The ‘Broken Veteran’ Excuse

By Mike Nelson

Sunday, June 14, 2026

 

Graham Platner’s victory this week in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary would have been a stunning achievement for a political newcomer under any circumstances. What makes it truly remarkable is that Platner pulled this off despite a decades-long trail of questionable behavior: a Nazi tattoo; contemptible written statements about sexual-abuse victims, Black people, and women; admissions of past substance abuse and marital infidelity; allegations of demeaning, disturbing, and physically threatening behavior toward former girlfriends. (Platner has denied any physical intimidation or violence.)

 

Platner and his surrogates have rolled out a catch-all excuse, meant not only to clarify how he could have made so many bad decisions, but also to shame people who criticize him: Platner, a Marine Corps veteran, was dealing with the heavy emotional burden and mental toll of the wars this nation sent him to fight. It’s not his fault. And he’s a better person now.

 

But that argument—and I say this as a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars—is nonsense, a convenient answer intended to divert the conversation from legitimate questions about Platner’s many flaws. It plays on Americans’ sympathy for those who have fought in war and overplays the distinction between veterans and civilians. Whether this justification is used cynically or sincerely—or ignorantly—it is insulting to veterans. Many of them suffer from their time in combat but don’t engage in the kind of behavior that Platner has. And many of them—despite, or because of, their wartime experience—are among our nation’s most accomplished, ethical, hardworking, and patriotic citizens and leaders.

 

Let me put this as plainly as possible: I know quite literally hundreds of combat veterans, and the soldiers I fought with, to my knowledge, all somehow managed to avoid getting Nazi tattoos. It doesn’t take much effort to avoid being inked with an SS symbol.

 

Platner himself has said repeatedly that much of his bad behavior stemmed from his war experience. “I’ve been very up front since the beginning of this campaign that that was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service,” he recently told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes, admitting to “not being a good boyfriend” and “self-medicating with alcohol.” He has spoken about having PTSD and, in an interview with The New York Times, described an incident in which his friend was badly injured when their vehicle got hit by an IED in Iraq. The morning after his primary win, Platner said that he had only started to feel like himself again in 2021, and added, “I wake up every single morning just trying to be a little bit better and a little bit kinder than the way I was before.”

 

His surrogates echo this defense, which plays into the dangerous and condescending stereotype of American veterans as broken people. Speaking at a Platner rally a few days before the primary, Representative Ro Khanna acknowledged that some of Platner’s past relationships were “toxic and volatile,” before pivoting to: “But we need to have an honest conversation in this country. We broke thousands of young men by sending them into dumb wars.” Senator Chris Van Hollen has defended Platner, saying, “Let’s take a couple issues, including the comments he’s made in the past. I mean, he’s been very clear that he went into combat on behalf of the United States. He went through a really rough period, PTSD-type period.”

 

According to this logic, Platner is not responsible for his own actions. The burdens he carries excuse things he has done over the course of two decades—in the military, after returning to civilian life, and apparently up until he decided to run for Senate.

 

Some of these defenses are well-intentioned. They suggest an admiration for the sacrifices that veterans have made. Perhaps some civilians feel unqualified to judge people who have served and who may well still experience the effects of their time overseas. The chasm between those who have been in combat and those who’ve only watched news of it is massive and growing: A smaller percentage of Americans served in the global War on Terror than in any other major war over the past century. This can lead some civilians to be overly deferential to veterans, who are, after all, human.

 

But showing respect to the point of refusing to judge someone’s questionable actions is a version of what George W. Bush called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Some Americans seem to view Afghanistan and Iraq veterans almost as an alien species, whose experiences cannot be understood and who therefore have a separate set of expectations. This attitude reduces an incredibly diverse group of individuals to the “broken veteran” cliché.

 

In some cases, Platner supporters who are veterans themselves have tried to lend credibility to this explanation. In a Substack essay published shortly before the primary, Daniel Barkhuff, the founder of Veterans for Responsible Leadership, a super PAC that endorsed Platner, wrote: “He said dumb things. He did dumb things.” Platner, Barkhuff added, seems to have “the sort of impulsive aggressiveness that is curated and encouraged in ground combat units where 99% of your problems can be solved by getting more violent and faster than the other guy. None of that is hidden, and none of it needs to be excused.” Barkhuff explained that he himself has used offensive language in online arguments. But that analogy doesn’t amount to much of a defense of Platner, whose troubling history goes well beyond a few bad words.

 

Platner and his supporters frequently talk about his personal story as one of redemption and recovery after his time at war. “Graham clearly made a mistake. What I appreciated about him is he owned that mistake. He took responsibility for it,” Representative Seth Moulton said in reference to Platner’s tattoo. But has he owned his mistakes? Although Platner claims that he didn’t know the significance of his Nazi Totenkopf tattoo, others have disputed this. His former campaign political director said that Platner “knows damn well what it means.” A former romantic partner, Lyndsey Fifield, told The New York Times that Platner had referred to the tattoo years ago as “my Totenkopf.” When Hayes asked Platner about a text in which Fifield referred to the “Nazi tattoo on his chest” before the tattoo became public, Platner responded, “Well, she certainly didn’t send that text to me.” His denial proved even more absurd when an unnamed second former romantic partner told The New York Post that she’d had a conversation with Platner about the tattoo and its Nazi meaning in 2021, and shared screenshots demonstrating her awareness of the tattoo prior to the public disclosure.

