Inside Scoop: Trump vs. courts, Golden State rising, and Hollywood bailout Inside Scoop: Trump vs. courts, Golden State rising, and Hollywood bailout Amy DeLaura This week’s Inside Scoop covers President Donald Trump's clash with the courts over his immigration policies and executive power. Jim Antle, the executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine, brings the pages of the magazine to life with exclusive insight from the articles' authors.
Antle analyzes the cover story by Daniel Ross Goodman, "Trump vs. the courts: Lessons from an unlikely source." Trump has been criticizing the courts for hindering his efforts to deport allegedly dangerous people who have entered the country illegally.
“We have thousands of people, some murderers, some drug dealers, and some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth,” Trump said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. “We'd have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials. I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it.”
Trump could learn how to challenge the judiciary from an unlikely source: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt struggled with the courts when he wanted to pass a series of bills to get the country out of the Great Depression. He tried to pack the courts to pass his New Deal. While court-packing did not work, Roosevelt was able to use his political popularity to battle the courts. The courts often defer to public opinion. While Roosevelt used his power to build up the administrative state, Trump can look toward Roosevelt’s strategy in order to tear the administrative state down. 
Next, Antle is joined by Barnini Chakraborty, who wrote about California's shift away from progressive policies and the effects in San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. Proposition 47, which decriminalized theft and drug possession, led to increased crime and worried people living in and visiting California. Residents became fed up and passed Proposition 36, which rolled back some of these policies, this year.
“I didn't think I would see it so quickly,” Chakraborty said. “I went to San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. I was shocked at just how much change had occurred by rolling back just a few progressive policies.”
She saw cleaner streets, the return of retail stores, and more people comfortably walking outside. Chakraborty said she believes it will take time for California to return to being a popular tourist destination. Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D-CA) recent push to "take back the streets" and clear homeless encampments could show people that the Golden State is trying to take a step in the right direction and fix the quality-of-life problems. This more politically centrist-leaning approach comes just in time for the California governor to make a move for a 2028 presidential run.
Finally, Zachary Faria wrote that Hollywood doesn’t deserve a tariff bailout. Trump’s obsession with tariffs is partly driven by a desire to restore industries to American communities. It is cheaper to fly people around the world for productions than to shoot in Hollywood. Trump announced a 100% tariff on foreign films, hoping to bring those filmmaking jobs back to the United States. He sees it as a sort of Hollywood tariff bailout.
INSIDE SCOOP: ELON’S EXIT, PETE’S PENTAGON PROBLEMS, AND AFTER 100 DAYS, CAN TRUMP STILL BLAME BIDEN?
Faria argues that with Tinseltown cranking out biased content that creates box office flops, maybe Hollywood doesn't deserve a bailout. At least not while it's producing unapologetically left-leaning content nobody seems to want to watch.
Tune in each week at washingtonexaminer.com and across all our social media platforms to go behind the headlines in the Washington Examiner’s new show, Inside Scoop.
Resistance media can’t handle the truth Resistance media can’t handle the truth Hugo Gurdon President Donald Trump wants to boost domestic manufacturing, but one sector has already massively increased output — of bogus news stories by hostile and biased media.
High productivity of superficial, misleading, and hostile “news” has always characterized Trump’s 10 years in politics. But it’s worth examining afresh because the 2024 election briefly encouraged hope that media shock might stop the news rot.
“Resistance” news outlets might have noted widespread revulsion at their maxim, “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a story,” and repented. But after a couple of months’ dismay that people prefer Republicans to run Washington, quiescent news organizations have rededicated themselves to “enterprise” stories — spinning thin and speculative yarns rather than telling people what’s happening.
When Trump appeared on NBC News’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, the big story was him responding, “I don’t know,” after Welker asked, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution?”
This was amid discussion of illegal immigrants’ due process rights. Trump noted the difficulty of giving millions of illegal migrants court hearings, which would be used to stall their deportation — “a million or 2 million or 3 million trials.” It would take centuries, and Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama weren’t similarly hobbled. Trump told Welker he’d rely on White House lawyers to interpret Supreme Court rulings.
