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Protecting Trans Rights -- And Rethinking Gender Transition For Kids

Protecting Trans Rights -- And Rethinking Gender Transition For Kids

Within the past few weeks, two major medical groups, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association, have issued statements recommending against gender-affirming surgeries on minors. This is a break from the past few years, when all the relevant medical societies endorsed these treatments. It comes on the heels of the first verdict in favor of a detransitioned woman who underwent a double mastectomy at age 16.

As with nearly everything in modern life, this issue has been tainted by politics. The Trump administration, with its characteristic brutishness, has targeted trans people — firing trans service members from the military, forbidding Veterans Affairs hospitals from providing trans care, and more. The right's contempt for people in genuine distress is almost enough to make one embrace the full gender-affirming model.

But not quite, because this is about what's best for kids. As the statement by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons noted, it isn't just surgeries on those younger than 19 that they now discourage, but a whole panoply of gender-affirming care because there is good evidence that a "substantial portion of children with prepubertal onset gender dysphoria experience resolution or significant reduction of distress by the time they reach adulthood, absent medical or surgical intervention."

It's odd that so much ink has been spilled about the question of sports and the unfairness of natal boys potentially snagging prizes over deserving girls. That's unjust, but really, it's insignificant. The number of trans athletes is very small, and the harm, while real, hardly begins to match the damage that may be done to kids who are rushed into transitioning without proper evaluation.

As BBC journalist Hannah Barnes found in her examination of Britain's transgender program, 60 percent to 70 percent of the kids who presented at the clinic with gender distress would eventually grow up to be gay.

Most parents desperately love their kids and don't want them to suffer, so it's inexcusable that some clinicians were telling parents that unless they agreed to support their child's sexual transition, the child would be likely to commit suicide. The doctors sometimes said, "You can have a live girl or a dead boy" or vice versa. Chase Strangio, the ACLU lawyer who argued the U.S. v. Skrmetti transgender case before the Supreme Court, reluctantly acknowledged during oral argument that there is no evidence that gender-affirming care reduces suicide.

Parents have been disserved by a medical establishment that got carried away by a cultural fad and failed to protect children. Puberty blockers were advertised as a fully reversible intervention that would simply give children "time to think" before their bodies began the process of maturation. But in fact, between 96 percent and 98 percent of patients who started puberty blockers went on to cross-sex hormones (whose effects, like body hair, deepening of the voice, and development of an Adam's apple, are not reversible). Rather than a pause, it was a first step on the ladder. As the Cass Review in the U.K. stressed, the studies on these interventions are of poor quality and lack long-term data on how adults who transitioned as children are faring.

If a child proceeds from blockers to transition, one thing many natal males will lose is the capacity to achieve orgasm. Is a child able to understand the nature of that trade-off? Most boys and girls will also lose their fertility.

How many kids are being diagnosed as trans and put on the pathway to transition and lifelong medication, infertility and sexual anhedonia, when their real issue was discomfort with being gay, autism, a history of sexual abuse, depression or mere confusion after absorbing online content? The vast majority of children with gender dysphoria have other medical and psychological issues as well. Are they being carefully evaluated? Not always. Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a leading practitioner of transgender medicine, rejected the idea of extensive psychological evaluation in 2018, explaining that "I don't send someone to a therapist when I'm going to start them on insulin."

Throughout history, there have always been a small number of people (mostly male) who feel that they are in the wrong body. But as a number of surveys have found recently, the share of young adults who are trans or nonbinary is dropping. The Cooperative Election Study, which included 60,000 respondents, found that in 2020, 8.6 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds identified as transgender. By 2024, that share had declined to 3.2 percent.

Most of the people who embrace gender identity do so to be inclusive and humane. The movement for trans rights seems like the struggle of gays to achieve true equality. In one sense, it is. Discrimination against trans adults needed to be stopped, and transgender people of all ages deserve respect. But as Europe, our own medical establishment and juries are coming to see, the trend to aggressively alter children's bodies and minds was too much too soon. That Americans are tapping the brakes now is a welcome corrective.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators


NBC News poll on immigration

The Democrats' Opportunity, If Only They Can Seize It

President Donald Trump's approval rating is sinking and gasping for air. His average net approval stands at -13.7, which is lower than Joe Biden's was at this point in his term. This matters beyond cosmic justice: The president's approval rating is the best predictor of midterm election outcomes. When it falls below 50 percent, his party tends to lose seats, as in the 1982, 1994, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018 elections.

So the Democratic Party, written off as dead by some a few months ago, stands poised for victory in November. That's good, but not good enough.

The stakes are so high that a win isn't sufficient to meet the moment. We need a crushing repudiation of this fascistic horror show.

The easiest issue, perhaps surprisingly, is immigration. Since 2024, Democrats have been snakebit on the subject, afraid that their instinctive pro-immigrant positions were unpopular enough to lead voters to select a snarling villain vowing mass deportations. They can exhale. What the polls over the past year suggest is that most Americans are not white-supremacist goons like Stephen Miller, ready to trash the Constitution in the name of purifying die Volk.

Instead, voters actually believed that Trump would only deport "the worst of the worst." As they watched the inhuman treatment of gardeners, veterans, children, and American-citizen protesters, they soured fast. Following the shooting of Alex Pretti, fully 60 percent of respondents told NBC they disapproved of Trump's immigration policies, 49 percent strongly so.

If Democrats present themselves as opposing the brutal tactics of ICE and CPB and favoring firm border controls, they should find themselves in the sweet spot. Messages like Billie Eilish's "No one is illegal on stolen land" are unhelpful. By all means, get angry about the savagery; stress that law and order means that first and foremost the state cannot be the lawbreaker. But also add that borders are not notional and chaos cannot be permitted to prevail along the Rio Grande.

The other big issue on voters' minds is inflation, or "affordability." The reality is that politicians cannot actually bring prices down, as Trump promised to do in 2024, except by crashing the economy. Still, some voters presumably believed him, and they are disillusioned now. Some Democrats may be tempted to run on taxing the rich. This is a comfortable old shoe for Democrats, but as a political strategy it hasn't been terribly successful. Middle-class voters often fear that they will be labeled as rich.

On the other hand, voters have already concluded that tariffs are making life more expensive. The issue is a layup — if Democrats can get out of their own way. Nearly 60 percent of Americans blame Trump for rising prices, and 65 percent disapprove of his tariffs. Fifty-nine percent of independent voters say the tariffs have hurt the economy and their personal finances. Voters are rarely able to connect policy to outcomes, but they have done so in the case of tariffs. Back in 2024, Americans were about equally divided on the question of trade, with some favoring higher tariffs and roughly similar numbers opting for lower tariffs. Experience has changed their views.

The progressive wing of the party has long favored tariffs as a way to protect American workers from competition from low-wage nations. This muddies the waters.

Cutting tariffs is one of the only levers governments can pull that will actually reduce prices, and since price sensitivity is very much on voters' minds, does it make sense to temper that message at all? All House Democrats voted in favor of a resolution that would end the national emergency excuse for tariffs, and three Republicans joined them. This is the moment. Tariffs are bad — full stop.

Finally, a vulnerability that Democrats must overcome is seeming soft on crime. Here again the Trump administration has handed them a golden opportunity. MAGA is so fixated on ethnic cleansing that it is pulling Justice Department officials off crime-fighting to pursue immigration cases. A memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove directed officers who had been working on transnational organized crime, money laundering, and major drug trafficking networks to focus instead on assisting ICE. Ditto for the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

Ditto for the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces. In fact, roughly 25 percent of FBI agents (and 40 percent in larger field offices) have been diverted from fighting financial crimes, public corruption, cybercrime and complex corporate investigations and pulled into immigration enforcement. Most maddening are the thousands of FBI and Homeland Security agents who've been pulled from investigations of child sex abuse to assist with deportations — as if the administration needed more ways of signaling that it's OK with child sex trafficking.

In fact, roughly 25 percent of FBI agents (and 40 percent in larger field offices) have been diverted from fighting financial crimes, public corruption, cybercrime and complex corporate investigations and pulled into immigration enforcement. Most maddening are the thousands of FBI and Homeland Security agents who've been pulled from investigations of child sex abuse to assist with deportations — as if the administration needed more ways of signaling that it's OK with child sex trafficking.

Cutting tariffs is one of the only levers governments can pull that will actually reduce prices, and since price sensitivity is very much on voters' minds, does it make sense to temper that message at all? All House Democrats voted in favor of a resolution that would end the national emergency excuse for tariffs, and three Republicans joined them. This is the moment. Tariffs are bad — full stop.