 

In reaction to a New York Times story in which Fifield alleged that Platner had grabbed her, pushed her, and twisted her arm, Platner denied not only that behavior but also that he and Fifield had ever dated, despite contemporaneous texts and social-media posts suggesting that they had been in a relationship. Platner’s campaign has also attacked Fifield, who has been active in conservative circles, as a political operative, though the Times found no evidence that Fifield was acting on Collins’s behalf. Part of redemption is accounting for one’s faults, and targeting the people who bear witness to those faults is not accountability—it’s defensiveness. When Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski recently asked Platner whether additional controversies might come out, Platner said, “There’s nothing out there that’s actually concerning. People will make everything seem very concerning.”

 

I have seen veterans deal with the very real stresses of America’s long wars—physical wounds as well as psychological ones that linger after witnessing death and carnage, or coming close to it oneself. The separation from home, family, and social networks to deploy to high-stress and high-risk environments, repeated cyclically over the course of decades, took a toll on every veteran of the War-on-Terror generation—whether they deployed once or a dozen times, whether they were directly in harm’s way or far from the explosions. Many veterans have sunk into substance abuse or engaged in questionable personal behavior, and I can understand why. Some no doubt have felt the need to “cut loose,” and we shouldn’t be surprised that the kinds of people who sign up to exit an aircraft mid-flight might also have a high risk tolerance in their personal lives.

 

But even if Platner’s pattern of behavior isn’t unique, that doesn’t mean it’s representative of the experiences or choices of the great majority of people who have served. And if all veterans who have suffered or stumbled deserve help and treatment, that doesn’t mean their hardship is a blanket excuse for immoral behavior. Everyone is responsible for the choices they make. That’s a lesson we learn in the military.

 

Anyone who claims that this kind of baggage is the cost of getting “regular” people—and specifically veterans—to run for office doesn’t realize how smug and out of touch that claim is. This argument implies that veterans are all a bunch of drunks with a history of contemptible beliefs and actions. We can’t claim to pay tribute to veterans while holding them to such low standards. This logic also ignores the many veterans who have entered public life without such questionable pasts.

 

Veterans are a part of American society, and many will continue to run for public office. But their status as veterans, though an important component of their story, should never excuse decisions they have made. Nor should veteran candidates use their service as automatic proof of their worthiness for office. If a candidate wishes to make his wartime service an essential part of why voters should select him, then he should highlight the traits he wishes to bring to the office, not dismiss the traits he wishes them to ignore.

The Shareholder in Chief

By John R. Puri

Thursday, June 11, 2026

 

Early in his second term, President Trump announced his intent to establish a sovereign wealth fund for the United States — a government-owned investment vehicle similar to those run by petro-states. It didn’t seem as if he would get his wish. The federal government was running a $2 trillion deficit, not a surplus to reinvest, and Congress had no appetite to appropriate billions for a presidential hedge fund.

 

What Trump quickly discovered, however, was that he did not need congressional assent to start assembling shares in private companies. All he needed was good old-fashioned leverage, using statutory tools he already possessed. Whenever a firm sought the administration’s help or tried to access an existing federal grant or loan program, the president would ask for an equity stake in return.

 

He began last summer by exploiting an obscure account dating back to the Cold War that is authorized to support defense-critical industries. Typically employed to provide loans and purchase commitments, the fund was used by the Trump administration to acquire a 15 percent equity stake in MP Materials, which operates the nation’s sole rare earth minerals mine. The purchase instantly made the Defense Department the company’s largest shareholder.

 

One month later, Trump blew his first equity deal out of the water. He eyed an ownership stake in the struggling chip giant Intel, which was bleeding money and jobs despite billions of dollars in federal subsidies under the Biden-era CHIPS Act. Trump noticed that $5.7 billion in grants had previously been awarded to Intel but had not yet been paid. In exchange for releasing the promised funds, the administration asked for 10 percent of the company. Intel was happy to accede, winning the most powerful ally in the world.

 

Before 2025, economic analyst Scott Lincicome notes, the federal government had not made an indefinite, noncrisis investment in a healthy private company since at least the 1950s. The Trump administration has now taken more than 20 such stakes, targeting a range of industries from minerals and semiconductors to nuclear energy and quantum computing. There is no limiting principle at work; the government is taking equity in any company it can, on any terms, in any amount. It’s a scheme that progressives can fall in love with: Bernie Sanders is now clamoring to take government stakes in artificial intelligence companies.

 

This endeavor is enabled by a mix of old and new legislative appropriations written with few constraints on their deployment for stretchable ends: bolstering the defense-industrial base, accelerating innovation, etc. Congress clearly did not anticipate the current president’s cleverness.

 

Trump is reaping the benefits of the industrial policy pushed by his predecessor. The CHIPS Act and Biden’s green-energy law, the Inflation Reduction Act, gave the executive tens of billions of dollars that he could dangle. Last year’s reconciliation bill gave the Defense Department billions more to dole out, and the administration’s recent budget request would supercharge the military’s investment accounts.