Welker: “Your secretary of state says everyone who’s here, citizens and noncitizens, deserve due process. Do you agree, Mr. President?”
Trump: “I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know. ... I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it.”
Welker: “But even given those numbers that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution ...”
Trump: “I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers ... and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said. They have a different interpretation.”
So Trump would follow Supreme Court rulings — i.e., uphold the Constitution — but his lawyers don’t think the court agrees with Welker’s implication that this means illegal immigrants get millions of trials. In short, there is debate about what process is their due.
A news outlet seeking to inform viewers rather than generate gasps of disbelief might follow up, “Mr. President, to be clear, are you saying you don’t know if due process requires court hearings for each illegal immigrant, or that you don’t know if you should uphold the Constitution?”
That was never going to happen. Instead, NBC and Welker thought, “Gotcha!” and ignited days of outrage from those who make a living being outraged over Trump, accusing him of not respecting and planning to break the Constitution.
TROUBLE AT THE NORTHERN BORDER 
The response of the ineffable Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was typical. He commented on X that our “un-American” president “admitted” he didn’t know if he should uphold the Constitution. No, no, he really didn’t.
Trump invites this sort of disingenuousness sometimes by deliberately goading the Left, sometimes by speaking without lawyerly precision and care despite knowing their malevolence and cynicism. But the news media also have a responsibility to find out what is true rather than feed their appetite to be baited. They want what stirs people up, not what is real.
Trump might not want to seek a third term even if he could Trump might not want to seek a third term even if he could Joshua Spivak It wasn’t just George Washington that made third terms rare — presidents and governors wear out their welcome.
It’s a timely matter since President Donald Trump regularly raises the possibility of another White House term despite the seemingly impenetrable barrier of the 22nd Amendment. His supporters have also bandied about theoretical workarounds to the constitutional prohibition and promoted the idea through online merch, such as the MAGA red "Trump 2028" hat.
Trump may be the first president since the ratification of the 22nd Amendment to discuss extending his executive stay openly. But almost all two-term presidents had acolytes suggest that a third term would be a great thing. Even today, former President Barack Obama is being suggested as a candidate to take on Trump in a theoretical two-way, third-term rematch.
But there’s another way to look at the historical landscape. The 22nd Amendment may not be the only hurdle for a third presidential term. History suggests that presidents and even state executives are significantly weakened by the time they seek a third term.
There were attempts for that elusive third term before the 22nd Amendment’s ratification in 1951, nearly six years after the death of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected four times. Surprisingly, it didn’t come up that often because serving two terms was unusual for a long period in U.S. history.
While five of the first seven presidents received two terms, in the 114 years between former President Andrew Jackson and the 22nd Amendment’s ratification, only four presidents managed to serve two full terms. The other two, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman, spent more than one and a half terms due to the death of the presidents under whom they were vice president. Each of those six either ran or flirted with a third term.
The first, former President Ulysses S. Grant, did not seek reelection in 1876 to his party’s relief. But in 1880, he sought and failed in a quest for the Republican nomination for the presidency.
The next was former President Grover Cleveland, who, before Trump, was the first president to hold the office for nonconsecutive terms (1885-89 and 1893-97). But, perhaps in a prelude to Trump’s sagging second-term approval ratings, Cleveland’s return engagement in Washington, D.C., was a rough go. A month before Cleveland’s second presidency began, the Panic of 1893 sparked a severe national depression. Severe labor unrest, intra-Democratic Party fights over currency based on gold or silver, and deep political divides of U.S. expansion abroad added to his political headaches. After departing the White House a second time, Cleveland, having lost all influence among Democrats, was recruited for an opportunity to run for a third term as the standard-bearer of a third party. But he turned it down.
Theodore Roosevelt only won one term (he filled out almost four years of former President William McKinley’s abbreviated term after the president’s assassination). But in 1912, after nearly four years as a private citizen, Republicans at the party’s national convention in Chicago rejected his comeback bid — even though he demonstrated residual support among rank-and-file GOP voters by winning 9 out of 13 GOP primaries over former President William Howard Taft, his onetime hand-picked successor on whom he soured.
He instead ran the most successful third-party candidacy but still finished a distant second in the general election. He also failed to get the GOP nomination in 1916.
