When Regimes Must Change

By John R. Bolton

Thursday, February 19, 2026

 

Regime change is somewhat back in favor in Washington, albeit in decidedly Trumpian ways. But what exactly should the phrase mean? When and under what circumstances is it advisable, and how is it best accomplished? Are free elections the only measure of success?

 

Let’s first clear the air of yesterday’s conventional wisdom, before Trump became America’s premier regime-change advocate. Opponents said it never works, citing failed efforts like the ones in Cuba (1961) and Venezuela (2019); or they came at some later (often quite distant) point to find the policy distasteful, as in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Afghanistan (2001), and Iraq (2003). They didn’t mention successes in Germany (1945), Japan (1945), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), or even, depending on your perspective, Afghanistan and Iraq. The Warsaw Pact’s collapse and the Soviet Union’s disintegration are also part of regime-change history, with mixed results.

 

It’s complicated. Regime change is not a philosophy; it’s a means available to achieve American national security objectives and, like any means, subject to cost-benefit analysis about both feasibility and chances of success. It doesn’t always succeed and doesn’t always fail.

 

When a country behaves in ways harmful to American interests, it is essentially axiomatic that we can either seek to change its behavior or, failing that, change its regime. In an overwhelming number of cases, especially with allies, we choose to induce behavioral change. Ironically, with allies, Trump has an urge for regime change, as with Canada and Greenland. He failed in the first case (if he was ever serious about the attempt). His callous ploy to annex Canada mortally wounded Pierre Poilievre’s candidacy for prime minister, dismaying Canadian and U.S. conservatives alike, and allowing Mark Carney, who’d been sworn in after Justin Trudeau resigned, to succeed Trudeau as the country’s elected leader. Trump is also failing in his threat to wrest Greenland from Denmark; Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, whose polling had been heading downward, has gotten a boost. Trump’s error in these instances was to even contemplate regime change when diplomacy would have sufficed (and still can).

 

Normal presidents focus on adversaries whose behavior is anathema to us and whose leaders are ideologically, religiously, or temperamentally impervious to diplomacy, untrustworthy, or just plain stupid. In some cases, as with the Soviet empire, regime change is a decidedly long-term project, while in others (Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran today) contemporary action is eminently possible. These are always issues of feasibility, advisability, and methods (invasion, economic coercion, subversion, etc.) on which reasonable people can disagree.

 

But if prudent political judgment counsels regime change, and the mechanics to achieve it seem realistic, decision-makers still must determine what exactly is the “regime” to be changed. Indeed, although conceptually separate, the extent of the change required is almost always inextricably linked operationally to the antecedent issue of feasibility. In well-planned regime-change efforts, all these questions have been thought through in advance. A good plan does not guarantee success, but it beats winging it.

 

There is no magic formula to decide how to change a regime, or what levels of government need to be changed. As Edmund Burke wrote, “Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.” Unfortunately, regarding today’s unfolding regime-change scenarios, we have a White House in which winging it is a way of life. Whether in Venezuela, Iran, or Cuba, strategic planning is noticeable by its absence.

 

***

 

In Venezuela, regime leader Nicolás Maduro was removed in a brilliantly conceived and executed military operation. But not only does the apparatus founded by his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, remain in power, its new top dog seems to have Trump’s affection. “She’s a terrific person,” said Trump of acting President Delcy Rodríguez, as much a Chavista as anyone in Venezuela. Trump’s rush to make money from Venezuela’s oil and the unfounded hope that future production there will depress near-term U.S. gasoline prices have produced optimism that we can do business with Caracas’s remaining drug-smuggling authoritarians.

 

So delighted with Rodríguez’s “cooperation” was the White House that Venezuela’s Central Bank recently received $300 million in proceeds from sales of Venezuelan oil previously held up by America’s blockade. These funds may not have gone into foreign bank accounts as in days of yore, but the reality is nearly as bad. Rodríguez, her brother Jorge (president of Venezuela’s National Assembly), and the thugs Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, whose power is backed by arms, can now pay salaries to the military, the colectivos (motorcycle gangs used to intimidate civilians), and the civilian bureaucracy of the Chavista state. So doing allows them to bolster their political positions, buy more time for maneuvering to avoid Washington’s “oversight,” and wait for Trump’s short attention span to turn elsewhere.

 

Meanwhile, Trump is disparaging the opposition, which won the 2024 presidential election and which the United States recognizes as the legitimate government. In almost all the skills necessary to run a government, the opposition is fully capable. Starting at least from the failed coup in 2019, both the opposition and Washington did extensive planning for the day after. Venezuela has educated, experienced businesspeople who can run the civilian agencies and negotiate seriously for a brighter oil-sector future.

 

There is no immediate need for presidential elections. Edmundo González, the legitimate president, could be sworn in immediately. This is precisely what happened in 1989 in Panama after the United States overthrew Manuel Noriega. The 1988 presidential election winner, Guillermo Endara, was sworn in almost immediately and commenced governing, including establishing control over Panama’s military and police. While Venezuela’s National Assembly is almost completely illegitimate and corrupted (as is the judiciary) because of Maduro’s repeated efforts to frustrate the popular will, it does not require fixing immediately. When the new government gains its footing, new elections for the assembly would be ensured.

 

Given the successful U.S. capture of Maduro, and the substantial military force assembled near Venezuela, Washington and the opposition could have brought down the entire Chávez-Maduro regime. Indeed, the U.S. military’s stellar tactical performance highlights the utter lack of strategic thinking so necessary for successful regime change. Most of the force remains in place and can still act, although time is likely on the side of Maduro’s remaining subordinates. Administration officials have claimed that the opposition could not have brought the military (and implicitly the colectivos) sufficiently under control to keep order. This view is wrong in multiple respects. It certainly is not the opposition’s view, and was not their view in 2019.

 

Trump cited Iraq as an example of regime change that went too far, particularly in disbanding the army, and de-Baathification more broadly. At least in hindsight, few now dispute that too much of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi state was dismantled, but it is hardly a sensible reaction to conclude that only the topmost leader needs removing. One can debate the correct level at which Maduro’s regime needs to be politically decapitated, but it is plainly more than just Maduro alone. We can leave the precise judgment largely in the hands of those most knowledgeable, namely the opposition. Certainly the cabinet and high-ranking officials must go, including roughly 2,000 flag-rank military officers who are living off the state oil company and drug money.

