The Iran Conundrum

By Elliott Abrams

Thursday, October 22, 2026

 

The war with Iran will likely cost Republicans votes in the upcoming midterms. In part this is President Trump’s fault: his wandering explanations, excessive claims, and repeated threats to “decimate” or “annihilate” Iran or end its “whole civilization” are no way to persuade Americans that he has a sensible policy and is implementing it.

 

But if one puts aside the bluster and looks only at what has been accomplished, his policy deserves more support. It has been clear for decades that Iran is seeking to build a nuclear weapon. That’s why even the Russians and Chinese supported, off and on, U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran, and why Barack Obama negotiated his 2015 Iran nuclear deal, though it only postponed Tehran’s program. Trump is the first president who looked at the advances Iran was making and, recognizing the narrow opportunity to stop them, struck. Today, Iran is no longer weeks or months away from a bomb but probably years away. Moreover, U.S. threats that we will never permit an Iranian nuke and will use force to prevent it (something even Obama threatened) will be taken far more seriously now that we’ve done it once.

 

In addition, Trump has blocked off the Strait of Hormuz for Iranian exports and imports, driving Iran’s economy into the mud. In early October, the Iranian rial hit its lowest value ever, having gone from roughly 800,000 to the dollar when Trump took office in 2025 to 2.7 million to the dollar. Meanwhile, non-Iranian oil exports through the strait are rising. The Wall Street Journal reported in late September that “Iran’s ability to choke off oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz . . . is breaking down,” with “Middle Eastern crude exports” rebounding. Oil is the lifeblood of the Iranian economy; it provides the cash the regime needs to survive, and Trump’s policy is squeezing it hard.

 

This is all good news, but it does not mean that the Trump administration has put tough decisions behind it. Iran may react to the pressure by seeking a deal, and if one is reached, it must be a better deal than the June memorandum of understanding. That agreement was an example of poor diplomacy and an embarrassment for the Trump administration. For example, at a moment when the new president and prime minister of Lebanon were denouncing Hezbollah and demanding that Iran butt out of Lebanese affairs, the MOU mentioned Lebanon three times in its first paragraph — an acknowledgment of Iranian involvement that U.S. negotiators should have rejected out of hand. The MOU also pledged that the United States would not “interfere” in Iran’s “internal affairs,” which is old Soviet language meant to bar U.S. support for human rights for the Iranian people. If Iran comes looking for a new deal, Trump needs a new team or at least new instructions to toughen up the U.S. position.

 

But the thugs of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who are now running Iran, may react with more attacks instead of more negotiations. The Shiite militias that the IRGC controls in Iraq and its friends the Houthis in Yemen can expand their attacks on Saudi Arabia, and the Houthis can work even harder to block shipping through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal — a key alternative to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran itself can decide once again to bypass its proxies and attack Israel directly, though the penalty for doing that is potentially severe. The top IRGC leaders know that they can easily become Israeli targets, as the late Supreme Leader Khamenei was. They must also wonder what will happen if they restart their attacks on U.S. bases and get lucky; how would a post-midterm-elections Donald Trump react against Iran if an Iranian strike killed a significant number of Americans? Iran’s best bet in these circumstances, if the squeeze becomes unbearable, may be to hit Gulf Arab economic targets again, and harder. That would mean striking oil facilities, power plants, and desalination plants, which could do enormous damage not only to the Gulf states but to the world economy. The Gulf Arabs would then need to decide whether to sue for peace and try to bring Trump with them, or to recognize that the threat to them will never end while the IRGC rules Iran. That would mean asking Trump to continue the squeeze on Iran and bearing the damage they are suffering until the regime falls or is hit with enough military force to stop it from attacking its neighbors.

 

The fact is that almost every country in the world is suffering the consequences of Iran’s and its proxies’ actions: China, India, nearly all of Europe and all other oil consumers that must pay higher prices, Egypt (whose Suez Canal revenues have fallen by billions of dollars), and the Gulf countries that are Iran’s direct targets. The only possible exception is Russia, an oil exporter that profits when world prices rise and that, for its war in Ukraine, has an ongoing military relationship with Iran. But not even Russia and China would benefit were Iran to get a nuclear weapon — hence their history of backing U.N. sanctions resolutions.

 

Here is where the Trump administration has failed badly. It should have been easy to build a strong international coalition against Iran, much as the United States once did against Saddam Hussein. If China and Russia did not join, and helped Iran, for example by providing intelligence on U.S. military sites and activities, that would be all the more reason to build a broad international coalition to collapse Iran’s economy until it abandoned its efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz — and agreed to end its nuclear-weapons program.

