Author: nick

The Israeli-American attack on Iran has been defined more than anything by the nonsensical nature of the messaging, with statements listing any number of potential goals. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump, always eccentric and erratic, has been ranting about an endless variety of topics, with each day bringing about new unhinged statements. It is as if we have watched the White House become a Greek tragedy before our very eyes, with Donald Trump in the role of a mad king. This represents an incredible fall for a man who defeated all of his opponents and orchestrated the greatest comeback in American…

Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves, by Stuart Schrader. Basic Books, 432 pages, $34 “Everybody else can indulge in politics—every black group, every political party group, every church group,” groused Carl Parsell, then president of the Detroit Police Officers Association, in 1969. “Why are police officers so different?” The question goes to the heart of Stuart Schrader’s Blue Power, a new book charting how police unions accreted and cemented power in the decades following Parsell’s query. It’s a ripe subject for review: Police officers’ savvy use of public sector unions and lobbying to largely immunize themselves…

In January, following Mark Carney’s well-publicised Davos speech, I wrote an article headlined… 2026 – The Year US Hegemony Ends? To be clear, I was not – and am not – predicting the empire is about to fall and usher in a new world of justice and freedom. No, I was predicting that certain media and political figures would start belatedly calling out the empire’s crimes and, more importantly, would start demanding and/or predicting its demise. Two-and-a-half months later, we can see that they are indeed doing exactly that. Even when that article was published, when the war with Iran was barely…

The Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) is unconstitutional. In Civitas Outlook, I explained why I thought this opinion was consistent with recent Supreme Court precedents, including Trump v. Mazars. Others, unsurprisingly, disagree. Christopher Fonzone, who headed OLC during the Biden Administration, writes that the PRA is constitutional. Here, I want to focus on one aspect of Fonzone’s analysis: who owns the President’s papers? Fonzone writes: First and foremost, the Property Clause. Article IV of the Constitution expressly grants Congress the “Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting” U.S. property. Since…

The early polling on President Donald Trump’s war against Iran presents what might, at first glance, look like a constraint on escalation. Across numerous polls a majority of Americans oppose the conflict with support for military action rarely breaking out of the 30-40% range. Concerns about escalation, retaliation, and the absence of clear objectives are widespread. And yet, none of this appears likely to meaningfully shape the administration’s decision-making. The reason is simple: in the political economy of contemporary American governance, broad public opinion matters far less than the alignment of elite incentives and core partisan support. On both counts,…

Elon Musk this week amplified an unfounded claim, based on a distortion of vaccine safety monitoring data, that COVID-19 vaccines killed tens of thousands of people in Germany. The vaccines saved millions of lives worldwide during a deadly pandemic, and serious side effects or deaths from vaccination are rare. Despite this well-established safety record, Musk questioned COVID-19 vaccine safety on X on April 12 while sharing a post from far-right Swedish influencer Peter Imanuelsen, who also goes by PeterSweden. Musk, a former Trump adviser who is CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owns X, has previously amplified and interacted with Imanuelsen’s posts on multiple occasions. Musk’s post had nearly…

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch (R–Idaho) has never believed that now is the right time to vote on war with Iran. “There is no clear line of delineation between actual war and the use of kinetic force,” he said during a war powers debate in 2020, adding that President Donald Trump has used force “very sparingly” against Iran. “This is not the start of a forever war,” Risch said after Trump launched a one-off air raid against Iran in June 2025. Now that Trump has started an undeniable, no-kidding war with no clear ending, Risch believes that a…

Question Alvin Bragg's Methods, But Numbers Don't Lie Source link

European and Gulf Arab countries do not believe the conflict in the Middle East will be resolved in the short term.  Arab and European leaders speaking with Bloomberg estimated it will take at least six months for the US and Iran to agree on a permanent end to the conflict. Last week, Pakistan brokered a two-week ceasefire between Washington and Tehran that was intended to facilitate a full peace agreement.  However, talks on Saturday ended at an impasse, and Iranian officials say the two sides are now forced to reach a cease-fire extension. Bloomberg reports a two-week truce extension is…

U.S. and Iran in Indirect Talks To Extend Ceasefire Source link