinese cooperation, Beijing still stands to gain. Every weapons system current U.S. allies build themselves, every supply chain they diversify, and every new relationship they develop gives Beijing another opening—a possibility that even Trump allies acknowledge. “We have to make sure that China doesn’t take advantage of the situation in the short term,” Richard Grenell, who has held a number of positions in both Trump administrations, including as ambassador to Germany, told me. “But I’m not worried about the long term, because what we hear over and over from world leaders is that dealing with China is not worth the price they pay.”

 

Last year, European leaders traveled to Beijing with major complaints about China’s growing industrial output, their limited access to its markets, and the massive trade imbalance. But the summit also reaffirmed a collective desire among European nations for deeper engagement with Beijing, despite the Chinese government’s obvious weaknesses as a prospective alternative to the United States as a global superpower. Their appetite for closeness reflects evolving public opinions around the globe. This year, a Pew Research Center survey in 36 countries found that for the first time, China was viewed more positively than the U.S. in a majority of the countries surveyed. In Canada, 44 percent of respondents expressed a favorable view of China, compared with 33 percent for the United States. China also overtook the U.S. in overall favorability in several European countries.

 

I asked William Taylor, who twice served as head of the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, whether Europeans feel that they can just buy time until Trump leaves office in 2029, when things might presumably snap back. “They’re not sure that it’s going to snap back,” Taylor responded.

 

The economic stakes of these shifts are substantial. Trade wars with allies raise costs for American consumers. U.S. defense companies could eventually lose market share as allies develop their own industries and buy more from one another. And the more that countries diversify their supply chains and commercial relationships, the less leverage Washington enjoys. “Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over,” Carney said, weeks after assuming office last year. “While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.” Trump’s biggest impact during his second term may be that America’s allies are now planning for that reality to outlast him.

True Crime, False Witness

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

 

In the more than two weeks since a Massachusetts judge was forced to declare a mistrial in the case against Lindsay Clancy, the defendant’s supporters have not let up in their campaign to ruin the life of the lone holdout juror whose confidence cost Clancy an acquittal verdict.

 

We now know that juror’s name, but only because his fellow jurors and their cheering section in the press did their utmost to out him. When his critics weren’t seeking to expose the juror’s identity, they were besmirching his character and judgment — sometimes in especially delusional ways. “He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children,” as one juror memorably put it, betraying both her personal affection for the defendant and an unsettling inhumanity.

 

“I didn’t have any doubts,” Michael Péguy Desronvil, a father from a Haitian migrant family and the holdout juror, said in his own defense. “As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence presented.” It’s not hard to imagine the abuse Desronvil likely endured for refusing to affirm what he did not believe.

 

For his troubles, Desronvil may face a judicial investigation if Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer gets his way. Her counsel wants to examine the juror’s mobile phone to see whether outside influences swayed him during the trial, as if that’s the only way the prosecution’s case could have persuaded anyone.

 

It’s not exactly hard to believe that Clancy killed her three young children. No one at the trial claimed she hadn’t. Rather, the defense contended that mitigating circumstances around the triple homicide excused, if not exculpated, the children’s killer. A plurality of Americans — including a plurality of women — reject the temporary postpartum insanity defense, but at least it’s an argument. What’s not even remotely plausible is that Clancy’s husband, Patrick, played some nefarious role in his children’s slaying. And yet, a significant constituency seems deeply invested in that unreality.

 

Patrick Clancy sat down with 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat over the weekend for an emotionally taxing interview in which he describes the experience of finding his family dead, save one child who passed away in his arms. He also describes the ordeal he’s experienced since the trial started, in which what must feel like an army of his wife’s supporters has done its utmost to make his and his new wife’s lives miserable. Maybe they’re convinced that, with a sufficient level of harassment, Clancy will have a theatrical meltdown in which he confesses to having framed his former wife. Maybe they’ve watched too many movies.

 

Indeed, a whole industry seems committed to retailing dubious but less-than-defamatory claims about Clancy designed to implicate him without leveling any concrete charges: the business of amateur “true crime” sleuthing.

 

The Crime Junkie Podcast contributor Briana Whitney savaged Douthat and 60 Minutes for failing to confront Clancy with the semi-cogent and wholly implausible theories that help “true crime” podcasters fill time. “If you’re frustrated by what you just watched, you’re not alone — we truly don’t know anything from Patrick,” she insisted. “I still think it’s far more likely that he did it than Lindsay,” said the TikTok star JA Kramer, who created a PowerPoint presentation titled “Patrick Did It.” Some even seemed to take pleasure in Patrick Clancy’s torment. As the content creator Alexis Rose said immediately following the CBS broadcast, “The bliss I feel in knowing that Patrick knows that I know.” Each complained that Douthat failed to press Clancy on the various vivid theories that populate the internet, which include the claim that he “hired a body double to go to the CVS for him” while he framed his wife for his kids’ killing.