Democrats should stress that the funds appropriated for ICE would be far better deployed to local police departments. Bill Clinton's promise to hire 100,000 police officers was very popular in the '90s and cut against the Democrats' soft-on-crime image. The slogans write themselves: More Cops, Less ICE.

The voters are the last redoubt in the fight to reclaim American democracy and decency, and the Democratic Party, the world's oldest political party since the advent of universal suffrage, is the only entity that can carry the burden. If they can win a resounding victory in the House and Senate in nine months, there is hope for us.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators


How Big Is The MAGA Cult, Really? Smaller Than You May Imagine

How Big Is The MAGA Cult, Really? Smaller Than You May Imagine

As we survey the wreckage of Trump's second term, it is often said that half the country voted for this, or worse, half the country is fine with this. That isn't true.

MAGA is a bit of a moving target, but a recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only 27 percent of all voters described themselves as "MAGA supporters" and a perhaps surprisingly low 54 oercent of Trump voters so identified. In other words, a minority of the voting public and only a little over half of the GOP is Trump's loyal base.

A new survey from More in Common, an international pro-democracy organization (I sit on its global board), offers a more granular look at Trump 2024 voters and provides further evidence that MAGA is definitely not half the country. They canvassed over 18,000 Americans over eight months. In looking over their findings, the group categorized the Trump voters into four clusters: MAGA Hardliners, Anti-woke Conservatives, Mainline Republicans and the Reluctant Right. Their conclusion? Trump voters were a coalition, not a cult.

The MAGA Hardliners

These are the people we usually picture sporting red hats. They are highly religious, are 91 percent white, mostly over 45 and less educated than other Trump voters — only 24 percent hold a college degree or higher compared with 29 percent of total Trump voters. They have little trust in institutions, believe that a sinister cabal runs media, business, and politics, and are not averse to their leader ignoring the Supreme Court or other constitutional checks in order to "get things done."

A lamentable majority (60 percent) of the Hardliners say their man should serve a third term. (In case you're wondering, yes, they do know the Constitution imposes a two-term limit, because it was included in the question.) Nearly three quarters think we should "use our military to round up everyone who came to the U.S. illegally, put them in mass detention camps, and deport them." Seventy-four percent say voting for Trump is part of "living out my faith," and 94 percent (75 percent strongly) believe that God intervened to save Trump's life in Butler, Pennsylvania, so that he could make America great again.

This crowd cannot be trusted with power. They are conspiratorial, cultish, dismissive of constitutional limits and punitive toward their perceived political enemies. There isn't much good to say about them except this: They represent only 29 percent of Trump 2024 voters.

The Anti-Woke Conservatives

This next group is a little different. Among Trump voters, they are the least likely to say their faith determines their votes (14 percent versus an average of 27 percent among all Trump voters), but also the most hostile to Democrats. This is an alienated bunch who believe (91 percent) that wokeness is a very serious problem plaguing America. So, while that was enough to put them in the GOP column, only 33 percent agree that Trump should punish his opponents. This group represents 21 percent of Trump's coalition.

The Mainline Republicans

Making up some 30 percent of the coalition, these are the most likely to say that they are Trump supporters and Republicans equally, the least likely to say America is in decline (39 percent versus 58 percent of all Trump voters) and somewhat cool (43 percent) to ignoring court orders. Fifty-four percent of this group, compared with 76 percent of all Trump voters, agree with the statement "The woke left has ruined American education, news, and entertainment."

The Reluctant Right

Of this final cohort, only a scant majority even identifies as Republican, and they were the most likely to say they voted for Trump because he seemed less bad than Kamala Harris. This group, which represented one in five Trump voters, was the most likely to say they were ashamed of what happened on January 6. Only 28 percent of this group favored rounding up illegal immigrants and deporting them (compared with 52 percent of all Trump voters). Twenty-five percent of the Reluctant Right say they have doubts about or regret their vote entirely. That's a start.

The Hardline MAGA group believes all of the worst things, but it's worth noting that some of the policies associated with Trump 2.0 have far less support among the rest of the coalition. Only 31 percent support deporting immigrants to third countries.

The Economist/YouGov poll found further fissures suggesting that Trump voters are not a monolith. Asked whether they supported increases or decreases in spending on Medicaid, for example, which the GOP cut by $1 trillion in last year's "Big Beautiful Bill," only 28 percent of Trump voters favored decreasing spending.

Trump's base is hate-filled and dangerous, but it is not the majority. Nor is it half of the country. As a January Pew poll found, only 27 percent of respondents say they support all or most of Trump's policies, down from 35 percent when he took the oath of office. Nearly all of that decline is attributable to Republicans. The erosion is proceeding fast, and based on the small size of the cult, there is plenty of room for more. Onward!

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators

Fight The MAGA Bully -- And See How He Keeps Backing Down

Fight The MAGA Bully -- And See How He Keeps Backing Down

Does it sometimes seem as though too many people have never learned the lessons of the schoolyard? If you capitulate to a bully, you will be bullied forever. If you stand up to him, he will back down. What's true on the playground is also true in the office, in politics and in international relations.

Standing up to bullies is not free of risk. You might get bloodied in the process. But afterward, the bully, having learned that there is a price, will hesitate to push you around, whereas if you fail to stand up to him, he will grow ever more menacing.

All of the bowing and scraping before the reelected Donald Trump last year by corporate leaders, university presidents, major law firms, leading journalistic outlets and European allies wasn't just demoralizing — it was foolish. If he had met firm opposition in all directions, his power would have been diminished. Each pushback would have inspired others, creating a flood. Instead, we saw a cascade in the other direction — a cascade of capitulation.

But the other path — etched in tragedy and martyrdom in Minneapolis — has shown repeated success. When you stand up to the bully, he backs down.

We don't yet know from whence a national political leader will arise, but the people of Minneapolis have reminded us that this country is still planted thick with inspiring, selfless, heroic people who will put their very lives on the line rather than submit to MAGA's naked barbarism. Renee Good, Alex Pretti and so many others who have braved bitter cold, pepper spray and tear gas and even being shot are the best of us. All honor to them.

That's the spiritual message of Minneapolis. The political message is this: The bully backed down. In the face of opposition not just from his opponents but from some of his allies who found that their vocal cords were actually operative, Trump announced that the Border Patrol ogre Greg Bovino was being demoted and removed from Minneapolis in favor of the slightly less brutal Tom Homan. Republican Sens. John Curtis (R-UT), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AL), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) called for investigations of Pretti's murder. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has asked the heads of ICE, CBP and USCIS to testify on the Hill.

Before there was Minneapolis, there was Chicago. Recall that in September, Trump posted that "I love the smell of deportations in the morning. ... Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR."

The governor of Illinois struck back, vowing that his state "won't be intimidated by a wannabe dictator." Other Illinois elected officials joined in. Thousands thronged the streets in protest, and lawsuits were filed challenging the legality of Trump's National Guard deployment. Eventually, the courts ruled against the administration, and Trump backed down.

Trump's climbdown from the asinine "Liberation Day" tariffs was so swift that it inspired the acronym TACO, for Trump Always Chickens Out. The pushback in that case came from the markets, but the principle holds — when there's resistance, Trump can be rocked back on his heels.

Trump's operating assumption on trade has always been that no one can counter U.S. market power and must tamely accept our terms. But in October, China reminded him that it isn't 1970 anymore and they have cards to play as well. They announced new restrictions on the distribution of rare earths. This is a vulnerability for the United States, which acquires 70 percent of these minerals from China. When the two sides met in South Korea in late October, the Trump administration backed off its threats and agreed to reduce its tariffs on China to levels comparable to other Asian nations. As one analyst put it, "Xi was ready for Trump in his second term and has a powerful weapon in rare earths. China is getting the better of the US in these recent truce negotiations."

Finally, the catastrophic Greenland threats, talking menacingly of getting the island "the easy way or the hard way," demonstrated to the Europeans that appeasing this ravenous bundle of appetites was not a successful strategy. Europe got tough and Trump deflated — yet further proof that standing up to him works. Our (former?) allies let it be known that they were finished capitulating. Eight NATO nations deployed troops to Greenland to participate in military exercises. The Danish prime minister declared that "Europe will not be blackmailed," and adding teeth to this position, a number of European diplomats spoke openly of deploying Europe's "trade bazooka" that would limit intellectual property protections for American businesses and deprive U.S. companies of access to public procurement opportunities in Europe, among other things. Trump caved.

