The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Task Force Dragging On | The Roundtable Ep. 261
James Hankins proposes a guest worker program that would address a half-century of shortcomings in American mass immigration policy. In its rare combination of hardheadedness and empathy, his argument calls to mind Victor Davis Hanson’s 2003 memoir/essay Mexifornia. Hankins is writing neither for economists nor for international lawyers, but for people who actually live in America and wish to do right by their neighbors, including the most recently arrived among them. This is going to be difficult.
We should be clear what Hankins means by “guest worker.” Aren’t illegal immigrants guest workers already? They are guests, after a fashion, and they do work. The expression “guest worker” means something different. Though the specifics can vary from country to country, the term means someone who is in the country where he works on sufferance. A guest worker has the right to work, but not necessarily the right to stay or become a citizen. Guest worker is an intermediate category between citizen and foreigner.
Hankins argues that elaborating such a special status for people would fix a few aspects of the present system that are especially unfair and perverse. By definition, illegal migrants do not belong here legally, but after long residence they may well belong here, and only here, culturally. What is more, their American-born children belong here unambiguously.
The triumphal arch holds a very important place in the annals of Western architecture and urbanism. In Roman times it played a lofty honorific role, even though most Roman arches commemorated civic achievements and personages rather than military victories. The freestanding monumental arch was a syncretic creation, structurally derived from Etruscan gateways and decoratively enriched with Hellenistic architectural and sculptural forms. Its distinctive presence, which accommodated an astonishing variety in massing and detail, enriched towns and cities across the Roman empire, from Spain to Syria.
The monumental arch should be regarded as a universal entity—eminently appropriate, one would think, to a universal nation like these United States. The late, great historian of imperial Roman architecture, William L. MacDonald, noted how the arch corresponds to the classical concept of human proportions as delineated in Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, in which a male figure is inscribed within an overlapping circle and square. The impost or “springing” of the opening within the arch corresponds, MacDonald noted, to the Vitruvian Man’s arms extended directly outward, while the curvilinear opening itself corresponds to his arms sweeping upward. The arch’s geometry thus addresses us as embodied beings. You can’t get more universal than that.
In his address to Congress this month, President Trump boasted—and justly so—of his administration’s astonishing success in stopping illegal border crossings over just six weeks. “Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded.” This is no Trumpian bombast: A 94% year-on-year reduction in illegal entries really is an unprecedented accomplishment. It is also a popular one: a majority of Americans approve of controlling the border.
An even larger majority—some 76%—approve of his policy of deporting undocumented aliens who have committed felonies. Even some on the Left like Jon Stewart have been wondering: if ICE knew exactly where to find all those murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and human traffickers, as clearly they did, why then did the Biden Administration never act to deport them? Good question.
The United States needs immigrants. Americans aged 65 or older will nearly double to about 50% of the population from today’s 27% due to declining fertility and rising longevity. The dire warnings we hear about the Social Security and Medicare systems will come true with a vengeance. Immigration, to be sure, is not the only remedy for our demographic problems—we can incentivize child-raising and extend the average working life—but it is an indispensable one. Working-age adult immigrants who pay into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds help keep these systems solvent.
The fall in America’s fertility rate stems from cultural and religious shifts that cannot be undone quickly. In a January 10, 2022 contribution to The American Mind, I reviewed the statistical evidence that the decline in our fertility can be explained by the attenuation of religion in the United States.
The most popular and encouraging part of the upheaval unleashed by the Trump presidency may be the administration’s fierce determination to break the grip that wokeness, the new racialism, and gender ideology have had on all levels of government, as well as on the commanding heights of civil society. As William Voegeli perceptively argues in the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Trump speaks for the 80% of Americans who are appalled by “anti-racism” being turned into a weapon of war by other means; who want free speech to be respected again; who are alarmed by limitless social engineering, the genital mutilation of the young, and literally open borders; who do not want women’s sports to be dominated by biological men; and who deeply resent the constant invective being directed against the noble American project itself.
President Trump has repeatedly spoken of a “common sense revolution,” a “revolution” that puts the lie to the para-Marxist claim, beloved by academics, journalists, and almost all politicians, that the concerns of citizens are almost exclusively “bread-and-butter” ones, and that “culture war” issues are at best a distraction and at worst an exercise in demagoguery, racism, and homophobia.