 

But that kind of diplomacy seems beyond the Trump administration, which instead insults and threatens allies like Denmark and Canada and has imposed tariffs without considering national security requirements. By now, in late 2026, the chances that Trump could put together such a coalition of like-minded states is gone, destroyed by actions in 2025 and 2026 that have offended and alienated too many countries. So the pressure on Iran — military, economic, and political — will be more exclusively American than it might have been.

 

As we have learned repeatedly, the Iran situation can change overnight. With U.S. elections coming up, Iran may think it can affect the outcome by holding back or by striking now. If Iran’s rulers are truly worried about economic collapse, there will be internal debates in Tehran about whether to pursue serious negotiations or a major new military attack. Given that IRGC terrorists are in charge — instead of officials such as Iran’s president or foreign minister (who seem to favor new talks with the United States) — the latter is more likely. And depending on the targets Iran chooses, our Gulf allies, Israel, or the United States itself may be back in heavy conflict before year’s end.

 

If so, we have to hope that Trump will not repeat the error he made last February — failing to explain the conflict to the American people. A Truth Social post is simply not enough, especially when the president’s rhetoric has been all over the place and the war is so unpopular. This is the other major Trump failure. Thinking back to the first Iraq War, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney together gave powerful and persuasive press conferences, only deepens the sense of what is missing now.

 

Americans know that Iran is an enemy, that a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran’s terrorist regime would be a great danger, and that Iran has been killing Americans for decades. That Trump has failed to win more support for what is at base the right policy in part reflects poorly on Democrats, who (especially in an election year) put partisanship far ahead of national security. But of course it reflects poorly on the administration itself. If the conflict continues — a choice that may be made in Tehran, not Washington — public support will continue to decline unless Trump, or someone else in the administration or the U.S. military, does a much better job of talking to Americans. A further decline in public understanding and support could be disastrous if Trump faces a Democratic Congress, especially as the country moves next year into a presidential-election campaign in which opposition to military action in Iran may become a Democratic rallying cry.

The DEI Language That’s Doing More Harm Than Good

By Conor Friedersdorf

Friday, October 23, 2026

 

Last week, Senator Edward Markey published a social-media post seeking interns for his Boston office. He wrote that “BIPOC, LGBTQ+, working class, veterans, and other underrepresented candidates with Massachusetts ties are encouraged to apply.” Outrage quickly followed: Critics treated the post not as a straightforward attempt to encourage diversity in job applications, but rather as a discriminatory signal that white men would be disadvantaged in hiring.

 

The Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo called the help-wanted ad an open violation of civil-rights law and urged a federal probe. The former Trump Justice Department appointee Theo Wold wrote that a goal of Democrats is to ensure that young white men “have no opportunities to find gainful employment.” One response to Markey stated, “If you are a young White man struggling financially, I understand your frustration with the Iran conflict and gas prices, but you must understand that this is the official hiring policy of the entire corporate world if democrats return to power.”

 

Because X rewards inflammatory retorts more than intellectual rigor, these particular claims of racial grievance are easy for skeptics to dismiss as sensationalism. Urging certain groups to apply for a job is not proof of hiring discrimination against others. Some groups that Markey’s post mentioned, such as gay people, veterans, and the working class, include lots of white men. There is overwhelming evidence that the Democratic Party’s goal is not “no opportunities” for white men, and that corporations are not a left-identitarian monolith.

 

Still, setting all falsehoods and exaggerations aside, Democratic elected officials have long been more likely than Republicans to favor policies that consider race and sex in employment decisions. These policies sometimes result in credible claims of discrimination against white and/or male candidates: Large nonprofits, major cities, multinational corporations, and prestigious law firms have all lost court cases involving employment discrimination against white people or men, or altered their employment practices under pressure from federal or state agencies that enforce civil-rights laws. Republicans generally treat such discrimination as a bigger problem than Democrats, even as most Americans—including a majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents—reject preferential treatment in hiring and promotions for favored groups. Populist-right partisans are probably correct that they have a political opportunity in going after any left-leaning political, academic, or business elites who push such policies.

 

The issue may prove especially potent for men in Generation Z. As recently as 2019, just a third of young men perceived some discrimination against men in America. In 2025, 51 percent of young men perceived it. Those feeling aggrieved by Markey’s words should bear in mind that, at 80, his views about race were formed before the civil-rights era. For most of his life, identity politics in Congress favored straight white men. Perhaps he still perceives that all groups other than white men need reassurance, and would be surprised that young white men today have any such need. (His office did not respond to my request for comment.)