This is not to say that Trump is a paper tiger. He is erratic, frequently irrational, flagrantly immoral and endlessly acquisitive. If he could confiscate all the wealth of the world, he would do so and still be unsatisfied. He's dangerous — but the only counter is to resist with everything you've got. It's the right thing to do, and it works.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators


With Trump's Fresh Insults To Democratic Allies, The Mask Slips Off

With Trump's Fresh Insults To Democratic Allies, The Mask Slips Off

Throughout 2017 and into 2018, I hoped that a moment would come when Republicans would see Donald Trump clearly. But years ago, I accepted that the scales-falling-from-the-eyes revelation will never come for the MAGA faithful. They are too invested.

Still, as a recent Chicago Tribune report found, a small but significant percentage of 2024 Trump voters either regret their vote or have serious concerns about the way things are going. When elections are decided by just a few hundred thousand votes in seven states, those defections are crucial.

It's entirely possible that those swing voters care only about the cost of living and not about the collapse of American decency. Still, it's worth spelling out one of the great delusions of the Trump era that has been definitively unmasked by the Davos Debacle.

Trump has never believed in the principles that NATO was founded to promote and preserve. He doesn't feel affinity for liberal democracy. Recall that in early 2024, Trump recounted a conversation (probably fictional) with the leader of a "large" European nation who supposedly asked Trump whether America would come to its defense in the event of a Russian invasion. Trump claimed to have replied: "You didn't pay? You're delinquent? No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay."

Trump doesn't respond to naked aggression the way normal people do. He gets excited. Recall that when Vladimir Putin's tanks rolled into Ukraine, Trump swanned into the Mar-a-Lago dining room gushing over what a "genius" Putin was. He later issued some rote condemnations, but his initial response to the murderous violence was delight, just as he had reveled in the January 6 attack on the Capitol — the gravest assault on our democracy since 1861.

Most hostility to the "neocon" agenda stems from the belief that the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan failed, but Trump doesn't even endorse the goals. He doesn't believe in promoting democracy at all, even if it costs us nothing. Early in his second term, Trump visited Saudi Arabia and declared that the days of Western leaders "in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs" were over. In hindsight, it's clear that this rule applied only to authoritarian countries. The Trump administration applied no such rule to our democratic allies.

Trump called former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a "far left lunatic" who had destroyed Canada with COVID mandates. He lambasted Volodymyr Zelensky (but not Putin) for failing to hold elections. JD Vance, among other MAGA figures, excoriated European nations for their tolerance of limitations on free speech.

It's hard to think of an occasion when Trump has criticized any authoritarian for their repression.

It's Trump's lack of belief in liberal democracy, as much as stinginess, that explains his coolness toward Ukraine. What seems blindingly obvious to every liberal democratic leader — that brute conquest by a quasi-fascist regime against a fellow democracy demands a forceful response — is not at all clear to Trump. What's in it for me? he keeps asking. Can I get a Nobel? Can we extort some rare earth minerals?

With the snatching of Maduro in Venezuela, we can see the full contempt Trump harbors toward democracy. The United States went to considerable risk and expense to capture Maduro — but there isn't even a pretense of pivoting now to help restore democracy to Venezuela. It's all about the oil. If a Maduro lookalike will pony up petrodollars to Trump, that's all he cares about. It's Putinesque.

Trump behaves as a bullying autocrat at home; why would he uphold the rule of law and democracy abroad?

And now we come to Greenland — the mad king in full regalia. There are several layers to this betrayal of American and Western values:

1. To even threaten military force against a peaceful ally violates common sense, as well as the norms and rules that America spent decades enshrining in international law and practice.

2. To do so because a private entity in a third country — which Trump himself confirmed he knows is not the same country — hurt his little feelings by declining to give him the Nobel Peace Prize is cringe-inducing and frankly borderline insane.

3. To insult every member of NATO is to alienate the United States from the entire democratic world.

4. To admit, in public, that because he is pouting over not winning the Peace Prize, he will no longer prioritize peace is as clear a confession as can be that his true interest was never peace.

For now, Trump has climbed down from his threats (after a market plunge). But our former friends will no longer labor under the delusion that he is a fellow liberal democrat.

Trump has contempt for democratic norms. He wants to move America's pieces to the other side of the chessboard, alongside those whose systems and methods he finds more congenial — Russia, China, El Salvador, Turkey and Hungary. NATO leaders at last see it. Perhaps it will also dawn on some critical American voters.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators


Only In A Thugocracy Could ICE Agents Pretend To Be 'Law Enforcement'

Only In A Thugocracy Could ICE Agents Pretend To Be 'Law Enforcement'

We've seen masked government agents roughing people up, shouting obscenities at them, trapping them on freezing cold roofs, smashing their car windows, shooting pastors with pepper balls, shoving women to the ground, separating mothers from their children, and killing an unarmed American citizen as she attempted to maneuver her car away, dog in the backseat and glove compartment overflowing with colorful stuffed animals.

Why was Renee Good executed in cold blood? Because, our jefe explained, "that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement." That's a lie, as the 80% of Americans who watched the video can attest. Her last words were, "I'm not mad at you." But even if it were true, we live in a country that protects speech — even disrespectful speech — above nearly all other things. That means a person cannot be penalized — say, pulled over or denied a government benefit — for exercising their First Amendment rights. And oh, yes, it certainly means that they cannot be murdered by the state for being disrespectful. You know where that can happen? In places like Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and China — countries ruled by thugs.

Before Good's body was cold, before a single question had been asked in any investigation, the Secretary of Homeland Security declared her to be a "domestic terrorist" and asserted that she was attempting to run down the officer who killed her. Having blamed and defamed the victim, the administration next attempted to investigate and perhaps prosecute her widow while blocking inquiries into the ICE agent who pulled the trigger and then pronounced her a "f—-ing bitch." Six Department of Justice lawyers resigned rather than participate in that travesty, which is not nothing. Add their names to the roll of honor that also includes the 10 lawyers who resigned rather than drop the case against Eric Adams, and the more than 5,000 officials who have quit the Justice Department in the past year.

The battle against thugocracy is being fought on many fronts — by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who called out the president for his blatantly political persecution by prosecution; by the Republican legislators in Indiana, who rebuffed Trump's demand that they redistrict midcycle; by Jimmy Kimmel, who refused to be cowed; by the millions who showed up for No Kings rallies; by the five Republican senators who voted to invoke the War Powers Resolution over the Venezuela attack; by the judges who have ruled against Trump's usurpations of power; by the voters who turned out in 2025.

It's not yet clear who's winning. Every day, judges are issuing rulings expressing their disgust and alarm at the immoral and illegal actions of this administration. It cannot be emphasized too often that respect for the law is the ballgame. When that goes, there is no republic to preserve.

So consider the words of Judge Gary Brown, a Trump appointee, concerning ICE's treatment of detainees. This decision was issued just before Christmas.

The case concerned a Jamaican immigrant named Erron Anthony Clarke, who entered the country legally in 2018 on an H-2B visa. Clarke does not dispute that he overstayed his visa (which is not a crime), but, as Judge Brown noted, he has never been accused of committing any other offense — no violence, no drug use, no arrests — and has since married an American citizen and sought to adjust his immigration status to permanent residency on that basis. Should he have been deported? Some might say so. But that is not what the case turned on. It was the conditions in which ICE is detaining people.

After he was arrested, Clarke was placed in a "hold room" meant to temporarily house one person. Judge Brown recorded the conditions: "Nine men locked in a putrid ... cell containing an open toilet." They were held "day after day, without access to bunks, bedding, soap, showers, toothbrushes or clean clothes."

ICE's own regulations, along with numerous judicial rulings and simple decency, require that detainees be provided with soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste, sanitary napkins for women, clothing, and humane conditions. ICE provided none of those. Another detainee, cited by Judge Brown, offered similar testimony, noting that when detainees slept, they had to lie around the toilet.

Most Americans would not let their pets stay overnight in such conditions.

Last year, 32 people died in ICE custody, exceeding any yearly total since 2004 — including the pandemic years. ProPublica found that at least 170 American citizens have been caught in ICE dragnets and spent time in detention without access to a phone or a lawyer for hours and sometimes days.

Judge Brown may yet hold officials in contempt. He closed with these words:

"After nearly 35 years of experience with federal law enforcement ... encompassing service as a prosecutor and a judge, I have never encountered anything like this. ICE's seeming disregard of procedural requisites, combined with the chillingly brutal conditions of confinement to which Petitioner has been, and presumably would continue to be subjected, cries out for immediate remedy."

Judge Brown no doubt has a legal remedy in mind, but the enduring remedy can only be political.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators


Plunder: How Trump's Greed Is Turning America Toward Piracy And Autocracy

Plunder: How Trump's Greed Is Turning America Toward Piracy And Autocracy

The Wall Street Journal editorial board has delivered its share of idiocies over the past few years, but its response to the capture of Nicolas Maduro has set a new standard. Calling the military intervention "justified" because Venezuela had allied with "Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran," the board then declared triumphantly that "Mr. Trump is pursuing the Bush freedom agenda, at least in the Western Hemisphere. Are we all neocons now?"

