Clarence Thomas Deserves Better Enemies

By Kevin D. Williamson

Monday, April 27, 2026

 

“But progressives only believe in nice things!”

 

Thus went up the cry from the very dumbest and laziest corners of American public life after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a personally moving—and, as a matter of fact, entirely unobjectionable—speech at the University of Texas in which he outlined two sets of principles and assumptions competing for dominance in our political culture: the ideas spelled out in the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago and those introduced during the Progressive Era about a century ago.

 

Justice Thomas gives a speech about Woodrow Wilson and Otto von Bismarck, and we get a howling chorus of partisan clods who apparently think he was talking about James Talarico—or Thurgood Marshall.

 

Erwin Chemerinsky is no buffoon, but—if the suits will forgive me for training my guns in-house here—his account on SCOTUSblog was typical of the problem: “Thomas suggests that the country began to go wrong early in the 20th century with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. It is true that Wilson considered himself a progressive. But, on race issues, he was among our least progressive presidents, barring Black individuals from the federal civil service.”

 

It is not the case that Wilson merely “considered himself a progressive.” It is the case that Wilson was, in his time, the single most powerful and consequential leader in the progressive movement in the United States of America. As Justice Thomas explained—and the point is hardly controversial among historically literate people—Wilson despised the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, preferring instead a government of relatively unfettered “scientific” expertise. There was a Progressive Party, whose most successful presidential candidate—maybe you’ve heard of Teddy Roosevelt—was an unapologetic white supremacist who believed that the majority of African Americans in the South were “wholly unfit for the suffrage.” His vice presidential candidate was the California governor who signed the Alien Land Law of 1913, designed to prohibit Asian immigrants (who already were legally excluded from naturalizing as citizens) from owning land in California. Wilson, the godfather of American progressivism, did not merely accept preexisting racial segregation in the federal government but imposed it on the federal work force where it did not already exist.

 

Wilson was not alone in this tendency. Progressive hero Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put the Supreme Court’s imprimatur on forced sterilization for eugenic purposes in Buckv.Bell and was supported in this by the progressive heroine Margaret Sanger. Soon after, the New Deal coalition was built on the support of progressive elected officials, mainly members of the Democratic Party, who backed Franklin Roosevelt on progressive priorities such as business regulation, political steering of the economy, welfare spending, etc., and who also were committed segregationists. You do not have to take that from me or from Jonah Goldberg—you can take it from Ta-Nehisi Coates or from any decent history book.

 

There were people called progressives and even Progressives. There was a Progressive Movement and a Progressive Era and a Progressive Party. Their racism was not incidental to their progressivism—their racism was rooted in their progressivism, a philosophy that insisted its adherents should merely “follow the science,” which, at the time, sometimes meant following it to a forced sterilization clinic or a concentration camp. It was during the Progressive Era that racism and antisemitism evolved from mere prejudices rooted in tradition and religion to rationalistic projects based on pseudoscience that successfully passed for science for a very long time. To insist that what the progressives said and did is somehow separate from that which is progressive is simply to define away that which is inconvenient in the history of a movement and its ideas. This is some rank “no true Scotsman” stuff. It would be like saying that William F. Buckley Jr. was one of the “least conservative” commentators on race in his 1957 defense of Southern segregation because, after all, conservatives believe in colorblind policy and equality under the law—I somehow doubt that Chemerinsky would let that pass.

 

In any case, maybe don’t lecture the Supreme Court justice who grew up barefoot and Gullah-speaking and poor and black under the bootheel of segregation in Georgia as though this kind of trivial response were a refutation to his informed views about living under the bootheel of segregation in Georgia and the ways in which that segregation was incompatible with our founding ideals. Justice Thomas spoke movingly about the kitchen-table conversation he had with his grandparents in 1955 when they took over responsibility for raising him and his brother. Think about what it took for Clarence Thomas to go from that kitchen table in 1955 to the Supreme Court and how that shaped the justice’s view of the Declaration of Independence and its most famous sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

 

The high ideals and the facts on the ground were irreconcilable, not merely as a political matter but also as a theological one. “That proposition was not debatable and was beyond the power of man to alter,” Thomas said. “Others, with power and animus, could treat us as unequal, but they lacked the divine power to make us so.” That American practice was (and is) at odds with the fundamental American claims about the nature of man and society is not something Clarence Thomas dreamed up: Abraham Lincoln saw things that way, too. So did Thomas Jefferson.

 

Don’t hold your breath waiting for our modern progressives to grapple with these notions. Paul Waldman, writing at MS NOW, thundered that Thomas “doesn’t understand democracy,” while engaging with almost nothing of the argument Thomas actually put forward. Heather Digby Parton insisted that the speech was “jaw-dropping and cause for alarm,” and not only that but “dishonest and dangerous,” at least according to the subheadline. Robert Reich sneered that the speech was “pure rubbish,” particularly in its connection of progressive ideology with Italian fascism—which is a matter of well-documented historical fact.

 

It surely is the case that many people who call themselves progressives today have ideas different from those of the people who called themselves progressives in 1916, just as it is true that many people who call themselves conservatives today—or who called themselves conservatives in October 2016, at any rate—have many ideas that are different from those who called themselves conservatives in 1950. But in much the same way that the modern conservative movement remains characterized by some of the same virtues and many of the same vices as its postwar expression, the modern progressive movement remains in thrall to the worst of its intellectual inheritance, i.e., the notion that politics can be superseded by science or by more general expertise, for example that fundamentally political questions about abortion, sexuality, or climate can be “settled” as though they were matters of scientific finding rather than matters of priorities, preferences, and trade-offs. Outside of a few elite law schools and the occasional snotty gaggle of blued-eyed undergraduates with keffiyehs and Palestinian flags, modern progressivism has given up its antisemitism, and “scientific” racism mainly has been relegated to the shadows, but the underlying intellectual defect connecting these and many other progressive errors—a profound lack of epistemic humility—remains very much at work, tirelessly so.

