The Social World

Category: Politics

  • Kamala: I could run in 2028

    Well, well, well. It seems Kamala Harris has finished licking her wounds after her defeat in last year’s presidential race and she, um, wants to do it all over again. Speaking to the BBC, the Democrat told a British journalist that she might run again for the White House: “I am not done.” Whether the polls are quite as optimistic about her chances is another issue…

    In her first British interview since losing to President Donald Trump, Harris told the Beeb:

    I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones… If I listened to polls I would have not run for my first office, or my second office – and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here.

    It’s fighting talk – but it’s not all that long ago that Harris, um, lost the election and all seven swing states to Trump. In fact, she took a number of swipes at the current president in her interview, calling Trump a “tyrant” – and adding she felt vindicated for predicting that the Republican would “behave like a fascist” if he won. “He said he would weaponize the Department of Justice – and he has done just that,” she raged. Shots fired!

    Harris has had almost a year to reflect on her failed bid for the Oval Office – but perhaps she needs a little more time to consider her position. She became the first Democrat to lose the popular vote in a presidential election in 20 years – which may be as good a sign as any that it’s time to finally throw the towel in…

  • Javier Milei wins on chainsaw-slashing reforms

    Javier Milei wins on chainsaw-slashing reforms

    Javier Milei, Argentina’s self styled “anarcho-capitalist” President, defied pessimistic poll predictions on Sunday to win in the midterm elections and save his radical economic reforms.

    With almost all the votes counted, Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party had won nearly 41 percent of the national vote, while the main left-wing Peronist opposition Fuerza Patria party netted just over 31 percent. 

    Up for grabs in the election were 127 of the 257 seats in the lower house of Congress, and 24 out of 72 seats in the upper house Senate. The LLA won 64 lower house seats and 12 in the Senate, enough for Milei to overcome an opposition veto against his most radical measures.

    Although the opposition retains ultimate congressional control, the triumph will come as a huge relief to the Trump administration in Washington, which had thrown a controversial $40 billion lifeline to Milei to prop up the falling Argentine peso and rescue Trump’s ideological soulmate. The US President congratulated Milei on Truth Social, writing that Milei was “doing a wonderful job” and that his “Landslide victory” justified his confidence in his Argentine ally.

    The chainsaw-wielding Argentine President, who once led a Rolling Stones tribute band, literally sang that he was “king of a lost world” at a victory rally in a Buenos Aires hotel, and vowed that his win would enable him to complete his mission to “make Argentina great again.”

    Using Trump’s favorite slogan underlines the debt that Milei owes to the American President, who had threatened to withdraw the aid package to Argentina if Milei lost the elections.

    Bond markets had piled pressure on the peso causing a run on the currency and forcing the country to dangerously dip into its dollar reserves after Milei lost local elections last month in Buenos Aires province – where 40 percent of the country’s population live.

    Milei’s cost- and job-cutting program has already succeeded in reducing Argentina’s inflation rate from 200 percent in 2023 when he took office, to around 30 percent in September. He had slashed tens of thousands of jobs in the country’s bloated state sector and merged overlapping ministries, but the cost of living remains high for ordinary poorer Argentines. The pain of his program, coupled with corruption allegations against Milei’s powerful sister Karina, had hit the President’s popularity. Investors feared that his reforms would be brought to a juddering halt.

    Now markets should feel reassured, especially as Milei has pledged that the most painful part of his program is over, and that the country will now begin to feel its benefits. Milei told supporters at his party HQ that Argentina had turned its back on “a century of decadence” and voted to continue along the path of “freedom, progress and growth.”

    Milei will still need the support of smaller conservative and centrist parties to push his reforms through Congress. Former President Mauricio Macri, the leader of the Republican Proposal party (PRO), said Milei could count on his backing.

    Another former president, the Peronist chief Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, appeared on the balcony of the apartment where she is under house arrest over corruption charges and blew kisses at her supporters. However, she stayed silent on her party’s loss in Buenos Aires last month.

    Observers await the markets’ verdict on Milei’s triumph when they open on Monday, though most analysts expect the peso to recover sharply and regain much of the ground lost in its recent falls.

  • Trump’s Pfizer deal will increase drug costs

    Trump’s Pfizer deal will increase drug costs

    President Donald Trump’s new partnership with Pfizer to sell drugs directly to consumers is being cast as a major win for patients. He’s right about the problem: healthcare and prescription drugs cost too much.

    Families are struggling, and patients often face heartbreaking choices between groceries, rent and the medicines they need. But the proposed solution isn’t tackling the root of the issue. It risks exacerbating federal government failures that created this problem.

    For starters, Pfizer is claiming that this new campaign is about lowering consumer costs. But it’s really about creating a cozy relationship with the government that nobody else can. Pfizer will gain special government profits, no-charge marketing from the most powerful voice in the world, and, perhaps most importantly, avoidance of the administration’s 100 percent section 232 tariffs on branded drug imports.

    This is good for Pfizer’s investors, but it hurts the overall market, especially for smaller competitors and many patients. Imagine what that will do to an innovative company researching and developing a better, more affordable life-saving drug. It’ll deny that company opportunity, reduce drug supply for consumers, increase drug prices and disrupt drug supply chains.

    In short, patients will pay more for worse access to critical drugs, even if the government-mandated direct-to-consumer plan does everything Pfizer and Trump say it will.
    Then there’s the simple math on how much this new relationship could, under the most optimistic scenario, save consumers. The answer is… not much.

    We spend about $5 trillion annually on healthcare. That staggering number is not just about doctors, nurses and medicines. As much as half of it – $2.5 trillion – is consumed by overhead: paperwork, compliance systems, licensing, mandates and bureaucratic red tape. Most of that has nothing to do with caring for patients, as at least 70 percent of these costs are likely wasted.

    Retail and non-retail spending on prescription drugs account for about 15 percent of overall healthcare spending, totaling around $750 billion annually. Apply the same waste factor, and you get more than $260 billion of unnecessary costs tied up in regulation and bureaucracy. That is nearly two times the entire generic drug market of $139 billion, which is less than 20 percent of spending on prescription drugs.

    So, even if the Trump-Pfizer agreement can save people 10 percent on generic drugs, it won’t make much of a difference to their bank accounts. The real financial challenges arise when more expensive, life-saving drugs are needed. And yet it’s those life-saving drugs that make up almost the entire debate surrounding the rising cost of prescription medications.

    This “deal” isn’t a solution, just like the Medicare “negotiation” or the Most Favored Nation (MFN) Executive Order “solutions” didn’t solve any real problems. They simply followed the long-held, bipartisan pattern of inserting government even more into how drugs are made.

    The path forward isn’t complicated, but it does require courage to take on Washington’s bureaucracy and other rent-seekers who want to create barriers for competition. If Trump – or others – wants to help make healthcare affordable while ensuring America remains the world’s leader in medical breakthroughs, the focus should be on deregulation.

    That means eliminating the 70 percent of healthcare costs that fail basic cost-benefit tests, resisting new price controls like MFN, streamlining FDA approvals to speed up generics and biosimilars and restoring real competition throughout the system. On the demand side, giving patients more control through No-Limit Health Savings Accounts and private direct-pay or direct-to-consumer approaches could introduce the price discipline that nearly every other market enjoys.

    America doesn’t need gimmicks or more central planning. It needs the freedom to innovate, compete and deliver care efficiently. Patients deserve a system where costs reflect value, where new drugs reach the market quickly and where politics don’t suffocate innovation.

  • Is DEI to blame for the Louvre heist?

    Is DEI to blame for the Louvre heist?

    Police in Paris have arrested two men after the “heist of the century” at the Louvre museum. According to the French press, the pair were arrested separately as they prepared to leave the country on Saturday evening; both are in their 30s and from Seine-Saint-Denis, the sprawling suburb north of Paris. As yet there is no indication that police have recovered any of the crown jewels that were stolen from the museum in seven sensational minutes last Sunday. The search for them and the two other gang members goes on.

    The 88 million euros ($102m) heist has been deeply embarrassing for France, and the fact that those responsible appear to be local villains as opposed to the international criminal masterminds that some had suggested will only further redden the Republic’s face.

    Jordan Bardella, the right-hand man of Marine Le Pen, called the robbery a “national humiliation”, as did Marion Marechal, the niece of Le Pen and a former MP in her National Rally party

    Marechal demanded that the Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, and the head of security, Dominique Buffin, be relieved of their duties. Marechal claimed they had been appointed to their positions as “part of a policy to promote women… at the cost of sacrificing competence and jeopardizing our nation’s cultural heritage.”

    There was much fanfare when Buffin was named last year as the first woman to head up the Louvre’s security. Profiling Buffin, the left-wing Le Monde claimed that she was sometimes mistaken by visitors for a gallery attendant as she went about her work in the museum. Tourists apparently couldn’t conceive that a woman was in charge of security with a staff of 1,100 under her command.

    Laurence des Cars was appointed to her post in 2021, the first woman in the 230-year history of the Louvre. Her competency has come under scrutiny this week. It was reported in the press that des Cars has invested five times less money in security than was the case between 2006 and 2008. On the other hand she has splashed out nearly half a million euros on a new dining room.

    Des Cars offered to resign in the wake of the heist but this was refused by the government. This is no surprise. Emmanuel Macron handpicked des Cars for the post of director and he has to stick by her or else his judgement might be called into question.

    Macron has been a fervent supporter of DEI, or what is known in France as the “feminization” of society. Upon his election as president of the Republic in 2017 he appointed Florence Parly the minister of the armed forces. A socialist and career civil servant, Parly had no military background.

    In March 2022, a month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, France’s top brass warned that they had enough ammunition for four days of high intensity combat. Parly left her post a few weeks later without much to show for her five years in office other than the “feminization” of the military.

    In 2019 Parly launched an initiative to increase the number of women in the armed forces and she boasted that she would “double the proportion of women among generals by 2025”.
    Her zeal encountered resistance among several senior military figures, who criticized her “political impatience”. In 2020 Parly blocked the publication of a promotion list because she was unhappy at the number of women on it.

    France’s civil service has also been subjected to similar social engineering. In 2023 a law was passed that increased the quota for female appointments to senior and executive positions from 40 percent to 50 percent. As of 2027 there will be financial penalties for non-compliance.