Also living in a dream world is Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who told Fox News, "We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here." Fetterman then offered a benediction, saying that he just wanted to "remind everybody that America is a force of good order and democracy, and we are promoting these kinds of values. We are the good guys."

That's delusional, and I say that as someone who believed in humanitarian interventions abroad, who supported the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the bombing of Serbia and the invasion of Grenada. American power has been used for bad ends at times (the Mexican War was unadulterated aggression), but it's hard to think of a country that has more often extended itself for good purposes around the globe. We had losses and failures — South Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya — but tens of millions of people in places like Taiwan, Germany, South Korea, Kosovo, Kuwait, Bosnia and, yes, Iraq owe their freedom and prosperity to American arms. Hundreds of millions more live free from oppression only because the United States armed them against aggressors or threatened to use force if they were attacked. Damn right, we were the good guys!

As Colin Powell put it in 2003: "We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years ... and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in."

To imagine that President Donald Trump is doing anything remotely like those interventions in Venezuela is risible. "Good order and democracy"? At his strutting press conference, Trump mentioned the country's oil more than 20 times and democracy not at all. Asked later whether the United States would encourage elections, Trump dismissed the idea: "We have to fix the country first. You can't have an election. There's no way the people could even vote." Would a "freedom agenda" president beat his chest and roar that "American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again"?

That press conference was not about democracy or human rights or even capitalism. It was about straight up plunder undergirded by threats. The country's oil, Trump announced, would be pumped by American oil companies for American oil companies — not even for American taxpayers. The welfare of Venezuelans is, at best, an afterthought, if that. Trump's eyes sparkle at the prospect of looting another country's natural resources. His lone complaint about the first Gulf War was that we failed to "take the oil." He has shaken down Ukraine for its rare earth minerals, and he is casting lascivious glances Greenland's way. But sure, it's a freedom agenda.

In the past, when the United States has toppled dictators, it has sought plausible leaders from among the democratic opposition and sometimes settled for less than inspiring choices like Hamid Karzai and Nouri al-Maliki. Not only is the Venezuelan opposition unusually united and organized; not only does it have a legitimate president in Edmundo Gonzalez; but it has a clear leader in Maria Corina Machado, who happens to be a global heroine and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The opposition won that election with two-thirds of the vote, though Maduro refused to recognize his loss (sound familiar?) and held onto power. There is no need to search for plausible democratic leaders. They are right there, but Trump said Machado is unable to lead: "She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect."

How can the Wall Street Journal editorial board and others credit the idea that Trump is pursuing some sort of freedom agenda when he has rejected the clear democratic leader of the country and the winner of the last election, and instead chosen to work with Maduro's Marxist Vice President Delcy Rodriguez?

Trump and his people don't leave any doubt that they are in the business of intimidation and possible conquest, but the justifications are delusional. None of the reasons that Venezuela is truly guilty seem to interest Trump, but he's obsessed with the fantasy that they somehow emptied their prisons and insane asylums and shipped the inmates to America.

This. Is. Not. True.

Back in 1980, when Trump was just a novice charlatan, Fidel Castro did something like that during the Mariel boatlift. Trump got that idea stuck in his brain and spews it about every country he dislikes.

The United States under Trump is an outlaw nation, threatening excellent neighbors like Canada with economic devastation, blasting people in fast boats to pieces, withdrawing from international agreements, bullying friends and foes alike, and now kidnapping foreign leaders (however evil). We are becoming the kind of nation against which America used to defend others.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators

Shame: How The 'Pro-Life' Trump Regime Brutally Abuses Pregnant Migrants

Shame: How The 'Pro-Life' Trump Regime Brutally Abuses Pregnant Migrants

Absorbing the news about the brutal treatment of detainees, to say nothing of the outright murder of "suspected" drug runners in the Caribbean, I think back to a conversation I had in February of this year. My interlocutor was a Trump voter who had just had a friendly encounter with an African immigrant striver — the kind who came from poverty and had started a successful business here.

I recall saying, "I hope he has his documents in order."

The Trump voter scoffed: "They're not going after people like him. They're only going after the criminals."

Eleven months later, that naive faith has been smashed. Not his — mine. I have no idea how that person feels about the Trump administration now, but when I advised in February that they were going to cast a wide net for deportations, I had no idea how bad it would be. This is not just a matter of aggressive deportation. The things that are being done by our government to our fellow human beings are monstrous.

The testimony of the Venezuelans who were deported to CECOT prison in El Salvador is harrowing. Snatched from workplaces or homes on mere suspicion of being criminals — supposedly members of the Tren de Aragua gang — 252 men were bundled onto planes and flown to a prison known for torture. There, courtesy of a heinous bargain between Trump and Nayib Bukele, the dictator of El Salvador, they were "trampled, kicked ... forced to kneel for hours," as well as waterboarded, forced to sleep on mesh metal bunks, shot with rubber bullets, forced into stress positions (including the "crane" in which their wrists were handcuffed behind their backs and then lifted to put pressure on the shoulders and back) and sexually assaulted. At least one attempted suicide. Their accounts are available now only because El Salvador arranged a prisoner exchange with Venezuela in July.

Copious reporting has since demonstrated that only a fraction of those deported had criminal records in the United States and most of those were for relatively minor offenses such as shoplifting, possession of drug paraphernalia or traffic violations. Only six had convictions for violent crimes.

Again and again, Trump administration goons have insisted that they are deporting only the "worst of the worst ... rapists, savages, monsters." They have even — and this is one of the most vile aspects of this government — encouraged their base to revel in the misery of their victims by releasing videos lovingly dwelling on images of people being bound and frog-marched toward the planes. The videos are titled "ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight."

Those enjoying what they imagine is righteous pleasure at the abuse of the "worst of the worst" might want to consider the testimony of Physicians for Human Rights or the Women's Refugee Commission, both of which have reported on the treatment of a group that the Trump administration apparently considers a dire threat: pregnant, nursing and postpartum women.

Melanie Nezer, vice president for advocacy and external relations at the Women's Refugee Commission, described the conditions that hundreds of these women are facing in U.S. detention centers. Pregnant women and nursing mothers are grabbed from their cars or workplaces by masked agents, hustled into buses or cars and whisked to overcrowded centers. In one Louisiana facility, according to a Senate report, at least 14 pregnant women were visible during the staff's visit. A woman who was four months pregnant and experiencing bleeding had not been seen by a doctor for months. Another had a miscarriage and was deported while still bleeding.

Nezer described pregnant women being forced into overcrowded detention facilities with inadequate sanitary facilities, only frozen burritos or potato chips to eat, lack of clean drinking water (except by purchase) and no medical care or medicines. Some pregnant women were sleeping on concrete floors. The WRC spoke to mothers who had been deported to Honduras. Several nursing mothers had seen their milk dry up due to poor nutrition while they were held in detention in the United States. A woman who was four months pregnant was denied medication for gestational diabetes.

Among these dangerous criminals that the Trump administration is devoting huge resources to detaining and deporting were a mother arrested as she was on her way to pick up her special-needs child from school, a mother separated from her 2-month-old baby, the mother of a five-year-old whose husband is a U.S. citizen and hundreds of others (though exact numbers are impossible to obtain due to government noncooperation).

Among those Nezer interviewed in Honduras were housecleaners, restaurant workers and stay-at-home moms. All of them were working, and quite a few had open asylum cases pending. Many were frantic about the children they'd been forced to leave behind in the United States. While they had phones with them, many did not have chargers and had no way of contacting their families, far less lawyers. As Nezer told me: "Before this year, detaining pregnant women was the rare exception, and there were safeguards. Now it happens all the time and conditions are beyond inhumane."

Do you feel safer now? I feel deeply ashamed.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators

The Worst Enabler In Epstein Files Isn't Larry Summers -- It's Steve Bannon

The Worst Enabler In Epstein Files Isn't Larry Summers -- It's Steve Bannon

If you followed the twists and turns of the Jeffrey Epstein saga over the last few weeks, you already know that several prominent names emerged from the tranche of emails that the Epstein estate released. Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, who exchanged scores of emails with the convicted pedophile, has seen his reputation shredded. But there is one big name that has so far received very little attention.

It's important to stress that Summers is not accused of any immoral or illegal conduct with underage girls, but he did betray a callous indifference to immoral and illegal conduct. Summers maintained a chummy relationship with Epstein years after Epstein had been convicted of soliciting underage prostitution, which is mind-boggling, and the consequences have been swift. Summers has withdrawn from half a dozen boards and has taken a leave of absence from Harvard.