 

Trump related his extralegal investment philosophy in an interview last December: “We should take stakes in companies when people need something. I think we should take stakes in companies. Now, some people would say that doesn’t sound very American. Actually, I think it is very American.” To call this approach transactional may sound trite — every equity deal is a transaction, of course. But conservatives have long insisted that government be the neutral arbiter of the marketplace, not an active participant. And, under law, the executive branch was never meant to trade special favors and taxpayer money for profit.

 

The president’s quest for ownership has pervaded his discretionary governance style. Executives are reportedly so afraid that Trump will demand stakes in their companies that they have rehearsed how they would respond in Oval Office meetings. Even when Trump doesn’t receive a stake, the mere prospect can affect his decision-making. When United Airlines’ CEO pitched him on a merger with rival American Airlines, Trump’s aides discussed whether to secure shares in the new company. The White House nearly bailed out Spirit Airlines with a $500 million loan because the failing carrier was prepared to hand over an 80 percent stake, until bondholders balked.

 

Treating federal agencies like venture capital firms risks that government will do poorly what it needs to do well. There is a strong national security case for using public funds to expand production of critical inputs, such as rare earth metals, for which we are dependent on China. It is essential to this mission, however, that finite resources are distributed to companies based on their viability and strategic necessity. With equity stakes on the table, government officials may instead be tempted to reward whoever presents the most attractive deal.

 

Some companies that the Defense Department has bought into, including MP Materials, are well-established producers looking to expand. Several others are start-ups that have barely gotten off the ground. Vulcan Elements, an aspiring rare earth magnet manufacturer, traded stock warrants for a $620 million loan despite employing fewer than 100 people. Trilogy Metals, a development-stage mining play in Alaska, got $35.6 million before it even applied for a permit. The department spent hundreds of millions of dollars for stakes in lithium and alumina producers — minerals that the United States sources from friendly South American countries, not from adversaries. It’s hard to say whether these companies would have received federal funds if they hadn’t offered shares. Conversely, what happens when an invaluable defense supplier refuses to fork over equity?

 

Federal stakes also threaten untold economic distortions. Once the government takes a financial interest in a particular company, the interventionism never ends there. Officials use the state’s power to privilege their investments over other firms, supplanting the market’s role in steering wealth and opportunity.

 

Intel is the clearest beneficiary of the president’s embrace. Since taking a stake in the chipmaker, the administration has worked to boost Intel’s business. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has effectively become the company’s envoy, convincing the chief executives of Apple, Nvidia, and SpaceX to form lucrative partnerships with Intel rather than with more advanced competitors. They may not have had much of a choice in the matter: Apple relies heavily on special tariff exemptions, Nvidia has an agreement with Trump to bypass export controls, and SpaceX would not exist without federal contracts.

 

Through such favoritism, Trump’s investment picks distort the flow of capital. Government stakes are intended to “crowd in” private investment, thereby diverting resources from more intrinsically promising businesses that otherwise would have received that funding. Intel’s share price has skyrocketed since its deal with Trump, despite persistently poor fundamentals — a telltale sign of capital misallocation.

 

Positive returns for taxpayers often fail to translate into success for the nation. Government-owned companies may well see their valuations jump as investors seek the security of state backing, but that only means they are eating up resources that could have gone to more productive ventures. It’s the same model that has faltered in China — government directing capital to state-owned and politically favored enterprises — with misallocation costing the country trillions of dollars in missed economic output.

 

There are ways for government to secure critical supply chains without constructing a corporate patronage network. Indeed, that was the intent behind many of the programs that Trump is using to extract equity. But so long as the state is taking stakes in private companies, there can be no neutrality. The paper profits may be sweet, but the losses will be booked against sound governance and economic dynamism. 

Media ‘Pounce’ on Susan Collins for Having the Temerity to Notice Platner’s Past

By Becket Adams

Sunday, June 14, 2026

 

We’re evidently in the “pounce” phase of Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner’s Hindenburg of a campaign.

 

Are you surprised?

 

The funny thing about the “pounce” trope — where newsrooms downplay a Democratic scandal by making the “story” about the right’s reaction to the story — is that it nearly always signals the scandal is indeed . . . a scandal.

 

Otherwise, there would be no need to shift focus.

 

At ABC News last week, Mary Bruce, like clockwork, accused Republican Senator Susan Collins of “pouncing” on the series of controversies dogging Platner, whom the network correspondent describes as a humble “oyster farmer” who, yes, once had a tattoo “resembling a Nazi symbol.”

 

There’s a lot to unpack here, not least of which is the insistence that Platner’s tattoo merely resembled the SS symbol as opposed to being that symbol. The tattoo, which Platner has since covered up with a goofy Gaelic dog-thingy, was an exact likeness of the SS “death’s head,” not just a lookalike. Furthermore, former acquaintances claim, as do text messages from before the tattoo became public knowledge, that he knew exactly what the image meant as far back as 2012 and referred to it as “my Totenkopf.”