 

But older legislators need to grasp that efforts to diversify organizations, many of which focus on new hires, mean that Gen Z has a unique experience of the job market. Exposing white men in this cohort to language that seems to treat them differently from other groups is particularly unwise––they are especially primed to infer discriminatory intent whether or not it is being implied. Cheryl Kaiser, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, researches how “well-intentioned organizational diversity initiatives create unintended consequences.” She told me in an email that, although outreach to particular identity groups is distinct from restricting hiring to those groups, “the mere presence of a diversity signal, not the signal’s actual impact in hiring decisions, can increase White Americans’ concerns that they’ll face racism.” (In fact, several federal and state laws prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics—and these are laws that are intended to protect everyone, not just women or people of color.)

 

In scholarship published in 2021, Kaiser and her co-authors found that “simply exposing White Americans to organizational diversity signals” increased their perception of a bias in hiring against white men. That perception occurred “even with clear evidence of White advantage within the organization, a less-qualified White candidate, or abundant promotion opportunities for all employees. Nor was it limited to people predisposed toward biased beliefs: the effect did not depend on participants’ endorsement of group-based hierarchy or their level of racial ingroup identification.” In another research paper, from 2015, Kaiser and her co-authors found that the mere presence of pro-diversity signals “cause White male mock job applicants to experience cardiovascular stress as well as anticipate experiencing discrimination when applying for jobs at these companies.”

 

Of course, the fact that people perceive discrimination does not mean they are actually being discriminated against. And if diversity language were effective in contributing to more equitable hiring outcomes, even while upsetting a few overly sensitive sorts, there would be a strong case for retaining it. But Kaiser believes that “the types of diversity signals that cause backlash often do very little to effectively diversify the workplace.” Research she published in 2020 found that “racial minority employees sometimes see organizational diversity signals as overstating real commitment, which is linked to feeling less able to fit in or thrive.” Often, then, diversity signals confound all assumptions: “They don’t produce the hiring outcomes critics fear, they don’t produce the trust or inclusion benefits supporters are aiming for, and yet they still trigger the perceptual backlash described above,” Kaiser told me.

 

To meaningfully reduce resentment, grievance, and reactionary identitarianism among young white men, Democrats should adopt rhetoric that unambiguously clarifies a commitment to equal opportunity. Some may find this advice frustrating. For decades, the political right insisted that racial preferences were immoral and illegal, and that diversity efforts should be restricted to outreach. Now they’re treating mere outreach as proof of illegal discrimination. But as Kaiser’s research shows, diversity rhetoric can have unforeseen effects. White identitarians would exist even in a world without bias of any sort in recruitment or hiring––but using language that fuels white identity politics, as Markey’s language did, is political malpractice that’s bad for Americans of all races, no matter how well intentioned it might be.

 

Even if one argues that diversity advocates shouldn’t have to change how they communicate in order to avoid backlash, the reality seems to be that they do. As is often the case in politics, social progress requires forging broad coalitions of people who often disagree. That requires an understanding of psychology, attentiveness to possible sensitivities, and, yes, even compromise.

 

Outreach that values diversity and inclusion is still possible. In 2015, the social psychologist Wiebren Jansen and co-authors found that “including the cultural majority group in an organization’s diversity approach” can help white men with a high need to belong feel included, and can increase support within organizations for diversity efforts. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s approach to recruiting interns is a good example of inclusive language. Her call for applications uses familiar and simple language, describing her office as “an equal-opportunity employer” that does not discriminate based on “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or uniformed service.” Warren “encourages all individuals from all backgrounds to apply.” Whether you’re Black or white or trans or gay or working-class or a veteran, if you are wondering whether people like you belong, that approach leaves no ambiguity: You’re encouraged to apply. “All individuals” are.

The French Are on Their Own, and They Know It

By Noah Rothman

Friday, October 23, 2026

 

Last weekend’s horrifying riots — only the most violent expression of the unrest that has plagued France for over a month — seem to have chastened the country’s notoriously permissive political class.

 

French President Emmanuel Macron blamed the catastrophe that unfolded on October 17 and 18, in which 3,000 stores were looted and over a thousand police officers were wounded amid the arrest of 2,700 rioters, on “seditious” elements within the French “ultra-left.” He implemented localized curfews while the Interior Ministry promised 20 percent more police as well as a military presence on the ground across the country this weekend. Authorities promised to be “uncompromising” toward “all those who will commit atrocities,” but local French officials have not inspired confidence.

