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Donald Trump’s significance to the American republic must be understood in light of his fight against despotism. He does not face a tyranny of blood and iron—he faces a tyranny of mass conformity, which bypasses the body and controls the will by controlling the mind. It seeks universal conformity, and for that reason, it is a more complete tyranny than anything imagined by ancient or medieval tyrannies. Kings could proscribe against their enemies, but they could find protection from the church, the aristocracy, or the people. There were threats to individual freedoms in the past, but they were never those of a mass society.

Trump’s candidacy was a declaration of war against a despotism that has restricted free speech and freedom of the mind more effectively than could any Roman emperor or European monarch. Our modern tyranny has been named, though not necessarily explained, using a variety of epithets: “political correctness,” “globalism,” “Cultural Marxism,” “the Deep State,” “the uniparty,” “the Swamp,” “the establishment,” and “the blob.” By challenging it, Trump forced it to drop its mask and reveal itself.

It’s easy in hindsight to say that Donald Trump’s ride down the Trump Tower escalator a decade ago changed everything. It’s more accurate and helpful to say that his journey merely heightened and channeled trends that were likely to emerge anyway.

Ten years ago, virtually no one was talking about populism or a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, working-class-based Republican Party. Democrats believed in the Rising American Electorate theory, which held that increased Democratic Party dominance was demographically assured because older, conservative whites were dying off and being replaced by young, Democratic-leaning voters plus people of color. The intra-GOP debate focused on which approach to the future was more compelling: doubling down on fiscal and social conservatism (Senator Ted Cruz was the most visible adherent of this view) or moving to the Left on immigration and same-sex marriage (the infamous RNC 2012 “Autopsy”).

Trump proved all three groups wrong. He ostentatiously ran against both GOP arguments, championing a hard-line immigration policy, attacks on free trade, and a notable unwillingness to compete in the GOP’s quadrennial “who’s the most religious candidate” primary pageant. He then upended the Democrats’ theory by attacking their soft underbelly: their reliance on blue-collar, Northern and Midwestern white votes. He assembled a coalition few had dreamed of, one that sacrificed moderate, college-educated whites for somewhat conservative non-college whites combined with the GOP’s conservative core.

For too long, many conservatives have relied on the Supreme Court to thwart the Left. I cheered over the last few years as President Trump’s appointees shifted the makeup of the Court to the Right, arguably becoming the most conservative Court since before the New Deal. I was thrilled when it handed down 6-3 decisions overturning Roe v. Wade, upholding gun rights, clawing back power from executive agencies, and quashing Biden’s attempts at student loan forgiveness.

The Supreme Court recently handed down two unanimous decisions that were clear conservative victories. The first vindicated the religious (and thus tax-exempt) status of Wisconsin’s Catholic Charities over against scrutiny from the state government. In the second decision, the Court sided with a heterosexual woman in Ohio who sued her state as a result of experiencing reverse discrimination that favored lesbians and gays. And in what is perhaps the biggest conservative win from the Court this term, we witnessed a 6-3 decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on transgender procedures for minors.

Donald Trump had publicly toyed with the idea of running for president many times before 2015. In fact, he even entered the Reform Party’s presidential primaries for the 2000 election. But the timing was never quite right, until it finally was.

Of the many actions and twists of fate that created the opening for Trump’s presidential candidacy, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is an underappreciated one. Hailed by the conservative legal establishment as a win for free speech (on the merits I would agree), in practice it released a flood of money into the American political system that fundamentally reshaped the landscape of campaigns and how they were conducted. Suddenly the candidates themselves mattered much less, along with political parties. What mattered now were the new players who emerged from the wreckage of campaign finance law.

Super PACs could raise unlimited funds from corporations and billionaires. Dark money nonprofits kept their donors’ identities secret while spending hundreds of millions on attack ads. Labor unions could now spend unlimited treasury funds on elections. A new class of mega-donors wielded influence that dwarfed anything seen in American politics since the Gilded Age.

A decade of the Trump phenomenon is a noteworthy milestone, worthy of commemoration and reflection. Yet in terms of this unusual bifurcated presidency, the high political drama has only just resumed after a four-year intermission. At Independence Day, Trump won’t even be six months into his four-year term. The real work is only beginning.

Not every citizen is bound to help the president succeed, but all must at least give him a chance to do so. Even those who don’t support Trump should recall Leo Strauss’s sound advice to expect less from politics and more from ourselves. Trump is trying to save republican self-government. Yet, since Americans fundamentally disagree on what a free society means, that depends just as much on us as it does on him—which is part of the challenge.

The Left attacks Trump for being a king, disregarding their undemocratic attempt to replace the doddering figurehead of Joe Biden with Queen Kamala, whose claim to the throne was that she is a black woman. The Right expects Trump to act with monarchical efficacy, forgetting that they elected him to regain control over the bureaucracy. This can’t be done in a day. Czar Alexander II took six years, acting by fiat, to free the serfs. Freeing citizens is even harder.