 

Then, of course, there’s the insistence on characterizing Platner, whose academic background includes attendance at an elite prep school where tuition currently sits at around $71,000–$80,800 per year, as the mild-mannered “oyster farmer,” with no mention of the fact that his customer base is essentially just his mother.

 

More than all of this, though, is the laughable suggestion that there is something notable or even untoward about the Collins campaign’s pointing out that her opponent in the 2026 midterms is a too-online sex pest edgelord with no impulse control.

 

This is not “pouncing.” This is called campaigning.

 

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

 

And when life gives you an opponent who once sported a Nazi tattoo, whose fondness for dating apps and hookup sites followed him into his marriage, who has published a series of unhinged opinions that would make even President Trump blush, and who has a string of ex-girlfriends alleging physical and emotional abuse, you make a campaign ad.

 

Collins’s team would be guilty of political malpractice if they didn’t point all this out, ad nauseam.

 

If you can believe it, Bruce and ABC are hardly the first to accuse those wicked Republicans of noticing the things that the Maine Democratic candidate has said and done.

 

In response to reports that Platner had sent racy text messages to women who are not his wife, the New York Times reported gravely that “officials with the campaign arm of Senate Republicans seized on the news, circulating reports and attacking Mr. Platner.”

 

Then, in reaction to a report detailing allegations that Platner was abusive to ex-girlfriends, The Guardian likewise noted with sadness, and perhaps a tinge of indignation, that “Republicans [had] seized on the latest report.”

 

In reference to the full body of scandals and controversies created by Platner, The Hill reported last week that “Republicans have pounced on the string of controversies in the lead-up to Tuesday’s primary.”

 

When Maine Democratic Governor Janet Mills suspended her campaign for Senate, Politico reported that Republicans had “seized on” her exit “to question Platner’s blue-collar bona fides and highlight his past scandal.”

 

Emphasis very much added.

 

The “pouncing” trope is funnier than usual in the context of the Maine Senate race because of the implicit, if not explicit, suggestion that it’s unfair to rake through a Senate candidate’s past.

 

Are the folks at ABC News, the New York Times, Politico, etc. unaware of what goes on in regular campaigning?

 

Are we really going to pretend as if bringing up Platner’s own words and deeds is somehow unusual for U.S. politics or dirty pool?

 

Apparently — but that’s not all!

 

The trope is doubly absurd for this specific case in Maine, given that the misdirection for scandals involving a Nazi tattoo and allegations of abusive behavior comes after we’ve spent the better part of the past decade listening to members of the press drone on about “white supremacy,” “toxic masculinity,” and how everything from milk to having babies to birdwatching to the “okay” hand gesture is rooted somehow in racism and fascism.

 

Yet now that these people are faced with something more concrete than their own bogeymen, they’d like very much for everyone to stop noticing.

 

They’d like it even more if the Republican senator from Maine would say nothing about it.

Flag Day Chronicles

By Kaitlyn Kiepert

Sunday, June 14, 2026

 

From fireworks to parades, the Fourth of July is one of America’s most festive holidays. But Americans often overlook another patriotic occasion worth celebrating: Flag Day.

 

Flag Day, though not a federal holiday, has been around for decades. Former Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge issued proclamations in the early 1900s designating June 14 as Flag Day. In 1949, the occasion became a legally recognized national observance under then-President Harry Truman.

 

The design of the iconic flag has evolved over the years, taking 183 years to reach its current iteration. Congress approved America’s first flag on June 14, 1777, while the flag as we know it today emerged in 1960. According to the National Flag Foundation, the design for the 50-star American flag first originated with a 17-year-old’s junior-year class project.

 

In 1958, Robert Heft and his classmates at Ohio’s Lancaster High School were each tasked with creating something and bringing it to school to show their classmates. Heft’s project was a redesign of the 48-star flag to have 50 stars since he predicted Alaska and Hawaii would soon become part of the union.

 

His teacher gave him a B minus on the project but promised to change his grade if Heft could convince Congress to adopt his design.

 

Though then-President Eisenhower did not directly select Heft’s flag, the 50-star flag design that was chosen looked exactly the same, and Heft’s grade was changed to an A. 

 

Over the past 250 years, Americans have regarded Old Glory as a sign of national identity and have used it in displays of reverence for national heroes. Flying the American flag at half-staff is used to symbolize mourning for a government official, a first responder, a military member, a national day of remembrance, a national tragedy, or Memorial Day. Only the U.S. president, a state governor, or the D.C. mayor have the authority to require citizens to fly a flag at half-staff.

 

Burial flags are also meant to honor a deceased active-duty or veteran member of the U.S. Armed Forces, including the president as the commander-in-chief. Usually draped over the casket or set out next to an urn during the funeral, the flag is given to the deceased individual’s next of kin after the ceremony.

 

No matter its star count or what it may mean to an individual, the flag has several timeless characteristics.

 

Each color represents several of America’s core values. The blue symbolizes determination, justice, and vigilance. The white represents innocence and purity, the red courage and valor.

 

The American flag is also a popular topic of hundreds of patriotic tributes, both spoken and sung, from George M. Cohan’s “You’re a Grand Old Flag” to Johnny Cash’s “Ragged Old Flag.”