 

That the Bill of Rights enshrines freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion and puts these rights beyond the reach of mere temporary democratic majorities is one expression, among many, that the founders expected the political life of our republic to be one marked by constant, profound, fundamental disagreement. We have divided powers, checks and balances, and the rest of it because ours is a political life of constant negotiation and constant revision. We have a government organized around our “unalienable rights” because our republic is based on the theological premise, spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, that all men were endowed by our Creator with such rights, which are not the gift of any prince, potentate, or parliament. The progressive error is the belief that the tension of permanent negotiation can be resolved by taking proper recourse to science and expertise, along with the consequent belief that society can be directed under something like the principles that Frederick Winslow Taylor—an inspirational figure for the progressive movement—put forward for the management of factories and industrial processes. Of course science and expertise play a vital role in both public and private life and contribute to our national affairs—but the question of how to live together in peace and prosperity is not an algebra problem and the solution is not to be found in a test tube or AI analysis.

 

There is an ongoing debate about what progressivism means now and what it meant in the past, including during the Progressive Era. But it does mean something, and, whatever that is, it isn’t “nice things for nice people.” Justice Thomas’s argument deserves better than that.

 

So does Justice Thomas.

 

If he will forgive the unflattering comparison, Justice Thomas is something like Ahab out there with his harpoon well sharpened on the hunt for the monstrous white whale–and these guppies, surely the most self-important guppies in piscatory history,  think he is interested in them.

 

Disclosures

 

I don’t know whether I need to do this every time I mention Clarence Thomas, but: I know him a little bit and have had the pleasure of spending some time with him, and we have friends in common, notably Harlan Crow, who is an investor in The Dispatch and, much more important, a cherished friend of mine.

 

And Furthermore

 

Speaking of the Supreme Court and the need for better enemies: Holy smokes, that New York Times report about the so-called shadow docket is just absolutely incompetent journalism. Sarah Isgur does her best not to make David French squirm too much as his employers are roasted, but Advisory Opinions has the Times’ number on this one.

 

Economics for English Majors

 

Here is an interesting development, from the Wall Street Journal:

 

At David’s Bridal, the country’s largest wedding-dress retailer, more brides are starting to shop for their dresses about 45 days before their wedding, compared with the company’s traditional five- to six-month shopping window, said Chief Executive Kelly Cook. And rush orders, with a turnaround within four weeks of a wedding, are up 50% in the last two years, she said. The company is paying for overtime for its more than 3,000 alteration specialists as needed to meet the demand.

 

Can you guess what is driving the change in the timeline? The lawyers know!

 

When Nicole Hamilton found the A-line gown she plans to wear to her wedding reception, she requested a waist roughly 3 inches smaller than her frame.

 

Hamilton, a product designer in New York, has lost roughly 50 pounds on weight-loss medications in the past few years—including 15 pounds since her fiancé popped the question last May. And she plans to lose more.

 

But when she went to buy her dress, she ran into a less-than-thrilling hurdle: She had to sign a legal waiver, acknowledging in writing that the gown didn’t yet fit.

 

I myself am curious about how Ozempic et al. will change Americans’ car-buying habits and how—or whether and when—this will change car designs. I don’t have anything other than anecdotal observation to back it up, but I get the feeling that your median Yukon XL-driver body and your median Miata-driver body are very different.

 

Words About Words

 

Item the first: Donald Trump, famously, has the “best words.” One of them is f—k.

 

Item the second: “Trump’s political headwinds pile up after a week of setbacks,” says the Washington Post headline. Work piles up. Wrecked cars on the freeway pile up. The @#$%&***! wind doesn’t pile up. If you can’t handle a metaphor, it’s best to leave it in the holster.

 

Item the third: The Wall Street Journal writes about Barack Obama’s “gerrymandering pivot,” in which the president “backs efforts he once opposed.”  When is it a pivot, and when is it a flip-flop? It’s a flip-flop when you don’t like the guy, in much the same way that one man’s principled advocate is another man’s ideologue, that there’s a world of difference between my pragmatism and your opportunism, etc. I don’t much like the use of the word pivot in this way, inasmuch as pivot implies the existence of a central point around which the wheel turns. If Barack Obama has a central point other than a firm belief in his own transcendent greatness, I still don’t know what it is.

 

Not that he’s in the wrong on the issue here.

 

In Closing

 

All dumbasses are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law:

 

A man was arrested in Pulaski County after a vehicle fire led to the discovery of over 100 propane tanks that were not his, Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office said.

 

…

 

Authorities said during the investigation, they found that a man was in the process of stealing two 500-gallon propane tanks from the facility when a valve on one of the tanks dislodged, which resulted in propane escaping the tank. The fire started in the engine of the truck, which was parked in the middle of the facility, surrounded by other propane tanks. The suspect left the scene before first responders arrived.

 

The sheriff’s office said they identified the suspect as 41-year-old Brett Compton. Search and arrest warrants were then executed at his residence, where 131 propane tanks were found that did not belong to Compton.

 

I used to say that there were people who would steal anything that was not actually nailed down—until I read about people stealing church roofs (for the copper and lead), at which point I had to revise and widen my assessment. There is a part of me that wants to be sympathetic: Think of the state to which a man’s life must be reduced before he turns to ripping off metal from construction sites to sell for scrap prices. Another part of me notes that we human beings have something like 70 percent of our DNA in common with piranhas—and we damned well act like it.

 

There’s a real contest going on in there. When I watched Clarence Thomas’s speech, I wondered to myself: How does this guy not hate his country? The segregationists would have kept Thomas poor and barefoot down in Georgia if they had had their way, and the nice progressives have worked tirelessly to obstruct and humiliate him since he became a consequential public figure. I have pretty mixed feelings about my country, and my life has been relatively easy. Justice Thomas must be much more of a patriot than I am, I think, and more of a humanitarian. Maybe I just have a smaller and meaner soul. But, then again, maybe I just shouldn’t take things so personally. From time to time, people ask me about my views on immigration, and my usual answer is: I’m thinking about it.