Jeremiah Gridley, leader of the Massachusetts bar when John Adams joined it, said that “a Lawyer ought never to be without a Book of Moral Philosophy on his Table.” In the founding era, moral philosophy was itself part of common law reasoning, as was political philosophy.
This sets the Founders apart not only from the modern academy, with its separate departments for government, philosophy, and law, but even from their British contemporaries of the late 18th century such as the jurist William Blackstone. As James Wilson noted of Blackstone, “He should be read and studied. He deserves to be much admired; but he ought not to be implicitly followed.”
Contra Blackstone, the Founders maintained that if one does not think about common law precedents in particular, and legal reasoning in general, in light of the moral/legal reasoning behind them, one will misread them. The reasoning that justified them was inseparable from the law itself, and informed the scope and limitations of any precedent that followed.
A sense of fear is rippling through higher education—the fear that the Trump Administration will hold it accountable for violating federal law. As President Trump withholds millions in grants to Ivy League institutions, The New York Times’s Thomas Edsall innocently asks, “The American university system commands worldwide respect. What would prompt a call for its abolition?”
Like so many institutions, the American university system used to enjoy bipartisan trust and support. It once commanded broad-based respect, a respect that has been in freefall as the Left systematically dropped objective standards of excellence and the canon of Western civilization, replacing them with ever-evolving departments of grievance studies and activism. The majority of Republicans view American universities as a net negative. Independents are trending the same way, with just one-third saying they have “quite a lot” of trust in our universities.
On the basis of once high levels of trust, the universities secured enormous taxpayer benefits not given to any other sector. Now, they are shocked to find themselves in the process of losing their special carve-outs, which make up a substantial portion of their budgets. Losing these perks is a serious threat to their entire business model. In other words, as the kids say, FAFO.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Mixed Signals | The Roundtable Ep. 260
Atlantic reporter Jeff Goldberg was mistakenly added to a national security group chat, leading to a DC media feeding frenzy—is there anything of substance to be gleaned from this goof? Meanwhile, Jay Bhattacharya—an early opponent of the 2020 lockdowns—was confirmed by the Senate to direct the National Institutes of Health, hopefully marking a turn back to sound health policy. This week, the guys talk through messaging and operations security, Biden-era censorship, plummeting egg prices, and more! Plus: a round of reading recommendations.
Recommended articles:
My friend, mentor, and former professor Jed Rubenfeld published an article last week in The Free Press titled “Why MAGA is Furious with Amy Coney Barrett.” In addition to discussing the particulars of the Right’s recent spat with Justice Barrett due to her vote in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, Rubenfeld explores “a civil war now being waged within legal conservatism, a war that will determine its future.” He contends that, like his progressive students a decade ago, many young conservatives are beginning to “turn against the constitution.”
With the utmost respect, Professor Rubenfeld is wrong. The rejection of our constitutional order remains a fringe view among right-wing law students and young lawyers. The most potent challenge to actually-practiced legal conservatism comes not from “right wing anti-constitutionalism”—it comes from originalism itself. But ours is not the same critique of originalism as Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule, who has been something of a bogeyman for legal liberals and FedSoc types. Yet for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the FedSoc establishment, it’s not clear Vermeule has much sway among young lawyers on the Right.
Those who control the Democratic Party despise America, our Constitution, and our history. Their goal is a repressive society based on Marxist and intersectional ideologies. Their claim to be champions of democracy is hypocrisy of the highest order. Through subterfuge and force they have moved the United States to the precipice of the abyss. Their radical views, vitriol, and violence are intolerable. Only by the strongest medicine, intravenously administered, can we turn the tide.
Donald Trump’s goal is to restore individual liberties, a constitutional republic, and American exceptionalism. He is fallible, and his flaws have been exacerbated by a decade of political, legal, and financial attacks. Yet, blemishes and some dark impulses aside, there is a broad chasm between the hellscape sought by Democratic activists and leaders and the America Trump seeks.
Like any young right-winger, I follow Vice President JD Vance closely on X. He’s one of the most interesting and inspiring figures in the Trump Administration. Recently, he discussed an interaction he had with a Ukrainian American that got my attention. The gentleman accused Vance of abandoning “his” country, to which Vance retorted that his country is America. He then said a line that has stuck with me, something I had never heard a politician express before: “I always found it offensive that a new immigrant to our country would be willing to use the power and influence of their new nation to settle the ethnic rivalries of the old.”