 

And of course, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was penned by Francis Scott Key after the American flag at Fort McHenry survived British bombardment; it was adopted by the Navy decades before it became the national anthem. Originally a poem titled “The Defense of Fort McHenry,” Key’s tune is actually that of the popular English song “To Anacreon in Heaven.”

 

The American flag has inspired countries’ flags around the world.

 

The Cuban flag displays blue and white stripes with a single white star on a red triangle. Designed by a Cuban exile in New York City, the flag’s origin was fueled by a passion for independence inspired by countries like the U.S.

 

Liberia’s flag has a similar red and white stripe pattern, and its top left corner displays a single white star on a blue background. The similarities point to America’s long history of intervention in the country, from the slave trade to the resettlement concept espoused by the American Colonization Society.

 

The American flag is a reminder of how far this nation has come — and of how much was sacrificed for our republic to carry on.

 

So it is only fitting to celebrate Flag Day today. The flag is so much more than a piece of cloth flapping in the breeze. It draws Americans to remember a long history of bloody battlefields where bravery was shown, crowded courtrooms where truth prevailed, and the timeless cause of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Ancient Wisdom

By David Wolpe

Sunday, June 14, 2026

 

Alexander Selkirk is not a name many people know these days, but he was the inspiration for one of the most famous books of all time: Robinson Crusoe. It was reading his story (along with those of other castaways) that led author Daniel Defoe to imagine a man on the island, creating a life in splendid isolation.

 

Selkirk, sailing with a group of buccaneers in 1704, ironically stranded himself on an island west of Chile in the Pacific. He had a dispute with his captain, Thomas Stradling, insisting that the ship needed repairs. Stradling offered Selkirk the chance to disembark and he did, assuming the crew would back him up. It didn’t, and when he begged Stradling to take him back, the captain refused. Selkirk proved correct—the ship later sank.

 

While Robinson Crusoe spent more than two decades alone in the book and underwent a spiritual awakening, Selkirk, who was alone for four years and four months, was miserable on the otherwise uninhabited island, suffering from isolation, loneliness, and a desperate desire to see other human beings. When he was rescued, he was overwhelmed at the vision of his rescuers—he was both distrusting and joyous.

 

That core insight, that the idea of individualism is incoherent without an accompanying community, animates one of the central books of sociology, Robert Nisbet’s The Quest for Community, published in 1953. Its insights have increasing relevance for our situation as a nation and, as technology spreads, for the world.

 

Nisbet, who taught at Berkeley and Columbia among other universities, recognized that individualism alone was insufficient to create a functioning society. The difference between the medieval world and the modern world was the prevalence of local associations. Guilds, churches, villages, and more gave people a community in which to feel a sense of belonging. Although some persisted into the modern age, they were far less all-encompassing. Paradoxically, individualism has the capacity to thrive when embedded in a network. The solitary individual is left without resources and power.

 

Though Nisbet does not mention it, writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, the paradigm of the lone individual in the woods thanks to his book Walden, was an integral part of Concord, Massachusetts, society. Walden’s cabin was some 1.5 miles from Concord’s city center, and Thoreau walked there frequently for various needs, including for his mother to wash and fold his laundry. Ironically, having a mom and a community helped him be a loner.

 

Decades before sociologist Robert Putnam coined the term “bowling alone,” Nisbet wrote that the more that voluntary, close associations are abolished, the greater the power of the state becomes. “The political enslavement of man requires the emancipation of man from all the authorities and memberships (obstructions to popular will, as the Nazis and Communists describe them) that serve, in one degree or another, to insulate the individual from external political power,” he wrote.

 

Our epidemic of isolation is not merely anecdotal. To cite just one recent study, the American Psychological Association reported last year that more than half of adults periodically feel isolated, alone, and subject to the resulting depression and anxiety that isolation can bring.

 

Here, modern conditions and Nisbet’s insight can help us understand the wisdom of Judaism’s response.

 

Certain central prayers cannot be said without a minyan—a gathering of at least 10 worshippers. Holidays are an inevitable time of assembly. The prayers are almost always collective—praying for what we, not I, need. Even the confession of sins on Yom Kippur is in the plural: “For the sins which we have sinned.” Society enables and restricts, and together these guardrails ensure that the idea of peoplehood (not just personhood) is as primary in Judaism as faith itself.

 

Community is not only a function of religious obligation—the obligation creates a community even for those who are not traditionally observant. I remember a man named Irv who lived alone and would come each morning to services at my synagogue in Los Angeles. He would attend the morning minyan at 7:30 a.m., even though he did not know the prayers. He came just to ensure that he would not be alone. Again and again, he would tell me how, as a child, he would accompany his father, who was a furrier, on his rounds. Once, his father sold a fur to Ella Fitzgerald, and she sang to Irv, who was a small boy, until he fell asleep. I sometimes think what Judaism meant to him was that he had someone to whom he could tell that story, as he did to each new member of the minyan.

 

That is why I argue against the association of houses of worship with particular political parties. What makes such associations perilous is that primary loyalty tends to shift to party, even if certain party positions are at odds with the tradition itself. Such standards, such as those notable in the civil rights era, will often be in opposition to the government. The separation of church and state, while never absolute, protects both institutions. Once you place an “R” or a “D” metaphorically on top of the spire, the religious meaning of the establishment is diminished. You are joining a party as much as a church.