To many Americans, the riots in Los Angeles look like another chapter in the history of the country’s race riots, going from the “long, hot summer of 1967” to the George Floyd riots of 2020. But the 2025 L.A. riots are different. The figure who helps us see that is Vice President Dan Quayle, the man who covered up the true causes of another infamous series of riots in Los Angeles.

In the spring of 1992, riots began after the verdict was announced in the Rodney King case. When the LAPD lost control of the streets, President George H.W. Bush declared a state of emergency and sent in the National Guard. Shortly thereafter, in a speech that became famous for Quayle criticizing the TV character Murphy Brown, the vice president provided an ingenious reframing of the disturbances. He used the riots to pronounce the central credo of his era:

From the perspective of many Japanese, the ethnic diversity of our culture is a weakness compared to their homogeneous society. I beg to differ with my host. I explained that our diversity is our strength and I explained that the immigrants who come to our shores have made and continue to make vast contributions to our culture and to our economy.

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.

No Kings, No Congress | The Roundtable Ep. 272

President Donald Trump, like the American Founders, believes that this republic is constituted to protect the citizenry against all enemies, foreign and domestic. When it comes to foreign affairs, we are not obliged to fight and die for anyone but our fellow citizens. Our social compact is with one another as Americans. Whatever we do militarily and strategically is first and foremost to preserve the freedom and well-being of the American people.

President Trump thinks this is just common sense.

There is a disagreement now over what America’s role should be, if any, in supporting Israel after its preemptive strike on Iran. President Trump has authorized the use of American air defenses to stop Iranian attacks on American assets and citizens: our military bases in the region, our consulate in Tel Aviv, and the Americans living in the surrounding area. This is not an endorsement of the Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and personnel. It is designed to protect the lives of Americans; the U.S. is well within its right to do so. It should be noted that we do not have an embassy in Iran, and for good reason.

The tumultuous and exhausting 12-year pontificate of the Argentinian Jorge Bergoglio, better known to the world as Pope Francis, came to an end in April. Francis was a paradoxical pope if there ever was one. He openly promoted disruption in the Catholic Church, which he did not hesitate to call causing “a mess,” as if unclarity about doctrine and the Church’s moral teaching could somehow serve constructive purposes. He spoke endlessly of mercy and the Church as an immense, nonjudgmental “field hospital” for the lost and broken. But Pope Francis rarely called for the repentance that is the crucial prerequisite for the healing of the soul. He occasionally criticized abortion and gender ideology, and in no uncertain terms, even as he tolerated and promoted those inside and outside the Church who indulged these grave evils.

I am just old enough to remember watching the tall ships sail down the Hudson River on Independence Day in 1976. My parents hosted a huge party for their friends and family to look out from the high windows of our apartment on Riverside Park and the river beyond. I alternated between eating slices from an enormous six-foot hoagie my parents had ordered and watching ship after ship sail by. My memory mixes up the sight of sails and the taste of salami.

I remember a spectacle, and I remember a host of people coming together to enjoy it. I remember the small, personal delight of racing from the dining room table with the hoagie to the window and back again. I remember the ships, proceeding by stately fathoms, with the Palisades of New Jersey behind. I remember my country’s 200th birthday—not as a solemn public event, but as something bound up with the happiness of family and friends, and with the individual joy of a small boy shuttling from gulping food to gaping at the masted vessels out of a storybook.

We have been too slow off the mark in preparing to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. It didn’t help that too many people in positions of power were at best indifferent to our country and have procrastinated celebrating its birth. Now we have leaders who love our country and want to hold a dazzling party for America in 2026.

Has anyone actually read The Handmaid’s Tale? Maybe Margaret Atwood has. But it seems unlikely that many of the demonstrators who hauled out their red cloaks yet again last weekend have done more than watch the HBO TV show based—rather loosely—on the 1985 novel. Thomas Aquinas was supposed to have said, “I fear a man of only one book.” These are people of only one streaming miniseries.

Margaret Atwood doesn’t seem to mind them very much. In fact she appears pleased as punch with them, which is yet another indication that she is not a serious person. Ever since she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian thriller implying that America in the mid-1980s was on the brink of turning women into burqa-wearing sex slaves because Ronald Reagan was president, Atwood and her non-readers have treated every political event they don’t like as their personal Iranian Revolution.

“Do you know the locus classicus of that exquisitely American intransitive verb, to absquatulate?” I am often asked. “Prefix, ab- as in from or out of; root, squat– from the reflexive verb, to seat oneself upon the hams or haunches; suffix -ulare, emulating other Latinate infinitives such as ‘to emulate’? Literally, to depart dragging one’s hindquarters; colloquially, to haul a** or tuck tail and skedaddle; literarily, to hasten away abjectly; melodramatically, to abscond in shame?”

“I believe I do,” is my unwavering reply, though these things are, of course, subject to eternal debate among those who care. “It is to be found on the second page of the Gold Hill Daily News in the Comstock, Nevada Territory, May 30, 1864.”