What Vice President Vance succinctly outlined is a problem that naturally seems to come with empire building: becoming international waters. The United States has become a place where other nations fight to win money, power, and influence for themselves while the American people are left in the dust. Client states at the outer edges of our empire have become the constituency of our politicians and bureaucrats. Taxpayers of the empire suffer as they’re forced to fund the outer colonies, getting hardly anything tangible in return for their labors.
In his address to Congress this month, President Trump boasted—and justly so—of his administration’s astonishing success in stopping illegal border crossings over just six weeks. “Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded.” This is no Trumpian bombast: A 94% year-on-year reduction in illegal entries really is an unprecedented accomplishment. It is also a popular one: a majority of Americans approve of controlling the border.
An even larger majority—some 76%—approve of his policy of deporting undocumented aliens who have committed felonies. Even some on the Left like Jon Stewart have been wondering: if ICE knew exactly where to find all those murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and human traffickers, as clearly they did, why then did the Biden Administration never act to deport them? Good question.
An unexpected line to trace through Christopher Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement underscores how post-1960s America—high on a new civil rights regime enforced by the federal bureaucracy—evolved into a culture of easy capital and low-accountability work. Caldwell’s warnings about limitless government spending, cheap credit, and extraordinary leniency on personal and corporate debt hint at a deeper transformation that I will make explicit: easy money ultimately begat easy jobs, embedding a sense of entitlement not just in civic life, but also in corporate America. Lax job performance and perpetual punting on profitability became commonplace, normalizing positions unattached to genuine operational needs.
The book’s climax spotlights Ronald Reagan’s decision to cut taxes and increase spending to buoy the Baby Boomers. Rather than halting the runaway habits of endless federal agencies, trimming spending, and repealing harmful laws from the prior generation, the Reagan Administration doubled down. The massive expansion of the administrative state—ostensibly to enforce civil rights—spilled into economic policy: free-flowing money, perpetual government growth, workless jobs, and inflated assets in both the public and private spheres. The federal government, alongside subsidized industries, sprawling corporate giants, and a host of NGOs, served as the unwitting backstop for this risky status quo.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Tren Wreck | The Roundtable Ep. 259
You’re fired. Trump, by executive order, has moved to terminate federal contracts with law firm Perkins Coie for its role in promoting the 2016 Russiagate conspiracy and otherwise influencing elections—sparking fervorous debate in and across the aisle. Meanwhile, the administration invoked the emergency powers of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport members of the violent Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, provoking an activist judge to obstruct the law’s use. Who rules: Congress or courts? The hosts sit down to discuss these ongoing legal battles in government, real battles abroad, and the absurd responses from the Left across the board. Plus, more media recommendations!
Recommended reading:
As the Trump Administration pushes DEI out of schools and colleges, it should incentivize patriotic civic education as a salutary alternative. While curricular mandates from Washington violate federalism—besides the views of the growing chorus of Americans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education—many federal tools remain available.
DEI, which nominally denotes “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” has come to stand for the full set of anti-American teachings and principles outlined in the January 2021 report of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission. These include promoting a false history of slavery that inaccurately denigrates the American Founders, praising progressivism and muting the horrors of Communism, and inculcating racist identity politics.
In contrast, the 1776 Report highlights ways Americans can develop enlightened patriotism. The family, inspiring and accurate education, noble stories, solid scholarship, and reverence for the rule of law under our common Constitution of the United States all have their roles.
Much has been written about Trump Derangement Syndrome, that mental and emotional affliction that distorts its victims’ ability to make measured judgments about the doings of our past and present president. No doubt much more will be written about it, because this malady shows no signs of abating.
One of the worst side effects of TDS is the widespread circulation of bogus constitutional claims. As Trump, the astute politician that he is, has staked out popular positions on many issues of interest to the public, his critics, at a loss for other arguments, routinely say he is trashing the Constitution.
This is a serious problem. Preserving our constitutional system, and the many blessings that flow from it, depends on preserving a correct understanding of the Constitution’s various provisions among the public. But the public’s understanding of the Constitution is undermined by the TDS brigade’s continual reiteration of fanciful claims of constitutional violations.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo v. City of New London is undoubtedly one of its worst decisions in the past 20 years. The Court gave state and local governments the option to transfer private property from its rightful owner to another private owner, justifying this as a “public use” since it will supposedly promote “economic development.” Kelo is a classic example of activist judges rationalizing a predetermined result—in this case, overturning the Constitution’s protection of private property rights.
The Court’s decision stripped Susette Kelo and her neighbors in the historic Fort Trumbull neighborhood of their property in order to build an “urban village”—a fact Justice John Paul Stevens breezily dismisses in his opinion, which is a thoroughly unimpressive piece of legal legerdemain. Stevens failed to note that the neighborhood would be bulldozed even though he acknowledged that not only had Kelo lived in her house since 1997, and had made substantial improvements to her property, but that “Wilhelmina Dery was born in her Fort Trumbull house in 1918 and has lived there her entire life.” The continued existence of what was apparently a very stable residential area, however, could not be allowed to stand in the way of “progress.” Stevens held that the residents and their homes must be sacrificed in the interest of a supposed greater good.
Two monumental events have shaken the U.S. foreign policy establishment since the inauguration of President Donald Trump. They took place at roughly the same time, but few have recognized their connection.
The first was the widespread exposure of USAID as the “world’s hipster vanguard of globalist, cultural Marxist revolution,” in the words of J. Michael Waller. When it wasn’t outright funding jihadist terrorism, USAID redirected billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to left-wing organizers promoting LGBTQ radicalism, anti-racism, climate change, and every other imaginable progressive policy around the globe.
While “charity” CEOs living in taxpayer-funded luxury wailed about how cuts would cost lives, the debate among the online Right was about burning USAID to the ground and salting the earth, or perhaps repurposing some form of foreign aid to support an America First foreign policy agenda.
“[T]he love of fame,” wrote Alexander Hamilton, is “the ruling passion of the noblest minds” (Federalist 72). But—also in the noblest minds—passion bows politely to reason, and the love of fame is tempered by love of the true and the good. Fame is the height of honor on the grandest scale, and the noblest minds will want to be honored only for what is most worthy of honor. They don’t seek the applause of fickle opinion here and now, but the respect of the wise and good of all times and places; ultimately, they want to be measured by what is worthy in the eyes of God.
What is most worthy of honor deserves to be remembered. “Old men forget,” as Shakespeare’s King Henry V proclaims at Agincourt, “yet all shall be forgot,” before oblivion shrouds in darkness the most worthy deeds. These will be remembered “from this day to the ending of the world.”
No human deed, in the whole “course of human events,” surpasses the American Revolution—bringing forth “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Rightly will the names of those happy few, that band of brothers—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Adams—be remembered to the ending of the world.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
BIPOC Cholbe | The Roundtable Ep. 258
First, they came for the green card-holding terror groupies—then they came for…us? Not exactly. But the recent detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University protest organizer who fought “for the total eradication of Western Civilization,” has prompted cries of fascism. Again. Meanwhile, California governor Gavin Newsom sheds his skin and snakes his way toward the center of the political spectrum: best not be fooled! This week, the guys discuss the antisemitic venom poisoning some young right-wingers, the ongoing disarray of Democrats; and more! Plus: a batch of media recommendations.
Recommended reading:
In politics, as in life, winning is better than losing. But some losses are worse than others. An especially damaging defeat creates a situation that is both hard to endure and hard to change.
This is the Democratic Party’s dilemma after the 2024 election: It suffered a bad defeat. An important cause of that defeat was that the party had embraced and become identified with a social justice ideology that offends more voters than it attracts. To become more politically competitive by becoming less politically correct is, under the circumstances, clearly advisable but also highly improbable.
A Win Is a Win
First, the election. Republicans retained a majority in the House of Representatives, with a 220- to 215-seat advantage, after a net loss of two seats. By gaining four seats, the GOP also captured control of the Senate with a workable but not dominating 53-47 majority. Finally, the party won the presidency with a 49.8% to 48.3% popular vote plurality and won 58% of the Electoral College: 312 electoral votes to the Democrats’ 226.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Red State Strategy | Cincinnatus Series Ep. 6
New Year’s Day 2020 was no different than the ones that came before. Many people were traveling back home from the Christmas holiday, expecting to find their jobs and schools much as they had left them. Almost no one owned a surgical mask, and nobody had ever been offered a free cheeseburger in exchange for taking a vaccine.
Those first months of the new year brought whispers of a virus that was causing disruption in China. Based on everything most Americans knew at the time, there was no reason to pay attention to COVID-19. The virus seemed far away—things like that never happen here. Nevertheless, in early March, our children’s schools shut down for “two weeks to flatten the curve.” They did not reopen for the remainder of the school year.
The months that followed brought a great deal of confusion. There was constant revision of recommended guidelines. Who was in charge of those guidelines? And by what authority? The lack of data in the early stages of the pandemic made it virtually impossible for citizens to evaluate whether the restrictions were really supported by what soon came to be known as “The Science.” And as is increasingly the case, The Science was “settled.”
There is a movement sweeping state legislatures, from Connecticut to Hawaii, to enact a “green” amendment that would enshrine a person’s “individual right” to a “safe and stable climate.” To be sure, clean air and drinking water are certainly laudable goals, necessary for life. But enshrining the “green” amendment into state and federal constitutions would have unintended—and disastrous—consequences.
The movement for an amendment began gathering momentum after the landmark decision in Robinson Township v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (2013). In that ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declared unconstitutional portions of Act 13, which expanded natural gas drilling from the Marcellus Shale reservoirs. Since then, activists such as those at For the Generations have argued that a federal amendment, modeled on Pennsylvania’s Constitution, would further strengthen the fight against climate change.
The next chapter of lawfare has already begun. A host of federal judges have issued orders to stop President Trump’s political appointees from implementing his policies. Judge Paul Engelmayer’s initial 4-page order against the administration temporarily prevented Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from accessing department records.
And worse still, the Supreme Court just allowed a lower court to command the federal government to disburse foreign aid before ruling whether the president’s attempt to withhold the funds was lawful. Justice Alito’s dissent excoriated the Court’s abdication of responsibility as “a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers.”
The ensuing struggle for executive power over the next few years will determine whether presidential elections have lasting consequences.
This latest round of chipping away at the executive power builds on the last century of judicial activism. What started in the 20th century with progressive darlings on the Supreme Court like Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter reached full bloom during the infamous Warren Court.
What do a windswept town on the plains of North Dakota and a sandy beach hamlet in Florida have in common? Aside from the fact they’re both in the U.S., they only require students to show proof of identification, residency, and an up-to-date vaccine card to enter their schools. With the exception of some states that allow for vaccination waivers, this policy has led to an unprecedented number of illegal migrant children gaining admittance to public schools across the country.
Though statistics on these demographic movements have been difficult to find, what is available suggests that the number of children of illegal immigrants attending publicly funded schools is staggering. The situation is becoming clearer with an uptick in deportation, and the Trump Administration’s stemming the tide of illegal entries into the U.S. The strain on public resources has been intensely felt—and in many school districts, the strain has become downright catastrophic.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Trump’s Cards | The Roundtable Ep. 257
The grotesque banalization of Hitler and Hitlerism proceeds apace. The American Left’s discourse is replete with comparisons of President Donald J. Trump to Adolf Hitler and constant evocations of a dangerous “fascist” threat to democracy supposedly coming from an altogether illiberal Right. Kamala Harris labeled Trump a fascist and Nazi sympathizer in a CNN town hall meeting in October, and she and the mainstream media continued to pile on until the November election.
When Trump held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, a little over a week before the election, many Democrats, and the increasingly hysterical talking heads on CNN and MSNBC, compared that rally to a meeting of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund in that same venue in 1939. Completely disregarding the impressively multiracial character of the MAGA supporters gathered to hear Trump, as well as the large contingent of Orthodox and Hassidic Jews also in attendance, the media incessantly identified Trump with Hitler and “fascism.” Not only was the deep-seated evil that was National Socialism trivialized beyond recognition, and not only was fascism crudely (and absurdly) identified with any opposition to a hard Left agenda, but crucial distinctions between fascism, National Socialism, and democratic conservatism were elided in a deeply misleading manner.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Cell Phones in Schools | Cincinnatus Series Ep. 5
On Super Bowl Sunday, President Trump announced that the penny, a coin that has been in circulation since 1792, will no longer be minted. For as long as America has had a penny, it has also had a national debt, and there has recently been a discussion of how much debt is too much.
The penny has become a microcosm of our financial issues. We collect a penny in revenue but incur three cents in costs. The penny-minting business runs a deficit, just like much else in Washington.
In order to keep our financial system operating smoothly, it is time for Washington to address the question of the debt limit.
Always a political minefield, Congress is supposed to set the credit limit on its own credit card. But for eight of the last ten years, it has given itself unlimited credit by suspending the limit altogether. Congress is now considering raising the debt limit beyond the existing $36 trillion.
But how far can Congress safely go?