 

From the casual slandering of the holdout juror to the possibly actionable denigration of a grieving father, the perversions we’ve had to witness have little to do with the facts in evidence. Rather, they seem to be motivated by their theorists’ desire to prove their membership in an exclusive club. They want to believe that they have seen a hidden truth. They want to think that they are so perceptive as to understand that every story has a far more complex, and more satisfyingly dramatic, subplot. “In the case of Patrick Clancy, there is a deep-rooted willfulness to not see things as they are,” our own Eva Terry wrote in an insightful analysis of Clancy’s interview. She’s right. That’s a problem that plagues “true crime” fandom.

 

Not every, or even most, of the defamatory allegations bandied about on your favorite podcast can be remedied in civil courts, but some have been. Earlier this year, an Idaho jury awarded Rebecca Scofield $10 million in damages — more than her lawyers sought — after she proved that “psychic detective” Ashley Guillard’s wildly popular TikToks alleging that Scofield was responsible for a quadruple homicide in 2022 were baseless. The YouTuber Ryan Upchurch was ordered to fork over almost $18 million after he spent weeks harassing the family of missing teen Kiely Rodni, alleging that her relatives were behind it all. It’s gotten to the point where being sued has become a point of pride within the true crime community — perhaps because the industry’s presenters typically couch their claims in language that indemnifies the speaker.

 

Given how common the dramatization of criminal cases has become on this medium, it makes no sense to allege that there’s something special about Lindsay Clancy’s case. Her horrific acts did not inspire so much fan fiction because her actions shine a spotlight on the “harsh realities of motherhood” or because her backers refuse to confront the “horrifying reality” of her alleged crimes. Clancy herself was only a catalyst for the phenomenon that truly jazzes true crime enthusiasts: how these outlets let listeners imagine themselves as a real-life Columbo.

 

According to some psychologists, the true crime genre — which “utilizes techniques from fiction, like dramatic narrative arcs and characterization techniques” to “deliver compelling stories” — is an elaborate coping mechanism. “The true crime stories they listened to validated both past experiences and future fears of gender-based violence,” Psyche contributor Amelia Anthony postulated. It is the refuge to which women who come up in “violent and patriarchal societies” like our own retreat.

 

Anthony cited Yale University professor Jeffrey Alexander’s work on the phenomenon of “cultural trauma” to illustrate her point. Alexander’s contributions are helpful, although perhaps not as Anthony intended. “For traumas to emerge at the level of the collectivity, social crises must become cultural crises,” Alexander wrote. What he calls “collective actors,” and what Max Weber called “carrier groups” — each with their own “ideal and material interests” — use their talents to “represent social pain” as a means of establishing their place in the social pecking order.

 

There is value in the exploration of that “social pain.” Some call it a “psychological rehearsal” for the eventual experience of trauma. But the overexposure to these “carrier groups” has a proven capacity to convince lay observers to overestimate their own personal risk, experience anxiety, and, most observably, succumb to an irrational level of mistrust in individuals and institutions.

 

The Clancy trial and its aftermath have given us a full-spectrum look at what a pathological level of mistrust paired with unearned self-confidence looks like. The business of “true crime” has led its consumers to conclude that there’s always a third act — a twist at the end of the teleplay that provides the audience with a tidy payoff. “But crime cases don’t follow a clean narrative, even though viewers and listeners really want them to,” said one media studies professor.

 

In the end, “true crime” isn’t about the perpetrators, the victims, or even the state’s discrete allegations in this case or the other. It’s about us — the viewer, the listener, the host and guests — all displaying their infinite capacity for cleverness. And if that exhibition produces entirely new victims or revictimizes the already traumatized, well, that’s a small price to pay.

At Turtle Bay, Trump Sinks Under His Own Weight

By Kevin D. Williamson

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

 

Donald Trump, the retired game-show host who serves, incredibly enough, as president of these United States, addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on Tuesday, and, of course, he gave a second-rate rally speech that was daft and superficial and dishonest in all the ways Trump customarily is daft and superficial and dishonest. Dog bites man, if toothlessly.

 

The ladies and gentlemen of the United Nations, for their part, did what they do best, i.e., approximately nothing, although they did apparently undertake several separate inspections of the escalator Trump would use, hoping to avoid repeating last year’s fiasco in which a malfunction had the president fuming about being victimized by “sabotage” at the international body. This time around, the stalled equipment was Trump’s inferior (very) frontal gyrus, specifically the bit known as Broca’s area, which is the part of the brain responsible for accessing vocabulary and evidently experienced a glitch as the president raged against the “mutilization” of children under the influence of radical gender ideology.