Some background and context are called for. In September 1862, Samuel Clemens, not yet boasting his soon-to-be famous nom de plume “Mark Twain,” walked into the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise office and started work as a reporter at $25 a week. In Virginia City, Twain would later write, “There were military companies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theatres, ‘hurdy-gurdy houses,’ wide-gambling palaces, political powwows, civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, [and] a whisky mill every fifteen steps.”

The release last fall, after 44 years, of the Beach Boys’ abandoned masterpiece Smile is a milestone of American popular culture. Rolling Stone has called it “the most famous unfinished album in rock & roll history.” But Smile is also something much bigger. It is the pinnacle artistic achievement of a lost civilization, the middle-class, baby-boom, sun-soaked, clean-cut, work-hard-play-hard, bungalow-and-car culture of post-war Southern California. It was a paradise for the common man, one that produced legions of loyal and productive citizens, developed the modern aerospace industry, helped the West win the Cold War, and exported an attractive and fundamentally decent (if often vapid) vision of American life to every corner of the globe.

Western Migration

To understand Smile, you have to start by understanding the Wilsons, which requires understanding Hawthorne, California, circa 1961. In 1922, Murry Wilson arrived in Los Angeles at age five from Hutchinson, Kansas. His family was part of what journalist Carey McWilliams described in his classic 1946 study Southern California: An Island on the Land, as one of Los Angeles’s frequent “quantum leaps, great surges of migration”—in this case the 1920s oil boom that flooded L.A. County with white low-church Protestant burghers and strivers (mostly the latter) from the Plains and the Midwest.

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.

Battle: Los Angeles | The Roundtable Ep. 271

This week, special guest Peachy Keenan rounds out the cast with a report from LA, where riots are breaking out (again). Governor Gavin Newsom failed to gain control on the ground, so Trump inserted himself and the National Guard to enforce law and order. Meanwhile, it’s not news that Trump and Elon’s bromance has concluded in a spectacular social media exchange, but Elon’s public tailspin in the aftermath merits a closer look. Plus: advice to law-abiding illegal immigrants (and to Elon), as well as media recommendations to help you escape the insanity of daily politics.

Recommended reading:

Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War

Shortly after Linda McMahon was sworn in as the 13th Secretary of Education, she pledged to dismantle the Department of Education (ED) as its “final mission.”

Just eight days later, the ED announced a reduction in force (RIF), which impacts nearly 50% of its personnel, as part of a “commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most.” Terminated employees were to be placed on administrative leave beginning March 21. The department explained that when Donald Trump was inaugurated it employed 4,133 personnel; after the RIF and voluntary resignations, 2,183 workers would remain.

One week later, on March 20, Trump issued an executive order that proclaimed that “the experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars—and the unaccountable bureaucracy those programs and dollars support—has plainly failed our children, our teachers, and our families.” Closing the department, Trump observed,

Ever since “Liberation Day,” President Trump’s tariff policy has provoked spirited public discussion. Supporters and opponents have vigorously debated the economic and political consequences of the administration’s departure from our governing elites’ preference for free trade.

There is, however, another aspect of the question—an ethical component—that is suggested by Trump’s rhetoric, although it has not been fully developed.

“America First” is one of the famous slogans Trump often deploys in defense of his tariff policy. The president’s use of this phrase implies that his efforts to regulate trade are in the service of a preferential concern for America over other nations. In other words, on his own understanding, Trump is embarked on a patriotic trade policy. This observation forces us to consider the questions: What is patriotism, and what does it have to do with trade and tariffs?

Patriotism is a love of country and also, necessarily, a love of one’s fellow countrymen. Most human beings in our own time and throughout history have regarded patriotism as a natural and normal human emotion—but also as a virtue or a duty. In other words, normal people care for their country with a warm affection and are willing to, and feel an obligation to, subordinate their own interests to its well-being as circumstances may require.

When you learn that the White House is keeping an eye on human rights violations in other countries, you probably imagine authoritarian regimes like those in Iran, China, or Burma. If I told you that it was the United Kingdom, only a small group of liberty-minded individuals might believe me. However, considering the critical state of free speech in Britain, it’s unsurprising that Donald Trump’s administration has expressed their concerns.

A representative from the U.S. State Department recently announced that the administration is monitoring the case of Lucy Connolly, a British woman who received a 31-month prison sentence in October last year due to a message she posted on social media. The announcement regarding Connolly comes just a month after the State Department issued a statement saying it was monitoring the case of Livia Tossici-Bolt, one of five British pro-life activists who were arrested for silently protesting outside abortion clinics. Connolly’s tweet followed the horrific murder of three young girls in Southport, which led to widespread rioting across the country. Two weeks ago, the 42-year-old’s appeal was rejected by judges. She is currently not set for release until August. 