In our personal lives, we are all aware that there is a limit to how much can be borrowed on a house or automobile. A banker will ask two questions before approving your loan: how much you earn and what you owe. He is seeking to determine if you have the capacity to handle a certain amount of debt.
The Oval Office showdown between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance was perhaps one of the most consequential spectacles of modern political history. Now that the administration has announced an end to further aid to Ukraine, many believe that Zelensky’s outburst may go down as one of the worst diplomatic mistakes in recent memory.
The claim that Trump is simply adjusting America’s involvement in Ukraine because of one bad meeting, however, is an insult to the president’s capacity for statesmanship. The seemingly intransigent impasse that has been reached is a direct result of Trump intending to keep his campaign promise to achieve a realizable peace in Ukraine, while Zelensky continues to demand an unattainable victory.
Trump came to office recognizing that U.S. support for Ukraine was always intended as a relatively low-risk way to weaken Russia through an armed proxy. If the Putin regime did not collapse due to domestic pressures, then Moscow would have a pyrrhic victory forced upon it due to significant military losses, a weakened economy, and broader international ostracization.
For nearly 15 years, American politicians have been clamoring for a “pivot to Asia” as they rightly recognize the growing threat posed by China, and the need to realign our strategic priorities accordingly. Yet across multiple administrations, the will fades. American leaders have instead dedicated much treasure and precious strategic attention to the latest developments in the ongoing reordering of Europe, or whichever Middle Eastern intrigue they are told will bring legacy-burnishing breakthroughs.
As the D.C. blob and the Reddit-screaming consultant class speed us toward disaster, the American people no longer countenance the breadth of international commitments their leaders cling to. The gap between what the elite wish for and what the people will tolerate is where America’s greatest risk lies. Folly, blunder, catastrophe: all are squarely in our future if we don’t act now to change course.
Our leaders’ unwillingness to make painful tradeoffs does not save us from pain—it only saves them from accountability. In fact, their choices make unavoidable pain more unpredictable, and more serious.
Well, thank you, and thanks to all the gathered delegates and luminaries and media professionals.
And thanks especially to the hosts of the Munich Security Conference for being able to put on such an incredible event. We’re, of course, thrilled to be here.
And, of course, it’s great to be back in Germany. As you heard earlier, I was here last year as a United States senator. I saw Foreign Secretary David Lammy and joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now.
But now it’s time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples, to use it wisely to improve their lives.
I was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours, and I’ve been so impressed by the hospitality of the people, even, of course, as they’re reeling from yesterday’s horrendous attack.
And the first time I was ever in Munich was with my wife, actually, who’s here with me today on a personal trip. And I’ve always loved the city of Munich, and I’ve always loved its people.
And I just want to say that we’re very moved, and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful community. We’re thinking about you, we’re praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come.
One particularly powerful obstacle that has quickly materialized against the Trump Administration is the federal judiciary. Lawsuits challenging Trump’s flurry of executive orders have been filed, and federal judges have begun placing temporary injunctions on the president’s EOs.
For example, U.S. District Judge for D.C. Royce Lamberth issued a restraining order that bars the implementation of President Trump’s EO that transgender prison inmates be housed in prisons corresponding to their biological sex. Two days later in Washington State, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour placed a hold on the president’s EO that refuses to interpret the 14th Amendment as automatically granting birthright citizenship to children born to non-citizens temporarily residing in the U.S., either legally or illegally.
While the Trump Administration is considering taking Greenland and Canada under its wing, there’s another foreign country America should watch over, in the way that a parent cares for a child: California.
If the Golden State were a nation, it would have the fifth-highest GDP globally: $3.8 trillion (more than India, and more than New York and Florida combined). It’s the most populous state, officially home to 39 million residents—eight million more than Texas. It has the most members of the House (52) and the most Electoral College votes (54).
California’s farms supply more than half of America’s fruits and vegetables, half our dairy, and every almond. The Central Valley, which spans 450 miles from Redding in the north to Bakersfield in the south, has 1% of U.S. farmland but produces 25% of Americans’ food.
California’s market power means that its laws affect 49 other states. In 2016, California adopted a “History Social Science Framework” for K-12 education to “feature the contributions of diverse peoples of all sorts to the story of California and the United States.” Publishers like McGraw Hill updated their textbooks nationwide to avoid printing a separate California edition. “LGBT” appears 21 times in the framework.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Press Pass Fail | The Roundtable Ep. 256
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Family Policy | Cincinnatus Series Ep. 4
In removing General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Trump made a necessary and long-overdue correction to a military leadership corps that has lost its way. For too long, the Pentagon has been governed by leaders more concerned with bureaucratic politics and ideological conformity than with the timeless requirements of combat: discipline, cohesion, and lethality.