 

The military is the main bone of contention. Trump says the opposition would lose control of the military and risk civil war, but this assessment of the military is simply incorrect. The opposition believes that enlisted personnel and many officers are substantially sympathetic to their cause. The rank and file know both who is corrupt and that their families and friends must endure the desperate straits of Venezuela’s economy. The opposition can exploit weak links in the chain of command and determine who would come to their side, assuming of course that Washington would bother to coordinate strategically with them. Certainly, after nearly 30 years of authoritarian rule, there can be no assurances of avoiding bloodshed and the settling of scores. But the risk is worth taking. The opposition thought so in 2019 and believes that again today. They may be wrong, and if they are, they will bear the brunt of the regime’s undoubtedly brutal reprisals. I would bet on the opposition, not the spotty intelligence and second-guessers in Washington.

 

Regime-change failure could also occur in Cuba, with one major difference. The large (numbering 2.5 million or more) Cuban-American community has been thinking about a post-Castro regime since the first refugees began arriving in America after the fall of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. All of these efforts at advance planning for the day after, considered and debated at length, enhance the prospects for rapid progress once the current regime collapses. Moreover, Cuba’s long-emphasized proximity to Florida (“just 90 miles away,” we said worriedly during the Cold War) means an extraordinary opportunity for interaction with island residents, which would be immediate and inevitable. Millions of tourists (count me in) would want to visit Havana and help the domestic economy. Especially with Secretary of State Marco Rubio doing overwatch, not even the current administration can botch regime change in Cuba.

 

***

 

Iran’s ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the real center of power, present the big test. When demonstrations recently erupted, Trump urged the people, “keep protesting  —  take over your institutions!!! . . . help is on its way. miga!!!” He added later, “It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran.” I only wish I and others had brought Trump to this point in his first term, but better late than never — if he really means it. The regime’s brutality needs no further proof, especially given its long-standing efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and its role as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The massacres in January of tens of thousands of demonstrating civilians underscore the point. A regime prepared to treat its own countrymen so inhumanely has no inhibitions about incinerating either the Little Satan (Israel) or the Great Satan (America) with nuclear weapons, or committing further barbarities against foreign civilians, directly or through surrogates like Hamas and Hezbollah.

 

The ayatollahs and the IRGC will not go quietly or bloodlessly even in the best circumstances. Nonetheless, the regime has not been this weak since it seized power in 1979. Economic despair, discontent among the youth, women’s rejection of the ayatollahs’ claims to speak God’s will, and intensifying ethnic tensions are all at work. This is the moment for Washington to work with the opposition and for Trump to vindicate the red line he drew by telling Tehran to stop the killing. Striking key instruments of state power like air defenses, IRGC headquarters and bases, the Basij militia (Iran’s version of the colectivos), the nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and naval assets in the Gulf would reduce both the regime’s capacity for domestic repression and its threats externally.

 

Iran presents a case in which it is nearly inconceivable that a successor regime could be worse than the incumbent. Today, the IRGC wields power, economically as well as militarily, with the ayatollahs providing religious and ideological camouflage. Whether now, or when the ailing 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dies, the opposition must try to split off defectors within the IRGC leadership and that of the conventional military, and even some of the ayatollahs, to join their side. Amnesty should be given to those who do. As in Venezuela, rank-and-file personnel see clearly the economic devastation the regime has wrought, including desperately low water supplies countrywide.

 

Iran’s near-term successor regime would likely be some form of military government, hopefully one that recognizes its main job as preparing for Iran’s people to choose how to be governed, and for the regular military then to return to its barracks. The IRGC and Basij must be disbanded and the ayatollahs confined to their religious duties. Diaspora Iranians have many competing day-after plans, but diverting their attention now to considering the future leadership is a mistake: it’s the surest way to splinter even further an opposition already sharply divided, as with many exile populations, into factions competing to govern Iran once the ayatollahs fall. American help can provide the opposition with resources like communications capabilities, dollars, and, if they want them, weapons. There need be no U.S. boots on the ground. This is the time for Washington to act, although whether the White House has thought through assistance packages is anyone’s guess.

 

Regime change is not necessarily quick and easy, but neither is it impossible nor always doomed to failure. I do not know whether Trump has seriously considered any of this. Presumably someone in his administration is doing so, untouched, we can hope, by the misconception that there is no American interest in seeing friendly regimes around the world.

Hamas Debunks the ‘Genocide’ Narrative

By Seth Mandel

Thursday, February 19, 2026

 

Hamas has wrapped up its latest revision of casualty data in the Gaza war, and it makes clear why Israel’s critics have been flailing since the end of the war.

 

The list has enough information to cite 68,800 deaths. Hamas has lost 25,000 fighters, which leaves 44,000 war deaths to account for. Included in that 44,000 are about 10,000 natural deaths. The remaining 34,000 would include civilians killed by Israel and those killed by Hamas and associated militant groups—either by execution, rocket misfires, turf wars, and the like. 

 

The result is that even when using Hamas’s numbers, Israel’s civilian-to-combatant death rate is close to 1:1, an unheard-of accomplishment in an urban war setting, let alone one in which much of the territory has been turned into Hamas human shields. Given that Hamas started the war, refused to surrender, and fired at Israel from civilian homes, the terrible tragedy of Gazan lives lost is laid at Hamas’s feet.

 

It feels pretty silly at this point to even consider the “genocide” accusation, but this is another opportunity to note that Hamas goaded its defenders out on that limb and then personally cut it off under their feet. While plenty of bad-faith actors have been accusing Israel of genocide since the war started, and are therefore immune to facts, I’m sure there are a number of decent folks who fell into the “genocide” trap because they followed a trend in the name of “human rights.” I do not envy the humiliation they are experiencing now, but neither do I find such people particularly sympathetic. They ought to feel bad about what they’ve said and done, and I hope they do.

 

The reason people were willing to believe it is twofold. First, it is the quintessential example of the Big Lie. Hitler’s belief was that the bigness of the lie not only lends it credibility but serves as an emotional, rather than rational, appeal. As we watch Israeli companies flood Gaza with sweets and drinks for Ramadan, we cannot maintain any rational, conscious interpretation other than Israel won a defensive war while protecting civilians to an extent never seen before. But those who shape their beliefs based on subconscious appeals to emotion? Who knows what contradictions they can maintain.

 

The other reason is, yes, anti-Semitism. The public’s willingness to believe the worst about Jews is not new, and it’s not an accident. Those who have participated in the “genocide” Big Lie have not made an honest mistake. A mistake, perhaps—but not an honest one. 

 

For anyone who wants to put up guardrails for the next time Hamasniks try to snare them in a massive hoax, the most important detail in the new report is the demographics chart. Women’s share of deaths is largely consistent with their share of the total population, even below that for younger age groups. Military-aged men, however, are a far larger share of fatalities than their share of the population. 

 

Which means another key part of the anti-Israel narrative is definitive nonsense. That is the focus by Israel’s critics on “women and children,” the narrative that claims the Jews are “baby killers.” When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she opposes Israel because “I care about little kids dying”; when Rashida Tlaib reads into the congressional record what she says are the names of “babies that the Israeli government has murdered”; when Elizabeth Warren tells a town hall audience that Israel is committing genocide and to “look at the children”; we are being fed the baby-killer trope from elected politicians.