In Crisis of the House Divided, Jaffa argued that once it became possible for Lincoln to foresee the end of slavery, he prepared himself for a role in emancipation, and even, in the Lyceum speech, gave a “prophetic account of the coming crisis” casting himself in the role of Emancipator! Lincoln warned of future dangers that would confront the nation. These would be internal dangers, principally those stemming from mob rule, or more precisely the “spirit of mob rule.” The lawless in spirit—those who tolerate lawlessness—will be prone to become “lawless in fact.” Lincoln, of course, without direct acknowledgement, referred to abolitionists, who advocated violating the Constitution in order to emancipate slaves, whereas Lincoln’s avowed policy was one of prudence, which was to observe strict adherence to the Constitution which, when understood in light of the principles of the Declaration, had put slavery on the course of “ultimate extinction.” The greatest danger engendered by the “mobocratic spirit,” Lincoln insisted, “which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, [is that] the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the People.” What can unite them? What is the remedy Lincoln proposes? A political religion!

Let every American swear, Lincoln pleads,

Last Tuesday Florida’s Board of Governors rejected Dr. Santa Ono for president of its flagship school, the University of Florida (UF). This came just one week after UF’s Board of Trustees (BOT) unanimously approved Ono. In what is typically a procedural process, it marked the first time in the 22 years since the Board of Governors was established that it had rejected a candidate in this fashion. It was a blow for not only Ono, but also UF’s BOT.

How did Ono nearly get approved as UF’s next president? The short answer is the almost childish simplicity of UF’s BOT, and especially its chairman, Mori Hosseini. They created a situation where only an establishment education administrator like Ono could be selected.

To the best of my knowledge, George Washington never explicitly offered his opinion of the First Amendment. It was proposed by Congress and ratified by the states during his first term as president but, per the Constitution, without his formal participation. Washington wrote to James Madison privately on May 31, 1789, stating, “I see nothing objectionable in the proposed Amendments. Some of them in my opinion, are importantly necessary; others, though of themselves (in my conception) not very essential, are necessary to quiet the fears of some respectable characters and well meaning men.”

The Constitution’s abolition of religious tests for office emancipated American Jews and Catholics from legal disabilities at the federal level, and decades before Britain did the same (this was only seven years after the devastating anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in London).

We gather at a time of great anxiety—and great possibility. For years, we’ve seen an America in decline. We have been told that our best days are behind us. That the people are too divided, our institutions too broken, our moral center too hollowed out ever to recover.

And yet—here we are. In 2025. Back under the leadership of President Trump. Not in retreat. Not in despair. But in the early, bracing hours of a national renewal.

I believe we are witnessing the dawn of a golden age. Not because of one man—though he has been a battering ram through the fortress of the ruling class. But because of what this moment now makes possible: a return not just to strength or prosperity or sovereignty—but to the permanent things.

As Russell Kirk once wrote, “The conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and the character—for the perennial truths.” And if anything defines this political moment—it is the hunger for those truths.

We are living through the collapse of liberal technocracy. And we are standing at the edge of something new—or rather, something very old. A renewal of the American republic grounded not in managerial jargon or neoliberal drift but in the principles of moral order, self-government, national purpose, and human dignity.

We are not clinging to fading embers but standing at the sunrise of a golden age, guided once more by the permanent things. This is not an accident of policy. It is the result of a people remembering who they are.

Last week, the Israel Defense Forces announced it will no longer train female soldiers to serve in infantry mobility units due to concerns about their physical preparedness. It is no small announcement that after two years of sustained warfare, the prime example of a modern sex-integrated military decided to backtrack. As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted in a tweet last weekend, this is major news for militaries around the world that are reconsidering the role of women in combat.

Israel’s decision highlights the obvious. Proper physical fitness is imperative for soldiers operating in combat roles—not only so they may achieve their objectives effectively, but also so they do not cause undue danger to themselves or their teammates. Soldiers must be able to trust each other. Real-world experience, from Israel to U.S. Army Special Operations Command, demonstrates that it is entirely reasonable to wonder if such trust can be maintained in co-ed military combat units.

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.

White-Collar Bots | The Roundtable Ep. 270

Artificial Intelligence threatens to storm the office as tech companies compete to replace entry-level workers with “agent” underlings. Will this be the next major technological displacement in the workforce? And to what end? Meanwhile, this “Pride month” has lacked the eruption of rainbows typical of June. Is a Pride Shift to go along with the Vibe Shift underway? This week, Blaze Media editor-in-chief and now Claremont Washington Fellow Matthew Peterson joins the guys to discuss the ramifications of AI, the containment of Pride, and to dispense good bad movie recommendations!

Recommended reading:

While experts have long dismissed large-scale Medicaid fraud as improbable, evidence from New Mexico tells a different story. This discovery presents an unprecedented opportunity to offset part of the $880 billion budget deficit without cutting healthcare services for enrollees.