The weakened former President Woodrow Wilson appeared to have wanted a third term, but the Democrats rejected him in 1920, right before the party received the largest trouncing in U.S. history. And Truman, the last president to have a chance to seek his party’s nomination before the 22nd Amendment took effect, quickly turned down the opportunity after his supporters put up a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary in 1952.
This leads to the one exception — FDR won two extra terms. Notably, he came into office following the Great Depression and ran for his third term as the world descended into war. However, even under those circumstances, his 1940 effort engendered huge opposition from Democrats. But perhaps more important, there was pushback from voters. FDR did significantly worse in his third and fourth runs. In 1940, his vote total dropped 6% from 1936, then dropped another point in his fourth try in 1944. At least some of FDR’s multitude of supporters started tiring of him, even if not enough to lose the race.
The vote fall-off was a major departure from most presidential reelection runs, where the general rule is “do better or get out.” Only three times — former Presidents James Madison and Andrew Jackson, before all the states had popular vote, and Obama — has a president managed to fare worse in the popular vote in a reelection and still won the race. Only Madison, Obama, and Wilson managed to put up worse numbers in the Electoral College.
But perhaps there is an even more striking recent stat that draws out this fact. In the pre-Trump and pre-COVID-19 era, from 1952-2016, the party seeking a second straight term in office has been very successful, going 7-1, with only former President Jimmy Carter falling in a reelection run. However, anytime the party looked to extend the term for a third or further term since 1952, it has proven to be astonishingly unsuccessful. In 10 attempts, only former President George H.W. Bush won, succeeding former President Ronald Reagan, under whom he was vice president for eight years. Bush followed that up in 1992, with the lowest vote percentage of a major-party candidate since the only real three-party race in 1912.
Opposition to third terms may also be evident in gubernatorial races. It is not an exact match, as most states bar a third straight term (37 states, with nine of them banning any third term, and Virginia limiting governors to a single one before having to sit out for four years and try a comeback). Most governors run in midterm elections, where they face national environments quite different from a presidential election year.
Perhaps most useful to consider is that this group of governors is self-selecting. Truly unpopular governors likely would not attempt a third term. Since 1990, 38 governors have been able to run for a third full consecutive four-year term. Twenty-one did not choose this route, and 17 governors ran (New Hampshire and Vermont have two-year terms and are excluded). Of those, 14 won, but 10 times, the vote total in favor of the governor dropped from the previous election. Additionally, seven former governors ran after serving two full terms and then sitting out one or more terms from the office. In the case of former California Gov. Jerry Brown, he ran 28 years later. The reboots saw four wins and three losses, most recently former Maine Gov. Paul LePage in 2022.
This may suggest that governors retain an advantage, but unlike in reelections, they are likely to see support bleed off by the time they get to their third term. We may get a chance to test this further, as at least three Democratic governors who are possible 2028 presidential candidates, including Govs. JB Pritzker (D-IL), Tim Walz (D-MN), and Tony Evers (D-WI), are considering running for third terms in 2026 before any national race.
Right now, the talk of a 2028 run is just that. In a May 4 Meet the Press interview on NBC, Trump pulled back a bit by suggesting he won’t run.
THE NEW RIGHT: THE ISSUES, THE MAJOR PLAYERS, AND ITS FUTURE
We have a long 3 1/2 years ahead of us. Trump’s past third-term musing could just be trolling and a way to retain relevance and stave off the lame-duck blues. Though since Trump has been flirting with the idea since very early on, there may be good reason to think he is serious and might change his mind again.
But it may not be just the law that stops a third-term run. History shows that voters grow weary of presidents, executives, and one-party rule.  
Joshua Spivak is a senior research fellow at UC Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center and a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institution for Government Reform at Wagner College. He is the author of Recall Elections: From Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Newsom.
The meme coin-operated White House The meme coin-operated White House Timothy P. Carney On May 5, millionaires, billionaires, and CEOs shelled out a reported $1.5 million per plate to dine with President Donald Trump. The proceeds from the night went to a political action committee controlled by Trump.
It sure looked like wealthy people and businessmen paid for access to the president, who wields great power over the taxes they pay, the regulations they follow, and the subsidies and contracts they receive. If it was corrupt, though, it was almost ordinary corruption for the United States.