 

It’s a lie, and a malignant one. Once again, Hamas’s own numbers obliterate the lies that Western anti-Zionists cling to out of a misplaced sense of pride. Indeed, one rarely encounters people with less to be proud of.

Media’s Belated Truth-Telling on Gaza

By Seth Mandel

Friday, February 20, 2026

 

From the Now It Can Be Told files come a couple more revelations about Gaza worthy of attention.

 

The BBC reports what has been true for over two years: Hamas is bleeding Gazans dry while violently cracking down on, as one Gazan described it, “people with opinions.”

 

The BBC has recently been embroiled in numerous ethics scandals around its reporting on the conflict. This report is an indication of what it might have looked like had the Beeb reported honestly and ethically for a single day during the war.

 

“At markets across Gaza,” BBC reports, “stallholders describe regular police patrols—and a renewed iron grip on official fees and taxes.” The market sellers can’t really afford what Hamas is demanding. “Should I pay them, or feed my children?” one asks.

 

As the piece explains, “food and some other basic goods are flowing into Gaza more freely. The few key traders with a license to bring them in from Israel say Hamas have reimposed strict control over taxing the imports. One trader, who agreed to share details anonymously, told us force was used against those who refused to pay.”

 

Same old story—Israel is letting in goods and food, and Hamas is taking it out of the mouths and pocketbooks of Gazan civilians and disappearing those who put up any resistance. The preceding sentence has never not been true since Hamas took control of the enclave close to two decades ago. If you want Gazans to be able to eat and earn a livelihood, you’ve got to remove Hamas. Because its policies are the same whether it’s peacetime or wartime: there is no such thing, in fact, as peacetime Hamas.

 

Interestingly, one trader told the BBC “that traders used a code-word for Hamas when discussing tax payments, so that Israel wouldn’t learn that money was being siphoned off to the group.”

 

Even Hamas’s victims have been helping the terror group cover up its crimes. What that means is simple: Hamas has, all along, been siphoning off a much larger share of goods and food and money than anyone claimed. If anything, the Israelis understated the extent of the problem.

 

In fact, it’s going to be difficult for anyone on the outside to get the full picture: “Hamas now has a database of all the traders who import goods into the Gaza Strip,” activist Mohammed Diab told the Beeb. “The trader pays in cash, not through bank transfers, so that the flow of funds cannot be traced. It is gradually restoring the system that was in place in the past, but away from the spotlight so it can’t be monitored.”

 

The longer it takes to disarm Hamas, the longer Palestinians will be immiserated and oppressed. It’s really that simple. And there’s nothing Israel can do to change that unless the world asks it to go in and disarm Hamas itself.

 

Then there was the announcement over the weekend by Doctors Without Borders that it would be suspending most of its operations at Nasser hospital in Gaza. Why? Because—I hope you’re sitting down for this—Hamas has been operating in the hospital, undermining medical work in the complex while endangering every doctor and patient.

 

The organization said that its “teams have reported a pattern of unacceptable acts including the presence of armed men, intimidation, arbitrary arrests of patients and a recent situation of suspicion of movement of weapons.”

 

Hamas has been operating out of hospitals since the beginning of the war, because such buildings not only offer more security but also a place to bring hostages—sometimes to execute them. Hamas has also been caught building tunnels underneath the hospital complexes. This is one of those subjects on which the anti-Israel media/NGO complex does Palestinians another great disservice by covering up the truth and thus enabling the hospitals to be used for war crimes by Hamas.

 

Nasser hospital did not deny the presence of armed men. It just claimed they were there for everyone’s protection. Again, at this point, there is no one still disputing Israel’s proven claims about Hamas terrorists operating out of Palestinian hospitals.

 

It is sobering to think of how many Palestinian and Israeli lives might have been saved had the media and NGOs told the truth earlier. Perhaps they’re considering, for the first time, choosing the welfare of Gazan civilians over Hamas.

How the Supreme Court Spared America

By Ilya Somin

Saturday, February 21, 2026

 

In a 6–3 decision yesterday, the Supreme Court rightly ruled that, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, the president does not have the power to “impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.” The ruling is a major victory for the constitutional separation of powers, rule of law, and millions of American consumers and businesses harmed by these tariffs.

 

This decision spared America from a dangerous, unconstitutional path. Under President Trump’s interpretation of the law, the president would have had nearly unlimited tariff authority, similar to that of an absolute monarch. That undermines basic constitutional principles. The Framers of the Constitution had sought to ensure that the president would not be able to repeat the abuses of English kings, who imposed taxes without legislative authorization.

 

The three cases decided yesterday (one of which I helped litigate as co-counsel for small businesses challenging the tariffs) all grew out of Trump’s April 2025 “Liberation Day” executive order that imposed 10 percent tariffs—supposedly justified by trade deficits—on almost every nation in the world, plus massive additional “reciprocal” tariffs against dozens, using authority the president claimed Congress had given him in IEEPA. The so-called “reciprocal” tariffs even targeted nations that impose no tariffs on U.S. imports, such as Israel and Switzerland. Trump also used IEEPA to impose massive 25 percent tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China, ostensibly imposed in response to fentanyl inflows from those countries. (These tariffs were challenged in a case filed by 12 states, though not in ours.)

 

Trump’s position had multiple flaws. IEEPA does not even mention tariffs, nor any synonyms such as duties and imposts. The law does authorize the president to “regulate” certain types of international transactions in the event of an “emergency” that amounts to an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States. But the tariff authority and the power to “regulate” foreign commerce are listed in separate clauses of the Constitution. And, as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his opinion for the Court, the tariff authority is part of the power to tax, an authority the Framers of the Constitution carefully reserved to Congress because they had “just fought a revolution motivated in large part by ‘taxation without representation.’” Furthermore, during the previous nearly 50-year history of IEEPA, Roberts continued, “no President has invoked the statute to impose any tariffs—let alone tariffs of this magnitude and scope.”

 

Rogé Karma: Get ready for zombie tariffs

 

Tariffs can, of course, be used for “regulatory” purposes. The dissenting opinion joined by three of the Court’s conservative justices—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh—makes much of this point. But that does not mean they are themselves regulations. As Roberts emphasizes, “the U. S. Code is replete with statutes granting the Executive the authority to ‘regulate’ someone or something.” But that does not mean all such laws also delegate the power to tax. “Taxes, to be sure, may accomplish regulatory ends,” Roberts recognizes. “But it does not follow that the power to regulate something includes the power to tax it as a means of regulation.”