Against Oppositional Defiance Disorder in Politics

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Monday, April 27, 2026

 

Here is Tim Miller of The Bulwark, in response to Sean Trende’s suggestion that his outlet treats Trump “as the Satan of a Catholic Baptism, where you’re morally bound to reject all his works and promises”:

 

 

I am a broken record on this topic, and I have been for eleven years. And here I go again: This approach sounds very righteous and pure until you realize that, by adopting it, you’re outsourcing your soul to Trump in precisely the same manner as his sycophants have. Ultimately, if you oppose something because Trump wants it, you’re not sticking it to him, you’re sticking it to yourself. Note the language Miller used: “opposed on all counts.” That, right there, is the problem. It’s entirely reasonable to take a binary view of the man’s character or electoral desirability, to submit that you will never trust him, or even to declare that he is the worst commander in chief in the history of the country. But to oppose him on “all counts”? That’s not judgment; it’s oppositional defiance disorder. Donald Trump is the president whether one likes it or not, and he’s going to take political positions and exercise political power whether one likes it or not. To decide ahead of time that one will oppose all the decisions he makes is to subordinate oneself to him. I refuse to do that. I think everyone else should refuse to do that, too.

 

Miller’s colleague, Cathy Young, weighed in on the same debate by describing herself as “an anti-Trump absolutist” who believes that “when he does/says smth I agree with, I think he discredits those things.” This, too, sounds good. But it doesn’t make much sense, does it? Are we really to believe that, say, school choice is rendered better or worse as a policy depending on who says they agree with it? If so, what is the mechanism by which that happens? If Jeffrey Dahmer had been in favor of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, would that have “discredited” the goal by even half an inch? That is superstition. In fact, it’s worse than superstition: It is a politics of men, not laws. If Donald Trump says something I agree with, I say that he is right. If he says something I disagree with, I say that he is wrong. Likewise, if he does something I agree with, I say he’s right, and if he does something I disagree with, I say he’s wrong. To do so is not to endorse him or to “normalize” him. Nor, if one has taken such a stance, is it to abandon one’s steadfast vow to vote against him every time, or to dilute one’s conviction that he is a uniquely bad person. Rather, it is to assiduously play the role of citizen in a free country, and to emphatically insist that there is nothing — not even hatred — that is capable of persuading you to hand your conscience over to another, and in so doing, to render your voice a mere tool of the ventriloquist behind the stage.

 

 

The Left Is Lying to Itself About the Cost of Its Rhetoric

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

 

On Saturday, a heavily armed lunatic attempted to gate-crash the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington, D.C., Hilton, while the president and most of his senior administration were in attendance. Cole Allen — the gunman, whose name sounds like a shoe brand from the racks at Payless — was thankfully tackled by Secret Service agents almost instantly after he dashed past the first layer of security, and although he fired several shots, nobody was killed. (One agent was clipped in his bulletproof vest, but his gear kept him safe.)

 

A potential atrocity was instantly prevented. The most memorable image from Saturday’s WHCD will not be one of blood, or tears, or spectacularly televised violence; it will be that of a naked, hog-tied Cole Allen kissing the carpet as he lies prone with a Mylar blanket draped over his raggedy hindquarters to hide his shame. (Police had stripped him to search for weapons.)

 

I would have let him lie there myself, but then again, Allen exposed himself in a far funnier way: with his ridiculously cocksure manifesto, written in eager anticipation of a massacre. Leave aside for a moment (but only for a moment) the fact that Allen seems to have been deeply affected by Bluesky-like progressive rhetoric in labeling Trump and his administration a bunch of Epstein-associated rapist pedophiles. Instead, breathe a sigh of relief at the fact that this man was undone in the most Zoomer way possible — by his own unearned and undeserved belief in himself.

 

I don’t normally like to reprint the crazed words of would-be mass shooters, but I can make an exception this time because (1) nobody got seriously hurt and (2) some things simply must be clowned on. Allow me to quote from what was clearly meant as both a manifesto and a farewell note:

 

Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance.

 

I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.

 

The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.

 

Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again.

 

Now, go back one more time and enjoy that photograph of Allen naked and hog-tied on the floor. Savor the superb irony of this premature victory dance: Allen was so smugly certain that he had “fooled” security and was going to cause mass slaughter that he took the time to add a lengthy postscript to his note, lecturing the Secret Service about doing their jobs. Meanwhile, the Secret Service took him alive and unharmed without a single casualty. What was that you were saying about “levels of incompetence” again, Cole?

 

The Left Remains Averse to Honesty

 

Jim Geraghty wrote an excellent piece on Monday morning, zeroing in on the inevitable “narrative wars” sure to be pursued by Democrats in the aftermath of the shooting: Was it “staged?” What were the shooter’s political affiliations? Isn’t this really all the fault of Trump or the Republican Party somehow, despite the fact that they were the targets?

 

What we do know, however, is that the shooter was a progressive who hung out at Bluesky, and he seems to have been radicalized into committing violence by the panic and apocalypticism common in such spaces. In his manifesto, he accused Trump of being a pedophile — clearly echoing years of careless Democratic rhetoric — and labeled his administration’s members as targets. He intended to kill them in order of importance, and it’s fairly obvious who ranked first. (Only Kash Patel, bizarrely and hilariously, was to be spared. Patel has enough problems as is and probably didn’t need this “blessing” from the shooter.)

 

It is desperately tiresome to watch the left disown the shooter while it refuses to acknowledge how freely insults and claims like “Trump may be a pedophile rapist” have flowed from leftists’ mouths. It has gotten to the point where that specific line — as a phrase of casual abuse — has simply dissolved into the ocean of political rhetoric in which we float nowadays. I don’t want to rehash the “stochastic terrorism” debate here: I am a First Amendment supporter, after all, and find any attempt to criminalize speech (and politics) to be abhorrent.