 

Despite a general ban on large gatherings in cities like Lyon, Nice, Le Havre, and Marseille, union organizations have been granted permits to hold marches — the same unions that have displayed a conspicuous toleration for the last month’s violence. A public furor forced the city of Marseille to reverse its decision to halt public transportation over the weekend, but its local business council advised shop owners to board up their stores. Many more store owners nationwide are preemptively shuttering their businesses. In Paris, marchers are restricted to certain highly policed routes. Nevertheless, the Louvre will remain closed, while other public events are shutting down early ahead of the expected chaos.

 

No one seems to believe French authorities can get their hands around the riotous elements in their midst. From the Pittsburgh Steelers, which canceled a weekend fan event in Paris, to the French right, which is planning counterprotests, everyone seems to anticipate more violence.

 

Forsaken by their nation’s public officials, the French are preparing to take their safety into their own hands.

 

“A lot of them are saying, ‘Yes, this time, they will fight back,’” said Times of London correspondent Adam Sage. “Will they in practice? I don’t know,” he continued. “When you’re faced with a horde of fifty rioters, looters, there’s probably not much you can do.”

 

Practical considerations do often militate against a one-man stand against a violent mob. Yet, in the days since last weekend’s rioting, a heroic archetype has emerged in France: the shopkeeper who resists.

 

Millions in France and worldwide celebrated the stubborn resolve demonstrated by the Nice-based gaming shop owner “Pierre,” who beat back the rioters sacking his shop and was, in turn, beaten himself. Euronews summarized the emerging personality cult around the defiant storekeeper:

 

Pierre has turned not just into a symbol of courage in France, but he has also become an icon for gamers. An image of him standing defiantly in the shop entrance next to a poster of Goku, a character from the Dragon Ball manga series, has quickly transformed him into a superhero around the world, with some branding him the “French Goku.”

 

‼️Goku existe y vive en Francia‼️
Todo mi apoyo a este héroe 💪#fotodelaño2026 pic.twitter.com/I5WrPTLd45

 

— KhaN ComicS (@IvaNxKhaN) October 18, 2026

 

“Pierre” is not alone. A variety of videos of “showing other heroic individuals taking matters into their own hands and facing off against rioters and looters” have since emerged. While the initial footage of the riots featured hapless French citizens pleading unsuccessfully with their attackers to spare themselves and their property, the newer fare finds the French people attacking their tormentors with blunt implements or pouring boiling water down on them from their besieged redoubts.

 

France’s political class remains besotted with the abstract idea of protest, and they all, irrespective of political affiliation, are inclined to respond to the “social crisis” represented by France’s insolvency with greater profligacy. Only in the aftermath of last weekend’s devastation have its officials mustered the resolve to defend France’s law-abiding citizens. But French authorities squandered public trust long ago.

 

The people anticipate anarchy. In an anarchic environment, we should expect some to revert to a Hobbesian state, lashing out with brutal force driven by an unrelenting instinct for self-preservation.

Should Ilhan Omar Be Denaturalized?

By Daniel Foster

Friday, October 23, 2026

 

The long-standing accusations against Ilhan Omar — if that is her real name — have resurfaced in light of the recent raid on her home. In brief, they are that 1) she, her father, and her sister entered the United States under false identities, 2) she lied about her birth year to obtain naturalization via said father and 3) she subsequently married her brother to facilitate further immigration fraud. The feds are also apparently interested in whether Omar’s father, a Soviet-trained regimental commander in the Somali army, concealed information about his military service when entering the U.S. It certainly appears that, in the very least, he served as a field commander in the Somali army during its commission of the Isaaq genocide that left 200,000 civilians dead. (Putting her deep interest in the “Palestinian Genocide” in new context).

 

There is a real chance that the Trump DOJ will pursue denaturalization and deportation if they end up prosecuting the case. And I say: good.

 

Denaturalizations have been remarkably rare in the United States, and usually committing a crime while a naturalized citizen is not sufficient. But obtaining your citizenship through fraud has been. I looked up recent successful cases of denaturalization and here are the summaries:

 

·         Vivian Chike Obichere (October 2026): Concealed fraudulent use of another person’s identity to obtain a U.S. passport before naturalizing.

 

·         Milagros Acosta Torres (October,2026): Concealed involvement in a money-laundering conspiracy involving proceeds stolen from a Florida casino.

 

·         Gurmeet Singh (August 2026): Concealed a rape and kidnapping committed before naturalization.

 

·         Sead Miljkovic (July 2026): Naturalized using a false identity while subject to a Bosnian arrest warrant alleging war crimes against civilians.