 

Three of the justices in the majority—Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett—also concluded that the Trump administration’s interpretation of IEEPA goes against what has become known as the “major questions” doctrine, which requires Congress to “speak clearly” when authorizing the executive to make “decisions of vast economic and political significance.” Since 2021, the Supreme Court has used the doctrine to strike down several presidential initiatives, such as President Biden’s $430 billion student-loan-forgiveness policy and a COVID-era moratorium on evictions. As Roberts noted, the doctrine applies with particular force “where, as here, the purported delegation involves the core congressional power of the purse.” And, as he also points out, “the economic and political consequences of the IEEPA tariffs are astonishing,” to the point where they “dwarf those of other major questions cases.” Even the massive Biden loan-forgiveness plan seems small by comparison.

 

Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett rejected the argument that the doctrine does not apply because tariffs are a “foreign affairs” power. First and foremost, tariffs impose taxes that are paid by Americans, and thus they are not purely a matter of foreign policy. As Gorsuch pointed out in a concurring opinion, many claimed delegations of congressional power—including the powers to impose taxes and spend money, and Biden’s attempts to use emergency powers to combat the coronavirus pandemic—have an effect on foreign policy. But it does not follow that they all fall into some sweeping “foreign affairs” exception to major questions.

 

The three liberal justices—Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—did not rule on the major-questions issue, because, as Kagan noted in a concurring opinion, they believe that “ordinary tools of statutory interpretation” are enough to invalidate the IEEPA tariffs. Like Roberts, they found that the sweeping nature of the power claimed by Trump helps doom his position. As Kagan puts it, “What Congress has never done in a tariff provision is what the Government claims it did here—conferred power on the President to impose a tariff of any amount, for any time, on only his own say-so.”

 

Underpinning the major-questions issue is that of “nondelegation”: constitutional constraints on the extent to which Congress can delegate legislative authority to the executive. The Court did not address this issue, because it did not need to in order to resolve the case. But Gorsuch, in his concurring opinion, made a strong argument that the president’s claim to almost unlimited tariff authority would violate nondelegation. If there are any meaningful limits to delegation at all, a grant of unconstrained power to impose tariffs would violate them.

 

The three dissenting justices, in different ways, argue for a sweeping exemption for tariffs from both the major-questions doctrine and nondelegation. Thomas’s solo dissent is particularly expansive, arguing that nondelegation only really applies to “rules setting the conditions for deprivations of life, liberty, or property.” Such a position would run roughshod over the text and original meaning of the Constitution, and create a dangerous form of near-monarchical presidential power.

 

***

 

In addition to upholding the separation of powers, the decision is a victory for the rule of law, which requires that major legal rules be clearly established by legislation, not subject to the whims of one person. Since first imposing the Liberation Day tariffs, Trump has repeatedly suspended and reimposed various elements of them. He has also imposed or threatened to impose IEEPA tariffs for a variety of other purposes, such as countering the supposed threat of foreign-made movies, punishing Brazil for prosecuting its former president for attempting to launch a coup to stay in power after losing an election, and most recently castigating eight European nations opposed to his plan to seize Greenland. Such gyrations undermine the stable legal environment essential for businesses, consumers, and investors, and create endless opportunities to reward cronies and punish political adversaries. Studies show that firms contributing to the Republican Party were disproportionately likely to receive exemptions from tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term, while firms contributing to Democrats were more likely to have to pay. If allowed to stand, the IEEPA tariffs would have created much greater opportunities for such corruption.

 

The more direct consequences of letting the tariffs stand would have been devastating, too. The Tax Foundation estimates that these tariffs would have added an average of some $1,000 a year in taxes per household (the biggest tax increase in decades), reduced GDP by about 0.4 percent a year, diminished real wages, and imposed additional harm in the form of higher prices throughout the economy. Both a recent Kiel Institute for the World Economy study and one conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York find that 90 percent or more of the cost of the tariffs would have been borne by American businesses and consumers, not foreign producers. Multiple other studies reach similar conclusions. The taxes are regressive and would disproportionately harm the poor and lower-middle class, because these groups spend a higher percentage of their income on goods subject to tariffs. The actual effects might have been even larger than economists’ estimates, as the estimates do not fully consider the effects of retaliation by trading partners and reduction in consumer choice. In combination, it was the biggest tax increase in decades, and would have led to the biggest trade war since the notorious Smoot-Hawley tariff, which gravely deepened the Great Depression.

 

David Frum: The Supreme Court delivers Trump a humiliating gift

 

Some of the damage has already been incurred: U.S. businesses had paid more than $133.5 billion toward these illegal tariffs as of mid-December. They may face a difficult process for reclaiming their funds. But the Trump administration promised to repay them in lower-court filings, and failing to do so now would in itself be a serious violation of the law.

 

The administration may try to reimpose many of the tariffs using other statutes, such as Section 232 and Section 301. But those laws have various constraints that would make it hard for the president to simply impose unlimited tariffs, as he could have done under his interpretation of IEEPA. As Chief Justice Roberts noted in his opinion yesterday, “When Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms, and subject to strict limits,” and these others statutes all have limitations on the amount and duration of the tariffs they authorize, plus “demanding procedural prerequisites.” If Trump or a future president does claim that those other statutes give him unlimited power, tariffs imposed based on any such theory would themselves be subject to legal challenges. Yesterday’s decision signals that a majority of the Court is seriously skeptical of claims of sweeping executive tariff authority.

 

Following the release of the Court’s decision, Trump announced his intention to use Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose 10 percent global tariffs. But Section 122 authorizes tariffs only in response to “fundamental international payments problems” that cause “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits” (which are not the same as trade deficits used to justify the IEEPA Liberation Day tariffs), or “an imminent or significant depreciation of the dollar,” or if they are needed to cooperate with other countries in addressing an “international balance-of-payments disequilibrium.” And Section 122 tariffs can remain in force for only up to 150 days, unless extended by Congress.

 

The president is not a king, and is not entitled to practically unlimited power to impose tariffs. The Supreme Court was right to deny it to him.

The Hypocrisy of Jon Meacham

By Becket Adams

Sunday, February 22, 2026

 

Of all the traits shared by President Donald Trump’s harshest critics, none is more amusing than their inability to see the ways in which they mirror his worst qualities.

 

Take, for example, Jon Meacham, a cable television groupie who aspires to become one of the great historians of our era.

 

You might know him best as the Morning Joe favorite who convinced Joe Biden, the patron saint of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, that he was the second coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. You might also recognize Meacham as the guy who went around cable news in 2020 praising Biden’s campaign speeches, only for it to be revealed later that Meacham himself had helped write them. You might also know Meacham for his demagoguery, including his frequent suggestion that Trump’s supporters are 21st-century Klansmen.