 

But there is little to say in favor of a wild, reckless lie intended to inflame. There are many out there who, because of the E. Jean Carroll case, consider it acceptable to call Trump a “rapist.” (I think that case was a pile of lies, but I’m giving leftists the benefit of the doubt here.) By contrast, there is not one responsible commentator in America who believes that Trump is a pedophile. It is simply a term that, when employed by those who should know better, is done as a nasty little splash of rhetorical tar, a jab with a sharp stick to bait the bear. Most people who hate Trump know it isn’t true — it just feels good to hurl such a nasty accusation.

 

But fringe types — and the nature of online discourse tends to select for fringe types — take such charges absolutely seriously. And now we see where that line of rhetoric can lead. It might have seemed like an easy play to make hay out of the Trump administration’s cack-handed fumbling of the Epstein files and squeeze whatever possible marginal electoral advantage out of it — as they say, politics ain’t beanbag. But we should have known that in the modern era, madmen can be easily stirred with fantasy narratives: How quickly some have forgotten about Pizzagate.

 

On the bright side, nobody’s talking about the Strait of Hormuz anymore.

 

Russell Brand, Yours in Christ

 

Russell Brand was once a professional comedian and actor. Then Russell Brand was criminally accused of the rape and sexual assault of four women. Now, as he faces the prospect of imprisonment for a life of sexual misdeeds — on Megyn Kelly’s show earlier this month, he confessed to having slept with a 16-year-old, and that one hasn’t even been charged — Brand has become a vocal Christian. (People change, after all. To quote Brand in his own defense: “I did sleep with a 16-year-old when I was 30, but when I was 30 I was a different person.”)

 

Why, Brand is so sincere about how Christ has saved his soul — after a lifetime of proudly hedonistic and aggressively ideological atheism — that he has written a book about it! It’s published by Tucker Carlson’s new imprint, surely a trademark of quality if ever there was one, and it’s called How to Become a Christian in 7 Days. That sounds like a land speed record to me — my confirmation process took months back when I was a kid — but, as Samuel Johnson said, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

 

Brand has even begun carrying a Bible around with him to public appearances, including in court. He has been seen leafing through it prominently, almost as if he’s doing it for the cameras. Perhaps Brand thinks he is being observed. (He is. God is watching.)

 

Do I doubt him? That would be uncharitable of me. I’m pleased to see Brand’s whirlwind conversion. (One more soul saved — the mission continues!) But I do hope he catches himself up a bit on the doctrine, and — especially for a Protestant like me — the Good Book itself. Because it seems he is as familiar with what it contains as an Andaman Islander.

 

Brand was on Piers Morgan’s show Uncensored last week, appearing in his own self-defense. The sit-down ran for about an hour, and I can’t imagine subjecting myself to the entire ordeal. But if you have any capacity for psychological pain (or if you enjoy cringe comedy), you should watch this two-minute clip, in which Morgan simply asks Brand to open the Bible he is carrying with him and pick a passage — any passage — that means something to him. For a full minute and a half, Brand rustles through a book known for its quotability and comes up blank. Morgan sits there in silence, letting the scene play out — he glances at the camera once with a knowing shrug, a bit like Jim Halpert from The Office. (Whoever in the sound booth mic’ed up those turning pages for maximum “crinkle” effect is a comic genius.)

 

I can certainly draw my own conclusions about the depth and seriousness of Brand’s faith. Others are free to do the same. In the meantime, I heartily recommend that he get started on those readings! There’s lots of meaning to be found in those pages. You don’t even have to start with the Old Testament if you find all that Mosaic law musty and irrelevant. Why, here’s a real banger from the Gospel of Matthew, just to start: Many will say to me in that day . . . Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? . . . And then will I profess unto them: “I never knew you.”

Atmosphere of Assassination

By Abe Greenwald

Monday, April 27, 2026

 

Last Thursday, I wrote about a New York Times podcast on which Hasan Piker, Nadja Spiegelman, and Jia Tolentino discussed the political virtues of left-wing crime and terrorism. The next day, I wrote about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s dangerous doxxing of Citadel CEO Ken Griffin. In that newsletter. “It’s not hard to see where this kind of thing leads,” I wrote. “Because we’ve already seen it go there.” And I closed it out with this: “What happened to that national conversation we were supposed to have about turning down the temperature of political debate? This was a strange and sickening week for American politics.”

 

To be honest, I reread that bit after the letter was sent out and wondered whether I had been unnecessarily dramatic.

 

On Saturday night, a gunman tried to kill Donald Trump and other administration figures at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

 

It turns out I’d been entirely too squishy.

 

The institutionalized liberal embrace of political violence constitutes a state of national emergency. What’s worse is that we’re nowhere near the end. Leading liberal lights either don’t recognize or don’t care what they’re doing. 

 

On Sunday night, for example, CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell interviewed Trump and asked him to respond to the charges in his would-be assassin’s manifesto. Last I heard, the press was against publishing shooter manifestos lest they inspire future killers. Oh, that’s right—only when the shooter is trans.

 

When the gunman takes a shot at Trump, however, the press picks through the manifesto for talking points and asks the president to defend himself against the accusations of the man who tried to kill him.

 

But the more revealing part of O’Donnell’s interview came later. “What do you say to people,” she had the nerve to ask, “who are encouraging political violence or even cheering it on?” Here’s my answer: Don’t echo and elevate the grievances of gunmen who are trying to destroy

the nation, Norah.

 

When news of the attempt on Trump first broke, someone sent me a text reading, “Maybe it’s just some nut.”