 

·         Gurdev Singh Sohal (April 2026): Naturalized under a false identity after concealing an earlier deportation order.

 

Representative “Ilhan Omar” certainly deserves the presumption of innocence and due process of law. But if the allegations at the top turn out to be true, then her crimes would warrant the same treatment. And yes, I am particularly disgusted by the possibility that Omar would do all these things, and then instead of keeping her head down and earning a simple living, enter high public office on a program premised on America’s numerous shortcomings, and use accusations racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia as cudgels against anyone who has questioned that program and/or her past.

 

How racist and Islamophobic can America be if it let you get away with all this?

Only Trump Can Do Trump

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, October 23, 2026

 

“You don’t turn around the Titanic overnight,” J.D. Vance recently told a rally in Toledo, Ohio. “It takes time to fix what is broken.”

 

He’s right, of course.

 

In fact, it’s been 114 years since the Titanic sank, and I would argue we are no closer to turning it around, never mind fixing what was broken.

 

It reminds me a bit of a joke my dad told every single year at the end of Thanksgiving. We’d be sitting around the table, stuffed to the gills with turkey and the fixings (Mom was a phenomenal cook). My dad would look at the ravaged carcass of the bird and turn to me deadpan: “Jonah, do you think if we got the best doctors in the world, we’d be able to save this turkey’s life?”

 

It also reminds me of this week’s slimy “revelation” that Sen. Lindsey Graham was gay. This hit with all of the shock and awe of being told that Jim J. Bullock is gay. “Not the guy from Too Close for Comfort!? I’ll never watch reruns of Hollywood Squares the same way again.” Given that Graham’s sudden death in July effectively ended his 2026 reelection campaign, this “October surprise” gives new meaning to the phrase “putting the final nail in the coffin” of someone’s political career.

 

Speaking to voters in his home state of Ohio, Vance was trying to blame all of the problems with the economy—real and perceived—on “Joe Biden’s policies” and the Democrats. That’s a hard argument to make when the president of the United States insists “affordability” is a “hoax” and that the economy is going so well that we live in a new “Golden Age.” It’s also a hard argument to make given that inflation was lower on Biden’s last day in office than it is today. The claim is even tougher when you recall that the administration took complete political ownership of the economy with its “Liberation Day” tariff idiocy. On Liberation Day plus one, Vance went on Fox News and declared, “President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction. He ran on that, he promised it, and now he’s delivering.” This was like saying, “The captain said he will tackle the plague of icebergs head-on, and he’s delivering!”

 

Adding to the degree of difficulty: The precipitating cause of high gas and diesel prices is an ongoing war against Iran that the administration sprang on the American people with no warning, explanation, or debate. The war was supposed to be of short duration when it was launched nearly 10 months ago, and we’ve declared victory a half dozen times.

 

But what makes Vance’s sales pitch the toughest sale of all is the fact that he’s a terrible salesman.

 

A vast coalition of MAGA activists and rent-seekers is determined to convince everyone that J.D. Vance is a unique political talent and that doubting his claim to a coronation as Trump’s successor is not only politically naïve but ideologically heretical. The chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, Tyler Bowyer, declared, “He’s the clear-cut leader by a lot. This isn’t highly competitive.” Indiana Sen. Jim Banks insisted, “I think it’s inevitable at this point that Vance will be the [GOP] nominee in 2028.” Breitbart’s Matt Boyle: “Vance is clearly the far, runaway frontrunner, and no one else can hold a candle to him right now.” Last year at the Vanceguard Heritage Foundation, Tucker Carlson pronounced, “J.D. Vance is the future, period.” At the recent (disastrous) NatCon event in Jerusalem, Christian right pooh-bah William Wolfe asserted, “JD Vance is the successor to Donald Trump. JD Vance, not Marco Rubio, not Ted Cruz, not anybody else who can throw their hat in the ring.”

 

Vance’s supporters think this is all a show of strength. I see it as a sign of weakness—theirs and Vance’s.

 

In 2022, Vance scored a relatively lackluster victory in the only race he ever ran on his own, in a state where all of the other Republicans on the ballot overperformed him by a wide margin. Running in a state that Trump won by 8 points two years earlier, hypernormie Republican Gov. Mike DeWine won by 25 points. Vance won by 6, after both Mitch McConnell and MAGA dumped millions on his race to drag him across the finish line.