As the most powerful stakeholders, insurers frame fraud as an issue with hospitals, physicians, and enrollees while quietly escaping scrutiny themselves. A 2020 Health and Human Services report claimed that fraud in Medicaid fee-for-service stood at 12.3%, compared to just 0.3% in Medicaid managed care, reinforcing the industry’s message that managed care is highly efficient. However, the Government Accounting Office offers a starkly different interpretation, arguing that fraud in managed care is simply escaping detection.

Unlike fee-for-service, managed care payments are issued in advance based on projected costs. When actual costs turn out to be lower, insurers are legally required to return excess funds. The failure to do so amounts to fraudulent retention—and this is where a massive financial recovery opportunity lies.

New Mexico’s Medicaid program provides a striking case study:

When the 28-year-old Bill Buckley wrote to his new pen pal, Whittaker Chambers, asking permission to come and meet him for the first time, Chambers, recovering at his Maryland farmhouse from another heart attack, replied cheerily, “By all means come. Come anytime of the day.” The letter included driving directions and what Sam Tanenhaus calls “a taste of Chambers’s signature gloom.” Chambers could not sign off without noting, “The score, as the points are chalked up, clearly and boldly, more and more convinces me that the total situation is hopeless, past repair, organically irremediable.”

By the “total situation” he referred not merely to his own ailments, though Buckley found him in bed and forbidden by the doctor “even to raise his head.” No, Chambers meant the whole situation of modern man, especially in the West. As he wrote in his invitation to Buckley, “Almost the only position of spiritual dignity left to men, therefore, is a kind of stoic silence, made bearable by the amusement of seeing, hearing, and knowing the full historical irony that its victims are blind and deaf to, and disciplined by the act of withholding comment on what we know.”

Real estate agents often say, “It’s always a good time to buy a house”—because they earn their commission whether or not it’s actually a good time to buy a house.

In the same vein, over at the Wall Street Journal it’s always a good time to increase immigration. The paper’s editorial page—notorious for repeatedly advocating a constitutional amendment saying, “There shall be open borders”—recently ran a column by Jason Riley, a member of the editorial board, entitled “Want to Raise Birthrates? Immigration Is the Key.” 

Curiously for a newspaper focused on business and economics, the column contains no numbers to back up this assertion.

Now, falling birthrates are an issue for almost all countries, developed or otherwise. The way this is usually expressed is the total fertility rate, or TFR. This represents the number of children the statistically average woman is likely to have in her lifetime. To maintain a stable population, a nation needs a TFR of slightly above two—one for mom, one for dad, and an additional fraction to account for child mortality.

Home ownership is declining across the West. In America, the rate continues to fall, down 3.5 percentage points since its peak. Australia is down 3 points, Great Britain is down nearly 7 points since, and so on.

These might look like only small drops, but they’re part of a worsening trend. In America, people under 35 have seen the largest decline in home ownership of any cohort, with their real rates falling by 12 points since 1990. Not long ago, the average age of a first-time buyer was around 30. Today it is almost 40 years old. The housing crisis, in other words, is disproportionately a younger person’s crisis.

In the first months of 2025, Donald Trump played a game of Russian roulette with the American economy and survived. Although the president had never hidden his enthusiasm for tariffs, the way he went about implementing them on taking office sowed confusion. Targeting not just geostrategic competitors like China but also allies like Canada and Britain, issuing demands that economists struggled to explain, reversing world-shaping policies from one hour to the next, and doing all of this on doubtful constitutional authority, sent markets into a tailspin.

And just when the president had been enjoying a honeymoon. In the last days of January, a majority of Americans had declared themselves—for the first time—Trumpians. They were particularly optimistic about his economic plans. But their enthusiasm diminished as the rumble of artillery from the trade war grew louder. By mid-April, fewer than 40% backed the president’s policy, and Trump was less popular than he had been at the same point in his first term.

In January, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded a policy enacted by the Obama Administration, and expanded by the Biden Administration, that barred immigration law enforcement from making arrests in “sensitive” areas, namely churches and schools. According to Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, this had become “fundamental” agency practice, which is something like so-called “super precedent”—that is, rules that progressives prefer.

“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” declared President Trump’s DHS. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense.” To most Americans this seems like common sense. If fugitives are exploiting lenient policies to avoid arrest and deportation, then those policies need adjusting.

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.

Putting DOGE Down | The Roundtable Ep. 269

News broke a few weeks ago that President Trump would seek to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in his next budget proposal, along with several other federal cultural agencies. Hours later, it was also widely reported that some of our current grants were being withdrawn and canceled with immediate effect.

These announcements have caused fear, anger, and bewilderment inside our agency. I find myself (as the historian for the NEA) in the unique position of explaining to my fellow employees how matters have reached this dire pass.

When I arrived at this agency in 2004, in the first years of the George W. Bush Administration, the staff was mostly composed of Democratic Party supporters. But they were also cognizant of the near-death experience that the NEA suffered during the so-called “culture wars” (which stretched from 1989-1998), when the agency was widely lambasted for providing sub-grants that were used for exhibitions which included Andres Serrano’s blasphemous work “Piss Christ,” as well as Robert Mapplethorpe’s sado-masochist and homosexual pornography.