 

Cable and broadcast news programs know Meacham for this latter quality. That’s why they love him. With his affection for presidential trivia, his penchant for comparing the Trump era to the American Civil War, and his willingness to slander conservatives and Republicans, he has got steady work on air as long as Trump exerts influence over the GOP.

 

So, true to form, while appearing recently on CBS News to hawk his latest book, America’s favorite TV historian claimed that the country is now at its greatest turning point since — you guessed it — the Civil War.

 

Why? You already know the answer: Donald Trump.

 

Asked what he means when he says the United States is in a moment of “moral crisis,” Meacham responded, “If we don’t recognize each other of equal dignity, if we don’t see each other as those who stand equally before God and the law, then the covenant that is America falls apart.”

 

He added, “If I’m able to think of you as lesser than, then I don’t have to accord you the full protections of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”

 

These are some nice sentiments. Someone ought to repeat them back to Meacham, who is not above the kind of rhetoric he criticizes.

 

After all, Meacham has described the Trump presidency, especially its handling of Covid-19, as a “reign of terror,” adding that Republican voters support someone who is dumber than a dog. He has also called “Trumpism” the result of the “anguished, nervous white guy’s lizard brain,” and compared it to Southern segregation and even the Klan.

 

“Trumpism is not new,” Meacham said in 2018, adding that “America [is being] held hostage.”

 

He added, “Trumpism is an iteration of a theme of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, all the way back. . . . The forces the president embodies — and the forces that he marshaled and managed to become president — are perennial ones. The American spirit isn’t just about Martin Luther King Jr.— it’s also about the Klan. And the battle is between those two.”

 

In 2022, he argued that voting Democratic in the midterms was like supporting Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, the obvious implication being that voting for the GOP was comparable to backing the Confederacy.

 

He also said the 2022 midterm elections were the “most important” since the American Civil War.

 

More recently, before Trump’s second inauguration, Meacham accused Republican voters of being “out of compliance” with the Declaration of Independence because, uh, they didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. Earlier, he criticized the Republican Party as a whole, claiming “[it doesn’t] actually want to unite behind the pursuit of that more perfect union with the Declaration of Independence at the core.”

 

There’s much more where this comes from; you can read more here.

 

During his appearance on CBS last week, Meacham’s appeal to our better angels persisted, with him warning, of course, that there’s an “authoritarian galloping at the highest level.”

 

“This is arguably the most important hour for citizenship since 1850,” he said.

 

But what about the young people? asked Meacham’s hosts. How can they grasp this moment within its historical context? Meacham admitted that, unlike himself, young people haven’t grown up adjacent to great moments in American history. Instead, they’ve known only administrative malfeasance, which is — of course — purely a Republican phenomenon.

 

“If you were born in the 21st century, the public sector has not covered itself in glory, right? September 11, weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “Iraq, Great Recession, Covid, President Trump, January 6, and school shootings and school shooting drills.”

 

One can’t help but notice significant gaps in this brief history of 21st-century public-sector misconduct (also, September 11 as an example of misconduct?). Are we to ignore the consecutive Obama presidencies and the disastrous, single-term Biden presidency, for which Meacham is partly responsible? Are we to overlook Democratic misdeeds, including how former President Bill Clinton’s interference with the Community Reinvestment Act contributed directly to the mortgage meltdown? Are we to ignore that Obama appointed key figures in the financial collapse to plum government positions? Are we to ignore that he droned U.S. citizens? Are we to ignore the fatal catastrophe that was Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, a domestic and international disgrace from which his presidency never recovered?

 

Apparently!

 

Don’t interpret any of this as a defense of Trump. He’s clearly a loudmouth who is often guilty of the things people say about him. He is vindictive, caustic, and graceless. Meacham is often correct when he highlights Trump’s worst traits. That said, and to Meacham’s main point, building a country where everyone is treated with some basic level of respect is a two-way street.

 

Meacham should take Meacham’s advice. It would be nice if the president’s critics were the change they want to see. It would’ve been nicer still had Meacham listened to himself when he had the ear of a notoriously inept president — you know, the one who compared voter ID legislation to Jim Crow laws.

 

Or is it, as Meacham suggested during his recent CBS appearance, that executive misconduct is simply not a thing when Democrats are in power?

No Kings

By Nick Catoggio

Friday, February 20, 2026

 

Yesterday an honest-to-goodness prince (yes, fine, technically a former prince) was taken into custody in the United Kingdom. Hours later in the United States, an enormous image of the president was installed on the facade of the Justice Department.

 

See now why I’ve felt so jealous lately of how Europeans conduct business? I prefer a monarchy in name but not in substance to a monarchy in substance but not in name.

 

That said, I also prefer the DOJ’s new look to its old one. Hanging Donald Trump’s photo on the nerve center of federal law enforcement is a disgusting, disgraceful fascist flourish, an official admission that the department now belongs to the president’s cult of personality. But it’s also an admirable case of truth in advertising.

 

The Trump Justice Department prioritizes the president’s political and personal interests over the rule of law. The least it can do under those circumstances is to drop any pretenses to the contrary, and now it has. With any luck, the few respectable prosecutors who still work there will take this as their cue to head for the lifeboats, leaving Trump and Pam Bondi with only bush-league legal talent to work through their political hit list.

 

Besides, the new banner doubles as a sly, if unintentional, joke. For the past year critics like me have complained about the president being above the law. Now, with his image looming high in the air over placards welcoming visitors to the Department of Justice, he literally is.

 

Literally—but, as of 10 a.m. ET on Friday, not figuratively.

 

The thing to remember about the Trump tariffs that the Supreme Court finally nuked this morning is that the president had a menu of statutes to choose from when he launched his trade policy. I won’t bore you by reciting the differences between them—you’ll find that here—except to say that, predictably, he claimed authority under the one that imposed the fewest restraints on his power.

 

The other statutes were all limited in certain ways, confined to particular industries or specific time periods, or larded up with onerous demands for investigations and explanations by the White House as to why a particular levy might be justified. So Trump opted to base his claim to authority on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), a sanctions law with no restrictions that doesn’t so much as mention the word “tariffs.”

 

He liked that one for the same reason all authoritarians like emergency powers: because it gave him a completely free hand legally. Then he set about doing everything he could to undermine his own argument that there was any actual emergency afoot. He threatened tariffs on countries for no better reason than that they prosecuted his cronies or resisted his bullying or took the wrong tone with him in phone calls. Nor did he spare nations with which America has a trade surplus, even though the “emergency” he cited in claiming vast tariff powers was our persistent trade deficit.

 

A deficit that’s somehow grown to the largest in American history after a year of Trump’s global trade war, by the way.

 

He aims to govern as a king. Apart from the pardon power, no authority he’s wielded as president allowed him to live that fantasy as vividly as his authority under IEEPA did. He exploited the economic power of the world’s wealthiest nation and the cowardice of its legislative branch to punish his enemies and reward his courtiers, forcing every government on earth and every major industry in the United States to seek his favor.

 

No kings, the Supreme Court decided this morning, a welcome change of pace for that body when it comes to Trump.

 

And an extremely lucky break for the president’s party, in theory: By killing off a White House policy that most of the public disliked and that had saddled the GOP with blame for Joe Biden’s economy, the court just made election-year politics easier for Republicans. No wonder John Thune and Mike Johnson sound distinctly non-outraged by the ruling.

 

Will things really be easier for their party, though?

 

Fight on the right.

 

In one way, sure. From now until November, the right can and will blame any bad economic news on the tariff ruling, as stupid as that may be.

 

If only the president had remained free to wreak havoc on global trade, upending the carefully laid plans of businesses and nations without warning because he was in a bad mood that day, GDP would be growing by 5 percent. Trump will doubtless insist that the end of his IEEPA authority means a new economic dark age, even though we’re now momentarily back to the Biden-era trade policies of 13 months ago—a period most Americans remember comparatively fondly.

 

Even so, there are suckers who will buy it. That’s good for Republicans.

 

On the other hand, Democrats are destined to argue that any good economic news between now and November should be credited to the court’s decision, not to Trump. If Americans don’t hand control of the House and Senate to us, Republicans will pass a law granting the president the tariff superpowers that SCOTUS took from him. That’s not a bad electoral pitch either.

 

The larger problem with believing that today’s decision is good for the GOP, though, is that it assumes the White House will acquiesce to it and take the proverbial W that the party has been handed. It will not.

 

There’s zero reason to think Trump will relent on his kingly tariff ambitions and let free trade lift the economy. He announced as I was writing this, in fact, that he’ll reinstitute his tariffs under some of the other laws on the menu I mentioned earlier. (His deputies had been planning for it.) There’s enough on the statutory books for him to “essentially recreate the IEEPA predicament” of setting trade policy by whim, per the Cato Institute’s Clark Packard, which means the judicial reprieve from voter anger over tariffs that the GOP just received is essentially over before it’s begun.

 

Which could make that anger more bitter. Bad enough that the president rewarded Americans’ pleas for relief from the cost of living last year with a trade war guaranteed to raise prices further. But to do it again, after the court told him no?

 

Is he trying to make life more expensive for them? (Spoiler: Yes.)

 

Congressional Republicans will be forced to explain that to swing voters. And then they’ll be forced to explain to their own base why they haven’t moved to pass a law that would restore the royal authority over trade that Trump had claimed under IEEPA until this morning.

 

There’s nothing in the court’s decision that would prevent them from doing so. (I think.) “When Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms, and subject to strict limits,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of himself and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch in today’s opinion, explaining why tariffs under IEEPA didn’t cut the legal mustard. How “strict” those limits might need to be to pass constitutional muster is an interesting legal question, but Congress could presumably enact some new quasi-monarchical form of trade authority that at least goes considerably beyond what’s currently available.

 

All Republicans need to do is kill the Senate filibuster. Then they could pass new trade legislation (and the SAVE Act!) with simple majorities. Right-wingers furious at the court’s ruling will demand that they do so. So will the president, browbeating congressional Republicans to choose between doing what he wants and, er, what most American voters want. In an election year.

 

Imagine how disappointed he and MAGA will be when they realize Senate Republicans won’t do it. Between centrist maverick Lisa Murkowski, libertarian Rand Paul, ol’ free-trader Mitch McConnell, and the most vulnerable Republican on the ballot this fall, blue-stater Susan Collins, the votes assuredly aren’t there to hand Trump vast new trade powers—let alone to end the filibuster to make it possible. The monarchist right and its king are destined to end up at the throats of Senate Republicans and Majority Leader Thune, demanding to know what the point is of controlling Congress if the GOP won’t fight fight fight with maximum ruthlessness.

 

“There’s no reason to vote for our party” seems like a bad midterm message. And if populist anger ends up scaring Republican candidates into pledging, if elected, to smash the filibuster and hand Trump the rootin’-est, tootin’-est tariff powers they can conjure, that seems like a pretty bad development for the GOP as well.

 

Retribution.

 

The other political problem looming for Republicans is the likelihood that the president and his base will plumb some new depth of demagoguery in protesting the court’s decision.

 

It’s hard to predict what that will look like but Trump has spent many months priming the pump. At various times, he’s claimed that an adverse ruling would trigger a new Great Depression, threaten national security, and—actual quote—“literally destroy the United States.” (Again, he’s talking about reverting to the trade status quo circa January 2025.) The last time he whipped up feral rubes this relentlessly, they ended up smashing windows at the Capitol and trying to hang his vice president.

 

Roberts, Gorsuch, and especially Barrett, all of whom joined today’s ruling, are doubtless being swamped with death threats already this evening. If the president and his fans had had an inkling that the tariff ruling would be issued today, there’s no reason to doubt that a “rally” would have been held outside the court to try to intimidate the justices with the possibility of a new January 6 if things didn’t go Trump’s way.

 

Fascist movement, fascist tactics. It’s to the credit of the six justices in the majority and their institution that they didn’t cower like so many others have, knowing what they were in for by refusing.

 

How sinisterly might Trump and his movement behave in response to their decision? And how will the wider public react if and when they do?

 

Not much more sinisterly, perhaps. Because Trump has other statutes at the ready to revive parts of his trade authority, he might content himself with a few days of “mean tweets” lazily accusing Gorsuch and Barrett of treason. Making bad-faith allegations of corruption against public servants who dispute the White House’s nonsense view of tariffs is de rigueur for this administration, after all.

 

If we’re lucky, we’ll get out of this with nothing worse happening than the most powerful man in the world casually alleging that America’s high court is somehow on the take from “foreign interests” and/or that the Federalist Society is some sort of criminal conspiracy. A pretty mild result for our rotten, embarrassing country in 2026!

 

That’s the optimistic take, though, and you know how I feel about optimism.

 

If Trump’s new tariffs hit a roadblock in the lower federal courts inspired by today’s decision, that’s when we might see him come unmoored. He hasn’t yet squarely challenged the judiciary’s power to constrain presidential authority but it would be strange if he didn’t end up doing so before the end of his term, as the glorious postliberal project to make America a third-world country demands nothing less. The judiciary snatching away his royal tariff scepter a second time is the sort of thing that could plausibly force the confrontation.

 

When the vice president is accusing the Supreme Court of “lawlessness,” you know we’re on track.

 

We might also see a half-hearted right-wing push for court-packing. That’s destined to fare more poorly in the Senate than even new tariff legislation would, given how eagerly Democrats would capitalize on the precedent once they return to power. But Trump will probably give it a go, unable to comprehend Gorsuch’s and Barrett’s votes today as anything other than an act of malevolent personal betrayal. He was hoodwinked by conservatives into appointing disloyal justices, he’ll declare, another “hoax” perpetrated on him by the uniparty. Only by creating two do-over appointments for him can congressional Republicans make things right.

 

If you liked Attorney General Pam Bondi, you’re going to love Justice Pam Bondi.

 

Were I a betting man, though, I’d bet the president’s preferred form of “retribution” against the court will be to have his DOJ start sniffing around the justices’ finances—or their mortgages, maybe, a Trump-goon specialty. It’d be an outrageous abuse of power but not wildly more outrageous than when his administration did the same to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Fed governor Lisa Cook. There’s no downside: Either the fishing expedition reveals an impropriety, forcing the justice to resign and handing Trump a vacancy to fill, or it turns up nothing but raises the price to the justices of future acts of “disloyalty.”

 

Fascist movement, fascist tactics. In fact, when he was asked this afternoon at a press conference whether he’ll investigate the court to see if it’s under the sway of “foreign influence,” the president didn’t say no. The man plastered his face on the farking Justice Department; he won’t be shy about giving it a corrupt new errand to run.

 

How do we think voters will feel when he does?

 

I don’t go to bat much anymore for the decency of Americans but a few facts are undeniable. They don’t like his tariffs, they don’t like him, they don’t like the thought of him confronting the judiciary, and, as with immigration enforcement, they don’t like overbearing authoritarian tactics even when they broadly agree with the underlying policy objective. A majority of the public will support today’s ruling, I’d bet, and so a majority of the public will be primed to resent it when he seeks some sleazy form of revenge on the court—particularly with alarm about his imperious autocratic ambitions growing.

 

That’s one of the best things about today’s ruling, I think. Not only was it right to hold that the president is no king, it arrived at a moment post-Minneapolis when fewer Americans are giving Trump the benefit of the doubt about his good intentions.

 

A monarchy in substance but not in name or a democracy in which the president’s power is subject to constitutional limits: That’s the choice that a confrontation between Trump and the court will present to Americans. At this point, with the White House having squandered so much goodwill over the past year, I like the odds that they’ll choose correctly.

‘Yellowstone’ on the Potomac

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, February 20, 2026

 

I just finished recording the solo Remnant, and when I emerged from my cave, I saw the news about the tariff ruling. I haven’t had time to read much about it, and I wouldn’t write about it before listening to the Advisory Opinions “emergency podcast” on it, which has not dropped at the time of this writing. But I am very glad for the ruling, though not a little dismayed that it wasn’t unanimous. Also, by the time this comes out we might be at war with Iran. (Alas, there will be many, many G-Files—perhaps thousands—before Congress rediscovers its role in declaring war). So I’m just gonna clear out my mental junk drawer.

 

Let’s start with the news that the guy formerly known as Prince Andrew was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office (he’s had the title revoked, if you missed the point). Those suspicions were raised by the Epstein files. I’m not a big royal watcher, and I really don’t want to write about Epstein. But this is a big deal. The last time a member of the royal family was arrested was more than 400 years ago, and that ended with Charles I’s head being separated from his body, and the monarchy—the “head” of England—being separated from the country. It was a big moment for parliamentary supremacy. Of course, the monarchy was eventually restored—after the brief rule of Oliver Cromwell—but the monarchy was forevermore restrained within a constitutional order.

 

Andrew won’t be beheaded, of course. But maybe we’ll get some updates on those old prank phone call jokes.

 

“Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”

 

“No, but can I interest you in Prince Andrew?”

 

Thank you, thank you. Please tip your server, and try the fish and chips.

 

Like a lot of people, I’ve been intrigued by the fact that the revelations in the Epstein files have been wrecking more careers in Europe than in America (Nick Catoggio had a good newsletter on this recently). I don’t think there’s just one reason why this is happening, but there is one that interests me. I’ve observed on TV and on some podcasts that I think this is partly because Europe is Americanizing and America is Europeanizing. When I’ve said this, people have looked at me like I said, “And that’s why the Federal Reserve should require we all put ferrets in our rectums.”

 

So I’m going to explain what I mean.

 

I’m reminded of a passage in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism:

 

According to Tocqueville, the French people hated aristocrats about to lose their power more than it had ever hated them before, precisely because their rapid loss of real power was not accompanied by any considerable decline in their fortunes. As long as the aristocracy held vast powers of jurisdiction, they were not only tolerated but respected. When noblemen lost their privileges, among others the privilege to exploit and oppress, the people felt them to be parasites, without any real function in the rule of the country. In other words, neither oppression nor exploitation as such is ever the main cause for resentment; wealth without visible function is much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated.

 

Like a lot in Arendt’s work, I’m not sure every argument she hangs on this insight is true, but it is interesting. And Tocqueville did indeed make this observation: “It is not always by going from bad to worse that a society falls into revolution. … Feudalism at the height of its power had not inspired Frenchmen with so much hatred as it did on the eve of its eclipse. The slightest acts of arbitrary power under Louis XVI seemed less easy to endure than all the despotism of Louis XIV.” (Though my Kindle version of The Old Regime and the French Revolution translates the same passage this way: “Revolutions are not always brought about by a gradual decline from bad to worse. Nations that have endured patiently and almost unconsciously the most overwhelming oppression, often burst into rebellion against the yoke the moment it begins to grow lighter.”).

 

Anyway, the point is that when royals are actual rulers they can get away with a lot, because in ages of aristocracy and monarchy, aristocrats and monarchs have a lot of power, and the system that gives them power confers different rules upon them than upon the little people. Tocqueville writes a good bit about this in Democracy in America. He points out that in feudal Europe, “Certain actions that dishonored a noble were therefore indifferent on the part of a commoner; others changed character according to whether the person who suffered from them belonged to the aristocracy or lived outside of it.” Nobles had to settle quarrels with lances and swords, while commoners just used sticks. The rule, according to Tocqueville, was “villeins [commoners] do not have honor.” But he adds, “This did not mean, as one might imagine in our day, that these men were contemptible; it signified only that their actions were not judged according to the same rules as those of the aristocracy.”

 

Things worked differently in America. One of the best things the founders did was forbid titles of nobility (it would have been great if they had followed—or had been able to follow—the egalitarian logic behind this decision to its rightful conclusion and banned slavery as well). In America there was, certainly in principle and in many respects in practice, the belief that no one was born inherently inferior to another. “When men who live in the heart of a democratic society are enlightened, they discover without difficulty that nothing limits or fixes them and forces them to content themselves with their present fortune.” You can, through dint of hard work, elevate your status above the station you were born into. Maids didn’t resent their employers, because their employers worked too. Work was the basis of the democratic, egalitarian spirit.