 

I no longer know what that means. One could say that anyone who tries to kill the president of the United States is, colloquially speaking, a “nut.” Whether or not that person is motivated by radical ideology or theology, he’s acting outside the bounds of what we recognize as sane behavior. And if he’s motivated by some florid delusion, he’s obviously unwell.

 

Today, it’s not so easy to tell the difference between violent political philosophy, violent religious fundamentalism, and violent psychosis. Maybe the differences between them were always illusory, but they’re now undeniably blended. Wokeness is no less a faith than a philosophy. Transgender theory is both delusion and doctrine. And then there’s anti-Semitism, which is at once a superstitious cult, a political weapon, and a consuming sickness.

 

I just don’t see many present-day assassins you could plausibly describe as “just some nut.” A mentally ill person marinating in a culture of political violence isn’t just some nut. He’s a node in an irrational network. So too is the sane person who comes to believe the influencers, media outlets, and politicians that support or advocate violent resistance.

 

We don’t yet know exactly what Trump’s latest would-be assassin is. But he, like all the others, is a product of a new national madness.

The Fading Trump Presidency

By Yascha Mounk

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

 

Predicting Donald Trump’s political demise has typically been a fool’s errand. Some of my smartest friends have declared his definitive fall from grace again and again, only to be proven wrong each and every time.

 

If you watch MSNBC or listen to NPR, you may over the past decade have believed that Trump’s presidential campaign is a hopeless publicity stunt; that the Republican Party is about to turn on him because of the Access Hollywood tape; that he has no chance of winning against Hillary Clinton; that his presidency will be so chaotic that he’ll be forced to resign within his first year in office; that Robert Mueller’s investigation into his relationship with the Kremlin will result in his impeachment; that his mishandling of the COVID pandemic will make him toxic to voters; that his loss against Joe Biden has ended his career for good; that he is about to be impeached over the January 6 riot at the Capitol; that he is sure to lose the race for the Republican nomination against Ron DeSantis; that he is sure to lose his bid for reelection against Joe Biden; that he is sure to lose it against Kamala Harris; and so on.

 

Ten years into Trump’s political career, the most avoidable mistake pundits can make is to underestimate his powers of survival and resurrection.

 

And yet, I have come to the tentative conclusion that this time may, finally, be different. For the past decade, Trump has dominated American politics like no other president in living memory; now, signs of that era coming to a close are suddenly multiplying. It is, as Saturday’s appalling assassination attempt on the president reminds us, impossible to see around the next historical corner. But it sure seems as though Trump’s hold over the country is finally slipping. This, to misquote Winston Churchill, no longer feels like the end of the beginning; it may be the beginning of the end.

 

***

 

A minority of Americans has always been drawn to Trump because of his most extreme actions and statements. They loved his coarseness, reveled in his taunts, and unhesitatingly embraced his radicalism. This group made up a significant share of his most devoted base—but it was never big enough to explain how he could have won two presidential elections.

 

Many of the voters who twice put Trump over the top have, all along, had a more conflicted view of him. Trump swore that he would make Americans far richer. He would cut taxes and curb inflation. The costs of health insurance would fall. There would be peace in the Middle East. The country would return to its former grandeur. It is not hard to see why those who were inclined to believe that he might actually turn these promises into reality, at least to some extent, found them to be very enticing.

 

During his first term, Trump did celebrate some genuine successes, from Operation Warp Speed to the Abraham Accords. But when he predictably failed to bring about most of his outsized promises, he proved shrewd at making up excuses. He had only just taken power. The deep state was standing in his way. The “Russia hoax” had made it impossible for him to govern. The global pandemic had messed everything up. The share of Americans who were genuinely excited about Trump shrank rapidly towards the end of his first term; and yet, the thought that it might be worth giving him a second chance in 2024—even if he just delivered on some tiny fraction of his promises—lingered in the minds of a surprising number of voters.

 

But the fulfillment of promises can’t be deferred forever without voters starting to lose patience.  As Viktor Orbán learned to his chagrin in Hungary, there comes a time when leaders are measured by their results rather than their rhetoric. And that time has now come for Donald Trump.

 

llöThe immediate reasons for Trump’s travails lie in his ill-fated war with Iran. The contention that foolish “foreign entanglements” had repeatedly led America astray was central to his political persona from day one. In his second inaugural address, he announced that “we will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” This makes it especially damaging that he pursued a war of choice in Iran without bothering to make a coherent case for it to the American public or ensuring that there would be a real exit strategy. The one major promise that Trump actually honored in his first term was that he would start no new major wars; that too now looks like empty self-promotion.

 

The knock-on effects for Trump’s other areas of traditional strength have been brutal. Americans voted out Joe Biden’s Democrats in good part because of the persistently high level of inflation after the pandemic, which had been fueled by the administration’s generous stimulus programs. Now, Trump’s failure to anticipate that Iran would choose to block oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has led to a renewed spike in inflation, putting the president’s approval ratings on inflation and the cost of living underwater by a remarkable 40 points.

 

Trump is also in trouble in some historic areas of strength that are less directly connected to the war in the Middle East. Most Americans grew furious with Biden’s inability to control immigration at the southern border. But in his second term, Trump has embraced a deportation policy that is so pointlessly cruel that, in many polls, a clear majority of Americans now disapproves of his handling of the issue.

 

The result is becoming increasingly clear in the data: Overall support for Trump is at or near record lows.

 

Trump has often been far more popular with the American public than his detractors cared to acknowledge; today, his approval ratings are genuinely dismal. Nearly 58 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance (most of them strongly) while only 39 percent approve (most of them weakly), according to statistician Nate Silver’s polling tracker. His net approval is as low today as it was in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 assault.

 

In the past, Trump has been hated by liberals, seen as divisive among independents, and (the complaints of a small band of principled columnists notwithstanding) enjoyed popular support among conservatives. Declines in Trump’s poll numbers were usually precipitated by independents abandoning him. Today, Trump remains toxic among liberals, has come to be viewed negatively by most independents, and is newly divisive among conservatives.