The result of that foolish grantmaking was the restructuring of the NEA so that from then on 40% of our total budget was automatically awarded to state arts agencies, while an independent council was created to oversee the entire grants authorization process as a watchdog appointed by the executive branch.

The effects of screens on children are even worse than you can imagine: they can literally break down the human body. In her forthcoming book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, Clare Morell tells the story of an optometrist who discovered that an eight-year-old girl seeking relief from pain in her eyes no longer had Meibomian glands—which means her eyes cannot produce lubricating tears. Hours of daily digital screen time had trained the child to stare, which dried up her glands. At such a tender age she runs the risk of eventual blindness, as do thousands of other pediatric patients with her diagnosis. It is a fitting illustration of the tragic phenomenon that technology is having on human beings: pained children with blank stares who are unable to cry tears.

In a discussion with James Poulos, Morell explains that well-meaning parents should not simply set up safeguards to filter out the toxic effects of addictive technology. This is like advising a drug addict to use only less frequently, even though every dose is toxic, mind-altering, and possibly laced with a deadly synthetic.

Where do you go in Los Angeles on Memorial Day? Los Angeles is known as Lotusland—the city without a memory. And it’s true that memory rests lightly on L.A. But turn east from Sepulveda Boulevard just north of Wilshire, onto Constitution Avenue, and you immediately recede from the goings and comings of the eternal present and enter a sanctuary of remembrance. 

The main gate is opened each morning at 8:00. Visit on an ordinary weekday morning and there isn’t a soul stirring except you and one or two of the groundsmen. The traffic of the 405 freeway will continue to hum behind you, but a sacred local silence takes you in, to the company of over 85,000 veterans and their families, some from as far back as the Civil War, who rest in peace here at the Los Angeles National Cemetery.

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.

Covering Up the Cover-Ups | The Roundtable Ep. 268

Egads! The Democrats! I had almost forgotten about them. I’m sure they’d prefer we all did, at this point. Ineffectiveness and obscurity would be better than whatever the hell this train wreck is that we’re watching now. It feels indecent even to discuss, like commenting on someone’s unsightly facial deformity. But I suppose we must.

Attending oral argument last week in the case touching on birthright citizenship pending before the Supreme Court, I observed a combination of confusion, omissions, and outright lies from some of the justices. As the lawyer for one of the amici, I witnessed the Court address the propriety of the nationwide, universal injunctions that have been issued by several district court judges blocking the execution of President Trump’s day-one executive order on birthright citizenship.

Let’s begin with the lies.

Early in the argument, Justice Sotomayor unequivocally stated that the Court had held 127 years ago that anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen, and repeated that holding in three other cases since. That is false.

The Supreme Court has never held that the children born on U.S. soil to temporary visitors or illegal aliens are citizens. The Wong Kim Ark case to which she was referring explicitly dealt only with a child born to parents who were lawfully and permanently domiciled in the United States—and the word “domicile” or one of its derivatives was repeated nearly 30 times throughout that opinion. Any language in the opinion beyond that is not part of the holding, but is rather non-binding dicta. The same is true with the passing references in the three other cases she cited—they are pure dicta. So her claim that the Court has already issued holdings that are contrary to the president’s executive order is simply untrue.

For 60 years, IBM was the heartbeat of our family. As a son, I (Andy) grew up in its orbit, my childhood punctuated by eight moves up and down the East Coast before eighth grade. Each new school, each cardboard box packed in haste, was a testament to IBM’s growing reach. We laughed that its initials stood for “I’ve Been Moved,” a lighthearted nod to a company we revered for how it respected the individual, its unmatched customer service, and its unrelenting pursuit of excellence.

As a father, I (Rich) dedicated 30 years to IBM, following my father-in-law’s path as a field executive. I led teams that launched groundbreaking technologies, and was proud to steward a legacy that didn’t just shape our family but redefined industries worldwide.

As shareholders, we grieve what IBM has become—a company where “I’ve Been Misled” now overshadows its once-proud ethos.

This is our urgent warning to Fortune 500 CEOs: embracing divisive political agendas like DEI courts material risk, derails your mission, and betrays the American values that drive success. DEI was never about diversity—it was about control, elevating race and sex over merit in a way that fractured many corporate cultures, IBM included.

College acceptance season is here—and with it the reminder that the college admissions process is broken.

Application essays, formerly written by highly paid tutors for those who could afford it, are now being composed by artificial intelligence. At the same time, the Ivory Tower’s embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which elevates race and sex above all other considerations, has made a mockery of merit.

In the midst of this systemic failure, the University of Austin (UATX) recently implemented a never-before-attempted policy that removes the subjectivity of AI-infused essays and DEI-infected applications: admissions based almost solely on standardized test scores.