Summers' behavior in his interactions with Epstein was appalling, but his response to the disclosure has been within normal bounds. Within hours of the emails' release, he released a statement acknowledging guilt. "I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein."

Why has there been no similar accountability for another of Epstein's pen pals — Steve Bannon?

Trump's consigliere, strategist, propagandist and former senior counselor at the White House was on very friendly terms with Epstein. He exchanged hundreds of emails with the convicted felon and conspired to whitewash his public image.

Do you have friends who can send a private jet to retrieve you when your flight has been delayed? Epstein apparently did that for Bannon in 2018. On a trip to Great Britain, Bannon was greeted by protests. He emailed Epstein: "Don't think I can make the flight we r enroute to heathrow."

Epstein replied that he could fix it: "There. Is a gulf air that leaves at 950 with a stop in Bahrain."

Bannon was appreciative, joking that "U r an amazing assistant."

Keeping up the theme, Epstein emailed a few days later asking how it feels "to have the most highly paid travel agent in history."

Bannon responded, "U r pretty good asst."

Epstein in turn replied, "Massages. Not Included." Yes, you read that correctly.

The emails suggest that Bannon and Epstein often met in person, though, as Epstein's case drew more attention in 2018 and 2019, they took precautions. Epstein emailed Bannon, "Btw Im in New York tonite thru sat , if you want to visit under the cover of darkness or breakfast tomorrow if you like."

Bannon apparently did like, but requested "access that's not the front door," since Epstein was under "24/7 surveillance."

Epstein sought Bannon's counsel on how to respond to then-Sen. Ben Sasse's highly critical comments: "Continue to ignore? Ann Coulter on hannity/. Attack? Op ed , ? Not my skill set. ... What about the attunes penning something that suggests indignation and lays out some of the facts."

Bannon replied, "That drives it a week."

Some weeks later, apparently planning some sort of public response, Bannon advises Epstein, "If you do an interview it can't be like 'Johnnie does a utube' - has to be amazingly professional and perfectly cut."

One of those professionals was evidently going to be Bannon himself. He filmed 15 hours for a documentary that would attempt to redeem Epstein's reputation. When Epstein related that a Christian group he had met with said the media were portraying him "as beyond redemption," Bannon responded, "Yes yes yes of course — but we must counter 'rapist who traffics in female children to be raped by worlds most powerful , richest men.'"

The public Steve Bannon was another matter.

While sometimes casting doubt on the QAnon conspiracy, at other times he fed the flames. At the height of the 2020 campaign, he told his audience that the pedophile conspiracy is "at least directionally correct." And earlier this year, addressing Turning Point USA, Bannon offered that "Epstein is a key that picks the lock on so many things. ... Not just individuals, but also institutions. Intelligence institutions, foreign governments, and who was working with him on our intelligence apparatus and in our government."

Well, the released emails show that one of those who was working most closely with Epstein, up to and including attempting to scrub his public image, was Bannon himself. Whatever else Summers may be, he is not one of the principal authors of the MAGA movement who stoked conspiracies about the "deep state" and gave oxygen to the most unhinged beliefs in circulation. Bannon, the man millions of MAGA fans trust to tell it like it is, stands revealed as one of the most cynical liars ever to mar this country.

Where are the firings and denunciations? Where is Turning Point USA, the White House, House Speaker Mike Johnson? Where are all the MAGA faithful who claimed to believe or did believe in the vast conspiracy among elites to abuse children? And where, finally, is Bannon's acknowledgment of wrongdoing? Where is his shame?

Of these two men, the less guilty has acknowledged wrongdoing and been harshly punished while the more guilty man sails on without a backward glance. It's a travesty.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators

If You Love Democracy, Prepare Now To Defend Free Elections In 2026

If You Love Democracy, Prepare Now To Defend Free Elections In 2026

Democrats and other democracy well-wishers are spilling gallons of ink and a profusion of pixels on the question of whether ending the government shutdown was a blunder or not. I submit that either way, it won't matter very much if at all in 12 months — and the 2026 elections are where our attention needs to pivot right now.

After the most depressing year in American politics of my lifetime, the 2025 election results were like a defibrillator shock to a moribund body. The landslide percentages achieved by Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill; the record-smashing turnout in New York City; the huge Democratic gains in the Virginia House of Delegates; the sweep of three state supreme court seats in Pennsylvania; the lopsided results in obscure Georgia races, like for the public service commission; and the success of the California redistricting plan (a response to Texas' naked gerrymander) all point to the fact that the electorate — unlike CEOs, partners in major law firms, university presidents and media companies — is not surrendering to President Donald Trump.

Coming on the heels of the massive No Kings demonstrations across the nation, last week's elections are reminders that voters are the final bulwark against despotism.

Of course, these races should not be overinterpreted. Democrats tend to turn out in greater numbers for off-year contests than Republicans; the GOP's Virginia gubernatorial candidate was off-putting; and Democrats ran disciplined campaigns. But the biggest drag on Republicans was something that felled Kamala Harris and is unlikely to change markedly by this time next year: prices remain high. Millions of non-MAGA voters supported Trump because they believed his promise to restore the 2019 economy. That he cannot do, and wouldn't be able to accomplish even if he refrained from the boneheaded tariffs that are his delight.

Over the course of the past year, the question I've had the most difficulty responding to was also the one that was most often asked: What can I, as a citizen, do to counter this descent into authoritarianism? The No Kings rallies were one answer. The 2025 elections were another. And now, the next step is coming into focus.

The Trump team will also certainly attempt to rig the midterm elections while falsely claiming the elections are rigged against Trump. They have already begun. The mid-decade gerrymanders that the president has demanded of red states are a brazen effort to skew election results. It's Trump's style to do the corrupt things openly, so that they almost seem above board.

A president who pulled every lever, jiggled every handle and applied every kind of pressure he could think of, up to and including inciting a riot to prevent his successor from taking office deserves no benefit of the doubt about what he might attempt in 2026. Let's not forget that Trump entertained the possibility of using the military to confiscate ballot boxes in close states.

Still perseverating about the "stolen" 2020 election, Trump is already posting on Truth Social that he detects similar fraud in 2026: "No mail-in or 'Early' Voting, Yes to Voter ID!" he wrote. "Watch how totally dishonest the California Prop Vote is! Millions of Ballots being 'shipped.' GET SMART REPUBLICANS, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!"

The Justice Department sent "monitors" to polling sites in California and New Jersey, which may have been nothing, or it may have been a dry run for deploying large numbers of federal officials to intimidate voters. Since 2020, Trump has been able to install election deniers in key federal posts, most importantly as attorney general, and has created a new, MAGA-inflected paramilitary force in ICE. It is no stretch to imagine ICE agents snatching people from voting queues and thereby deterring U.S. citizens who speak with an accent or have dark skin from exercising their right to vote. God knows, they've already pulled any number of citizens into their unmarked vehicles and held them for hours.

Everyone can participate in the pushback. Thankfully, elections are local and state affairs, not federal, which means the Trump administration has limited power to interfere with the way votes are cast. Still, leave nothing to chance. Sign up to be an election worker. The turnover rate has increased since 2020, with 2 in 5 election workers leaving the job. Contact groups concerned with election integrity, like Protect Democracy, the Campaign Legal Center, the Brennan Center for Justice, the NAACP, States United Democracy Center, Society for the Rule of Law (especially if you have a law degree) or the Fair Elections Center. Contact your state representatives and senators to inquire about funding for election security measures. File Freedom of Information Act requests as American Oversight has done to discover if the Trump administration is preparing military or other deployments at election time next year.

We've witnessed what unified Republican control of the government has meant over the past 11 months. Winning back the House and, who knows, maybe even the Senate, is the whole ballgame now.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators


supreme court justices Roberts, Kagan, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh

Will Supreme Court's 'Originalist' Justices Permit Trump's Power Grab?

I think the Supreme Court will rule against President Donald Trump's imposition of tariffs. That said, it's just remarkable that the vote will not be 9-0.

Trump is claiming sweeping powers to impose (and rescind and reimpose and re-rescind) tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), which was a revised version of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 (TWEA). The acronyms "I-EE-pah" and "TWEE-ah" flew around the courtroom like trapped sparrows.

The question for the Court was whether IEEPA actually grants the president power to impose tariffs — though the word "tariff" does not appear in the text of the law and no president has ever before interpreted the statute to grant taxing power. Addressing the justices on Wednesday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that because the law grants the power to "regulate" trade in certain emergencies, it must also include the power to tariff.

But that's a huge leap, and the reason should be obvious to conservative justices who have claimed to be suspicious of overweening executive power. Striking down former President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that "some of the biggest mistakes in the Court's history were deferring to assertions of executive emergency power," while "some of the finest moments in the Court's history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency power."

