THIS Wednesday, January 7, 2026, at 5 PM Pacific, we welcome Leah Litman who will be in conversation with Madeleine Brand (see bios below) on the topic: “LAWLESS: HOW THE SUPREME COURT RUNS ON CONSERVATIVE GRIEVANCE, FRINGE THEORIES, AND BAD VIBES” (Register Here)

Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, co-host of Strict Scrutiny, and author of the recent NYT Best-Seller “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Rules on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, & Bad Vibes.” Her scholarship has been recognized with the American Law institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal & the American Constitution Society’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Scholar Award.

Madeleine Brand is the host of the award-winning daily news and culture show, Press Play.  On the show, she covers national, international and local stories through a Southern California lens.  She i also the co-host of KCRW’s legal affairs podcast, The Legal Eagle Files.

From her clerkship with former Justice Anthony Kennedy to her current teaching on constitutional law, Litman is well positioned as an observer of the Supreme Court.

Her aim in writing the book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes was to inform readers who are not immersed in the law about the workings of the US SC.

New York Times/Opinion

Thomas L. Friedman

January 3, 2026

To Trump, on Venezuela: You Break It, You Own It

It is far too early to have clear answers as to what will happen next in Venezuela in the wake of the Trump administration’s removal of President Nicolás Maduro to stand trial in the United States. But I have a lot of questions based on such interventions by the United States in other regions.

On March 19, 2011, a NATO-led coalition launched a military intervention — exclusively using air power — into the Libyan civil war that eventually led to the toppling of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government, followed in October of that year by his killing by opposition forces. On March 29, 2011, I wrote a column that concluded, “Dear Lord, please make President Obama lucky.” The theme of the essay was that Barack Obama had just facilitated the ouster of the leader of Libya, but we had no forces on the ground to shape events after that.

“I don’t know Libya,” I wrote at the time, “but my gut tells me that any kind of decent outcome there will require boots on the ground — either as military help for the rebels to oust Qaddafi as we want, or as post-Qaddafi peacekeepers and referees between tribes and factions to help with any transition to democracy. Those boots cannot be ours. We absolutely cannot afford it.”

So, who would referee the next phase?

(To continue reading, click here)

Washington Post/Opinion

Max Boot

January 3, 2025

Trump claims the U.S. will ‘run’ Venezuela.

What’s the plan?

The raid to nab Maduro was brilliantly executed. The aftermath could get extremely messy.

In recent months, President Donald Trump has assembled the largest U.S. naval armada in the Caribbean since the invasion of Panama in 1989. There were far too many forces simply to blow up some suspected drug boats — but not enough to invade Venezuela, a nation of nearly 30 million people. Now we know what all that naval might was for. The U.S. force was the perfect size for a commando raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

That is exactly what the U.S. Army’s Delta Force pulled off under the cover of darkness early Saturday morning in a bold and brilliant operation that showed once again why the U.S. Special Operations Command and the U.S. intelligence community are the best in the world.

A U.S. Special Operations raid in a large foreign capital full of hostile fighters could easily go wrong, as did the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” fiasco in Somalia. That operation damaged President Bill Clinton politically and led to Defense Secretary Les Aspin’s downfall. It must have taken nerves of steel for Trump to give the go-ahead. Because the raid seemingly went like clockwork, Trump was able to take a victory lap at a typically rambling Saturday news conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club.

Maduro was no terrorist leader, and he was no direct threat to the United States, despite the administration’s attempts to label him as a “narco-terrorist.” But…

(To continue reading click here)

Next Wednesday, January 7, 2026, at 5 PM Pacific, we welcome Leah Litman who will be in conversation with Madeleine Brand (see bios below) on the topic: “LAWLESS: HOW THE SUPREME COURT RUNS ON CONSERVATIVE GRIEVANCE, FRINGE THEORIES, AND BAD VIBES” (Register Here)

Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, co-host of Strict Scrutiny, and author of the recent NYT Best-Seller “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Rules on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, & Bad Vibes.” Her scholarship has been recognized with the American Law institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal & the American Constitution Society’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Scholar Award.

Madeleine Brand is the host of the award-winning daily news and culture show, Press Play.  On the show, she covers national, international and local stories through a Southern California lens.  She i also the co-host of KCRW’s legal affairs podcast, The Legal Eagle Files.

From her clerkship with former Justice Anthony Kennedy to her current teaching on constitutional law, Litman is well positioned as an observer of the Supreme Court.

Her aim in writing the book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes was to inform readers who are not immersed in the law about the workings of the US SC.

The Economist

Leaders | Cost of living

December 30, 2025

The truth about affordability

Voters in rich countries are angry about prices.  Politicians could make things worse.

SLOP, PARASOCIAL and rage bait were contenders for word of the year in 2025. In 2026 an early favourite for that title, at least among pollsters and election strategists, is “affordability”, often paired with the word “crisis”. Having at last found a slogan that seems to work against the spell of Trumpism, Democrats will talk of little else between now and the midterms in November. In Europe, which is better at reposting American memes than coming up with fresh ones, there is talk of a cost-of-living crisis. A transatlantic consensus is forming that prices are out of whack.

But are they?

Affordability is a fuzzy term that can mean whatever feels true. Telling people to stop complaining and be happy with their lot—the Marie Antoinette strategy—is not working for a White House where the tone and decor increasingly resemble Versailles. Maddeningly, voters want contradictory things: low prices when they shop, high wages for themselves; not many immigrants but lots of cheap labour; rising house prices when they own and lower ones when their children want to buy.

Successful economies are filled with tensions like these. Politicians will naturally say what polls well to win elections. If the only downside of the affordability story were that voters punished incumbents for high prices, that would not be so bad. Yet if the problem is misdiagnosed, the risk is greater that harmful policies will be introduced to “fix” it.

That is because talk of an affordability crisis mixes phantom concerns with real ones. Start with the imagined problems. People are sensitive to the prices of things they buy all the time. A gallon of milk cost $3 in American stores in January 2019 and now costs $4. Food prices have shot up in Europe too, as have energy prices. However, wages are growing faster than prices up and down the income spectrum on both sides of the Atlantic. In this sense there is no affordability crisis. Besides, nobody should really want prices to return to 2019 levels. If that were the goal, policymakers should seek to imitate Greece after its debt crisis, when it suffered depression and deflation.

There is more to the affordability story than the price of milk or electricity, though. As societies grow richer, the share of spending on goods shrinks and spending on services increases. When Donald Trump was born, 60% of America’s household consumption went on goods. Now the share is below 40%, while that spent on services has risen. Many people have forgotten how long their parents once had to save to buy a TVtv and so do not appreciate the globalised supply chains that have made goods so much better and cheaper.

Meanwhile they are shocked by how expensive a haircut is now, let alone child care. Although both goods and services are included in inflation numbers, services remain stubbornly resistant to the huge productivity gains seen in manufacturing. In the euro zone the affordability conundrum in services presents itself in a different way. Because the prices of services such as health care and home rental are more regulated, the problem is availability more than affordability, and it is often solved by queuing—which does not feel good, either.

That is the first true affordability problem. The second is that though real wages have indeed risen, they have not gone up as fast as assets have. The wealth-to-GDP ratio is close to an all-time high in America. To think through the effects of this, picture two people who earn identical salaries that place them in the top 10% of earners. They have a standard of living that robber barons or monarchs of a bygone era would envy.

Then imagine one of these people also inherited $1m ten years ago. Had this lucky one put the money in the S&P 500, they would now be sitting on $4m. When these two people want to buy a car or a phone, this is not a problem. Ford or Apple can make an additional unit and sell it at the same price. When they want to buy positional goods, such as an apartment in San Francisco with a nice view, they are in competition. For one of them, this feels like an affordability crisis.

Substack/December 30, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

December 31, 2025

Letters from an American

The hallmark of the first year of President Donald J. Trump’s second term has been the attempt of the president and his cronies to dismantle the constitutional system set up by the framers of that document when they established the United States of America. It’s not simply that they have broken the laws. They have acted as if the laws, and the Constitution that underpins them, don’t exist.

As soon as the 2024 election results were clear, billionaire Elon Musk, who had supported Trump’s campaign both through his purchase of Twitter—now X—and with $290 million in cash, posted on social media: “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” Latin for “New World Order.” Although he won with less than 50% of the vote, Trump announced that he had an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” Musk would head a new “Department of Government Efficiency” that Musk vowed would cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget.

Musk and his operatives muscled their way into government offices and gained access to computer systems. With strokes of a keyboard they eliminated jobs and programs, including, as Musk put it, feeding “into the wood chipper” most of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government agency aimed at combating disease and malnutrition around the globe. That dismantling has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

(To continue reading the entire post, click here)

Dear America at a Crossroads subscriber:

We thank you again for your support and attendance in 2025. If you have not yet had a chance to make a 2025 donation, there is still time to do so.  All of the funds donated are tax deductible and are used exclusively to support America at a Crossroads programming.

You can use this link to make your donation.

On Wednesday, January 7, 2026, at 5 PM Pacific, we welcome Leah Litman who will be in conversation with Madeleine Brand (see bios below) on the topic: “LAWLESS: HOW THE SUPREME COURT RUNS ON CONSERVATIVE GRIEVANCE, FRINGE THEORIES, AND BAD VIBES” (Register Here)

Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, co-host of Strict Scrutiny, and author of the recent NYT Best-Seller “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Rules on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, & Bad Vibes.” Her scholarship has been recognized with the American Law institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal & the American Constitution Society’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Scholar Award.

Madeleine Brand is the host of the award-winning daily news and culture show, Press Play.  On the show, she covers national, international and local stories through a Southern California lens.  She i also the co-host of KCRW’s legal affairs podcast, The Legal Eagle Files.

From her clerkship with former Justice Anthony Kennedy to her current teaching on constitutional law and the federal courts, Litman is well positioned as an observer of the Supreme Court and its activities of the past several years.

Her aim in writing the book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes was to inform readers who are not immersed in the law about the workings of the US SC.

Wall Street Journal/Opinion

The Editorial Board

December 29, 2025

Did Ukraine Target Putin’s Residence?

Kyiv denies an attack, but Moscow is already using it as an excuse against peace talks.

President Trump seemed pleased after meeting Sunday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. So right on time comes Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine launched a large drone attack that same evening on Mr. Putin’s residence. The question to ask is who benefits from this story?

Not Ukraine, since Mr. Trump said Monday he had heard of the alleged attack directly “from President Putin today. I was very angry about it.” The U.S. President added that “it’s a delicate period of time,” and “it’s one thing to be offensive” but “another thing to attack his house. It’s not the right time to do any of that.”

Blowing up the Trump-Zelensky bonhomie may have been Mr. Putin’s intention. Mr. Zelensky said Monday that the “‘residence strike’ story is a complete fabrication.”

The Kremlin claimed no damage or casualties from the attack as Russia destroyed all 91 drones allegedly headed for Mr. Putin’s home. But Moscow said it is preparing retaliatory strikes against Ukraine—oh, and because of the alleged attack, “Russia’s negotiating position will be reviewed,” the Foreign Ministry posted on Telegram.

There’s reason to doubt the Russian claim. When Ukraine conducts a deep strike against Russia, there are normally “reports from local civilians and government about drones or drone debris, footage of drones flying overhead or air defenses activating, and footage—often geolocated—of fires, smoke plumes, or explosions,” says Grace Mappes of the Institute for the Study of War.

But as of Monday “we have not yet observed any of these with the claimed strike targeting Putin’s residence,” she added.

Speaking of targeting heads of state, Russia has repeatedly tried to assassinate Mr. Zelensky, including on NATO territory. In September a Russian cruise missile struck Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers building in Kyiv.

Mr. Zelensky has nonetheless continued his efforts to negotiate an end to the war. Mr. Putin has refused to stop fighting until Ukraine and its partners agree to every Russian demand. The challenge for Mr. Putin has been how to say no to Mr. Trump’s attempts at a peace deal while still portraying Ukraine as the obstacle. Mr. Trump is onto something when he talks about the timing of this story.

The Hill

Tara Suter

December 29, 2025

Pompeo: Putin has ‘conceded literally nothing’ in Ukraine peace talks

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “conceded literally nothing” in talks to end the war in Ukraine.

“The adversary here, Vladimir Putin, has — to best I can tell — conceded literally nothing to date. And while they say there’s 90 percent agreement, I doubt that Vladimir Putin thinks that the relevant 10 percent that remains is anything he’s willing to give up on,” Pompeo said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

“This is about land. He also doesn’t want European forces on his border. That’s part of the security guarantee. I’ll bet that’s a poison pill for him,” he added.

On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian and American negotiators had made notable progress on a 20-point peace proposal in a meeting at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

When asked by a reporter about “the thorniest issues still unresolved,” Trump responded that land was a notable one.

“I think the land — you’re talking about — some of that land has been taken. Some of that land is maybe up for grabs, but it may be taken over the next period of a number of months — and you’re better off making a deal now,” Trump said.

Putin has historically aimed to take over specific parts of Ukraine. The Russian leader has said he will continue fighting until Ukraine pulls back its troops from every Ukrainian region annexed by Russia almost four years ago, The Associated Press has reported.

Dear America at a Crossroads subscriber:

We thank you again for your support and attendance in 2025. If you have not yet had a chance to make a 2025 donation, there is still time to do so.  All of the funds donated are tax deductible and are used exclusively to support America at a Crossroads programming.

You can use this link to make your donation.

On Wednesday, January 7, 2026, at 5 PM Pacific, we welcome Leah Litman who will be in conversation with Madeleine Brand (see bios below) on the topic: “LAWLESS: HOW THE SUPREME COURT RUNS ON CONSERVATIVE GRIEVANCE, FRINGE THEORIES, AND BAD VIBES” (Register Here)

Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, co-host of Strict Scrutiny, and author of the recent NYT Best-Seller “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Rules on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, & Bad Vibes.” Her scholarship has been recognized with the American Law institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal & the American Constitution Society’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Scholar Award.

Madeleine Brand is the host of the award-winning daily news and culture show, Press Play.  On the show, she covers national, international and local stories through a Southern California lens.  She i also the co-host of KCRW’s legal affairs podcast, The Legal Eagle Files.

From her clerkship with former Justice Anthony Kennedy to her current teaching on constitutional law and the federal courts, Litman is well positioned as an observer of the Supreme Court and its activities of the past several years.

Her aim in writing the book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes was to inform readers who are not immersed in the law about the workings of the US SC.

Washington Post/Opinion

The Editorial Board

December 24, 2025

The Supreme Court raises the stakes on Trump’s troop deployments

The decision risks the president invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the regular military.

Federal judges have been wrestling with whether President Donald Trump’s National Guard deployments in blue cities including Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago are necessary. The Supreme Court on Tuesday found a way to sidestep that question, dissolving guard deployments on a technicality. Now the White House has two options: Reconsider its strategy of militarizing law enforcement — or escalate.

Federal law allows the president to deploy National Guard troops if he “is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” Trump said episodes of violent resistance to his administration’s deportation campaign met that standard. Litigation in lower courts focused on whether these episodes really rendered the federal government “unable” to enforce the law.

The Supreme Court instead ruled that Trump’s National Guard deployment in Chicago was unlawful based on the definition of “regular forces.” The administration had assumed “regular forces” meant civilian law-enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Because those forces were unable to enforce the law, the administration said, Trump could deploy the Guard.

But supplementary briefs showed that when Congress granted the president this power in the early 1900s, “regular forces” meant the military. That would mean Trump can only deploy the Guard if “the regular military” is insufficient to execute the laws, the court said. The opinion added that circumstances in which the military can be used for domestic law enforcement are “exceptional.”

(To read the entire column, click here)

New York Times/Opinion

Matthew Walther

December 24, 2025

The Strange Death of Make America Great Again

In 1935, the English journalist George Dangerfield published a book-length political obituary for the British Liberal Party, which only a few decades earlier had found itself “flushed with one of the greatest victories of all time” after winning a commanding parliamentary majority and passing a series of long-sought reforms. “From that victory,” Mr. Dangerfield wrote, “they never recovered.”

Nearly a century after its publication, “The Strange Death of Liberal England” still makes for instructive reading — especially after the recent annual gathering of Turning Point USA, where conservative infighting seemed to threaten President Trump’s remarkable political movement. Mr. Dangerfield thought that the Liberals, who by the mid-1930s were an all but spent force electorally and intellectually, had been victims of their own success. They ended up with a political coalition that was not only divided internally but also increasingly aloof from the concerns of ordinary voters.

Though parts of Mr. Dangerfield’s narrative have been criticized by academic historians, his central argument remains persuasive: Coalitions organized around symbolic enmities and ideological absolutes rather than shared material interests are prone to sudden collapse. The analogy with today’s G.O.P. should not be pressed too hard, but his main insight will travel a bit.

Not long ago, the Make America Great Again movement was ostensibly a right-leaning response to neoliberalism. Its bugbears were free trade, immigration, postindustrial decline, institutional inertia and the cultural condescension of an elite managerial class. Its greatest strength was its breadth. Former Tea Party voters, paleoconservatives, Christian culture warriors, foreign policy realists and a small but decisive number of disaffected Democrats in the Midwest: All could be part of MAGA because its enemies (the establishment, the swamp, the media, globalism) were external and vaguely defined. These antagonists provided MAGA with a raison d’être and, after 2016, an excuse for every perceived failure or delay.

(To read the entire column, click here)

HAPPY NEW YEAR

On Wednesday, January 7, 2026, at 5 PM Pacific, we welcome Leah Litman who will be in conversation with Madeleine Brand (see bios below) on the topic: “LAWLESS: HOW THE SUPREME COURT RUNS ON CONSERVATIVE GRIEVANCE, FRINGE THEORIES, AND BAD VIBES” (Register Here)

Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, co-host of Strict Scrutiny, and author of the recent NYT Best-Seller “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Rules on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, & Bad Vibes.” Her scholarship has been recognized with the American Law institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal & the American Constitution Society’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Scholar Award.

Madeleine Brand is the host of the award-winning daily news and culture show, Press Play.  On the show, she covers national, international and local stories through a Southern California lens.  She i also the co-host of KCRW’s legal affairs podcast, The Legal Eagle Files.

From her clerkship with former Justice Anthony Kennedy to her current teaching on constitutional law and the federal courts, Litman is well positioned as an observer of the Supreme Court and its activities of the past several years.

Her aim in writing the book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes was to inform readers who are not immersed in the law about the workings of the US SC.

New York Times/Opinion

By Ezra Klein

December 21, 2025

The Trump Vibe Shift Is Dead

In January, I made a prediction: “I suspect we are at or near the peak of Trump vibes.” Now, as this long year grinds to its end, I think it can be said more declaratively: The Trump vibe shift is dead. And there are already glimmers of what will follow it.

The Trump vibe shift was American culture and institutions moving toward President Trump and Trumpism with a force unexplained by his narrow electoral victory. It was Mark Zuckerberg donning a chain and saying that the corporate world was too hostile to “masculine energy.” It was corporate executives using Trump as an excuse to wrest control of their companies back from their workers. It was the belief that Trump’s 2024 coalition — which stretched from Stephen Miller and Laura Loomer to Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joe Rogan and Tulsi Gabbard — was the arrival of something new rather than, as many thought in 2016, the final heave of something old.

As 2025 closes, Trump’s polling sits in the low 40s, with some surveys showing him tumbling into the 30s. Democrats routed Republicans across the year’s elections, winning governorships in New Jersey and Virginia easily and overperforming in virtually every race they contested.

Moderate Republicans broke with Speaker Mike Johnson to bring to the House floor a Democratic bill to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. Marjorie Taylor Greene is retiring. Elon Musk said he regretted joining the administration to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Joe Rogan called Trump’s immigration policy “insane.” The right is at war with itself over the Epstein files and how much antisemitism and anti-Indian racism is too much antisemitism and anti-Indian racism.

A year ago, we kept hearing that Trump was cool now. Is anyone saying that now?

(To read the entire column, click here)

Washington Post/Opinion

By Fareed Zakaria

December 19, 2025

Trump’s doctrine is ‘Make America Small Again’

A hemispheric focus makes little sense for a global economic and military giant.

If there is a slogan that could be attached to the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy, it is simple: Make America a Regional Power Again. The document begins by lambasting decades of American foreign policy that saw the United States as a global hegemon, tending to its interests around the world, promoting globalism, embracing global institutions and shouldering global burdens.

Instead we are told that the United States should define its interest much more narrowly. While the NSS concedes a few interests in Europe and Asia, it says America’s fundamental interest should be in its neighborhood, the Western Hemisphere, where it invokes the Monroe Doctrine and a “Trump Corollary” — which sounds a lot like the Roosevelt Corollary announced by President Teddy Roosevelt. Marco Rubio recently explained that “America First” means first paying attention to the region we live in.

It all sounds logical, but it isn’t. The U.S. is the most powerful country in history, and that power has actually grown in the last three decades, as its companies and technologies dominate the globe. It cannot limit itself to what is going on in its own backyard without massive consequences, both for itself and the world.

(To read the entire column, click here)

If you missed today’s program featuring Ambassador (fmr) Michael McFaul in conversation with Larry Diamond, you can watch the program at THIS PAST EVENTS LINK. The program will post a few hours after it ends. Starting Thursday morning, you can listen AT THIS PODCAST LINK

On Wednesday, January 7, 2026, at 5 PM Pacific, we welcome Leah Litman who will be in conversation with Madeleine Brand (see bios below) on the topic: “LAWLESS: HOW THE SUPREME COURT RUNS ON CONSERVATIVE GRIEVANCE, FRINGE THEORIES, AND BAD VIBES” (Register Here)

Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, co-host of Strict Scrutiny, and author of the recent NYT Best-Seller “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Rules on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, & Bad Vibes.” Her scholarship has been recognized with the American Law institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal & the American Constitution Society’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Scholar Award.

Madeleine Brand is the host of the award-winning daily news and culture show, Press Play.  On the show, she covers national, international and local stories through a Southern California lens.  She i also the co-host of KCRW’s legal affairs podcast, The Legal Eagle Files.

When pondering the concept of lawlessness and the Supreme Court, you don’t usually think of the problem as coming from within the court. But that’s the message of a new book by Michigan Law Professor Leah Litman.

From her clerkship with former Justice Anthony Kennedy to her current teaching on constitutional law and the federal courts, Litman is well positioned as an observer of the Supreme Court and its activities of the past several years.

Her aim in writing the book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025), was to inform readers who are not immersed in the law about the workings of the US SC.

New York Times/Opinion

By Bret Stephens

December 16, 2025

Our Petty, Hollow, Squalid Ogre in Chief

Though I tend to think it’s usually a waste of space to devote a column to President Trump’s personality — what more is there to say about the character of this petty, hollow, squalid, overstuffed man? — sometimes the point bears stressing: We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.

Markets will not be moved, or brigades redeployed, or history shifted, because Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner were found stabbed to death on Sunday in their home in Los Angeles, allegedly at the hands of their troubled son Nick.

But this is an appalling human tragedy and a terrible national loss. Reiner’s movies, including “Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride” and “When Harry Met Sally…,” are landmarks in the inner lives of millions of people; I can still quote by heart dialogue and song lyrics from his 1984 classic, “This Is Spinal Tap.” Until last week, he and Michele remained creative forces as well as one of Hollywood’s great real-life love stories. Their liberal politics, though mostly not my own, were honorable and sincere.

To which our ogre in chief had this to say on social media:

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

(To read the entire column, click here)

New York Times/Opinion

By Bret Stephens

December 14, 2025

Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like

There is a measure of comfort to be taken in the fact that Sunday’s terrorist attack at a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which left at least 15 people dead and many more injured, also produced a hero. A man described in news accounts — but not yet confirmed by The Times — as a local shopkeeper named Ahmed al-Ahmed  single-handedly disarmed one of two terrorists and survived being shot twice, in a scene that was captured on camera and has since gone viral.

That act of bravery not only saved lives; it served as an essential reminder that humanity can always transcend cultural and religious boundaries.

But the Hanukkah massacre also represents the continuing inability of the government of Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, to safeguard the country’s Jewish community. In October 2024, a kosher restaurant in Bondi was the target of an arson attack; six weeks later, an Orthodox synagogue was firebombed. Those attacks were attributed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, and the Albanese government duly responded by expelling the Iranian ambassador in Canberra and closing its own embassy in Tehran.

Sadly for Australia, foreign actors alone aren’t the problem. Last year, Jillian Segal, the government’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, warned that “antisemitic behavior is not only present on many campuses, but is an embedded part of …

(To read the entire column, click here)

In Memoriam

We grieve for the lives lost to violence and antisemitism in Sydney, Australia on Sunday. We honor their memories with resolve to uphold human dignity and compassion.

THIS Wednesday, December 17 at 5 PM Pacific, we welcome Ambassador (fmr) Michael McFaul who will be in conversation with Larry Diamond (see bios below) on the topic: “AUTOCRATS VS. DEMOCRATS: THE NEW GLOBAL DISORDER” (Register Here)

Michael McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2012 to 2014. He is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, where he serves as Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Larry Dimond is an author, an American political sociologist and a leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies. Diamond is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

New York Times/Opinion

By Bret Stephens

December 14, 2025

Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like

There is a measure of comfort to be taken in the fact that Sunday’s terrorist attack at a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which left at least 15 people dead and many more injured, also produced a hero. A man described in news accounts — but not yet confirmed by The Times — as a local shopkeeper named Ahmed al-Ahmed  single-handedly disarmed one of two terrorists and survived being shot twice, in a scene that was captured on camera and has since gone viral.

That act of bravery not only saved lives; it served as an essential reminder that humanity can always transcend cultural and religious boundaries.

But the Hanukkah massacre also represents the continuing inability of the government of Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, to safeguard the country’s Jewish community. In October 2024, a kosher restaurant in Bondi was the target of an arson attack; six weeks later, an Orthodox synagogue was firebombed. Those attacks were attributed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, and the Albanese government duly responded by expelling the Iranian ambassador in Canberra and closing its own embassy in Tehran.

Sadly for Australia, foreign actors alone aren’t the problem. Last year, Jillian Segal, the government’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, warned that “antisemitic behavior is not only present on many campuses, but is an embedded part of …

(To read the entire column, click here)

New York Times/Opinion

By Thomas L. Friedman

December 11, 2025

Trump Isn’t Interested in Fighting a

New Cold War.  He Wants a New Civilization War.

Every few years I am reminded of one of my cardinal rules of journalism: Whenever you see elephants flying, don’t laugh, take notes. Because if you see elephants flying, something very different is going on that you don’t understand but you and your readers need to.

I bring that up today in response to the Trump administration’s 33-page National Security Strategy, released last week. It has been widely noted that at a time when our geopolitical rivalry with Russia and China is more heated than at any other time since the Cold War — and Moscow and Beijing are more and more closely aligned against America — the Trump 2025 national security doctrine barely mentions these two geopolitical challengers.

While the report surveys U.S. interests across the globe, what intrigues me most about it is how it talks about our European allies and the European Union. It cites activities by our sister European democracies that “undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

“Should present trends continue,” it goes on, “the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”

Indeed, the strategy paper warns, unless our European allies elect more “patriotic” nationalist parties, committed to stemming immigration, Europe will face “civilizational erasure.” Unstated but implied is that we will judge you not by the quality of your democracy but by the stringency by which you stem the migration flow from Muslim countries to Europe’s south.