If an applicant receives a 1460 or above on the SAT, a 33 or above on the ACT, or a 105 or above on the Classic Learning Test (CLT), that student is automatically accepted. (Full disclosure: I am the president of the CLT.) Any student with lower scores can still be admitted with the added consideration of Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate scores, as well as one-sentence descriptions of up to three significant achievements such as outstanding athletic accomplishments or examples of personal fortitude.

UATX does not accept essays, insincerely elongated lists of extracurricular activities, proclamations of intersectional victimhood, or any other non-merit-based materials.

Two weeks ago, Federal District Court Judge Beryl Howell permanently enjoined the Trump Administration from implementing the president’s executive order targeting the Perkins Coie law firm. Trump’s order suspended security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and barred them from federal buildings, prohibited the government from engaging the firm, and directed that it be investigated for violating civil rights laws.

The order explained that these restrictions were appropriate because of Perkins Coie’s “dishonest and dangerous activity,” including hiring Fusion GPS to manufacture a false dossier to “steal an election.” As counsel to Hillary Clinton, the firm worked with Fusion GPS to produce the Steele dossier, which was used for the Russia hoax that destabilized the first Trump Administration.

President Donald Trump’s administration has mostly defended its efforts to deport visa-holding foreign students on the grounds that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) allows deportation of those whose actions might have “adverse foreign policy consequences.”

But the administration could do a better job of articulating squarely what adverse consequences, exactly, it fears from the actions of high-profile detainees like Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil, who engaged in and helped organize anti-Israel protests.

Section 237(a)(4)(C) of the INA renders deportable any alien “whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” (author’s emphasis) if the Secretary of State “personally determines that the alien’s beliefs, statements, and associations” would compromise U.S. foreign policy interests.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a two-page April 11 court memorandum for the Khalil case, asserted that Khalil’s “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities” fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States, and therefore undermined “U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world.”

In 2006, James C. Ho wrote an article titled “Defining ‘American’: Birthright Citizenship and the Original Understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Since his appointment to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018, his article has gained greater attention and authority than it otherwise might have done. Judge Ho was nominated by President Trump as an adherent of original intent jurisprudence, and the president’s confidence in Judge Ho’s fidelity to the Constitution seems to have been amply borne out by some of his early opinions. In one concurring opinion, he wrote that “it is hard to imagine a better example of how far we have strayed from the text and original understanding of the Constitution than this case.”

“Text and original understanding” are, indeed, the reliable touchstones of constitutional jurisprudence. But Judge Ho did not live up to those standards in his attempt to uncover the meaning of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, even as he has recently indicated he understands the high stakes involved. He did write that “under our Constitution, the people are not subjects, but citizens.” While Judge Ho provides no acknowledgment, this is a close paraphrase of a statement made by signer of the Declaration and the Constitution and Supreme Court Justice James Wilson quoted in chapter two. “Under the Constitution of the United States,” Wilson wrote in 1793, in the case of Chisolm v. Georgia, “there are citizens, but no subjects.”

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.

Congress Take the Wheel | The Roundtable Ep. 267

Sir Winston Churchill is known to have remarked that “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” That timeless mindset of deception has proven effective at enabling militaries to surprise adversaries on the battlefield throughout the history of human warfare. But when such tactics carry over into how the military communicates with citizens, ethical lines have clearly been crossed. This undermines the military officer’s oath of office and sows distrust among the public that the military is supposed to serve. Such a case is presently before us.

A recent report in the New York Times revealed that the pilot of the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter that knocked American Airlines flight 5342 from the sky in January made several errors. The pilot ignored a warning to change direction and collided with the plane, killing everyone on both aircraft. This information was not released by the U.S. Army nor the Department of Defense, even though the official policy of both is maximum disclosure, minimum delay. But in this and countless other cases, the military’s actions are hostile to official DoD policies.

Kenin Spivak’s response to my piece, “Striking Iran Would Be a Mistake,” reflects a familiar but strategically short-sighted instinct within American foreign policy: the belief that forceful action against a dangerous regime, if justified morally or militarily, must also be wise geopolitically. But as I argued, and will expand upon here, the deeper question confronting the United States is not merely whether Iran goes nuclear, but whether the geopolitical structure of Eurasia becomes locked into a sinocentric configuration—one that fuses Iranian energy, Russian military-industrial depth, and Chinese strategic coordination into a single bloc capable of overturning the Western-led order.

The real catastrophe is not Iran’s enrichment centrifuges—it is China’s encirclement of the West.

In the rapidly digitizing landscape of modern America, our homes, businesses, and national infrastructure are increasingly reliant on interconnected devices—collectively known as the Internet of Things (IoT). These devices promise convenience and efficiency, but they also pose an unprecedented cybersecurity challenge. From smart thermostats to baby monitors, each device can become a potential gateway for cyberattacks. The Biden Administration’s development of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark (CTM) attempted to meet this challenge. While we take issue with many elements of that administration’s broader regulatory agenda, the CTM represents a rare case of smart, market-aligned governance.