America’s military is not merely a collection of well-equipped components—it is an institution forged by a distinct moral and martial tradition. Its strength has always come from a warrior ethos that prizes courage, merit, and excellence. Yet over the last two decades, that ethos has been eroded by a leadership class that increasingly serves the managerial regime rather than the nation it was sworn to protect.
In many ways, General Brown exemplified this decline.
His removal is not just about replacing one man—it is about reclaiming the military from an ideological project that has subordinated warfighting to the dictates of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Uniformed military officers have been active agents in this ideological capture, so it is only fitting to ensure accountability for this class of leaders.
It’s long past time to rein in the field of public administration, which supplies the bureaucrats who populate the administrative state. About 12,000 U.S. students a year graduate in the field, mainly at the master’s level through the Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree. About half of all MPA graduates end up in government, mostly at the state (25%) and local (15%) levels, but some (about 10%) at the federal level. This means that about 1,200 public administration graduates enter the federal bureaucracy every year, presumably in leadership and management-track roles.
Christi Grimm, a former inspector general in the Department of Health and Human Services, is one such MPA holder who did damage from the federal bureaucracy. Grimm issued a panicked report on COVID in its early days that President Trump viewed as an attempt to undermine his handling of the crisis (she has since sued for reinstatement after being fired shortly after Trump’s second inauguration). Another is Karen Chen, a senior analyst on environmental issues in the Government Accountability Office, who previously worked for Michael Bloomberg’s net-zero initiative for local governments that sought to counter policies of the first Trump Administration.
To prevent national security failures and mitigate them when they occur, the U.S. has built a national security state unlike anything humanity has ever seen. The U.S. government has a network of security intelligence and operations agencies that spans the world, working through a web of domestic and foreign governmental, nonprofit, and corporate institutions.
We outsiders think this network runs through the CIA. Yet as we are learning, thanks to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), that is only partly true. In 2023, while the Intelligence Community, including the CIA, was appropriated $71.7 billion dollars, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an “independent” but supposedly State Department-guided agency, received about $40 billion. While USAID has the word “International” in its name, it has spent a lot of money not only spreading atheism in Nepal but also on woke dogma and censorship at home.
The Right has a rare opportunity to turn the tables on the administrative state—and also prepare the way for the great re-learning that America needs.
If you’re an American who works for a living, chances are good that between state and federal laws, insurance carrier requirements, and woke corporate Human Resources (HR) departments, you’ve had to endure “anti-harassment” trainings. These are delivered either in live group settings or via online modules that combine videos with quizzes, with only certain responses deemed acceptable. Some of the content has amounted to forced indoctrination in leftism to a captive audience—which was, of course, the point.
I work for the Claremont Institute, which leaders on the Right have called “America’s most consequential think tank”—and which even frequent critics such as the New York Times have had to admit is “a nerve center of the American Right.” Yet even on this island of sanity, we have had to devote multiple hundreds of staff hours to watching training videos that explain what is and is not acceptable to say and do in California’s woke legal environment.
It would be much more appropriate to stop the ideological chicanery and instead require employees in federal agencies to be trained on how to not harass American citizens.
“The strategy is to delay, postpone, obfuscate, derail.”
That was the U.S. Agency for International Development’s approach to protect its autonomy from the president. It had nothing to do with resisting Donald Trump and DOGE—this line was written three decades ago to resist reforms by Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton’s mild-mannered secretary of state.
The career bureaucrats and their aid-industrial complex won out. That marked the last shovelful of dirt on the grave of attempts to rein in USAID.
Until Trump and his DOGE team.
Recent revelations go beyond the imaginations of what many knew but could seldom prove. USAID has become an out-of-control agency spending billions a year in bloated crony contracts, rotten from top to bottom with systemic fraud, corruption, and politicization. USAID has a budget roughly triple the official budget of the CIA, and has become an unaccountable slush fund for a left-wing political machine. For decades, that slush fund paid the salaries and projects of activist consultants, policymakers, lawyers, journalists, entertainers, organizers, think tanks, universities, and NGOs.
My friends at the Claremont Institute have provided the intellectual underpinnings for President Trump’s executive order that attempts to end birthright citizenship and replace it with a rule that recalls the ius sanguinis rules of Old Europe.