 

Vance seems to think that Trump’s magic comes from being an ass. And to be sure, that is what some people like about him. But most Trump voters think his asininity is an at times regrettable byproduct of what they like about him. As someone preternaturally immune to Trump’s supposed charms, I can’t say I like the guy (growing up in Manhattan made me a bit like the Dread Pirate Roberts developing an immunity to iocaine powder). But I get why some people do. They think Trump is authentic, funny, and bold. (They also love him for his enemies.) I can quibble with all of these things. But I can also recognize the reality of the perception. Being Donald Trump works for Donald Trump. It really doesn’t work for anyone else.

 

Vance thinks he can emulate Trump’s shtick successfully. It’s a bit like me thinking I can dance like Fred Astaire by copying the moves. Politically, Vance looks more like Elaine dancing in Seinfeld.

 

At a recent rally for North Carolina Senate candidate Michael Whatley, Vance vowed that Whatley would “fight back against the fart left.” No one caught it, so he said, correctly, “you may not have even heard that,” then said it was an accident. Then repeated it again. Then railed against the “fake news” because he claimed the media would take it seriously. At another event in Maine, he said, “We have to remember Canada is a state—sorry, Freudian slip. That was actually an accident.” Sure.

 

Trump says dumber and more asinine things pretty much hourly. But when he prattles on about “Dumbocrats” and has to explain his bizarre conviction that most people don’t know that “dumb” has a silent “B” in it, he comes to it naturally. With Vance, everything is forced because his whole persona is forced.

 

That doesn’t mean we don’t get glimpses of the real Vance.

 

Back in the Before Times, I used to argue that Mitt Romney had an “authentic inauthenticity” problem. I feel a little guilty about it, in that I think Romney is a profoundly honorable man who would have made a good president. But I think I was right:

 

As I’ve been saying for years, Romney has an authentic inauthenticity problem; he seems fake, but that’s actually him. Not only does he look like the picture that came with the frame, he talks like a 1920s college president. Maybe it speaks ill of America that voters put so much stock in empathy and authenticity, but they do.

 

Vance’s problem is sort of the reverse. He has an “inauthentic authenticity” problem. There is no real Vance, there is only a theory of power and how to get it. I have to say, Marco Rubio has a similar problem. He desperately wants to be the avatar for a New Idea, and so he chases shiny intellectual objects and embraces them wholeheartedly.

 

The key difference between Rubio and Vance is that Rubio is actually a person interested in ideas, and he’s a very good, and quite likable, politician. Vance isn’t the latter, and as for the former, he’s attracted to ideas about how to get power and how power should be used. As Rubio might say, he’s thumos stripped of honor and virtue. He’s ambition all the way down.   

 

Vance likes the idea of seizing the assets of enemy institutions and giving the spoils to his team, not because that would be good policy, but because it would be good for him. He had tough love for downscale whites when that worked for him. He now sees them as victims, because that works for him. He was anti-Trump (“America’s Hitler” and all that) when that helped him inchworm up the greasy pole. He became drunk on Trump’s musk when that was the path of least resistance. The most authentic thing about Vance is his appetite.

 

There was no better example than this week when he lambasted Republicans who condemned an ad put out by Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy—a thoroughly Vancian creature himself—in which his opponent’s estranged mother calls her daughter a liar. “I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what … Democrats want to do to the United States of America,” Vance railed. He praised Ramaswamy for having “the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.”

 

I haven’t followed Amy Acton’s career or campaign closely. I’m totally open to the idea that she has lied about things that politicians lie about—though behind my pundit’s veil of ignorance I am willing to bet she hasn’t lied nearly so often as Ramaswamy. But the crucial point is she didn’t lie about being sexually abused by her stepfather or emotionally betrayed and abandoned by her mother. That’s the context of the heinous ad recorded by Acton’s mother and pumped out of the sewer pipe that is Ramaswamy’s campaign and political career. Ramaswamy knows that. Vance knows that. And so does Trump.

 

But Trump can get away with scuzzy and indefensible things because he’s Trump. Vance isn’t. Vance’s theory of being the next Trump drives him to show asinine “strength” and shamelessness, without any appreciation for the fact that shamelessness is Trump’s superpower, not a superpower that can be mimicked effectively by being Trump’s Yalie scrivener.

 

It appears that after Vance said Ramaswamy called it out “like it is” about Acton, someone explained to the vice president this wasn’t like force-feeding a fart joke to an audience like a foie gras goose. So he tried to clean it up by saying that Acton was in his prayers and that “[g]etting into the middle of that drama is not something I want to do.”  

 

That horse left the barn, my dude.