That is a flying elephant no one should ignore. It is language unlike any previous U.S. national security survey, and to my mind it reveals a deep truth about this second Trump administration: how much it came to Washington to fight America’s third civil war, not to fight the West’s new cold war.

(To read the entire column, click here)

Dear Friend,

If you missed today’s program featuring Erwin Chemerinsky in conversation with Warren Olney, you can watch the program at THIS PAST EVENTS LINK. The program will post a few hours after it ends. Starting Thursday morning, you can listen AT THIS PODCAST LINK

On Wednesday, December 17 at 5 PM Pacific, we welcome Ambassador (fmr) Michael McFaul who will be in conversation with Larry Diamond (see bios below) on the topic: “AUTOCRATS VS. DEMOCRATS: THE NEW GLOBAL DISORDER” (Register Here)

Michael McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2012 to 2014. He is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, where he serves as Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Larry Dimond is an author, an American political sociologist and a leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies. Diamond is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

New York Times/Opinion

By David French

December 7, 2025

This Is What It Looks Like When Your Coalition Is Coming Apart at the Seams

It hasn’t happened much in my life, but last Tuesday night a place I know very well was at the center of national attention. The bright red congressional district where I lived until this summer delivered a sharp warning to the Republican Party.

I’m speaking about the special election results in Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District, a mostly suburban and rural district that includes parts of Nashville. The Republican candidate, Matt Van Epps, defeated his Democratic opponent, Aftyn Behn, by just under nine points.

In some places, a nine-point Republican margin is considered a resounding victory. But not in Tennessee 7. In 2024, the district voted for Donald Trump by a 22-point margin. At the same time, Mark Green, the Republican Van Epps succeeded last week, won re-election by 21 points. This is not a swing district or one that Democrats expect to win this side of the apocalypse.

But for a few days in October, it seemed like the end was nigh. I’d been hearing rumors that Republicans were starting to worry about the race, and a poll taken between Nov. 22 and Nov. 24 showed Van Epps leading by only two points.

That it was close at all was stunning, not least because Behn is hardly an ideological match for one of the most conservative districts in Tennessee. She’s been labeled — and not as a gesture of love and respect — the “A.O.C. of Tennessee.” She once posted (then deleted) during the George Floyd protests in 2020, “Good morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified.”

(To read the entire column, click here)

The Times of Israel/The Blogs

By Ethan Kushner

December 5, 2025

About the Author

Ethan Kushner is an American Israeli-based businessman, who serves as Chair of American Democrats in Israel (ADI). A non-profit organization based in Israel, ADI provides a voice for American liberal voters in Israel by advocating for policies that advance the liberal political agenda, and by mobilizing US-Israeli voters to vote for politicians running as Democrats who among their issues support the State of Israel. Ethan is the nephew of JUDJ co-founder, Zev Yaroslavsky.

Michael Jordan, The Bulls & The Search For a Transformational Leader

Sports fans remember the moment the Chicago Bulls became more than just another NBA team. It happened in 1984, when a young Michael Jordan walked onto the court and without saying a word, changed the fate of a franchise.

Jordan elevated the entire organization, created a culture of accountability, turned teammates into champions, and forced management to rethink what was possible.

This one player reshaped the trajectory of an entire sports franchise and a city. One can even say an entire industry.

This phenomenon – one person’s ability to alter not just results but the story a community tells itself – is not limited to sports. Politics confronts similar questions today.

And the biggest of them is this:

Do Democrats have a Michael Jordan? A singular leader who can change the game?

The Democratic Party’s “Jordan Gap.” Why It Matters to Jews in Israel and the Diaspora

The Democratic Party, like any large tent organization, swings between coherence and fragmentation. It has had its Jordans: Roosevelt reshaping the social contract; Kennedy inspiring generational optimism; Clinton reframing centrism; Obama expanding the map and modernizing the coalition.

Today, Democrats face a familiar challenge: this increasingly diverse, sometimes divided community is trying to articulate a unified identity in turbulent times.

And within the tent, many American Jews, especially those who identify with the party’s “soft middle,” feel politically homeless. They value progressive ideals but struggle with segments of the party that have grown increasingly hostile toward Israel or indifferent toward Jewish vulnerability…

(To read the entire blog, click here)

Dear Friend,

THIS Wednesday, December 10 at 5 PM Pacific, we welcome Erwin Chemerinsky who will be in conversation with Warren Olney (see bios below) on the topic: “THE CONSTITUTION IN CRISIS: WHATS’S AT STAKE FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY” (Register Here)

Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law on July 1, 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law. Prior to Berkeley Law, from 2008-2017, Chemerinsky was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science. A study of legal publications between 2016 and 2020 found Chemerinsky to be the most frequently cited American legal scholar. Chemerinsky was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. The National Jurist magazine has named him the most influential person in legal education in the United States.