 

Trump’s ironclad grip over the Republican base is starting to loosen. In the past, conservative critics of Trump have usually complained that he has sold out the views and values associated with figures such as Ronald Reagan. Now, criticism of Trump within the conservative camp is for the first time being framed as a betrayal of the supposed values on which the MAGA movement was founded. Some of the biggest influencers on the American right, such as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, have recently expressed regret for supporting Trump. For the first time since 2016, his hold over the MAGA movement may actually be weakening.

 

The political costs from these developments are likely to compound over the course of the coming months. Betting markets give Democrats about a 6-to-1 edge to win the House of Representatives in midterm elections this November; despite a daunting electoral map, they also have slightly more than even odds to take control of the Senate. If Trump’s party really does suffer a serious shellacking in the midterms, his inability to push major legislation through Congress and the impending end of his term will further weaken his control over his own party. With attention turning toward the 2028 primaries, the White House may suddenly see its power slipping away, as happened after the 2006 midterm elections, in which Democrats took control of both houses of Congress, rendering George W. Bush largely powerless during the last years of his term. Sooner than we can now imagine, Trump may come to be seen as a lame duck.

 

***

 

When Trump was reelected with a bigger, younger, and more diverse electorate in 2024, it seemed as though he might actually manage to impose his vision and his values on the country. In the first months of his second term, the administration was moving with impressive speed. Resistance to its ascendancy was conspicuous by its absence. It felt as though America might stand at a genuine tipping point.

 

The window of opportunity for Trump to reshape the country in a significant way was, I think, real. But he responded to the cultural excesses of the Democratic Party—and the broader progressive establishment with which it is increasingly associated in the public mind—with even more extreme cultural excesses of his own, provoking a broad counter-reaction which extended well beyond those who partook in resistance marches during his first term. Therefore, it now seems increasingly safe to say that he has squandered it. Trump’s second term will leave behind an America that is weakened, cheapened, and fractious; but it seems increasingly unlikely that he will leave behind an America shaped in his own image.

 

This is cause for optimism, an indication that America has proven to be more resistant to the appeal of authoritarian populism than many feared. It would take someone who is much more popular and disciplined than Trump to change the country in a fundamental way.

 

And yet it is far too early to celebrate. Trump will, after all, remain in office for another 32 months. That is enough time to do a lot of damage to democratic institutions, to engage in a great deal of corruption, and perhaps to start more reckless wars. In all likelihood, a President Trump who is starting to sense that the tide is turning against him will turn out to be more, not less, dangerous to the American republic—and the world.

 

Some danger will persist even after he leaves office. When demagogues leave office—even when they are booted from office in disgrace—it rarely spells the end of their movement. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro lost his bid for reelection and was imprisoned for trying to impede the peaceful transfer of power, and yet his son Flávio has close to even odds of becoming the next president of Brazil, according to prediction markets. Alberto Fujimori was hounded out of Peruvian politics due to massive corruption and human rights abuses nearly three decades ago, and yet his daughter may be about to lead the country.

 

In Brazil, Peru, and many other democracies around the world, voters may decide to give populist movements a second (or third or fourth) chance because they were so disillusioned with the hapless alternatives. Given that the popularity of the Democratic Party remains at record lows, it would be deeply naive to rule out a similar future for the United States.

 

Trump looks likely to start fading from American politics over the coming years. But the broader threat of Trumpism may well outlast its creator.

 

 

The Age of American Caesarism

By Gregg Nunziata

Monday, April 27, 2026

 

Julius Caesar styled himself as a servant of the republic, claiming to speak for the people even as he disregarded laws and norms to govern by caprice. The Roman republic did not survive him.

 

The second Trump administration has revealed American Caesarism in nearly full bloom. Despite ambitions to fundamentally change the course of the country, this administration has no real legislative agenda. Instead, the president governs by executive orders, emergency decrees, and extortionate transactions, using his power to reward his friends and punish his enemies. He’s launched foreign military adventures and full-blown wars seemingly based on personal whim, and has made the military a political prop and a tool for domestic law enforcement. With Congress sidelined and the courts reluctant to check Donald Trump’s excesses, America has been left with what some legal scholars have described as an “executive unbound”—and with a president who threatens to supplant the republic in all but name.

 

Trump’s most fervent supporters justify his approach in terms reminiscent of Caesar’s. The White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has remarked that “the whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president.” Many Republicans argue that Trump’s policy preferences deserve support because he has a “mandate,” and they heap scorn on the “unelected” judges who have had the temerity to rule against him.

 

This is not American democracy. The central premise of the Constitution is that liberty requires divided authority. The accumulation of power in one branch of government is, as James Madison warned, “the very definition of tyranny.” Americans are already feeling the consequences of this imbalance: Because executive orders, emergency declarations, and unilateral action lack the durability of legislation passed by Congress, policies swing wildly from one administration to the next. Families and businesses cannot plan ahead, which undermines investment, growth, and prosperity.

 

American Caesarism did not emerge overnight with the election of Trump, but over the course of decades. And though conservatives alone did not create this state of affairs, many were key proponents of a vision of politics centered on one commanding figure—a vision that is now destabilizing our country. I have spent my career in the conservative legal movement, which has included advising Senate Republicans on judicial nominations. I have become convinced that if the Madisonian republic is to endure, conservatives must reckon with our role in bringing the nation to its current breaking point, and work to reestablish the checks and balances that we helped erode.

 

***

 

For much of American history, conservatives were the nation’s fiercest skeptics of executive power, warning that a swelling presidency could threaten liberty by displacing the authority of Congress and the courts. By the 1970s, a rise in what conservatives saw as judicial activism had shifted their focus to overreach by the courts. To those on the right, the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade was emblematic of a Court operating far beyond the bounds of the Constitution to usurp policy making. The courts of the era also reshaped criminal law, ordered busing to desegregate schools, redefined the relationship between church and state, and even waded into tax-and-spending issues. Convinced the judiciary had slipped its constitutional leash, the conservative legal movement dedicated itself to preventing what it called “legislating from the bench,” through scholarship, advocacy, and organizing.