Johnny Chung, a major Chinese donor to former President Bill Clinton, described the arrangement.
"I see the White House like a subway: you have to put in coins to open the gates," he said.
But there's a new kind of turnstile in Washington, D.C., and it will be on display later this month. Trump and his private club are hosting another dinner for big spenders — cryptocurrency investors. However, there is an important difference between the two events. While the May 5 guests paid their admission to a PAC, the May 22 guests will gain admission by personally enriching Trump.
Specifically, the May 22 dinner is for the top 220 owners of Trump’s cryptocurrency.
Both events may be corrupt, but, to adapt P.J. O’Rourke’s phrase, Trump's PAC dinner was corrupt within normal parameters.
Unfortunately, selling access to power to fill political coffers is normal for U.S. presidents. Selling access to power to enrich yourself and your family is typically reserved for third-world governments or Cook County, Illinois.
Here’s how the whole crypto arrangement works:
After winning the election in 2024, Trump launched his coin, which has the ticker symbol $TRUMP.
Nobody believes $TRUMP has any underlying value. It’s not really a currency. It's typically called a "meme coin" because, like an internet meme, it's a bit of a joke. Owning it is essentially a way to signal allegiance or membership in some clique.
Owning a meme coin is like owning collectible artwork — it’s only worth as much as the next buyer is willing to pay for it. Similar to the artwork of former first son Hunter Biden, it's safe to suspect that the people buying Trump's coin may be doing so because it is a legal way to funnel money to someone who can make policy that helps them.
But Trump hawking his coin is notably different than Biden hawking bad paintings.
First, the art sales enriched the president’s son, while the crypto sales enriched the president.
Second, the economic arrangement of the Trump coin is a bit more complex. Trump isn’t exactly selling the coins directly, like one might sell their home or stocks. Trump is more like a real estate agent or stockbroker who profits from the sale.
Trump owns a company called CIC Digital, which makes money any time someone buys or sells $TRUMP.
When he announced in April that he was hosting a dinner for the 220 biggest owners of his coin, the price shot up. More importantly for Trump, lots of people bought up the coin — more trading volume means more money for Trump — about $1.25 million in a week, according to a Washington Post analysis.
These people paid Trump for access to Trump. Some of them are surely wealthy Trump supporters who mostly want to be in the same room with him. But some of them are folks who have or want to have business before the federal government — lobbyists, government contractors, or agents of foreign governments.
An analysis by Bloomberg News said the recent buyers of $TRUMP are mostly foreigners.
Are they Pakistanis or Indians hoping to win his favor in their recent hot war? Are they Russians or Ukrainians? Are they Chinese officials or executives seeking the same sort of reprieve from sanctions that Trump has given TikTok?
It’s likely that some of this pay-to-play action will work, given what we know about Trump. First, there are the favors Trump is willing to do for his friends. Consider how he did an about-face on the TikTok ban because TikTok investor Jeff Yass was his supporter, or when he agreed to extradite a Chinese dissident to please a friend who wanted to open a casino in China.
DEMOCRATS TO INTRODUCE BILL BANNING TRUMP AND LAWMAKERS FROM SPONSORING CRYPTO COINS
Also, consider all the quid-pro-quo, pay-to-play operatives who received clemency or prosecutorial favors from Trump: Rod Blagojevich, Paul Manafort, Elliot Broidy, Kwame Kilpatrick, and Duke Cunningham, to name a few.
Trump is setting up turnstiles around Mar-a-Lago's banquet rooms, and special interests are happily paying the fare.
Walkable to what? Walkable to what? Timothy P. Carney “Walkability” is a buzzword, but like the related term “urbanism,” nobody can agree on what it means.
Is a neighborhood walkable simply if it’s easy to walk around? Or is it only walkable if all the amenities of daily and weekly life are within a mile of your house?
Plenty of websites and nonprofit organizations issue “walkability scores,” which ought to include sidewalks, crosswalks, trails, and speed limits. But should it also include parks, schools, creeks, and woods — or mostly cafes and cocktail bars?
That is, when we think of the people walking, do we include children?
Urbanism is getting plenty of attention these days, but we don’t really have an urbanism for families. Also, because urbanism is at its heart a study of how the built environment affects human behavior and interaction, it ought not ignore the suburbs, or the more suburban, sprawly parts of our cities.
A little urbanism spat flared up on X about Phoenix.
Sami Gold, a pro-Palestinian “cultural Marxist” writer with a Ukraine flag in his profile name, asked a reasonable question: “Genuinely, what is there appealing about Phoenix Arizona. Why should one live in a city that only exists due to air conditioning.”
He then posted a satellite image from Phoenix’s Paradise Valley Village — a suburban grid of rectilinear streets lined with nearly identical taupe-roofed homes and basically no trees.
“What about *this* is appealing?” Gold asked.
Lyman Stone is a pro-family pronatalist with three bison in his X profile name, and he was baffled by the Marxist’s question. Stone reframed Gold's question as, “Why would people want to live in a dense walkable neighborhood full of nice houses with pools?”
This triggered all sorts of replies, most interestingly “Walkable to what? I don’t see any bars or restaurants or cafes in that pic. Just more houses.”
And here, the first great dividing line was clearly drawn. What is it that you want to or need to walk to from your own house?
Stone pointed out that four small neighborhood parks were visible in the frame, which included about 92 single-family homes in 18 acres. Further inspection reveals only one, rather skimpy playground among the four parks. But the bigger distinction is whether you value walking to see your friends and neighbors, or only your barista and bartender?
Another nuance: Are you the only one whose walkability from your house you care about? Or are you considering the walkability for littler people, with littler legs, whose cravings might be more for friends, basements, and backyard swimming pools than for lattes and negronis?
But the walkability problems in Paradise Valley Village don’t end with the lack of bars. A lack of shade with midday temperatures of 100 degrees in the summer might disqualify a place as walkable. And the architecture, houses whose facades are almost entirely garage doors, can turn off some front-porch-type conservatives.
Writer Shane Morris, for instance, denigrated the “endless rows of carhauses where people lock themselves up to consume miles away from the site of any productive or family-friendly activity, essentially trapping anyone who lacks a car in a culture desert.”
MARRIAGE IN THE AGE OF AUTONOMY
Morris is a writer for the conservative Christian Colson Center and a married father. As you can see, the battle lines here are far less straight than those on East Desert Cactus Street.
What’s clear is this: Talk of “walkability” is important, but it also needs to ask “walkable to what, to whom, and by whom?”
The great supply chain robbery The great supply chain robbery Jeremy Lott A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon, criminals have made off with tens of billions of dollars in precious cargo — every year. That’s the basic sales pitch by the supply chain lobby for the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025, or CORCA, introduced in the House and Senate in April.
“Cargo theft has become a sophisticated, coordinated threat impacting every link in the supply chain—not just railroads, but also truckers, retailers, manufacturers, and ports,” said Association of American Railroads President Ian Jefferies in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “In 2024 alone ... Class I railroads saw a 40% increase in [cargo theft] incidents year-over-year.”
Jefferies’s trade association believes this is a “national issue that demands a unified federal response to protect our supply chains and economy,” he said. Congress ought to respond to the rise in crime by putting a CORCA in it, in other words.
The AAR was emphatic to the Washington Examiner that rail is only one of many victims of organized theft. In making a full-court press for congressional action, the AAR held a joint press conference in March with competitor the American Trucking Associations, for instance, as well as the Retail Industry Leaders Association.
Retail theft is technically a separate issue, but the two are linked in important ways. Estimates of cargo theft run between $15 billion and $35 billion a year. Retail theft is probably greater.
Christian Hardman, who leads eBay’s North America Criminal and Regulatory Investigations team, wrote that shoplifting has climbed 93% from 2019 to 2023 in an op-ed published in Fox News. Much of that increase was due to organized theft, where multiple criminals coordinate to make off with and sell the merchandise.
As a result, Capital One Shopping estimates a $45 billion loss to retail theft nationally for last year. Put cargo theft and retail theft together and it makes for a loss of between $60 billion and $80 billion annually for American businesses.