The CTM is a voluntary labeling program for consumer IoT products that allows manufacturers to demonstrate they meet certain cybersecurity standards. But its true innovation lies not in the sticker slapped on a product box—but in the market incentives it unleashes. Unlike heavy-handed federal mandates, the CTM respects consumer choice, empowers corporate accountability, and opens the door to a new kind of risk-based procurement that strengthens our national cybersecurity from the ground up.

The Trump Administration’s plan to reorganize the State Department is the most ambitious effort of its kind since the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998. Announced on April 22, it calls for reducing State Department offices from 734 to 602, a 17% cut. While the plan outlines a 15% cut across all existing bureaus, so-called “functional” bureaus, as opposed to the traditional geographic bureaus that oversee specific parts of the world, would in particular be slimmed down, especially those grouped under “J”—for example, the Under Secretary of Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.

“J” (which confusingly used to be called “G”) has been around for a few decades. The world of J includes offices such as the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (a white elephant created under Hillary Clinton), the Office of Global Criminal Justice, and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), mocked internally as “Drool,” that would either be drastically cut back or eliminated altogether.

A considerable amount of the media’s drive-by criticism of the Trump reorganization plan takes at face value the name of an office or what it seems to be doing instead of asking if the work could be done elsewhere, or not at all. The names of these offices, however, have absolutely nothing to do with the work they actually do, much less the tangible value they provide in advancing an America First foreign policy.

Mr. President, I rise today to engage in this great debate that is raging across our country. Turn on the TV, read the newspapers, or open your phone and you will be overwhelmed by the back-and-forth over tariffs, trade deficits, prices, and markets. We hear the talking heads say that America simply can’t afford President Trump’s insistence on more favorable trade policies. We hear much less about whether America can afford to continue down the road we have traveled these past 30 years.

That is not a question that people in this city are asking. For many, it is not a question that appears to have occurred to them at all. The debates right now are about the future and how President Trump’s policies will shape it. That is good. These are important debates that we should have. But, today, I rise because I want to speak about the past.

I am speaking as an American but, in particular, as a proud Missourian, a boy from Bridgeton. My folks—they weren’t wealthy. My grandfather was an infantryman in World War II and returned from the war with an eighth-grade education and some money he won playing craps on the Queen Elizabeth on his way home. All of his children worked in his butcher shop growing up. Later, I remember seeing my dad work seven days a week on the midnight shift to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. He worked hard and lived honestly. And, just one generation later, look where we are.

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.

Crowd Funding and Mob Rule | The Roundtable Ep. 266

To cap off the first 100 days of his administration, Trump sparred at length with Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press over his record so far—from immigration successes to choppy economic waters. Alarmed by Trump’s use of emergency powers in rolling out this agenda, David Linker at the New York Times draws some loose connections—to say the least—between Trump, Claremont, and Carl Schmitt. Meanwhile, Shiloh Hendricks has raised over $700 thousand from supporters after a video of her using the n-word prompted threats of retaliation. The guys discuss Trump’s first months, midterm prospects, and our climate of race politics. Plus: media recommendations!

Recommended reading:

President Trump’s barrage of tariffs has produced in response a barrage of criticisms. Some take the form of an appeal to expert authority: economists, we are told, agree that tariffs are bad policy, and thus the administration’s recent “Liberation Day” tariffs are prima facie irrational.

Such claims are, of course, exaggerations. At least some economists—even if unorthodox ones—have supported the use of tariffs in certain situations. Indeed, it is hard to see how economists can claim to reject tariffs in principle since they as a class do not reject all government interventions in the market. We rarely hear that economists agree in condemning the income tax or social assistance to the poor even though these policies are market interventions.

Nevertheless, suppose all economists actually agree that tariffs should be rejected in principle. What then? It does not follow that tariffs are necessarily bad public policy. Economists specialize in the conditions that make for an efficient and prosperous economy—but that is not the sole aim of government policy. A strong economy is not the same thing as a strong and secure political community. The latter is the aim of the statesman, who must take a more comprehensive view of things than the scholar who specializes in economics.

The revolutionary online publication in which this note appears calls itself “The American Mind.” That memorable phrase was introduced into the American political tradition 200 years ago today, in a letter Thomas Jefferson sent to his Virginia neighbor, Henry Lee, on May 8, 1825.

Jefferson was at the time on the board of visitors of the University of Virginia, which he had founded just a few years earlier. Lee had written as one interested “in the renown of our ancestors, and the history of the Country” to call Jefferson’s attention to certain historical documents in Lee’s possession. “These papers,” Lee wrote, “might have formed the materials, out of which the fine propositions of the Declaration of Independence arose.”

Jefferson was already one of those ancestors in whose renown Lee was interested. He responded with a historic reflection that deserved to be remembered through the ages, explaining the purposes of the Declaration: