No Fooling
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
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Signal Markers
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
Blame Canada
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
Union Busting
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: The Selma Posse
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
Tariffied
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
Post to the Ghost
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
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The Thursday Afternoon Massacre
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
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Shock and Awful
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
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The Perversion of Justice
It’s only been a week, and the Trump administration has already done plenty of damage. The Republican campaign and their allies in Project 2025 made no secret of their plan to sabotage and subvert the agencies of the federal government, but it’s still been a bit breathtaking to
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All Hail the King
In case you thought the script for 2025 wasn’t heavy handed enough, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday falls on the same day that Donald Trump will be inaugurated. The two men, of course, could not be any more different from one another. King dedicated his life to combatting
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Worst AG Ever?
As the Biden administration winds down to its final week, Many People Are Saying™ that Merrick Garland turned out to be the worst attorney general in all of American history. Well, I’m here to say that’s not true — but only because the competition for that particular dishonor is