 

But this focus on reforming the judiciary, combined with the politics of the period, meant that comparatively little attention was paid to the other two branches of government—and, in particular, to the slide toward rule by presidential fiat. Many of the leaders of the modern conservative legal movement had served in Republican administrations and had lived their entire lives against a backdrop of seemingly unbreakable Democratic control of Congress. (The future judicial superstars William Rehnquist, Robert Bork, and Antonin Scalia all held senior legal roles in the Nixon and Ford administrations.) In the 1970s, they saw the presidency humbled by the Watergate scandal and subsequent reforms. To a conservative of this era, the presidency must have seemed the only viable instrument of policy making, and its relative weakness a cause for concern.

 

Over time, sympathy for executive authority hardened into theory, and the legal movement once known for “strict construction” of the Constitution found a great deal of elasticity in it. Some began to advance the view that Article II, which vests “executive power” in the president, gave him any authority not expressly limited by the Constitution. The duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” came to be seen not as a restriction on the president’s policy making but as a grant of leeway to reinterpret the law. Most important, many conservatives came to believe that the president’s role as “commander in chief” gave him sweeping, unilateral authority in matters of national security—a view that has significant implications in a nation perennially on a war footing, including against non-state actors.

 

During the Reagan administration, conservative legal thinkers also embraced the “unitary executive theory,” which asserts the president’s sole control over the executive branch. In the past few years, this theory, reasonable at its core, has gained traction in the courts. The Supreme Court seems poised to allow Trump’s removal of a member of the Federal Trade Commission, which could set the stage for broader, more dubious rulings. The most extreme interpretations of this theory could allow the president to fire any federal employee at will, ignore civil-service protections, and eliminate the independence of the Federal Reserve.

 

While legal conservatives were developing theories of enhanced executive power, their political compatriots gained a congressional majority for the first time in decades. The new Republican majority, distrustful of Congress after decades of liberal control, undertook “reforms” that undermined the power of the institution. They slashed congressional staff (particularly nonpartisan and expert staff), weakened committees, and imposed term limits on committee chairmen, eroding important points of leverage over the executive branch.

 

By the 1990s, the courts were changing too. The new generation of conservative judges, intent on reining in the judiciary, empowered the executive. They embraced doctrines that instructed courts to defer to the administrative agencies’ interpretation of their own authority, and others that tended to insulate the executive from meaningful judicial review. (The “presumption of regularity,” for instance, assumes that the president and his agents act in good faith.) Courts also tended to uncritically accept presidential determinations in matters of foreign affairs and national security.

 

The conservative bench’s focus on preventing a weak presidency arguably reached its zenith in 2024 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, which concerned Trump’s potential criminal liability for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The majority, rather than being rattled by a president who had attempted a coup, labored to protect the country from the hypothetical danger of a presidency rendered impotent by specious criminal prosecutions. Never mind that if such a future materialized, Congress or the Court could resolve it. Instead, breaking with foundational conservative legal principles, the majority created sweeping presidential immunity out of whole cloth.

 

***

 

In recent years, the Supreme Court has shown signs of being open to another path, ruling against the administrative state in several major cases. However, the judiciary remains less willing to confront executive overreach outside of the regulatory context, especially in matters of purported national security. Conservative judges, in particular, continue to indulge presidential power at the expense of Congress.

 

Last year, an appellate court overturned the president’s invocation of wartime authorities to expedite the deportation of Venezuelans on the sensible grounds that Venezuela was not, in fact, invading the United States. A conservative judge dissented, writing that “the President’s declaration of an invasion, insurrection, or incursion is conclusive. Final. And completely beyond the second-guessing powers of unelected federal judges.” This type of deference to the executive, which relies on presidential good faith, now amounts to judicial abdication.

 

Similarly, the recent decision striking down Trump’s tariffs relied solely on the determination that the emergency authority at issue does not authorize tariffs. The justices did not wrestle with the president’s invocation of a national emergency to impose his policy agenda, nor did they say that Congress could not hand such legislative powers over to the president in the first place. Even still, with this modest holding, three conservative justices dissented. Justice Clarence Thomas, a favorite of conservatives, wrote separately to argue that Congress could give any of its powers to the president, so long as they were not “core legislative powers.”

 

If America is to preserve its liberty, conservative legal scholars and judges will need to adjust to a new reality and revisit doctrines that no longer serve to protect the constitutional structure. Some conservatives have already begun moving in this direction. In its recent rulings ending deference to the administrative state, the Court explicitly abandoned the stance of an earlier generation of conservatives. The lawsuit challenging Trump’s tariffs was brought by veterans of the conservative and right-of-center legal movements, who argued that the president had exceeded his authority. These are promising developments—but we need to go further.

 

Courts should refuse to read broadly any executive power not firmly tethered to the language of the Constitution, and reject clearly pretextual claims of national emergencies. They might, as the conservative legal scholar Yuval Levin has suggested, adopt a doctrine that resolves ambiguous legal questions in favor of republican government, which would mean pushing policy disputes to the legislature rather than the executive.

 

The Supreme Court should also look with more scrutiny at the White House’s use of the “emergency docket” (or “shadow docket”), whereby the Court issues interim rulings on urgent cases. The Trump administration has filed dozens of emergency requests to freeze adverse lower-court rulings while litigation continues. The Court’s tendency to side with the White House in such cases, if only temporarily, has allowed serious constitutional harm to continue, and has, in some cases, done irreparable damage. This seeming deference to executive interests is particularly difficult to justify in an administration willing to flout court orders.