Warren Olney was the host and executive producer of the nationally syndicated weekday afternoon program “To the Point,” which originated at KCRW. Olney and his programs have been honored with nearly 40 national, regional and local awards for broadcast excellence. He is the only two-time winner of the Los Angeles Society of Professional Journalists Distinguished Journalist award.

The Times of Israel/The Blogs

By Ethan Kushner

December 5, 2025

About the Author

Ethan Kushner is an American Israeli-based businessman, who serves as Chair of American Democrats in Israel (ADI). A non-profit organization based in Israel, ADI provides a voice for American liberal voters in Israel by advocating for policies that advance the liberal political agenda, and by mobilizing US-Israeli voters to vote for politicians running as Democrats who among their issues support the State of Israel. Ethan is the nephew of JUDJ co-founder, Zev Yaroslavsky.

Michael Jordan, The Bulls & The Search For a Transformational Leader

Sports fans remember the moment the Chicago Bulls became more than just another NBA team. It happened in 1984, when a young Michael Jordan walked onto the court and without saying a word, changed the fate of a franchise.

Jordan elevated the entire organization, created a culture of accountability, turned teammates into champions, and forced management to rethink what was possible.

This one player reshaped the trajectory of an entire sports franchise and a city. One can even say an entire industry.

This phenomenon – one person’s ability to alter not just results but the story a community tells itself – is not limited to sports. Politics confronts similar questions today.

And the biggest of them is this:

Do Democrats have a Michael Jordan? A singular leader who can change the game?

The Democratic Party’s “Jordan Gap.” Why It Matters to Jews in Israel and the Diaspora

The Democratic Party, like any large tent organization, swings between coherence and fragmentation. It has had its Jordans: Roosevelt reshaping the social contract; Kennedy inspiring generational optimism; Clinton reframing centrism; Obama expanding the map and modernizing the coalition.

Today, Democrats face a familiar challenge: this increasingly diverse, sometimes divided community is trying to articulate a unified identity in turbulent times.

And within the tent, many American Jews, especially those who identify with the party’s “soft middle,” feel politically homeless. They value progressive ideals but struggle with segments of the party that have grown increasingly hostile toward Israel or indifferent toward Jewish vulnerability…

(To read the entire blog, click here)

The Times of Israel/The Blogs

By Sarah Tuttle-Singer

December 6, 2025

About the Author

Sarah Tuttle-Singer is the author of Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered and the New Media Editor at Times of Israel. She was raised in Venice Beach, California on Yiddish lullabies and Civil Rights anthems, and she now lives in Jerusalem with her 3 kids where she climbs roofs, explores cisterns, opens secret doors, talks to strangers, and writes stories about people — especially taxi drivers. Sarah also speaks before audiences left, right, and center through the Jewish Speakers Bureau, asking them to wrestle with important questions while celebrating their willingness to do so. She loves whisky and tacos and chocolate chip cookies and old maps and foreign coins and discovering new ideas from different perspectives. Sarah is a work in progress.

Ms. Rachel, Israeli children deserve your voice — Not a modern blood libel

When a public figure speaks about protecting children, and the only children consistently absent from her compassion are ours

Ms. Rachel — for anyone who doesn’t have a toddler glued to their hip — is an early-childhood educator and YouTube creator whose slow, gentle, speech-development videos have been nothing short of salvation for millions of exhausted parents.

My special-needs son learned some of his first real words from her. I have listened to her voice at 3 a.m. while praying for strength during long nights of teething and meltdowns. She has been a comfort in my home. And for that, I have genuinely liked her.

Which is why what I’m about to write is complicated, and honestly, painful.

Because I love that Ms. Rachel fights for children.

But I can’t escape the ache that she doesn’t fight for all of them.

When she posts about the suffering of children in Gaza — which she absolutely should, because every innocent child deserves protection — she rarely acknowledges the Israeli children who were murdered, burned alive, executed in front of their parents, or taken hostage by Hamas on October 7.

She doesn’t mention the babies dragged into tunnels. The toddlers orphaned. The ones kept underground for weeks in the dark. The ones strangled by terrorists.

If you position yourself as a universal advocate for children, Israeli children must fall under that umbrella of compassion. And when they don’t, parents like me notice. We shouldn’t have to beg a children’s champion to remember our murdered children. Empathy is not a finite resource. You don’t have to choose.

And yet — painfully — it feels like she has because the precious little lip service she’s given in broad strokes simply doesn’t suffice.

(To read the entire blog, click here)