 

Trump’s speech was intended for domestic rather than international consumption, and it contained no good news for Republicans—rather the opposite, in fact: Trump reiterated his insistence that he expects an Iranian peace deal and a rapid decline in gasoline and diesel prices after the midterms, which is Trump’s beef-witted way of saying that he expects no such developments before the midterms. Not unrelatedly, he made a point of reminding the room that he is not going to be on the ballot. Allow me to translate that into English from the original Low Chimpanzee: You Republicans are hosed, nothing is going to be done about the one big issue that most irritates the greater part of your voters, and my main concern here is that this could make me look bad, so I’m just going to pretend that it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Trump is getting ready to tell defeated Republicans “I never knew you,” words he himself might expect to hear in the near future in another context.

 

Indeed, much of the speech was given over to Trump’s rehearsing the emotional self-defense litany he will be chanting to himself (and to anyone who will listen) after Republicans get their asses handed to them at the polls and he gets to spend a lot more time answering questions about why it is that a family of supposed billionaires needs a Russian oligarch to pay for Uday’s ghastly wedding: greatest economy ever, strongest country ever, strongest military ever, etc.—an all-American bed of roses until those ungrateful MAGA rube voters Democrats came along and wrecked everything.

 

President Ronald Reagan gave seven addresses to the General Assembly in the closing days of the Cold War, which was in its closing days in no small part because of the efforts Reagan described in his U.N. speeches, which were themselves moral weapons wielded in that war to considerable effect. The first, second, and last of them together form a sort of essay on Reagan’s view of international relations in his time. Many Americans, particularly miseducated young people, will find those speeches enlightening, even shocking: Reagan, caricatured in our time as a warmonger and bigot, is remarkably conciliatory toward the Soviets, denounces South African apartheid and comparable moral blights on the second half of the 20^th century, presses for reduction in both conventional forces and nuclear weapons, quotes Mohandas Gandhi, etc. At the United Nations, Reagan the peacenik is on full display: You know—the man who wanted the United States to share anti-missile technology with the Soviets as a way to make nuclear missiles less strategically valuable.

 

In much the same way that civil rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were at their best and most influential when they indicted the United States for failing to live up to its national creed, Reagan put the United Nations on the spot by celebrating its ideals and idealism and pressing the body and its member states to live up to its own words. In his series of speeches, Reagan reiterates his belief that the two great mandates of the United Nations—the pursuit of international peace and the defense of fundamental human rights—are, in fact, the same mission:

 

If we would have peace, we must acknowledge the elementary rights of our fellow human beings. In our own land and in other lands, if we would have peace, the trampling of the human spirit must cease. Human rights is not for some, some of the time. Human rights, as the universal declaration of this Assembly adopted in 1948 proclaims, is “for all people and all nations,'” and for all time.

 

This regard for human rights as the foundation of peace is at the heart of the U.N. Those who starve in Ethiopia, those who die among the Kurds, those who face racial injustice in South Africa, those who still cannot write or speak freely in the Soviet Union, those who cannot worship in the Ukraine, those who struggle for life and freedom on boats in the South China Sea, those who cannot publish or assemble in Managua—all of this is more than just an agenda item on your calendar. It must be a first concern, an issue above others.

 

Trump, on the other hand ... well:

 

I have a big decision to make.

 

Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?

 

Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East, or even the world.

 

Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?

 

Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?

 

But I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to.

 

They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election.

 

What they don’t realize is that I’m not running.

 

I did that already and won in a landslide.

 

We won in a giant landslide.

 

Trump also reiterated his favorite political slogan: “To the victor belong the spoils,” a slogan introduced into U.S. politics in the early 19^th century as a defense of the patronage and corruption of the “spoils system.” Its antonym is “Drain the swamp,” if anybody remembers that much-abused phrase.

 

Of course, it is embarrassing for Americans to be represented by such a man as Trump: ignorant, rage-addled, smeared in make-up applied with an artistry that falls somewhere between clown and hooker along with an evolving assortment of hair dyes, doddering, bloated. It is tempting to treat a pathetic figure such as Trump the way Trump would treat such a figure. But what afflicts Trump more than whatever causes his ankle swelling is a curse that might be best understood as a form of moral obesity, a suffocating excess of self that has the ironic effect of disfiguring the self—here I mean the moral self and the mind—rather than aggrandizing it and fortifying it. One can overdo the metaphor, but Trump is a man who seems to have suffered the spiritual equivalent of an ischemic stroke when he was about 27 and never to have recovered the full use of his faculties. It is not for nothing that he insists on traveling with the emotional equivalent of a nurse.

 

Perhaps Natalie Harp could be dispatched to represent U.S. interests at Turtle Bay. The United Nations is not what it used to be, and it is a very long way down to Ambassador Mike Waltz from George H. W. Bush, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, George Ball, or Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. It remains a very high platform from which to speak and might prove useful for a man with something to say. But the American president is not that kind of man: He has nothing at all to say, beyond even if he does go on and on and on about it.