According to the view advanced by participants in this symposium, including John Eastman, Ed Erler, Michael Anton (since departed for the Department of State’s Office of Policy Planning Staff), and my podcast host, the international woman of mystery Lucretia (yes, that is her official title), not only must a baby be born on American territory to become an American citizen, but the baby’s parents must also be in the country legally. I take them to mean that the parents must be either citizens or legal aliens, such as permanent resident aliens, but they cannot be in the United States illegally or even under short-duration visas, such as for tourists or students. I assume Claremont Institute scholars draw the line at citizens and green card holders because of Eastman’s argument in 2020 that Kamala Harris could not become vice president because she was born to parents who were in the U.S. on student visas.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Mr. Vance Goes to Germany | The Roundtable Ep. 255
After an Afghan national drove his car into a Munich crowd, J.D. Vance delivered a stern rebuke of the European ruling class. Unsustainable immigration, Islamic extremism, and censorship raise the question whether once-great nations can be relied on as true Western allies. Meanwhile back home, Democrats struggle to decouple from woke, but best not interrupt their mistakes. The guys sit down to talk foreign policy, DOGE’s popularity, and resistance 2.0—plus, recommendations for must-watch shows and must-read articles!
Recommended reading:
As the U.S. southern border begins to function once again, it’s time to consider what kind of immigration policy we should adopt. President Trump’s move to deport huge populations, upwards of 10 million just since 2021, could prove to be among the most decisive actions a president has taken in decades.
The Biden Administration’s oddly permissive policies ironically have stiffened Americans’ opposition to immigration across the board. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who wish to reduce all immigration has soared from 41% just two years ago to over 55% in 2024, although many still embrace legal migration.
Throughout his time in office, President Reagan was frequently called the “Great Communicator,” as he was blessed with a wealth of experience on the screen and possessed an actor’s natural sense of stage presence. But in his initial weeks in office, Donald Trump has put together a team whose power and effectiveness have dwarfed even Reagan’s substantial efforts.
It has long been said (usually with express or implied derision) that Trump picks senior staff because they will “look good on TV.” But even to the extent this is true, it is clear that Trump understands the centrality of communications for 21st-century governance in a way that his critics do not.
Just a week into Donald Trump’s presidency, Ben Shapiro, who endorsed Trump in the 2024 election but has never been the president’s biggest fan, expressed shock at the effectiveness of the Trump team’s communications work. He had “never seen anything remotely like this extraordinary level of effective quality agenda advocacy from a Republican administration in my lifetime. It’s jaw-dropping.”
Responding to Shapiro, conservative commentator John Hawkins wrote that “Reagan set the standard for grassroots Republicans from the eighties to the present…. Now, Trump is setting a new standard for both groups in his 2nd term.”
“It gets better with every minute,” agreed the popular Libs of TikTok account.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
IVF | Cincinnatus Series Ep. 3
The Fighting Irish may soon be fighting in court rather than on the gridiron. Few universities have practiced affirmative action in hiring longer than Notre Dame, as I document in a new report. Notre Dame’s provost even recently announced that increasing “the number of women and underrepresented minorities” on the faculty is a goal “equally important” to hiring Catholic faculty.
AUSTIN, Texas – President Trump’s recent deal with Mexico has that country deploying 10,000 troops to the border. But America’s commitments in agreement have gone insufficiently examined.
“For the first time, the U.S. government will work jointly to avoid the entry of guns to Mexico,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced to reporters.
That promise is in response to a years-old narrative that America’s love affair with guns helped create Mexican cartel monsters who poison Americans with fentanyl. This claim has been relentlessly advanced by Democratic lawmakers and progressive gun-control advocates. Trump’s recent concession to work on the “problem” has added heft to Mexico’s claim that it has nothing to do with its own cartel crisis—as when Mexico recently filed a $10 billion lawsuit against American gun manufacturers for allegedly turning a blind eye to gun smugglers.
“If you want to stop the trafficking of fentanyl to the U.S., if you want to stop the violence that’s leading to a lot of migration across the border, you’re going to need to stop the flow of guns to Mexico because that’s what’s leading to all these problems,” said Jonathan Lowy, an attorney representing the Mexican government in the case.
But this storyline has not aged well. It is so incomplete and devoid of up-to-date context as to qualify as an unproven claim at best, and a flagrant falsehood at worst.