 

It’s not quite like promising that there’s still time to turn around the Titanic. But we saw who—and what—Vance really is. And I suspect the hull damage he took this week will become more apparent in the years to come.

Main Character

By Michael Warren

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

 

As I sat in a folding chair on the tarmac at the Pitt-Greenville Airport on Tuesday night during a rally with Donald Trump and GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley, numerous questions ran through my head.

 

Why, two weeks before Election Day, is Trump campaigning in a state where both parties appear to have already written off the Senate race as a Democratic win? Why, the day before, was he in Kansas, which last had a Democratic senator during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration? And why, on Wednesday, is the president heading to ruby-red South Carolina to campaign for struggling Republican Senate nepo-nominee Darline Graham?

 

There are two answers, neither of which should offer comfort to Republicans clinging to power in Washington. The first is that things really are that bad for Republicans. Candidates like Graham and Roger Marshall, the embattled Kansas senator, need the boost that Trump’s presence can theoretically give to GOP turnout—and they aren’t the only ones. But the second is that, for the most part, Trump is going where he wants to go, where he’s most comfortable, where he can get a reliable crowd to don MAGA hats and line up hours beforehand for a chance to see the man in person. It’s part last-ditch strategy, part vanity tour.

 

“I hope you saw the plane fly right over your head. Did anybody notice?” Trump asked the cheering crowd in Greenville.

 

Let’s be fair. Trump’s schedule since October 1 has taken him to plenty of Senate battleground states, including Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, and he’ll head to Iowa and Michigan next week. And though it feels like he’s checking a box, Trump’s visit to North Carolina in support of  Whatley isn’t entirely pointless, since GOP candidates in two toss-up House races could use the assist.

 

But Trump’s itinerary has also taken him to states that aren’t, or shouldn’t be, in any danger of collapsing under anything but the most catastrophic blue wave: Oklahoma, Nebraska, Alaska, Montana, Alabama, Kentucky.

 

With the threat of a Democratic takeover of Congress and the prospect of a very difficult and unpleasant final two years of his presidency, Trump is doing what he can, in the only way he knows how, to salvage his party’s hopes: holding primetime fly-in rallies that are focused on his favorite subject, himself. In North Carolina, Trump touted Whatley for defending false claims that he won the 2020 election, called out protesters who interrupted his speech as “losers” and “pretty fat,” and encouraged people to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” He also repeated his recent riff on the impressive physique of Republican Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio. (“I looked at his ass, and then I looked at his legs, and I said, ‘His ass, it’s like a pile of muscle!’”)

 

But it’s far from clear that Trump barnstorming the country to stump for candidates will even help.

 

“We’re f—ed,” one seasoned GOP operative told me when I asked him recently about Trump’s appearance in that operative’s state. “I don’t think rallies work anymore.”

 

Maybe, but Trump is giving it the old college try. Republicans have a lot to blame on Trump as a dismal midterm election looms—his ill-conceived tariff scheme, his ill-conceived war with Iran, his ill-conceived maximalist approach to immigration enforcement—but they can’t say the president isn’t showing up for the party in the final stretch of the campaign.

 

But my source raises another question: What good is showing up to do these rallies anymore, and at the eleventh hour? Plenty of Republicans with their eyes on the future say they’re worried it’s just not enough to make up for Trump’s lack of party-building over the last two years. It’s not just the subpar Senate candidates Trump has backed–-from Whatley to Ken Paxton in Texas to Mike Collins in Georgia—though it is certainly that.

 

It’s also the slow crumbling of GOP infrastructure and institutional memory as old party hands have fallen away or been actively turned out from local committees in favor of more loyal, but less experienced, Trump fans. For years, GOP operatives have fretted to me about how volunteers and activists show a lot less interest in the grunt work of winning campaigns, like phone banking and door-knocking, in non-presidential years. Another operative recently complained to me that this loss of expertise at the precinct level is having long-term effects on the future of viable Republican candidates.

 

“It used to be that you worked your way up the local political ladder. You brought some kind of expertise, even if it was just party loyalty and years of groundwork. You paid your dues,” this operative said. “Today those things count against you. Primary voters want outsiders with extreme rhetoric, and expertise, experience, and education are seen as drawbacks. The result is weaker general election candidates who will lose races unnecessarily.”

 

That’s not to say Trump hasn’t built up any important party institutions. The Trump-aligned super PAC known as MAGA Inc., for instance, is putting up a considerable amount of cash in the final days to get out the vote by way of digital ads on social media. That sort of crunch-time expenditure may be worth a lot more than any number of fly-ins by the president. But super PACs come and go with the election cycles, and they’re only as strong as the principals who back them and the donors who fund them.