What do those figures mean for consumers and investors? The costs pencil out to higher prices for consumers, higher insurance premiums for those who move and sell the goods, higher security costs, and lower profits.
There are also other knock-on bad effects of these trends. Many stores have responded to increased retail theft by putting a good chunk of their goods behind lock and key. Gating goods can cut down on theft, of course, but the added inconvenience of having to go and get a worker to free a stick of deodorant from the case, for instance, has convinced many would-be customers not to bother. This added friction has further dragged down sales in an already fragile economy.
On the issue of cargo security, the Eno Center for Transportation reports on “one of the fastest growing trends in cargo theft,” called “strategic theft,” that has ballooned from a negligible 3% of the problem to about one-third of cargo thefts today.
“While cargo theft has been a problem since the 1800s,” a phenomenon that has been memorialized and dramatized in countless stagecoach and train robberies on the screen, “in the past few years, rates of cargo theft have significantly grown, becoming an unavoidable problem for those in the freight industry.”
Eno analyst Grace Truslow wrote that in a May report that centered on expert congressional testimony. She added that the “convergence of criminals exploiting weaknesses in security, infrastructure, and law enforcement along freight routes and the increased capabilities of new technologies for more sophisticated criminal activities have drastically increased rates of cargo theft.” 
In the case of strategic theft, criminals use “advanced cyber tactics to pose as carriers or brokers to get cargo directly delivered to them,” Truslow explained. The added distance makes it harder to track and capture said criminals. This difficulty is “especially [true for] those higher up in criminal organizations,” making it harder to get at the bigger fish to disrupt operations.
Cargo thieves have also embraced current technology with gusto. These criminals, for instance, are now “utilizing drones to remotely track freight travel and identify vulnerable portions of the supply chain,” the Eno analyst warned.
What’s in the bill? In making the case for CORCA 2025, supporters are touting greater federal coordination, more resources, and better tools for combating cargo and retail theft.
The most visible sign of increased coordination and resources would be a new agency, the Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center, to be housed within the Department of Homeland Security, an agency with an annual budget north of $110 billion and thus the resources to staff it. The coordination center would also have to make regular reports to keep tabs on the problem.
The “tools,” in addition to better coordination at the federal and state levels, would be increased federal penalties for cargo and retail theft. For instance, under current law, such theft does not rise to the level of a federal crime until it involves $5,000 worth of goods. CORCA would make that a cumulative amount, amending the relative statutes to read “or of an aggregate value of $5,000 or more during any 12-month period.”
Will Congress act? CORCA’s chances in the 119th Congress are likely good but not great. On the one hand, most people are unhappy about the recent rise in five-finger discounting, and this seems like a layup in the more populist, GOP-controlled House of Representatives. On the other hand, the Senate Democratic Caucus has enough votes, 47, to filibuster legislation that its members do not like.
Absent political pressure, Senate Democrats would likely rubber-stamp legislation to deal with cargo and retail theft. But they could face pressure from activists to hold the line against this legislation.
The bill’s predecessor, CORCA 2023, likely died for just that reason. An umbrella group called the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, with members including the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, sent a letter to Congress objecting to the legislation in no uncertain terms.
“This bill relies on old, outdated data and, as a result, reacts to fear over facts to promote failed punitive policies that would further criminalize poverty and potentially cause disproportionate harm on Black and Brown communities,” the letter charged.
The groups added that the CORCA $5,000 aggregate theft provision “likely increase the criminalization of poverty” because “those living in poverty without access to adequate programs or services that would help them to afford basic needs could easily surpass this new threshold during the course of one year.”
PAM BONDI CELEBRATES ARRESTS THAT ‘MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN’
If the same progressive groups circle the wagons again during the present Congress, Republicans will have to get around filibuster threats by passing the bill through the reconciliation phase of the budget process to get it to President Donald Trump’s desk. Such reforms have to be deemed significant for budgeting purposes, which is one reason why proponents of CORCA 2025 are playing up tax and other revenues lost due to theft.
“Retail crime has cost Iowa billions, and it’s even worse across the nation,” the bill’s chief sponsor, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), said in a statement accompanying the rollout. He added that CORCA “improves the federal response to organized retail crime and establishes new tools to recover stolen goods and illicit proceeds, and deter future attacks on American retailers.”