 

Judaism has survived, generally speaking, by avoiding this temptation while still insisting Jews do not survive alone. In his 1926 book Religion in the Making, British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote that religion is what one does with his solitude. But in Judaism, religion is what one does in community, in mutual aid. It is not a tradition of hermits on mountaintops. Moses spent 40 days at Sinai, but then even he had to come down and be with the people.

 

When Jews fight against the existence of Israel, I believe this is the part of Judaism they miss—the essential connection of peoplehood. I don’t mean those who object to the government of Israel or its actions, but those who demonstrate little or no care for the survival and security of its people. There is a phrase from the Talmud, often repeated in Jewish circles: “All of Israel is responsible for one another”(Shevuot 39a). Community is central to a tradition that Genesis depicts as a family grown into a people.

 

Nearly half of all Jews live in Israel, and built into our tradition is a natural solidarity. When, in the Bible, two and a half tribes wanted to live on the other side of the Jordan, Moses assured them that they could, as long as they fought for the land. To extend the meaning of the political philosopher Edmund Burke’s phrase, “little platoons” are essential to the Jewish undertaking.

 

Hillel, perhaps the greatest of the early rabbis, said, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” Our age is constantly diagnosed with the flip side of individualism: loneliness. Judaism carries within its spiritual DNA the cure, and it is one that America once understood better than it does now. It is not an online community, but a real and living gathering of human beings, who know each other’s joys and sorrows and dreams. We have become a nation of Selkirks waiting for rescue. But that rescue will not come on a screen.

 

We have to get ourselves off the island.

Three Cheers for Elon Musk — and America

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Friday, June 12, 2026

 

Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire. I think that this is marvelous.

 

Many of our public officials, it seems, do not. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, responded to the news by saying that “the rich get richer and everyone else gets shafted.” Senator Ed Markey complained that it was “disgusting.” Senator Elizabeth Warren suggested that it was a “wake up call.” Would-be Senator Graham Platner wrote that “Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire. Let’s make sure he’s also the last.” And so on and forth.

 

I find this viewpoint revolting. Repulsive. Grotesque. Un-American. I hate it. As far as I’m concerned, Newsom, Markey, Warren, Platner, and those who agree with them are members of an impotent envy cult. Elon Musk has been responsible for PayPal, Starlink, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and more. If your primary reaction to his stewardship of these endeavors is to wonder how quickly you can confiscate the money he has tied up in them, you are a loser and you do not deserve the blessings that this country has bestowed upon you. That sort of thinking is at home in Belgium or Canada or Russia. It is not at home in the United States of America. There are many, many reasons that I wanted to move to this country, and one of them is that it is the sort of place where people such as Elon Musk are able to do great things. England has become sclerotic and its politics have become narrow and covetous. But America? America is a different beast. Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire? Hell yeah he is.

 

And spare me the cheap psychoanalysis. I don’t believe what I believe because I want Elon Musk to “like” me or because I expect rich people to “give” me things or because I suspect that, one day, I, too, will be a trillionaire. What sort of political worldview would that be? And what does it say about those who assume it in others? No, I believe what I believe because I lived for 26 years in a place that seems to have given up on creating wealth and dreaming big dreams — and that has become gray and boring and myopic as a result — and because I much prefer the alternative.

 

I suspect, at one level, Musk’s enemies believe the things he has achieved would magically have happened without him — that, somehow, they were foreordained to occur, and that he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. This is stupid and it is wrong. There are such things in history as great men, and Musk is one of them. Gavin Newsom, Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, and Graham Platner, by contrast, are not. If they got their way, the United States would become France. An interesting place, yes, but not one that ever does much of note.

 

So, yeah: If your reaction to this news was to cavil and whine and start looking lasciviously at Musk’s property, you can count me out.  I want no part of it. Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire. Only in America.

Black Marks

By Nick Catoggio

Friday, June 12, 2026

 

There’s no such thing as a dignified Republican in 2026, but there are ways for Republicans to make less of a spectacle of their indignity. And so I offer this advice to John Cornyn, Thom Tillis, and others in Congress whose careers will end this year because they ran afoul of la grande orange:

 

Say nothing. Better to be silent in defeat than find the “courage” to speak up against the president only after you no longer risk a primary challenge by doing so.

 

“If he would do that to me, he would do that to anybody,” Cornyn complained to the New York Times this week about Donald Trump’s decision to endorse his Republican challenger in Texas. “There’s never going to be good enough for him, other than 100 percent, you know, slavish adherence to whatever he wants.” That’s true—as has been obvious even to young children for the last 10 years.

 

For Cornyn to object to it now means he’s either extremely unobservant or he spent the last decade timidly biting his tongue as his party devolved into a fascist personality cult. I don’t think he’s unobservant.

 

It got worse. When asked whether retiring senators like him now feel more emboldened to oppose Trump on legislative matters, he referred the Times to the president’s famous (and incorrect) remark to Volodymyr Zelensky about not having any “cards” against Russia. “We’ve got some cards to play,” Cornyn boasted.