 

Another question came to mind as the sun went down and I waited with a few thousand dedicated MAGA fans on the tarmac. What is the closing message for the Republican Party in these midterms? In his remarks in Greenville, Whatley said some stuff about standing up to the “woke mob,” lowering costs, creating jobs, and preserving the American dream. He warned against empowering radicals like Zohran Mamdani (the mayor of New York), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a congresswoman), and Hasan Piker (an anti-American left-wing influencer) by electing North Carolina’s center-left former governor, Democratic Senate nominee Roy Cooper.

 

But all of that doesn’t seem quite right. The real message, the final argument Republicans are making as they try to hold on to power, could be seen on a pair of massive signs and a giant screen erected around the stage: “Make America Great Again,” the old standby the president has been delivering for 10 years straight.

 

The details are different, specific to the state and the news and the whims of the president in the moment, but the song remains the same. The 2020 election. The “Dumbocrats.” Fake news. The beautiful border wall. The low cost of gasoline (back during his first term, of course).

 

“The oil is going to get down to where I had it. I had it down to $1.85 a gallon, and I’ll have it down to that number,” Trump said in Greenville.

 

The only message, as it has been for a decade, is Trump. And as electoral disaster looms for the GOP, the party is only beginning to grapple with what the message will be afterward, on November 4 and in the months and years to come.

Macron’s ‘Turning Point’

By Andrew Stuttaford

Saturday, October 24, 2026

 

There was a series of shootings on Friday in Trappes, France. One person was murdered and five others injured, including a twelve-year-old girl, who was hit eight times and is in a serious but reportedly stable condition.

 

The French interior minister said the (sole) suspect, who has been caught, used what appeared to be “a military-grade weapon, or at least an automatic weapon, on five people in different locations.” He also said that there was “a rather strong indication” that the crime was terror-related.

 

Reuters:

 

Nicolas Dainville, the mayor of nearby La Verriere, said the suspect was “of a European type.” Rabeh [the mayor of Trappes] said two of the victims were of African ⁠and North ​African origin, respectively, and did not provide details about the ​backgrounds of the other victims.

 

President Macron has rightly condemned this horrific attack, but the way in which he did so was far from reassuring.

 

Reuters:

 

“What happened today is, I am telling you, a turning point, because it is the first ​time we have had a terrorist act that was planned to kill our compatriots, our ​children, based on the colour of their skin or their religion,” Macron told ⁠reporters.

 

The first time?

 

As was quickly pointed out on X and elsewhere: Not exactly.

 

To take a couple of examples from many: What about the two Islamist terrorists, who in 2016 attacked those attending a Mass in a Catholic church? They took a number of those attending prisoner and killed the officiating priest, Jacques Hamel, by slitting his throat. Father Hamel was 85.

 

The next day a Mass was held in Father Hamel’s memory at Notre-Dame. Macron was among those in attendance.

 

But he didn’t seem to remember Hamel when he spoke on Friday.

 

And what about the attack in 2012 by Mohammed Merah, an Islamist gunman, on the Ozar Hatorah Jewish day school in Toulouse?

 

He murdered four people, three of them under ten years old.

 

Merah was killed in the aftermath of the attack, but he has been in the news recently. A rap song referencing (and named after) him was recently released (it also namechecks Hitler and the only survivor of the group responsible for the 2015 Paris attacks). It has been chanted by high schoolers during at least one demonstration and was being played by another group of teenagers as they filmed themselves riding scooters and skateboards inside a church.

 

Given the controversy the song has stirred up and the fact that it and the incident in the church have triggered a legal response by the authorities, it might have been thought that Merah’s crimes would have been on Macron’s mind when he spoke. But it seems not.

 

Later on Friday, Macron, clearly responding to criticism of his earlier comments, tweeted out an additional response to the Trappes shooting.

 

He still referred to the shootings as a turning point:

 

We are confronted with an act of extreme gravity, and one that, by its proven racist nature, marks a turning point for our country.

 

But, among other points, added this:

 

I also want to recall an essential truth and avoid any controversy: in recent years, our country has experienced attacks that targeted Christians because they were Christians and Jews because they were Jews. None of these victims must be forgotten. No pain must be ranked above another. And I want nothing tonight to add to the grief of the families, to the sorrow of the country, or to the nation’s solemn reflection.

 

But if antisemitism is racism (it is, of course), there has been no “turning point,” but rather a descent further along a path toward a very dark place.

 

To reverse course is going to take more skill than Macron showed yesterday.