Once upon a time, it was expected that the President of the United States would work for all the people of the United States, not just the ones who voted for him. The Biden administration, for instance, repeatedly worked to make life better for Americans in rural, red states. Take
Elon Musk, who has famously always delivered on his promises – like getting a million robot-taxis on the streets by 2020, sending a manned mission to Mars by 2021, or creating a 29-minute "hyper loop" on the East Coast – has now vowed to create his most stunning achievement to
The success of Zohran Mamdani in the mayoral primary in New York City has predictably set off the worst possible takes from the worst possible people. And while I'm generally loathe to drag out any posts from the dilapidated Nazi bar that was once known as Twitter, this
During these early months of Trump II: The Revenge, we've all been subjected to an overwhelming flood of outrages – unconstitutional power grabs, international emergencies, economic chaos, an assault on higher education, a wave of white nationalist race-baiting, bigoted culture warrior nonsense and so, so much more. The effort
Yesterday, as the world's richest narcissist and the world's most powerful narcissist engaged in a campaign of mutually-assured destruction, social media platforms witnessed record new levels of schadenfreude. Musk insisted that Trump was an ungrateful client who owed him his presidency and, by the way, a
Work in Progress is a recurring feature on CAMPAIGN TRAILS, in which I share some of the more interesting materials I’ve uncovered in my book-in-progress on the work of John Doar and the Civil Rights Division in the 1960s. (This is normally a feature reserved just for paid subscribers,
This past week, the corporate media apparently met in a secret conclave and emerged with a new decree for the American electorate – Joe Biden was old. Politico announced that "the first litmus test of the 2028 campaign" would be whether or not Democratic candidates would be able to
Using the Past to Make Sense of the Present
Even more so than his exhausting first term, the second term of President Donald J. Trump has been a seemingly endless onslaught of outrages. There's so much incompetence, so much stupidity, so much criminality going on at any one moment that it's hard to think straight.
As Donald Trump lumbers towards the first major milestone of a new presidency this week, hitting the marker of the First Hundred Days, it's worth taking a moment to marvel at just how badly he's doing. The latest polls show Trump's approval rating has
Whether it's been an intentional strategy of "shock and awe" or just the inevitable result of a bunch of ignorant assholes being empowered at the same time, the opening months of Trump's second administration have been a complete clusterfuck of utter chaos. Between Trump&
As a historian, I prefer my subjects to be long dead before I start poking them with a stick. It's just safer that way, to be honest. I'm well aware of how often people make predictions about politics that turn out to be wildly wrong, and
The Trump administration has tried to subdue us with a "shock and awe" approach that has been deliberately designed to overwhelm our senses with an endless stream of outrages and divide our reaction to its intentional cruelties, but every now and then an outrage manages to poke its
As I noted on Bluesky, many Americans – including me – have tended to treat Donald Trump's comments about annexing Canada as a joke. That attitude is a mistake on our part, but let me explain why we've made it. We've treated the idea of a
In one of this morning's Daily Presidential Rants, Donald Trump insisted – as he has many times before – that the European Union was "formed for the primary purpose of 'screwing' the United States of America." Leaving aside for the moment the fact that the president
Work in Progress is a recurring feature on CAMPAIGN TRAILS, in which I share some of the more interesting materials I’ve uncovered in my book-in-progress on the work of John Doar and the Civil Rights Division in the 1960s. (This is normally a feature reserved just for paid subscribers,
As part of its ongoing crusade to roll back the clock and return America to some mythical golden age, the Trump-Musk administration has just launched a new wave of tariffs against China, Canada and Mexico. These actions from the US, of course, immediately inspired a reciprocal wave of tariffs and
I'm delighted to announce that, at long last, I've finally managed to move CAMPAIGN TRAILS away from Substack over to its new home at Ghost. This move has been a long time coming. More than a year ago, I signed on to this letter expressing the
I realize we’re all overwhelmed by the firehose of insanities that President Musk and Vice President Trump are blasting us with these days, but it really is worth pausing to note that one of the forty scandals that dropped yesterday — the mass resignations over the Eric Adams prosecution — is
While everyone expected Trump II: Trump’s Revenge to get off to a quick start, it’s still been a bit breathtaking to see just how fast and how far his enshittification of the federal government has already spread. The assault has burst forth across multiple fronts. This is, as