 

That’s also true. Just last week, he and his colleagues had a major card to play when $70 billion in funding for ICE came to the floor. And they … didn’t play it.

 

Tillis warned beforehand that he wouldn’t support the bill unless it included language blocking the president’s taxpayer-money slush fund for MAGA criminals. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had assured the Senate that the fund wouldn’t move forward, but Tillis didn’t trust him, quite sensibly. The senator wanted to kill the program officially, so he offered an amendment to the ICE bill that would have converted the slush fund into an “anti-fraud” fund.

 

The amendment failed. Whereupon Tillis—and card-playin’ John Cornyn, who’s also criticized the fund—voted for the ICE bill anyway.

 

Particularly when they know, or should know, that he’s going to embarrass them further by resurrecting the slush fund that they foolishly neglected to kill. The president has entered “legacy mode,” you see, and in his case “legacy mode” means rewriting history to reframe the worst things he’s ever done as ackshually good.

 

Whitewash.

 

It will not surprise you to learn that Blanche lied by omission to senators when he said the slush fund wouldn’t move forward. That might be technically true, according to The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick, in the sense that the original mechanism for paying out money to criminals will change. But have no doubt: The Trump administration still intends to see to it that those criminals get rich.

 

I spoke with eight people familiar with the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund—including current and former Justice Department officials, current and former members of Congress, a defense attorney, and political operatives close to the administration. All said that Justice Department officials and people close to the White House have indicated that the payout idea has not actually been scrapped. Rather, they say, officials are exploring whether elements of the fund can be reactivated while also examining alternative arrangements to make sure loyalists get compensated.

 

…

 

Officials told me that those who believe they were victims of a weaponized government may ultimately need to file lawsuits so they can then receive settlements from a previously established Justice Department fund. Suing the government is not a new idea. But typically the government looks for ways to defend itself; in this case, officials are exploring proposals to facilitate litigation and to expedite payments without requiring an expensive and lengthy process that might draw attention. One former DOJ official told me that discussions are happening about how to provide legal support at scale to those who want to file lawsuits. “They’ll sue, and they’ll settle,” the former official said of the plan.

 

Instead of a dedicated “anti-weaponization fund” handing out millions to January 6 degenerates like candy on Halloween, there’ll be a pseudo-adversarial process in which each degenerate will need to file a formal legal complaint to receive his candy. (Assuming it survives a court challenge, of course.) Thank Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, who did nothing to prevent this heist when they had the chance.

 

The fund isn’t the only way that Trump is trying to rehabilitate the insurrection, though—or, amazingly, the most outrageous. The WSJ reported Thursday that the White House is discussing whether to lean on House Republicans to pass a resolution that would purport to “void” his two first-term impeachments.

 

It was a cockamamie idea when the GOP first considered it in 2023, and it is more cockamamie now. Legally, it would be meaningless, as there’s no constitutional mechanism to unimpeach someone. Politically, it would be idiotic, reminding voters that Trump has always been unfit for the presidency when they’re already down on him. And for what? The measure will probably fail on the floor, which would have the effect of “ratifying” the impeachments instead of voiding them.

 

And electorally it could be poisonous. If there’s any way for the president to signal more clearly to voters that he doesn’t give a rip about the cost of living, goading his toadies in Congress into revisiting his first-term grudges as gas approaches $5 per gallon would be it. One of the better Republican arguments against electing Democrats this fall is that the left will use its time in power to focus on all things Trump rather than improve Americans’ lives. What’s left of that argument if the GOP spends the home stretch of the midterm campaign doing the same thing?

 

The icing on the cake is that “voiding” Trump’s impeachments is destined to be about as popular as the slush fund is. One recent poll found 52 percent of Republicans—not Americans, but members of the president’s own party—oppose giving taxpayer cash to people who believe the government was “weaponized” against them. We might expect a bit more support than that on the right for trying to unimpeach the ringleader of the January 6 coup plot, but it’ll be a bottomless pit of contempt among Democrats and independents.

 

So why, with an election less than five months away, would Trump bother?

 

The WSJ knows. “The effort to ‘expunge’ Trump’s impeachments fits with a wider campaign to erase black marks on his record,” the paper noted. “His lawyers are trying to overturn his criminal conviction for falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star, and they are seeking to reverse unfavorable civil rulings.”

 

The president will be 80 years old on Sunday. The end is approaching, and not just the end of his term. He has many “black marks” and he knows it, and that legacy clearly occupies more of his mental bandwidth than, say, his party’s electoral chances this fall. What can he do about it?

 

“Try being a better person and a better president?” you might say. Sure, but if he knew how to do that—or was willing to—he would have done it already. Besides, the die is already cast.

 

I think he’s doing what any strongman would instinctively do in his predicament. He’s trying to brute-force a better legacy for himself by abusing his power to whitewash his sins from the public consciousness.

 

Moral ambivalence.

 

I’ve always thought Trump was lucky in one sense to be an American and unlucky in another. He had the good fortune to live his life in a country that worships wealth, celebrity, showmanship, and crude machismo, and he took full advantage. But he had the bad fortune to be born an authoritarian demagogue within a constitutional system that still somewhat limits his ability to rule as he’d like.