Yet when it came to Trump's imposition of crushing tariffs against every nation on the globe, Kavanaugh curled up at the feet of executive power like a purring cat. "The tariff on India, right? That's designed to help settle the Russia-Ukraine war, as I understand it," he said on Wednesday.

But that's a huge leap, and the reason should be obvious to conservative justices who have claimed to be suspicious of overweening executive power. Striking down former President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that "some of the biggest mistakes in the Court's history were deferring to assertions of executive emergency power," while "some of the finest moments in the Court's history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency power."

Yet when it came to Trump's imposition of crushing tariffs against every nation on the globe, Kavanaugh curled up at the feet of executive power like a purring cat. "The tariff on India, right? That's designed to help settle the Russia-Ukraine war, as I understand it," he said on Wednesday.

Not quite. The tariff on India reportedly arose from Trump's pique at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's refusal to say (falsely) that Trump had negotiated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan and thus deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.

But let's grant for the sake of argument that Trump's 50 percent tariffs on India have a legitimate foreign policy purpose. How does Kavanaugh account for the extra 10 percent tariff on Canada in retaliation for a TV ad that embarrassed Trump by accurately quoting Ronald Reagan's opposition to tariffs? Or the 40 percent tariff on Brazil (a country with whom we ran a trade surplus) for trying and convicting his fellow election stealer Jair Bolsonaro? Kavanaugh should reread his own words about unwise deferral to executive authority.

As the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in August, imposing tariffs is a core congressional prerogative, and while the statute authorizes a number of discrete actions, tariffs were not among them.

This would seem to be a core point. When the president claims sweeping authority to impose taxes (tariffs) without congressional approval, he obtains his own independent income stream and Congress becomes a nullity. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specifically vests power in Congress to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises." It is Congress, not the president, that is granted power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations." If the Supreme Court were to accept Trump's grasp for unreviewable taxing power, the balance would be obliterated.

During Wednesday's oral argument, the advocates and justices discussed the emergency powers in question but didn't dwell on whether the emergency was real or a Trump alternate reality — like the 2020 "stolen" election.

Trump has claimed several "emergencies" as justification for upending global trade. One is fentanyl. And while it's true that fentanyl is a dangerous drug that enters the United States through Mexico, it is not the case that Canada is implicated — yet Canada is sanctioned along with Mexico and China. (More than 5,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized on the southern border in the first part of 2025, but only 64 pounds crossed from Canada; that's the difference between a U-Haul's worth of fentanyl and a backpack's worth.)

More risible is the argument that America's bilateral trade deficits with various countries comprise an emergency. The U.S. has been running trade deficits since 1976, and in that half-century, it has achieved the highest per capita GDP on the planet. With only about 4.5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. accounts for more than 26 percent of global GDP. In any case, something that has been going on since before most Americans were born is hardly an emergency.

In 2023, the conservative justices were correct to brush back the Biden assertion of authority to forgive billions in student debt. Citing "major questions doctrine," Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that if something will have huge economic or social consequences, it requires clear congressional authorization.

But it shouldn't require any newly minted doctrine to find that presidential power, like kingly power, cannot go unchecked. Resistance to arbitrary power fueled the American Revolution and inspired the Founding. When Patrick Henry worried that the president might easily become a king, James Madison sought to reassure him by noting that "the purse is in the hands of the representatives of the people." In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Chief Justice John Marshall intoned that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy."

Our Constitution is premised on limiting the power of the state. Judicial conservatives claim to cherish this idea. Let's see.

Terror On The High Seas Displays Trump's Deadly Dictatorial Impulse

Terror On The High Seas Displays Trump's Deadly Dictatorial Impulse

The United States is engaged in summary executions on the high seas. That bald fact is being obscured by talk of drug interdiction and war powers and whether we're certain the drugs on those boats were headed for the United States or somewhere else.

Let's be clear. Even if we knew for certain that the boats being destroyed in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific 1) contained illegal drugs; 2) those drugs were headed for our shores; and 3) all on board were criminals, it would still be grossly illegal and immoral to blast them out of the water as we have now done some 14 reported times, killing 61 people. This is not drug enforcement. This is murder.

Drug trafficking is bad. It is a crime. But it is only very rarely a capital offense. In fact, no criminal in the United States has been sentenced to death for drug crimes that did not also include homicide since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1988. But the crucial thing to keep in mind is that the criminals involved were captured, charged and tried. That's what a law-abiding nation does.

The only time you can legally use lethal military force is when Congress has specifically granted authority against an enemy state or entity, or when American forces are attacked and act in self-defense. It was not illegal for American sailors to shoot back at Japanese planes on December 7, 1941. But we are not at war with "narcoterrorists." That simply isn't a thing, even if President Donald Trump has stated that the United States is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels. Those words are without legal effect.

The "war on drugs" is a metaphor. Or was. Under our laws, suspected drug boats can be interdicted, boarded by the Coast Guard, and in the event contraband is discovered, the drugs can be confiscated and the drug runners can be arrested, tried and punished. That's if they are found in U.S. territorial waters. Interdictions beyond our borders have been controversial, with courts expressing skepticism about the constitutionality of prosecuting (not killing!) drug traffickers captured in international waters.

The administration has not provided evidence that the boats they've destroyed were carrying drugs. For all we know, some were fishing vessels or pleasure boats. Nor have they even suggested that the people on board those vessels were armed, far less that they fired on U.S. ships. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was brutally frank: "At this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings. And this is akin to what China does, to what Iran does with drug dealers. They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public."

Some commentators have justified Trump's extrajudicial killings by pointing to drone strikes on suspected terrorists carried out by the Bush and Obama administrations. But those attacks were issued pursuant to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (essentially a declaration of war) passed by Congress in 2001.

Trump is abusing his power to sic the military on criminals — or those he claims (without evidence) are criminals. That is not the military's job. For now, these are foreigners. But he has long expressed admiration for leaders who engage in extrajudicial killings at home. During his first term, he praised Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, for doing an "unbelievable job" on drugs. Duterte is now facing charges of murder and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. His "unbelievable job" included unleashing police and vigilantes who rounded up and extrajudicially executed — murdered — between 12,000 and 30,000 people.

Trump has a strong yearning for state violence. Regarding the suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the president is bloodthirsty: "I don't think we're necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We're going to kill them. They're going to be, like, dead."

Regarding migrants attempting to cross the southern border, Trump instructed aides during his first term to shoot them in the legs, but was advised that this would not be legal. Campaigning in 2023, he suggested that the United States should address shoplifting by shooting people: "We will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. Very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store."

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper told NPR that Trump was enraged by the unrest following George Floyd's murder: "He thought that the protests made the country look weak ... and (asked) Gen. Mark Milley ... 'Can't you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?'"

Presidents are sometimes called upon to make decisions that can result in the unintentional deaths of innocents. But when they do, it is after careful briefing, weighing of options and consequences, consideration of all reasonable alternatives and with legal authority. Trump's boat attacks, by contrast, are an almost gleeful bloodletting without any consultation with Congress, evidence or legality. The people in those boats may or may not have been criminals. The people ordering the strikes are.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her latest book is Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators

The Obscene Destruction Of A National Treasure Is This President's Legacy

The Obscene Destruction Of A National Treasure Is This President's Legacy

The building's facade is gone — an ugly gash reminiscent of the smoldering Pentagon on 9/11. This disfigurement is not the act of terrorists or foreign foes. It's the work of our president. The East Wing of the White House, which has housed the visitors center, the office of the social secretary, the calligraphy office, and the First Lady's staff since 1942, is being demolished. No planning. No proposals to the National Capital Planning Commission. No opportunity for notice and comment from the public. Just Trump's whim — and a beloved national symbol tumbles to dust.

It's obscene.

No, destroying the physical structure of the White House is not as bad, on a moral scale, as blowing up boats carrying possibly innocent people to kingdom come. It's not as bad, as a political science matter, as corrupting the Justice Department to criminally prosecute Trump's critics. It's not as menacing as sending troops into American cities. And yet, this hurt is particularly sharp.

Any American who has ever been stirred by patriotic feeling has at some time or other considered the White House his or her own possession. Ten thousand people a week tour the mansion that is sometimes called the "People's House." They aren't there just to see the Blue Room or the Green Room. They are relishing a piece of their patrimony. The building was basically a character in the hit show "The West Wing," and you cannot count the number of movies — thrillers, histories, love stories — that have been located there. The building itself has semi-sacred status because of its history and because it represents something inestimably precious: this democratic republic.

Trump is not demolishing the whole building, but he's tearing down a wing — a graceful addition that was built to blend into the entire White House complex. In place of the lovely two-story building that featured views of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and an iconic colonnade that led to the residence, he is constructing a 90,000-square-foot ballroom in the garish style of Mar-a-Lago.

It's all but impossible to imagine that this can be undone. But, as Jonathan V. Last suggests, Democrats interested in running for the presidency in 2028 should make "erasing this monstrosity" a campaign promise.

One of Trump's most successful cons is that he is a patriot. He literally hugs the flag and dubs anyone who supports him — disgraced and jailed former congressmen, criminals who attacked police on Jan. 6, convicted war criminals — patriots. Anyone who opposes or even criticizes Trump is tarred as an enemy of the people and an America hater.

But the bitter truth is that Trump is an antipatriot. He destroys things that make America worthy of love and admiration, and he is twisting the country toward a mean, crass kleptocracy. Our global reputation for humanitarianism? Gone. Our investments in scientific research for the betterment of humanity? In trouble. Our status as a secure financial center? Wobbly. Our reliability as an ally? No more. Our dedication to the rule of law domestically? Teetering. Our rock-solid dedication to freedom of speech? Under threat.

Would a patriot have turned bulldozers on the White House? For the sake of a gargantuan, tacky monarchical event space? Would a patriot show so little regard for how it would feel to his countrymen to see this desecration of a national symbol?

Trump is turning the White House into a reflection of himself — just as he is attempting to do to America. We can't stop the former. We must stop the latter.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators

Charlie Kirk

Is The Other Party Truly The Enemy -- Or Do We Exaggerate Political Polarization?

Just after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a New York Times/Siena poll found that Americans believe polarization is the second most serious challenge facing the nation. (The economy came in first.) As recently as one year ago, fewer than one percent of registered voters cited polarization as a national problem; this year, 13 percent said it was the most important problem facing the nation. Additionally, strong majorities agree that "America's political system ... is too politically divided to solve its problems."

Not only do Americans believe we're bitterly polarized; they worry that we're condoning political violence and that we cannot agree on basic facts. When Republicans were asked to name the nation's biggest problem, their first choice was the economy but their second was "Democrats." When Democrats were asked the same question, they put the economy second and named "Trump/Republicans" first.

Nations are not eternal, and domestic divisions often lead to destruction — especially when exploited by foreign enemies. So it's important to pay attention to these red flags, but it's equally important not to misinterpret them.

When we consider how much of our discourse is mediated through partisan sources and the fact that the governing political party is dominated by incendiary extremists, it's surprising we aren't even more polarized. A reservoir of moderation persists in the nation. It's shrinking but still present.

Research by More in Common (where I serve on the board) has found that time spent online is highly correlated with support for political violence. A 2024 survey conducted by the group found that 14 percent of American adults agreed with the statement "I feel that violence is sometimes needed to advance political causes in the U.S. today." That number jumped to 22 percent among those who spent five or more hours on social media daily and dropped to six percent among those who devoted a half-hour or less to social media each day.

Surveys showing support for political violence are disturbing, particularly in the wake of assassination attempts on Trump, arson at the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro, the attack on Paul Pelosi, the assassinations of Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk, and other politically motivated attacks. But those surveys can also be misleading. As More in Common explains, vaguely worded questions — that, say, fail to define violence or to distinguish between attacks on people and attacks on property — can lead to inflated responses. When Americans are asked, for example, whether it is justified to commit violence against supporters of the other party's presidential candidate, nearly 100 percent say no.

And yet, Americans have a distorted impression of how their political opposites feel about violence. The same More in Common survey from 2024 (conducted after the assassination attempt on Trump) found that Democrats and independents vastly overestimated how Republicans would react. Democrats guessed that 47 percent of Republicans would agree with the statement "Violence against Democrats is now justified." The actual number of Republicans who agreed with the statement was 13 percent. Independents estimated that 38 percent of Republicans would endorse the statement.

Misperceptions abound on other topics as well. A June 2025 survey found that 85 percent of Republicans and 89 percent of Democrats believe freedom of speech to be "unconditional." Yet Republicans estimated that only 52 percent of Democrats believed that, and Democrats guessed that only 57 percent of Republicans would say so.

Similarly, 80 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans say it's important to respect those with whom you disagree. Democrats think only 39 percent of Republicans assent to this, and Republicans estimate that only 36 percent of Democrats would say the same.

Vast swaths of Americans of all political persuasions would like to see a more united country, yet on this question as well, the perception gap is large. When Republicans were asked in January 2025 what qualities Democrats would want to see in the country 10 years into the future, they guessed "green" or "tolerant." Republicans estimated that only about 14 percent of Democrats would say "united," but in fact, 44% percent of Democrats chose united, more than any other quality. And while 47 percent of Republicans offered that they wanted to see a united country, Democrats supposed that this would be true of only 13 percent of the GOP.

There is no sugarcoating the trend toward authoritarianism among the very online and a growing share of Republicans. While only one percent of Democrats say they endorse non-democratic government in the United States, fully 10 percent of Republicans now say as much. On the other hand, Democrats might be surprised to learn that 13 percent of Republicans believe that Donald Trump's presidency poses a greater threat to democracy than the courts or bureaucracy. Of course, if that 13 percent includes the 10% who like autocracy, it's a less encouraging finding.

Surveys can't capture everything. And even in a nation where large majorities disfavor violence or extremism, we can't kid ourselves. A small number of dedicated revolutionaries have overcome widespread indifference before. Still, the research on perception gaps is a useful corrective to pervasive beliefs about our divisions. The gaps are wide but perhaps not as deep as we fear, and there remain opportunities for leaders to appeal to unity and mutual respect.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators

J.D. Vance

Epstein, Trump, And The Bottomless Moral Void Of MAGA

The rush to exonerate Trump from the implications of the Epstein birthday book message reveals a contradiction at the heart of MAGA.

In the immediate aftermath of the Wall Street Journal scoop about the smarmy message Trump included in the book of friendly tributes assembled in 2003 for Jeffrey Epstein's fiftieth birthday, Vice President JD Vance rode to his defense, calling the reporting "complete and utter bulls—-," an echo of his master's words. Trump had said, "This is not me. This is a fake thing. It's a fake Wall Street Journal story. I never wrote a picture in my life."

Vance could have stopped there, having fulfilled his loyal henchman duty, but he continued with words that haven't aged well in two months. "Where is this letter?" Vance tweeted. "Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?"

Where is the letter? Well, the birthday book has now wound up on front pages all over the world. The House Oversight Committee had subpoenaed it from the Epstein estate and has released images from it — complete with Trump's unmistakable signature over the pubic region of a female form. So that's where the supposedly nonexistent book is.

As for Vance's second question, is he serious? Of course, it sounds like Trump. He's a person of low character with a severe case of arrested development. He taunts political opponents, journalists and foreign leaders with middle school insults, brags about "inspecting" naked teenage beauty pageant contestants, and ranks women on how rape-worthy they are. Do you really think such a person is incapable of lewd chortling with a fellow perv about his "wonderful secret"?

Vance, the vanguard of those defending Trump's honor, was soon joined by the MAGA minions. Laura Loomer called the story "totally fake." "Time for @newscorp to open that checkbook, it's not his signature. DEFAMATION!" tweeted White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) also declined to see reality, insisting, even after the publication of the image in which Trump's signature is clear as day, "What I see is not his signature. I've seen Donald Trump sign a million things." Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) likewise sees only what the tribe permits: "Anybody can do a signature. To me, it's just bogus. The whole thing is bogus right now."

Others recirculated Trump's dubious accounts of why he kicked Epstein out of Mar-A-Lago, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) offered that the president had actually been acting as an FBI informant, dropping a dime on Epstein (a claim he walked back last Monday), but still maintains that the story is "much ado about nothing."

Yes, they all look foolish now, but that's only part of the point.

At the heart of the case for Trump has always been the notion that, sure, he's rough around the edges, but we have to put aside our piddling character concerns and just be glad that he is so strong, because the left presents such an existential threat to America that we cannot survive without Trump. It was always the Flight 93 election. When you are drowning, you don't question whether the man throwing you a life preserver is a decent person or not, you're just grateful he's there.

They knew Trump was a louse. They knew he lied, betrayed his business partners and his wives, spread false rumors, played dirty and did it all without a flicker of conscience. When Trump's character was raised as an issue by opponents, the knee-jerk MAGA response was not to defend him, not really, but to stress the enormity of the Democrats.

This carried them through Trump's escalation of offenses — from bullying and lying to inciting a rebellion, to standing by while a murderous mob hunted his opponents (including his vice president), to the machine-gun fire he's now spraying at our institutions. We need a tough guy, they say, because the Democrats are so dangerous.

But now they find themselves defending Trump against the one sin that has given their movement its chief moral stature: child abuse. It was QAnon, Pizzagate, and other iterations of the vast child abuse conspiracy that reassured MAGA that no matter what Trump did, the other side was always worse. Thus, the obsessive focus on Jeffrey Epstein.

And it appears that Trump was more than a little accepting of Epstein's crimes. He actually found them amusing. Not only that, he wrote in the birthday message that he and Epstein "have certain things in common."

For a decade, MAGA and most of the GOP have excused every Trump outrage on the grounds that America needed him to counter a widespread Democratic conspiracy to victimize innocent children. But the only powerful figure to be tainted by the Epstein revelations is Trump himself. No claims of "we need a tough guy" or whataboutism can square this circle.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators

Glimmers Of Light In The Fight Against Authoritarianism

Glimmers Of Light In The Fight Against Authoritarianism

These are dark days for American lovers of liberty, so any glimmers of light are especially welcome.

Let's start with "Sandwich Man." The world knows him as the pink-shirted guy who shouted at federal agents patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C. After some aggressive language and pungent invitations to get lost, Sean C. Dunn then tossed a sandwich, hitting one of the officers (who seemed to be wearing body armor!) in the chest. Dunn ran (demonstrating impressive athleticism if I may say so). Weighed down by gear, the agents lumbered after him, eventually catching him a few blocks away and placing him under arrest. "I did it," he confessed. "I threw a sandwich." He was later released.

End of story? Not at all. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, sent more than a dozen FBI and U.S. Marshals agents in full tactical gear to Dunn's house to arrest him again the next day. Pirro then starred in a video of her own, declaring, "Assault a law enforcement officer, and you'll be prosecuted. This guy thought it was funny — well, he doesn't think it's funny today, because we charged him with a felony." Attorney General Pam Bondi chimed in to say that she had just learned that Dunn had been employed by the Department of Justice, but no longer. She fired him, she said, and charged him with a felony because he represented the "Deep State" they were fighting.

It was an absurd overcharge, lampooned as an "assault with a breadly weapon." A misdemeanor? Sure. You shouldn't throw things at people. But a felony, carrying a penalty of years in prison and thousands in fines? Please. Across Washington, D.C., posters and street art featuring the likeness of Sandwich Man proliferated — the flowering of popular protest. And then an interesting thing happened: The grand jury declined to return an indictment.

Grand juries hear evidence only from the prosecution, not from the defense, and the standard for bringing an indictment is only probable cause, not preponderance of the evidence or proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That's why they say a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich — but not, it seems, Sandwich Man.

Nor was this a lone example. Just a few days earlier, the Justice Department was obliged to reduce the charges against Sidney Lori Reid, who had been involved in a protest against federal agents attempting to transfer two people the government characterized as "gang members" into custody. Reid filmed them and placed her body between the officers and the men, resulting in some pushing and shoving in which an FBI officer's hand scraped against a brick wall, resulting in injury. The government charged Reid with forcibly "assaulting, impeding, or interfering with federal agents," a felony that could carry an eight-year sentence upon conviction. Three grand juries declined to indict.

These Washingtonians continued a long and venerable tradition of using the power of juries to stymie government overreach. In 1735, a jury declined to convict John Peter Zenger of seditious libel for criticizing the colonial governor, establishing a key precedent about press freedom. In the antebellum North, juries often refused to convict defendants who violated the Fugitive Slave Law, an expression of contempt for legislation that dishonored the nation.

Sandwich Man has allies in his resistance to injustice.

Lisa Cook is also supplying some welcome fight. Instead of retreating quietly after Trump attempted to fire her from the Federal Reserve Board, she declared her intention to sue on the grounds that Trump lacks the authority to fire her. "President Trump purported to fire me 'for cause' when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022."

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is mocking Trump, which may have no immediate payoff but raises the spirits of those in need of it.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), less showy but not less effective than Newsom, delivered a forceful, intelligent and carefully reasoned repudiation of Trump's threat to deploy troops to Chicago. He began by saying, "If it sounds to you that I'm being alarmist, that's because I am ringing an alarm."

Pritzker made the point that crime is down, not up in Chicago and emphasized that Trump's approach neglects successful crime-fighting techniques. But more importantly, he excoriated Trump's threat as a transgression against American law, tradition and decency. He further urged all who might resist to do so peacefully, reminding them that the National Guard troops dragooned into this duty could very well be doing so unwillingly, subject to court martial if they disobeyed. It was the kind of message Americans need to be reminded of as Trump attempts to push us into civil conflict, which he could then use as cover for even more despotic power grabs.

Hats off to the good citizens of the District of Columbia and the others who are meeting this moment with signs of fight and the recognition of what we're facing.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her latest book is Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

RFK Jr Won't Make America Healthier -- But He Can Make Us Sicker

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was named as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Calley Means, a former Republican lobbyist, expressed a common misconception: "The public health expert class has given us a public health collapse. We are on the verge of, at best, a health crisis and, at worst, a societal collapse with 20% of GDP going to health expenditures. (We're) getting sicker, fatter, more depressed, more infertile for every dollar we spend."

The Trump movement has given snake oil salesmen new life because their conspiracy-mindedness fits seamlessly into the MAGA analysis of the world: You are not responsible for anything that has gone awry in your life. Sinister elites have betrayed you. They've shipped your job overseas, halved your neighbor's salary through bad trade deals, stolen elections and picked your pocket to fund forever wars. In that spirit, the notions that vaccines cause autism, that antidepressants cause school shootings, and that COVID-19 spares Jews and Asians seem to demand a fair hearing.

In the early days of Trump 2.0, even reasonable adults who should know better told reporters that it might be good to have Kennedy as our chief public health officer because, after all, we do have a serious problem with chronic health conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

But the reality is that most of what causes chronic medical conditions in America is almost entirely outside the remit of government. Obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, drinking and poor diet all contribute mightily to chronic poor health — and they are behaviors that are extremely difficult to change. By contrast, government is indispensable in certain crucial areas — prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, promoting research on new drugs, and funding scientific studies on best practices. In all of those, Kennedy is not only failing to do his job well; he is doing the exact opposite of what he should.

Please don't get me wrong: People get cancer and Parkinson's and ALS and lots of other ailments due to simple bad luck. But chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, obesity and heart disease are closely linked to behavior. Even cancer rates can be affected by eating habits: consuming lots of fruits and vegetables has been shown to be protective against several forms of cancer. Again, this is not to blame people for their diseases or to suggest in any way that they don't deserve treatment and care. But as a matter of epidemiology, it's important to be clear-eyed about what we can control and what we can't.

People who are obese have a 28% higher risk of heart disease than do people of normal weight. Carrying excessive extra pounds also increases cancer rates, stillbirths, preeclampsia, strokes, arthritis, type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, infertility, gout and mental health challenges.

Sitting for most of every day also does not conduce to good health.

We Americans (and, to be fair, many people around the globe) do a lot of that. A British study found that adults who watch six or more hours of TV a day had twice the all-cause mortality of those who watched two hours or less.

Everyone knows that the best path to good health is eating healthy foods, getting a decent amount of exercise, avoiding cigarettes, drinking alcohol in small amounts (no more than one drink per day for women, two for men) and maintaining a healthy body weight. A study in the journal Circulation found that women who followed these recommendations lived an average of 14 years longer than those who did not, and men lived an extra 12. But take a guess at how many American adults actually follow all five of those recommendations? According to a University of Oregon analysis, only 2.7%.

So, yes, we are plagued by diabetes, heart disease, strokes and cancer. But it's not because we use food dyes, or because drug companies have conspired to keep us sick, or because Wi-Fi is frying our brains. The only way to grapple with these conditions is to change our behavior — and that's hard.

Meanwhile, what is not hard, or shouldn't be, is to hire a government that does the basics of public health, like empanel experts to advise on the composition of the yearly flu vaccine, or provide guidance on which vaccines are needed for children and at what ages, or fund research on vaccines to prevent future pandemics. On all of these fronts, Kennedy has done the opposite, disbanding advisory committees of academics and physicians, canceling funding for mRNA vaccine research, changing the recommendation for COVID vaccines for pregnant women and babies, and creating a panel stacked with frauds to "reexamine" the nonexistent link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Kennedy's crusade will not overcome our chronic disease problem. But it is very probable, if he is not stopped, that former plagues like measles will make a big comeback; that we will be far less prepared to cope with the next epidemic because we cut research on the miracle of mRNA technology; that rates of vaccine hesitancy will continue to rise; and that trust in government professionalism will be shattered.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.