Jeremy Lott is author of The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency.
Trump vs. the courts: Lessons from an unlikely source Trump vs. the courts: Lessons from an unlikely source Daniel Ross Goodman
The gavel falls, and another executive order hits the skids. Federal judges, cloaked in black robes and armed with injunctions, have become the bane of President Donald Trump’s second term, much like they were for President Franklin D. Roosevelt nearly a century ago. 
But Trump is involved in an important fight over the legitimate powers of the federal judiciary and his own under Article II of the Constitution. The outcome will have major implications for the constitutional separation of powers that go far beyond whether Trump is able to implement his preferred policies.
Since Trump returned to the White House in January, his agenda — slashing federal agencies, curbing immigration, and empowering the Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk — has collided head-on with the federal judiciary. The clashes began almost immediately. On Feb. 4, a federal judge in New York blocked DOGE’s access to Treasury payment systems, citing privacy concerns raised by 19 state attorneys general. Days later, judges in New Hampshire, Washington, and Maryland halted Trump’s executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship, a cornerstone of his immigration crackdown. By mid-April, the Congressional Research Service tallied 17 Trump policies blocked by federal courts, a pace that dwarfs the judicial resistance faced by the last two Democratic presidents.  
The pattern is familiar: Trump acts, opponents sue, and a judge, often appointed by a Democratic predecessor, issues a nationwide injunction. Trump’s response? A mix of defiance and social media broadsides. In March, he suggested the administration might ignore a court order to halt deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members, posting, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Vice President JD Vance chimed in, questioning whether judges can “control the executive’s legitimate power.” Even Chief Justice John Roberts, typically reserved, felt compelled to push back, issuing a rare statement criticizing Trump’s calls to impeach judges who rule against him.  
The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 Republican-appointed majority, has been cautious, avoiding direct confrontation. In April, it ruled against Trump’s attempt to freeze $2 billion in foreign aid, splitting 5-4, and sidestepped the merits of a Venezuelan migrant case by citing procedural errors. These narrow, technical rulings suggest the justices are wary of a showdown with a president who thrives on challenging institutional legitimacy. Yet the lower courts, emboldened by a lack of congressional pushback, remain the primary battleground. With Republicans controlling Congress, the judiciary is the last line of defense for Trump’s opponents, leaving the courts as the only check on his ambitions.
Looking ahead, the legal gauntlet shows no signs of easing. Trump’s push for mass deportations, including a plan to target 425,000 migrants with prior removal orders, faces lawsuits from immigrant advocacy groups and blue-state governors. His impoundment efforts, withholding congressionally authorized funds to starve agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, have drawn fire from Democrats and even some GOP senators wary of executive overreach. DOGE’s mission to fire tens of thousands of federal employees and Trump’s attempt to wind down the Department of Education are mired in litigation over civil service protections and congressional authority. And looming on the horizon is a possible Supreme Court battle over nationwide injunctions, which critics argue give individual judges outsize power to derail executive action undertaken by a nationally elected president.
For Trump, the stakes are monumental. His supporters see him as a wrecking ball to the deep state, fulfilling a mandate to shrink government and restore national sovereignty. Every judicial block fuels their narrative of an elitist system thwarting the will of the people. But the courts aren’t just a nuisance. They’re a structural barrier, rooted in the Constitution’s checks and balances, that could stall Trump’s revolution unless he navigates them shrewdly.
Enter Franklin D. Roosevelt, a president who faced a similar judicial wall and, through a mix of audacity and adaptation, found a way through. In 1932, Roosevelt swept into office promising a “New Deal” to lift America from the Great Depression’s depths. His first term saw a flurry of legislation — banking reforms, public works, agricultural subsidies, and labor protections — designed to stabilize the economy and empower the federal government. But the Supreme Court, dominated by conservative justices dubbed the “Four Horsemen,” had other ideas. Between 1934 and 1936, the court struck down key New Deal programs, including the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, as unconstitutional overreaches.  