    This quota also applies, from January 2026, for appointments to ministerial cabinets and the cabinet of the President of the Republic.

    Earlier this week a collective called Women of the Interior bemoaned the fact in their view there aren’t enough women employed in France’s Ministry of the Interior. They also regretted that female police numbers have slightly decreased.

    Policing is not much fun in France, what with violence from Islamists, Antifa, anarchists, rioters and radical environmentalists. In 2023, there were 5,492 police officers injured in the line of duty, an average of 15 a day. Perhaps that is why numbers are down.

    France’s “feminization” has been inspired by America’s DEI, but while the Trump administration has started dismantling the dogma, France is doubling down. There was a furious response earlier this year when the US Embassy in Paris sent letters to companies requesting they drop DEI programs.

    The Ministry of Foreign Trade denounced the letters as “US interference” and proclaimed that France “will defend their companies, their consumers, but also their values”.

    One wonders if France can defend its companies better than it can its crown jewels.

  • Is Jack Carr behind the Department of War?

    Is Jack Carr behind the Department of War?

    As a Navy SEAL for 20 years, who reached the rank of Lieutenant Commander and served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jack Carr knows about warfare on an expert and visceral level.

    And as the New York Times bestselling author of The Terminal List series and writer of the Amazon hit show based on the books, starring Chris Pratt, he knows the power of words.

    He also has a tendency to succeed at whatever he turns his mind to (see the above). But, still, when he decided the Department of Defense should be renamed the Department of War, it seemed like a very tall order and he was a lone voice. Undeterred, he wrote in op-eds about how the department had lost its way and needed to refocus on warfighting by changing its name back to that it was given in 1789. He urged the vital name change in the pages of his novels, on TV and he even interviewed Pete Hegseth on his podcast just before he was appointed Secretary of Defense by Donald Trump.

    Perhaps, then, it should have come as no surprise when the President signed an executive order last month that the department was to be called the Department of War once again.

    Carr shrugs when asked if he thinks he was in any way responsible. Others believe he was, they say no one else was championing the name reversal but him.

    His latest book in The Terminal List series – Cry Havoc – is itself a throwback to another time: Vietnam in 1968. Think James Bond (but an American) as a Navy SEAL fighting the North Vietnamese at brutally close quarters and also untangling le Carré-esque spy webs in America and Europe. The weapons, the tactics, the events and even the people all feel real – which is because, almost always, they are. Carr’s research is meticulous, his storytelling white-knuckle. Gunsmoke, jungle heat and the fog of communist East Berlin drift from the page.

    In a world where Amazon has stripped James Bond of his guns and spies are either hopeless – Slow Horses – or prioritize diversity – Black Doves – over detecting and dispatching dastardly villains, Cry Havoc is a refreshing blast of undiluted 1960’s masculinity, hard drinking, carnal violence and sophisticated subterfuge.

    So, why did Carr decide to write an origin story for the father of his Terminal List character, James Reece? What did he say when he was sounded out for a position in the first Trump administration? And do his kids think he’s cool now he hangs out with Chris Pratt?

    Why did you write Cry Havoc?

    I wanted to drop an espionage thriller into the heart of the Vietnam War, specifically into the heart of Saigon. And I didn’t want to just put on some Creedence Clearwater Revival in the background, call it 1968, throw in a couple things that happened that year and then just write a normal novel. I really wanted to capture the feeling of 1968 for people who lived through it.

    And then I wanted to capture, specifically, what it felt like to be a MACV-SOG [special forces] operator in Vietnam going into Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. I had some of the guys who served in MACV-SOG on my podcast and as I got to know them I’d reach out to confirm things and get their take on what I was writing. The main thing that I wanted to do was honor them.

    It was the most research I’ve ever done, there were books everywhere, maps from the sixties, I even bought a dictionary from the sixties so I could look up words and definitions because some of those have morphed over the years. I wanted to use the terminology of the day.

    If I’m looking up a street name in Saigon – what is now Ho Chi Minh City – I need to know what it was in 1968. It certainly wasn’t what it’s called now. I had to go back to photos and I had to zoom in on grainy black and white images. It takes a lot of time to do that.

    What were your influences in writing Cry Havoc?

    I thought it was a type of story that hadn’t been told in a long time, so I went back to The Quiet American by Graham Greene, that was 1955, The Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry, that’s 1974, and The Honorable Schoolboy by John le Carré, that’s 1977. Those authors were so influential to me.

    Cry Havoc takes a skeptical view at the role the media played in shaping public opinion about the Vietnam war. Do you think reporters influenced the outcome?

    The role of the media was very interesting, specifically highlighted by the Tet Offensive, which was obviously a strategic win for the North Vietnamese but also a tactical loss for them. That was a huge turning point in the war, largely manipulated by how it came out in the reporting.

    American reporters misrepresented a little of what was happening. A lot of them were, and this is a very blanket statement, reporting from Saigon and making it look like they were out in the jungle and then going back to nice hotels for drinks in the evening and really living it up.

    This is a broad generalization, but certain people in the media at the time realized that they weren’t just reporting the news anymore, they had the power to shape the news through opinion. But up to that point, people weren’t seeing it as opinion.

    To really get to know someone, to find out what kind of person they are, you give them power. And I think that happened with certain reporters back then. They realized that they had this power, and it wasn’t just straight up reporting the news anymore. They could influence events. And of course it’s continued to go in that direction today.

    What’s the next project?

    My next book’s going to be a James Reece, but I also have my first co-written thriller that should come out in 2026. I wrote it as a screenplay and then clawed it back. I had this huge outline. I had this mood board. I had the whole thing, probably thirty pages of a PowerPoint ready to go to pitch to Hollywood. And then I was about to do it, and I decided that I was going to turn it into a book first and then option it to Hollywood.

    I spent about a year searching for a co-author, just reading other books that are out there and looking for the right person. We haven’t announced my co-author just yet. But he’s a fantastic guy and he’ll be right there on the cover with me. It’ll be a test case and hopefully people like it. It certainly works very well for James Patterson and it worked for Tom Clancy, so we’ll see.

    Do you think you were responsible for the Department of Defense being renamed the Department of War?

    I don’t know if I talked to Pete Hegseth about it, but I mentioned it multiple times when I was on Fox News after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And I put it in my book, and I wrote op-eds on it. Then lo and behold, here we go, the Department of War.

    Precision in language reflects precision in thought. And when you think about a Department of Defense, to me from a language perspective that seems more like border patrol or a means of defense, like defending a fixed position, the United States. There’s something psychological that happens when you use precise language.

    I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this could change back very easily to the Department of Defense with the new administration. As I read it, this doesn’t seem as permanent as they’re making it out to be.

    Would you ever go into politics?

    I get asked about going into politics all the time. Someone gave me a call actually in the first [Trump] administration and nothing official, but they said, “Hey, I wouldn’t be surprised if you got a nomination for Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Low Intensity Conflict.” It was just someone giving me a heads up test, testing the waters, saying they wouldn’t be surprised, not a “Hey, what would you say if.” I want to be very clear about that. Anyway, never happened.

    But I just love what I’m doing now, and this is all I ever wanted to do, other than serve my country as a SEAL.

    It seems like a horrible time to work in government. I just wouldn’t want to spend my life in this fight or flight. Constant engagement, constant getting arrows and spears thrown at you virtually all day, every day from not just every corner of the country but the world. It’s just a very, very toxic time, I think, to step into that kind of service. I’m glad mine was Iraq and Afghanistan, very basic, very primal. I was very good at it, and I don’t think I would be very good at the other. That’s not my battle space, so I’m going to continue to write and solve problems creatively on the page.

    Would you encourage your children to join the military?

    It’s tough. Our daughter is getting close to that age, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she joins. She’s worked with World War II veterans for the past five years now, taking them back to Normandy, taking them to the Netherlands, taking them to Pearl Harbor. She’s been able to hear stories of Iwo Jima and Normandy from guys who were there.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if that influenced her much more than my service or much more than anything I write or say. Talking to a 100-year-old World War II veteran that isn’t trying to convince her one way or another, but is just telling her what it was like to run off the back of that landing craft on Omaha Beach and run across this open terrain while machine gun positions and elevated positions up top or shooting down from the cliffs and what that was like. And I think that really has made an impact.

    So I will not encourage, probably, or dissuade her, she’s going to make her own decision.

    But I think in life, it’s important to listen to those callings inside, whether they work out or not. At least you don’t look back at 50 and wonder what could have happened if I’d only gone to Hollywood, what could have happened if I’d only turned in that script that’s been sitting in my drawer here for the last 30 years if I’d only worked a little harder to find an agent.

    You’ve just finished filming series two of The Terminal List with Chris Pratt in Morocco. You took your family with you – just how cool do your kids think you are now?

    I’m cool for maybe a minute and a half, then I just go back to being dad and they’re completely unimpressed with any of this. My youngest son, who’s 14, was just in a tent with Chris Pratt in the Atlas Mountains having a conversation, and they’d also met at the premiere. I was cool for a brief moment and then I went straight back to being just a goofy dad.

  • Will Hamas give ‘cold peace’ a chance?

    Will Hamas give ‘cold peace’ a chance?

    Gaza was always going to be a hard lift, and it is proving to be exactly that. The two years of fighting were hard and deadly. Establishing a stable peace after the fighting ended is proving just as hard, despite the promising settlement negotiated by President Trump’s emissaries, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

    Looking forward, there is some good news and some major obstacles to success beyond Phase One of the peace deal.

    Let’s start with two pieces of very good news. First, Hamas has released all its living hostages. They are still holding some bodies of the dead, despite explicit promises to return them. Pause for a moment to consider the moral depravity of killing innocent people and then holding their bodies for ransom.

    Still, releasing the living hostages is a huge step with important strategic consequences. The humanitarian consequences are obvious. The return of loved ones is an enormous relief for their anguished families and for hundreds of thousands of supporters who marched in the streets, demanding their return, even if that meant concessions to the terrorists who held them.

    As long as Hamas held the hostages, Israel’s leaders not only faced ongoing political pressure, the country’s military had to avoid tactics that might endanger the Israeli captives. Now, with those captives returned, that constraint is removed.

    If the Netanyahu government determines Hamas is violating major elements of the ceasefire, it can use military force to punish the terror group and make its violations more costly. That’s exactly what the Israeli Air Force did earlier this week after Hamas killed two Israeli soldiers. The major constraint for the Netanyahu government now is avoiding a direct conflict with the Trump administration over Israeli retaliation.

    The other piece of good news is the sharp limitation of Iran’s role in the Middle East and especially in Gaza. For years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has lived up to its name, establishing, funding, and supporting violent, Islamist terror groups surrounding Israel. In the war that began October 7, 2023, the Jewish state rolled back those groups one by one, extinguishing the “ring of fire,” and decimating the regime in Tehran that sponsors them.

    These other, Iran-affiliated groups launched their own attacks on Israel immediately after Hamas did. Their collective goal was not only to kill Jews but to divide and overwhelm Israeli forces. They failed in that mission and were successively destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

    After dealing with this “ring of fire,” Israel launched a two-week long aerial attack on its sponsor, Iran, and especially on its program to develop nuclear weapons. US bombers completed the last phase of that attack, taking out a nuclear production site buried too deeply for Israel jets. The current program was obliterated and will take years to rebuild.

    The Trump administration did something more: it punished Iran financially. The first Trump administration had imposed serious sanctions that left Iran almost broke. The Biden administration discarded that successful program and allowed Tehran to sell oil freely and pocket billions of dollars, some of it used to fund terror groups across the region. The second Trump administration re-imposed – and rigorously enforced – the sanctions against the Mullahs and their Revolutionary Guard.

    The Iranian regime still has enough money to pay for repression and cooptation at home, but it doesn’t have enough to fund the resurgence of its terror networks across the Middle East. Although those groups will try to rebuild, they will have to do so without the financial and material support Iran has long provided.

    The good news, then, is that Iran has been reined in and Phase One peace settlement in Gaza signed. There is still more good news in the support of that Gaza deal by so many Muslim-majority nations.

    The bad news is that governing Gaza and ensuring peace there will be extremely hard.

    No one expects Gaza (or the West Bank, for that matter) to establish a stable, comprehensive peace with Israel. The enmity is too great, the Islamist resistance too strong. A more realistic outcome would be one that simply allowed the residents of Gaza to live their lives in peace, no longer dominated by Hamas and other terror groups or by corrupt leaders who steal the humanitarian aid to enrich themselves and strengthen their political hold on the area. That modest aim would mean a “cold peace,” at best, like Israel’s current arrangements with Egypt and Jordan, not a warmer one envisioned by the Abraham Accords with the Gulf States.

    There are three obstacles to achieving even that modest goal in Gaza:

    1. Hamas has already come out of its hiding places and started killing local opponents in Gaza. Hamas has executed over 100 locals since the ceasefire. They have done the killings publicly as a show of force, designed to intimidate everyone in Gaza.

    2. Hamas is working hard to ensure it plays a major role in Gaza’s governance and could make up half of the so-called “technocratic” commission that will govern the area. The other half will be members of the Palestinian Authority. The PA is non-democratic, corrupt to its core, and happy to reward families of terrorists killed in attacks on Israel. It is a sick joke to call members of these groups “apolitical technocrats.”

    3. Two of the outside powers involved in Gaza’s post-war governance and reconstruction are regimes that routinely support Islamist attacks on Israel. Giving Turkey and Qatar a
    large role in post-war Gaza is a major error by the Trump administration and will have lasting consequences. Neither country has positive relations with Israel and can hardly be expected to encourage Gazans to seek one, either.

    These three obstacles amount to one overriding problem. The proposed governing arrangements for Gaza are weak protection against the resurgence of Islamist factions there.

    Put differently, the problem of rebuilding Gaza is not just one of establishing a stable government and paying billions for reconstruction, hard as those tasks are. It is also preventing Hamas and other Islamist factions from regaining control, stamping out peaceful opponents, and continuing to dominate the educational system and educate children in Jew-hatred.

    Those groups will seek to regroup and resume their decades-old terror struggle against the Jewish state. The big questions are whether they will succeed and whether the turmoil in Gaza will limit the great counter-movement for peace and cooperation: the Abraham Accords.

  • Will Trump meet ‘Little Rocket Man?’

    Will Trump meet ‘Little Rocket Man?’

    As President Trump sets off on his East Asian tour, all eyes will be on the bilateral summits that the US president will hold. After all, Trump has made no secret of his preference for tête-à-têtes over multilateralism. With a meeting with Xi Jinping scheduled in South Korea, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, the question of whether Trump will meet Little Rocket Man is unsurprisingly pervading, not least given how few details have been revealed as to Trump’s agenda.

    Although such a meeting, whether at the Demilitarized Zone or otherwise, seems unlikely at a time when US-North Korea relations are poor, nothing can be ruled out. Nevertheless, whilst the first Trump administration taught the world to expect the unexpected, Trump 2.0 is hardly the same beast.

    Back in 2017, Trump and Kim Jong-un were engaged in an escalatory war of words, threatening “fire and fury” if “Little Rocket Man” continued his “suicide mission” of developing and testing nuclear and missile technology. In response, North Korea insulted Trump as a “dotard”, referring to Trump’s “impaired intellect or understanding in old age.”

    The next two years, however, would see Trump and Kim pose for photographers in Singapore, Hanoi and at the Demilitarized Zone. The latter, held on June 30, 2019, even caught North Korea off guard. A day before he planned to visit Seoul to discuss how to revive denuclearization talks, following the failed Hanoi Summit in February, Trump tweeted that he wanted an impromptu meeting with Kim at the inter-Korean border “to say hello”. The North Koreans deemed the proposal to be “interesting,” but much like the rest of the world, were confused. An hour-long meeting happened, and Trump became the first incumbent US president to enter North Korean territory.

    By the end of 2019, however, Washington’s relations with Pyongyang had made little concrete progress despite three presidential summits in two years. North Korea only continued to accelerate its treasured nuclear development, and Pyongyang’s willingness to negotiate with Washington plummeted during the four years of neglect by Biden, for whom Pyongyang was hardly a priority. When Trump entered the Oval Office for the second time in January 2025, North Korea had bonded with what Kim Jong-un called its invincible ally, namely, Russia.

    Could we see a repetition of the 2019 DMZ summit this week? The answer is perhaps. The second Trump administration faces global challenges that are hardly the same as those into which Trump was thrown in 2017. The North Korea problem is now not limited to a rogue state seeking to bolster its own nuclear capabilities but doing so in close security cooperation with Russia during a global war, all the while China knowingly turns a blind eye. What is more, whilst the first Trump administration saw core teams of senior officials responsible for preparing and negotiating with Pyongyang, in Trump 2.0, any talks with Kim look to be much more the product of Trump’s own desires.

    Pyongyang’s supply of artillery, missiles and manpower to Moscow to assist Putin’s war, in exchange for financial and technological assistance, could see Kim Jong-un rebuff any overtures by Trump. Nevertheless, Kim craves status and legitimacy, whilst having no intention of denuclearizing. In September, he stressed how North Korea would “never ever” abandon its nuclear weapons, and only earlier this week, Pyongyang tested several hypersonic missiles of what it deemed to be a new system able to engulf South Korean defenses. A spontaneous Kim-Trump summit wherein the North Korean leader refuses to offer any nuclear concessions and is not expected to do so by the United States would be a victory for Kim.

    Whilst Trump’s East Asian sojourn will conclude with the APEC Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, the multilateral forum risks being overshadowed by his bilateral meeting with Xi, the day before. At the same time, other East Asian leaders cannot rest on their laurels as they prepare to meet the US president. For the newly elected Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi – a staunch conservative – and her South Korean counterpart, the left-wing Lee Jae-myung, the next week will prove a key test of their abilities to work with their ironclad ally. They will need to manage Trump’s penchant for personalistic politics deftly and adapt to his unconventional style. At the same time, they must ensure that the interests of Washington’s Northeast Asian allies are not sidelined amidst difficult discussions on tariffs. Strengthening deterrence is more important than ever.

    At a time when East Asia faces an ever-increasing range of isolated and connected security threats, not least from North Korea, China and Russia, the West has a difficult challenge ahead. Nevertheless, even in the unlikely event that Trump and Kim do meet, we must be realistic in our expectations. North Korea will do anything but denuclearize.

  • Will SCOTUS strip seats from Democrats?

    Will SCOTUS strip seats from Democrats?

    The headwinds facing Democrats in Congress have been blowing powerfully for some time now. On culture, the economy, law enforcement and immigration the party is on the defensive as it casts about not only for a winning message, but leaders able to persuade the public the party remains relevant in the age of Trump.

    Add to that list of hurdles the Supreme Court.

    The court’s conservative majority has delivered one blow after another to treasured progressive causes including transgender rights, maintaining the federal workforce and presidential authority. Now the court is contemplating changes to the Voting Rights Act that could, if carried out, cause Democrats to lose a dozen or more seats in the House, all of them held by minorities.

    Further losses for House Democrats couldn’t come at a less opportune time. While the Republican House majority is razor thin, Democrats have yet to hit on a theme that could plausibly drive a campaign to take back control. Off year elections typically favor the party out of power, but with opinion polls showing historically low ratings for Democrats nationally, the picture is bleak.

    That is why the case before the Supreme Court is so problematic for Democrats. During oral arguments Oct. 15, Republican appointed justices seemed to suggest they were open to restricting and perhaps even ending a provision of the Voting Rights Act that permits state legislatures to consider race when drawing up congressional districts. It’s not at all clear that the court, if it decides to strike down or dramatically change the law, will issue a ruling in time for next year’s congressional elections, though the possibility cannot be ruled out.

    Most of the vulnerable districts are in the south. Were the court to curtail the act, some 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus, might lose their seats.

    The case, Louisiana v. Phillip Callais, centers on a redistricting battle in Louisiana following the 2020 census. Population changes forced the state Legislature to redraw the state’s seven congressional districts to ensure that the state’s voters were evenly distributed among them. A group of black voters challenged the plan, arguing that by creating only one black majority district, the state had intentionally discriminated against African American voters, who composed one third of the state’s residents.

    A federal district court judge agreed and in response, Republican leaders preemptively came up with a new plan that created a second black majority district while at the same time protecting the seats of House Speaker Mike Johnson and majority leader Steve Scalise, both Republicans.
    Deploying a dash of Constitutional finesse, the Republican authors of the new map declared that even though they had created the state’s second black majority district, the primary goal was not to redress a racial injustice, but rather to insure the Republicans’ advantage in the upcoming congressional elections. In the abstruse and often murky precincts of Constitutional law, the Republican map drawers seemed to be creating a defense against a line of attack that they had impermissibly used race in their redistricting plan.

    It didn’t work. A group of white voters sued, alleging the map breached the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment by engaging in racial stereotyping to design the district, and they asked the court to throw out the redistricting plan.

    During oral arguments, the court’s conservative justices appeared open to the idea of restricting or perhaps even overturning section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which in broad terms restrains state legislatures from engaging in the practice of racial gerrymandering, or intentionally distributing minority voters among multiple districts in a way that leaves them short of a majority.

    Over time, the Supreme Court has interpreted the law to mean that state legislatures may consider race among a number of other factors, including incumbent protection and geographic consistency, so long as the purpose of the plan is to remedy past discrimination.

    Justice Brett Kavanaugh queried Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who argued in favor of keeping the second black majority district, on whether section 2 ought to be time limited in some way. The implication of course was that maybe the time had come to end the practice.

    “As you know… this court’s cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but that they should not be indefinite and should have an end point,” Kavanaugh said. “And what exactly do you think the end point should be or how would we know for the intentional use of race to create district.”

    Later in the hearing, Justice Neil Gorsuch pointedly asked whether creating a black majority district would require that a state intentionally discriminate on the basis of race by excluding white voters.

    At another point, Justice Samuel Alito seemed to imply that apportioning white or black voters from one district to another might not have anything to do with racial stereotyping but rather the result of partisan politics, since in many jurisdictions whites overwhelmingly vote Republican while blacks vote largely for Democratic candidates.

    Under those circumstances, what might look like racial stereotyping instead is simply one party or another seeking to pack a district with their voters.

    “If it happens to be that people of one race or another race overwhelmingly prefer one of the political parties, does that transform the situation into racial voting, or is that just partisan voting?” Alito asked.

    Gerrymandering, the practice of creating congressional districts to capture certain voting blocks and gain partisan advantage, dates back to former Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, an early master of the art. In 1814, Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, signed off on a redistricting plan with a state legislative district so misshapen that critics said it resembled a salamander. It wasn’t long after that “gerrymandering” entered the political lexicon.

    The Supreme Court has periodically weighed in on the practice, usually giving great deference to state legislature. In the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause, it even declared that there was no role for federal courts in restricting or controlling most gerrymandering disputes, since it was fundamentally a political function and a prerogative of state legislatures.

    The court, however, has from time to time stepped into redistricting disputes that involve racial discrimination and that are brought under the Voting Rights Act. After the 2020 Census, when South Carolina state legislators redrew the boundary lines of Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace’s coastal district and removed about 30,000 black voters to make it more reliably Republican, the court upheld the new map saying the challengers had not proven that race was a predominant factor.

    The Supreme Court agreed that the redesigned district’s purpose was to maximize Republican votes, not exclude blacks.

    Earlier, in a 2013 opinion, chief justice John Roberts, wrote the court’s majority opinion overturning section 5 of the voting rights act, which required certain states with a history of discriminatory behavior to get preapproval from the Justice Department for changes to voting procedures.

    Each decision marked an incremental change, but the overall effect has been to ratchet back judicial oversight of elections. If the Supreme Court curtails or eliminates section 2 of the voting rights act, the effect will be to further diminish the federal role.


  • Did the billionaire Binance bro pay for his pardon?

    Did the billionaire Binance bro pay for his pardon?

    “Better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Those were the words of Changpeng Zhao – the billionaire founder of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange – when dismissing the need for anti–money laundering safeguards. This week, his strategy proved both vatic and effective. Zhao, better known as “CZ,” received a presidential pardon for the money laundering charge to which he pleaded guilty in 2023.

    Just a year ago, CZ was sentenced to four months in prison and Binance issued a colossal $4.3 billion fine after U.S. authorities found the exchange guilty of financial malpractice on a global scale. Yet its founder’s contrition was short-lived.

    “No felon would mind a pardon,” Zhao wrote on X back in March, noting he was the only person in U.S. history jailed “for a single [Bank Secrecy Act] charge.”

    His lawyer, former SEC attorney Teresa Goody Guillén, has since echoed the line, describing it as “a single charge of failure to have an effective compliance program. NO fraud, NO victims, NO criminal history. NO money laundering.”

    That defence glosses over a staggering record of malpractice. Binance’s plea agreement with the DOJ states that between 2018 and 2022, the exchange enabled at least 1.1 million illegal transactions, worth nearly $900 million, between U.S. users and Iranian entities under sanctions.

    Internally, Binance executives worked to obscure those violations. When high-value clients were flagged, they were told to create new accounts with non-U.S. identification. One senior compliance officer summed up the company’s attitude in an internal chat: “We need a banner – ‘Is washing drug money too hard these days? Come to Binance, we got cake for you.’”

    Between 2017 and 2022, Binance handled $106 million in transfers from Hydra, the Russian dark-web marketplace used for drug trafficking and identity fraud. The exchange was also implicated in laundering funds for North Korea’s Lazarus Group, whose cyberattacks bankroll the regime’s nuclear programme. IRS investigators also found transactions linked to “Welcome to Video”, one of the most depraved child-abuse networks in history.

    Given the scale and severity of the conduct at Binance under CZ’s watch, one glaring question emerges: why was the exchange’s criminal founder even considered for a pardon?

    President Trump, when posed this exact question on Thursday, replied vaguely: “I don’t know, he was recommended by a lot of people… A lot of people say he wasn’t guilty of anything, and so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”

    That explanation satisfied few. Former Labour Secretary Robert Reich called it “the latest example of Trump’s Pay-to-Pardon scheme.” Even Trump allies were appalled: Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale said the decision “makes it look like massive fraud is happening around him in this area.”

    The crypto lobby’s influence looms large in the background. During the 2024 elections, the industry’s Super PAC Fairshake amassed a warchest of hundreds of millions to back pro-crypto candidates. Their investment has paid handsome dividends: as well as issuing pardons to the founders of the BitMEX exchange, and the founder of the illicit marketplace Silk Road, the Trump administration has also fired SEC chair Gary Gensler and dropped a large number of prominent investigations into industry fraud.

    As well as being major financial backers of political campaigns, crypto giants such as Ripple, Tether and Coinbase, and prominent industry leaders such as the Winklevoss twins, are also among the donors contributing to Trump’s new White House ballroom project.

    Speculation has also been rife around whether Binance’s own business dealings may have influenced the decision to pardon Zhao. The firm is linked to World Liberty Financial: the crypto project launched by Trump and his sons, the latter currently running it alongside the son of Trump’s Middle East advisor, Zach Witkoff.

    Earlier this year, the UAE – where CZ lives – announced it would be purchasing a stake in Binance worth $2 billion, with the funds being paid in World Liberty Financial’s $USD1 stablecoin. This figure accounts for the vast majority of all the $USD1 stablecoins in existence.

    As the digital currency is backed by treasury bills, the project receives interest for as long as the tokens are held by Binance and not cashed in. Some estimates put the amount of interest the Trump family project will receive in the region of $60-80 million annually.

    Given this web of financial entanglements, it is little wonder critics see CZ’s pardon as just the latest example of the commodification of justice under this administration. All eyes are now on who might be next in line to receive clemency, with the odds of Sam Bankman-Fried – the convicted FTX fraudster – skyrocketing.

    And with get out of jail free cards now seemingly available to those with enough cash, the chances that criminals will feel more emboldened to act than ever before are rising too.

  • Trump’s World Series wind-up

    Trump’s World Series wind-up

    It’s thanks to good old Yankee bravado that baseball’s most important fixture is called the “World Series,” even though it’s a thoroughly North American affair.

    Yet Major League Baseball, like the National Hockey League, is not restricted to the US – Canada joins in, too. Tonight, for instance, the Toronto Blue Jays will compete against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first game of what should be a thrilling World Series, and the now-familiar Canadian-American sporting rivalry has been given added spice thanks to a certain man who happens to be President of the United States.

    Last night, Donald Trump, who relishes abrupt announcements, abruptly announced that he was suspending trade negotiations with Canada. The reason? He was deeply annoyed by a television advertisement, paid for by the Province of Ontario, which replayed some old footage of Ronald Reagan condemning tariffs as a recipe for economic catastrophe.

    “TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A.,” Trump replied on his Truth Social platform. “Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.”

    In another post, Trump declared that the ad was fraudulent. He said it had been broadcast in order “to interfere with the decision of the US Supreme Court,” which is currently pondering a big legal challenge to the President’s tariff agenda.

    The advert has clearly been troubling him since at least Tuesday, when he said “I see foreign countries now, that we are doing really well with, taking ads ‘Don’t go with tariffs!’ They’re taking ads. I saw an ad last night from Canada. If I was Canada, I’d take the same ad also.”

    It’s always hard to tell if Trump is ever truly enraged or merely playing mind games for headlines and leverage. But he seems oddly determined to wind up America’s second biggest trading partner – and neighbor. He has said, repeatedly, that he thinks Canada should become America’s 51st state, and his blustering on that front helped Mark Carney, the impeccably globalist former governor of the Bank of England, win an election and become the country’s prime minister. Carney’s victory was widely put down to the “Trumplash,” the global reaction to the Donald’s obnoxious tariff agenda.

    But the relationship between the United States (the superpower) and Canada (its more European neighbor) is more intimate and complicated than mere policy. Trump’s dismantling of NAFTA – the free trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico – and his replacing it with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is one of the important and under-discussed aspects of his two-terms as Commander-in-Chief. USMCA is still mostly in effect, despite Trump’s tariffs on Canadian steel, automobile parts and lumber.

    Will Trump continue to use tariffs as a tool in his push for full annexation? Or is he just toying with the sporting hype around the World Series? We’ll probably never know. The Dodgers are favorites to win, by the way, and – despite what Sean Thomas says about American sports – I think we should all tune in.