 

This made some kinds of moral double standards a kind of sin against the fundamental assumptions of the regime. The idea that simply being richer or having a “better” bloodline gave you special license to behave immorally was quite simply un-American or un-democratic as Tocqueville understood the term. This might give you some insight into why I find the new right’s infatuation with “heritage Americans” to be so grotesque.

 

Today, the British monarchy doesn’t have a lot of power. Yes, it has more power than average citizens, but its function is mostly ceremonial, mythic, or vibes-based. It’s great for tourism, Netflix series, and gossip pages. But King Charles III can’t order any executions or invasions, and if he tried, the monarchy would almost certainly be abolished. In other words, today’s royals don’t have a lot of old-fashioned “privileges.” Instead, being a royal is a privilege granted by the people. And Andrew abused his privilege by being a member of the Epstein entourage.

 

Tocqueville did warn about aristocracies of wealth, or “aristocracy of manufacturers” (he used both terms), in America. The Epstein story is probably not exactly what he had in mind, but it’s close. The idea that the super-rich and the super-connected have exempted themselves from bourgeois morality in their private lives while preaching it in public is at the core of a lot of populism these days. Some of it is understandable and defensible. Some of it is absolutely bonkers (think of all the QAnon nonsense).

 

But that is not the only attitude out there. There are also a lot of people who like this new aristocracy—if it aligns with their brand of populism or serves their political agenda. With the remarkable recent exception of Sen. Jon Ossoff, progressives who rail against “the billionaire class” do not include George Soros in their blistering denunciations of the “billionaire class.” Elon Musk, Howard Lutnick, and, duh, Donald Trump are largely exempt from the indictments of right-wing populists.

 

Donald Trump’s defenders often acknowledge (if inadvertently) his apparent corruption, but they say it’s fine because it’s out in the open and he’s being “transparent.” Caligula was transparent and out in the open, too. That’s not a defense of Caligula. In 2016, Trump quite brilliantly defused charges of corruption by essentially admitting to being in on the corruption in the past, giving him the expertise to fight for the forgotten man.

 

“And I will tell you this, I know the system far better than anybody else and I know the system is broken…” he said in one typical exchange during a 2016 primary debate, “because I know it so well because I was on both sides of it, I was on the other side all my life….”

 

A decade later, he held up that promise—if by “the forgotten man” you mean Donald Trump.

 

Trump’s second presidency is nothing if not a relentless exercise in promoting his cult of personality and settling affronts to his exalted status. Just yesterday, his subalterns unfurled a banner of his face on the Department of Justice. He has pushed to use the instruments of government to punish those who have offended him. Like Napoleon III’s effort to turn Paris into an “imperial city,” he is trying to redraw Washington along similar lines, down to drenching the Oval Office in gold and constructing a massive White House ballroom. Like 18^th-century monarchs, he has blurred the distinction between the nation’s honor and his own. Crossing him, he often says, is treason, because Trump is—in his mind—l’état.

 

Or just look at his beloved tariff powers that he claimed were absolute, until today. Forget the economic objections, or the constitutional ones. The thing that he likes most about the tariff power—like other emergency powers—is that he can (or thinks he can) use them unilaterally, based on his own personal feelings and whims. That’s a regal power, not a presidential one.

 

This stuff is orders of magnitude more grandiose than anything we’ve seen in living memory from American presidents. But the temptation to confer a kind of royal status upon presidents is not new. I don’t have room to run through a lot of examples, but I’ll offer two. It wasn’t Trump who invented the idea that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” That was Richard Nixon (or maybe Andrew Jackson or maybe John Adams). Second, during the Monica Lewinsky saga, President Bill Clinton unsuccessfully argued that his Secret Service detail could not be compelled to testify against him because it was in effect a praetorian guard. At the time, many of Clinton’s defenders celebrated the novel theory.

 

Being a royal is not quite synonymous with being an aristocrat anymore. It’s a role for ribbon cuttings and nostalgia, because there is no real power behind the title. This is what I mean when I say Europe is becoming Americanized. The idea that one is exempt from the rules of the liberal order just because one inherited a title arouses rage. Royals are in some respects employees now, stage actors assigned a part to play. And they can be fired for moral turpitude.

 

In America, where offense at royal privilege and aristocratic arbitrary power seems like an ancient hang-up for American revolutionaries, some people have grown enamored with the form of such privilege, and in some cases—Curtis Yarvin and Adrian Vermeule come most immediately to mind—they even argue for the formal reconstruction of such rule. Others ransack anti-liberal Catholic doctrines from the European past in the hope of slapping them onto the American system.

 

Many other normal Americans don’t go so far, but they nonetheless subscribe to a kind of neo-royal thinking when it comes not just to the very rich and the very powerful, but the very famous as well. They like the soap operas of sex tapes and other forms of salaciousness. They don’t expect the Eloi to follow the rules of the Morlocks—at least not the Eloi they like.

 

I’ve been rewatching Yellowstone, an utterly compelling fictional soap opera about the Dutton clan. It is remarkable how much the show fits this slice of the zeitgeist. The whole show works on medieval notions of morality. The Duttons will talk of evil, but often evil is defined the way Trump defines treason—trying to take what is theirs. No one more than Beth, the daughter of the family patriarch and avowed follower of Nietzsche, typifies the moral logic of this neo-royalist nihilism.

 

“I care about you, I care about Kayce, I care about Rip,” Beth tells her father.

 

The father, the good king, responds, “Well, if you care about them, then you need to care about having some morality in the way you fight.”

 

Beth replies, “There's no such thing. Not in a kingdom. And that's what this is. There is no morality here, Dad, none. There is keep the kingdom or there is lose the kingdom.”

 

Later, even the good king, John Dutton, comes to a similar conclusion: “Let me tell you what fair means. Fair means one side got exactly what they wanted in a way that the other side can't complain about. There's no such thing as fair.”

 

Look, I like the show, despite all of this stuff. But I don’t like this “stuff” in American politics. Of all the myriad problems with this multi-pronged effort to import the rules and thinking of the ancien régime into American politics, the most relevant one is that the reactionaries have forgotten the point about aristocracy. For all of its hypocrisies and injustices, the aristocrats did have a conception of honor that constrained them. The need to be virtuous or at least appear virtuous was taken very seriously, and the doctrines, customs, and traditions that went into notions of honor were developed over centuries. The neo-royalists skip over such constraining notions of honor and simply go straight to power. Recreated royalism—by whatever name you call it—is royalism without roots, without context and custom. It’s just an argument about power leeching off nostalgia and ignorance to pretend to be something more. It’s Nietzschean logic in the costumes of Medieval Times or a Renaissance Faire.

 

When a reporter asked Donald Trump whether there were any checks on his power on the world stage, he replied, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good.”