 

The tyrants in China whose methods he admires so much can suppress public awareness of their own “black marks” to a degree that the First Amendment would never permit him to do. The president’s interest in “voiding” his impeachments reflects the same Orwellian impulse to write events out of history that reflect badly on him, but the hard fact remains that he can’t memory-hole January 6.

 

So what he’s doing instead is using executive authority to try to create moral uncertainty around it, aiming to turn a “black mark” into something that posterity will view as closer to gray. He pardoned the insurrectionists, then moved to remunerate them with the slush fund, and now wants the House to absolve him of wrongdoing for his gross dereliction of duty in trying to overturn the 2020 election. All of that is an attempt to manufacture moral sanction, attesting to the righteousness of what he and others did.

 

He can’t memory-hole what happened—although God knows, he’s tried—but he can perhaps turn January 6 into something about which future generations feel ambivalent, an event whose obscenity is deemed debatable.

 

And in a way, if he succeeds, it’ll be an appropriate legacy for him. Trumpism is an alternate morality more so than it is a political program, or so I’ve always believed. The president’s most enduring influence on American politics won’t be the border wall or his idiotic tariffs but the idea, as I wrote last month, that “whether an action is right or wrong, good or evil, depends entirely on whether one benefits from it or not.” Fighting to a long-term draw along those lines in public opinion about a violent coup plot would be a supreme triumph for his worldview.

 

Whether a “black mark” is black is ultimately a matter of whether it’s to your advantage to think so. Who says postmodernism is left-wing?

 

There are other, more mundane reasons for Trump wanting to expunge January 6 from the public record. On some level he’s probably driven by a simple pigheaded impulse to “win” an argument that he’s been having for five years. He seems to think, with some justification, that he can talk anyone into believing anything, including himself. His “rigged election” mania may be a case of a master bullsh-tter chasing his white whale, aiming to prove that there’s no reality so big that he can’t harpoon it through sheer mendacious determination.

 

He’s also likely motivated by the opportunities this subject presents to impose new loyalty tests on Republicans. Postliberals are forever obsessed with sniffing out heretics, as purging conscientious people from their ranks is the only way to achieve the degree of absolute ruthlessness they’re convinced they need to overcome their political enemies. “Expunge the impeachments” and “support the slush fund” are easy ways to smoke out non-sociopaths like Cornyn and Tillis and clear a path for better-qualified candidates like Ken Paxton.

 

I’d imagine that Trump is also keen to humiliate Congress and the Justice Department, the arms of the government that sought to hold him accountable after the insurrection, by enlisting them to whitewash his “black marks” now. He doesn’t need them to do so, strictly speaking: Nothing’s stopping him from declaring his two impeachments “void” (as preposterous as that would be) or from paying the January 6ers out of the billions of dollars he’s made by turning the presidency into a racket.

 

But doing things that way wouldn’t exact “retribution” on two entities that made a spectacle of his disgrace after his coup attempt. He’s turned both of them into laughingstocks over the past 16 months; roping them into undoing his impeachments and cutting checks to criminals they prosecuted would be a sort of coup de grace, a master stroke in the postliberal campaign to denigrate liberal institutions and destroy public confidence in them.

 

Still, though, I think this is mostly about Trump’s legacy.

 

Black and gilt.

 

The “black marks” he’s seeking to erase strike me as the flip side of the gilt fixtures he’s smeared across the Oval Office’s walls, not to mention the more grandiose vanity projects in which he’s engaged around the capital. Both are coping mechanisms for the public’s obvious buyer’s remorse about his presidency.

 

As the president’s anxiety about his governing legacy deepens, he seems to be compensating by imposing a permanent physical legacy for himself on his surroundings, including the money in people’s wallets. Recognizing perhaps that he’s doomed to be remembered for a failed war in Iran, a new inflation crisis, and a 2026 midterm wipeout, he may be trying to “balance” all of it by adding regal touches (new ballroom! victory arch!) to the landscape that might also cause him to be remembered fondly—even grandly—in certain respects.

 

He’s aiming for ambivalence instead of vilification, same as with January 6.

 

Last week Politico sifted through his Truth Social posts during May—a period in which the United States was at war, mind you—and discovered that “the president broached planned renovations to Washington 80 times last month, more than the combined number of posts he made about election integrity, immigration or crime in U.S. cities.” He posted about Iran 68 times … and about “images and iconography” 77 times, by comparison.

 

That’s an odd set of priorities for a man who still has more than half of his term left to govern, but really no odder than him wanting to revisit his two first-term impeachments or reimagine the insurrection as some sort of Alamo for super-patriots who deserve to be rewarded with American tax dollars. The president seems to be engaged in a sort of postliberal version of the serenity prayer: Forced to accept certain things he cannot change, like a 40 percent job approval and Iran’s refusal to capitulate, he’s going to be bold about changing the things he can.

 

The Oval Office decor. The Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. Public opinion about whether he was right in 2021 to try to overthrow the incoming duly elected government of the United States.

 

Turning black marks into gray ones and papering over civic squalor with gilt claptrap: A mixed legacy is the best a man can hope for who was both lucky and unlucky to have been born an American. Trump is doing his best.