 

Courts cannot restrain the executive alone; they have too narrow a function and work too slowly. Congress must rediscover its role—and conservatives who wish to preserve our original constitutional structure can help make this a reality by supporting expanded funding for the legislative branch and championing rules reforms to make Congress more effective. Another step would be to establish a congressional version of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The OLC issues opinions that, though not law, guide executive-branch behavior and influence both the judiciary and the public’s understanding of contested legal questions. A well-funded congressional office of legal counsel could weigh in on such questions as well, so that executive-branch lawyers would not be the only ones assessing the bounds of executive power on behalf of the government.

 

Legislation to rein in our “unbound” executive should be a priority. Obvious first steps would include strengthening the enforceability of congressional subpoenas, protecting against politicized law enforcement, and limiting the president’s emergency powers and ability to profit from his service. America could also recover its capacity to amend the Constitution and use that power to pare back the presidency. A prime target would be the presidential pardon, a vestige of monarchy that has become a source of scandal and corruption.

 

The conservative legal movement once transformed the national conversation about the courts. It can do the same with executive power—but only if it is willing to redirect its intellectual and advocacy efforts in that direction. If conservatives truly believe in ordered liberty, constitutional limits, and the rule of law, then the task ahead is clear: We must help check Caesar. Not for the sake of any party, but for the sake of the republic.

Strait Flush

By Kevin D. Williamson

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

 

The Trump administration has blocked the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the Iranians’ having blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the geopolitical version of, “You can’t fire me! I quit!” It is not quite banished Coriolanus howling “I banish you!” at his tormenters, but it will have to do.

 

The question before the world—and the White House, and the American voter—is not who can close the Strait of Hormuz but who can keep it open.

 

These are not the same question. The Trump administration seems to think that keeping the strait open is a task that should be in Tehran’s portfolio, even though the Strait of Hormuz is not sovereign Iranian territory and in spite of the fact that the Iranian government is the last party on God’s green Earth that any sensible human being would wish to leave in control of the economically sensitive waterway.

 

Anybody with a little bit of firepower can close the Strait of Hormuz—the U.S. military, of course, but also the Iranians, or, presumably, the Royal Navy of Oman, if the powers that be in Muscat were willing to endure the consequences, to say nothing of more consequential seafaring powers such as the United Kingdom, India, or China, or, for that matter, any state or private actor willing to put forward the small expenditure necessary for a few mines. There are drug cartels with resources sufficient to the job of closing the strait, if there were some profit in it.

 

The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway under maritime law, but the Trump administration insists on treating the strait as though it were sovereign Iranian territory, doing so for reasons ranging from incompetence to political cowardice. Washington has negotiated with Tehran on a sovereign-to-sovereign basis, entertaining this or that concession in exchange for reinstating open international access to the Strait of Hormuz, and, whatever gloss is put on that by Donald Trump and his warmaking team—one part Village People, one part Apple Dumpling Gang—that amounts to a recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the strait. Iran is losing the war so badly that it now has been, in effect, granted recognized sovereignty over new territory. So much winning.

 

Any half-organized gaggle of pirates could make a good go of closing the strait. Keeping the strait open and secure is a heavier lift—which is why the Trump administration, whose key figures have never lifted anything heavier than money, would prefer that the Iranians do the job. Never mind the inescapable instability that will be created by leaving the strait under the control of an unstable gang of Islamist fanatics—one whose most effective and most accessible geopolitical weapon is interrupting traffic in the strait; for the Trump administration, the alternative is something unthinkable: hard work that does not pay much.

 

U.S. forces could keep the strait free and clear on their own, if Washington so desired, but this would involve some real expense and considerable risk, including the risk that millions of Americans will one day peer into their mobile self-moronization devices to watch the TikTok video of a $15 billion U.S. Navy ship burning and sinking after being attacked by $500,000 worth of drones or encountering a $10,000 mine.

 

Washington could, as an alternative, try to put together an international coalition to keep the strait open—if Washington had any competent international partners who regarded the Trump administration as a credible, reliable, good-faith partner. But, unhappily for that prospect, Paris and London and Berlin are not at present inclined to such an extraordinary level of self-delusion, even if those capitals are as thickly planted with dupes and dunces as Washington. Oman, long a junior partner in the strait, has good reason to believe that Iran remains more credible as a potential enemy than the United States is as an ally.

 

From Ottawa to Tokyo, it surely has not escaped the world’s attention that it is the United States, not Iran, that is the reigning world champion when it comes to the cynical and self-serving weaponization of trade and trade relations. Word has reached Brussels—and has even gone as far as Copenhagen!—that the United States is full of blistering contempt for its erstwhile allies, a contempt felt especially strongly by senior administration figures such as J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth. It is difficult to imagine that Ursula von der Leyen is going to look up from her relentless LinkedIn posting long enough to suddenly give the nod to a great big gushing flood of euros to bail out a U.S. administration that was only a few months ago threatening to make war on a NATO ally and member of the European Union. What would be in it for the Europeans? If anything, the timid and underarmed continental leadership might prefer that the Strait of Hormuz be dominated by a hostile power that is weak rather than by a hostile power that is genuinely powerful. The Europeans may not be ready to fight a big war, but they can still afford a good bit of bribery.

 

Keeping the strait open for business means taking effective command over the water and adjacent land not only in the strait itself but also immediately on both sides of it. There is little question that U.S. forces could do the job, but it will be a bloody and expensive job as long as the Iranians are willing to keep fighting the war—and, while events remain utterly unpredictable, we do not seem to be in any way obviously on the brink of that “unconditional surrender” that the U.S. president was talking about approximately five minutes ago. Perhaps there will be an internal crackup in Tehran that will create an opening for Washington.

 

But any settlement that is based on the assumption—however implicitly accepted—that access to the Strait of Hormuz is Tehran’s to grant or revoke will settle nothing at all. It could, however, give the Iranians what they want: time, including the time to take another bite at the atomic apple.