Roosevelt, fresh off a 1936 landslide, wasn’t about to let nine unelected justices derail his vision. In February 1937, he unveiled the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill, a brazen plan to “pack” the Supreme Court by adding one justice for every sitting justice over 70, up to a maximum of six. The pitch was couched in practical terms — older justices needed help with caseloads — but no one was fooled. Roosevelt wanted to stack the court with liberals who would greenlight his agenda.
The backlash was swift. Newspapers decried Roosevelt as a dictator-in-waiting. The American Bar Association, with 86% of its members opposed, joined a coalition of civil libertarians and corporate lawyers to tank the bill. Even Democrats, including Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, rebelled, issuing a scathing report calling the plan “an invasion of judicial power.” By July 1937, after 168 days of debate, the bill was dead.  
Even as Roosevelt lost the court-packing battle, he won the war. In the spring of 1937, the Supreme Court began upholding New Deal laws, including the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act. Historians call it “the switch in time that saved nine,” attributing the shift to Justice Owen Roberts, who flipped to the liberal side. Some argue Roberts was swayed by Roosevelt’s pressure. Others say he was already leaning that way. Either way, the court’s pivot legitimized a vast expansion of federal power, cementing Roosevelt’s legacy. Over his 12 years in office, Roosevelt appointed eight justices, reshaping the judiciary without ever passing his controversial bill.
Former President Joe Biden and many congressional Democrats hatched their own court-packing scheme to thwart the current Republican-appointed majority. But one needn’t support these constitutionally dubious plans to see how Trump can fight his own political battles against federal judges testing the limits of their power.
Like Roosevelt, Trump faces a judiciary skeptical of his transformative vision. Like Roosevelt, he is backed by a popular mandate and a compliant Congress yet stymied by judges wielding constitutional vetoes. And like Roosevelt, Trump’s rhetoric, blasting “activist” judges and hinting at defiance, risks alienating the very institution he needs to advance his agenda.      
But conservatives, of course, aren’t exactly FDR fans. His New Deal laid the groundwork for the sprawling federal bureaucracy that Trump is attempting to dismantle. His court-packing scheme, to many on the Right, was a power grab that flirted with authoritarianism. So, what can Trump learn from a president whose legacy is anathema to conservative principles? The answer lies not in Roosevelt’s ends but in his means — his ability to adapt, pressure, and outlast his opponents.
Trump’s public attacks on judges, while crude, keep the judiciary on notice. His base loves it, and it signals to the courts that defiance comes with political costs. The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority, already sympathetic to executive power, may hesitate to kneecap Trump’s agenda if public support holds. But Trump must tread carefully. He risks alienating a judiciary with lifetime appointments that could outlast his term.
In Roosevelt’s case, time was on his side. Retirements and deaths allowed him to appoint justices who shared his vision. Trump, at 78, won’t serve 12 years, but his first term already delivered three Supreme Court justices, tilting the balance rightward. If Justices Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan retire, Trump could cement a 7-2 conservative supermajority. Lower court appointments, too, will shape the judicial landscape for decades. Trump’s team should prioritize filling vacancies with judges who share his deregulatory zeal, ensuring long-term wins even if short-term battles falter.
As the Supreme Court eventually met Roosevelt halfway, upholding New Deal laws without requiring a constitutional overhaul, Trump could seek a similar detente. For instance, scaling back DOGE’s most legally vulnerable plans, such as firing protected civil servants en masse, could blunt judicial resistance while preserving core reforms. On immigration, narrower executive orders targeting specific criminal populations might survive scrutiny better than blanket measures. Compromise isn’t weakness. It’s a prudent strategy that Trump can use to keep the bigger fight alive.
Roosevelt’s court-packing plan flopped because the public, despite supporting the New Deal, revered the Supreme Court’s independence. Trump’s defiance resonates with his base, but new research shows that Americans, including many Republicans, still back checks and balances. To sustain his momentum, Trump must frame his battle as one against judicial overreach, not the rule of law itself. His gift for narrative, honed on social media and at rallies, can rally voters to pressure Congress and the courts, much as Roosevelt leveraged his fireside chats.  
For conservatives, these lessons come with a caveat: Roosevelt’s victory expanded government in ways that clash with Trump’s mission. His judicial triumphs entrenched a regulatory state that conservatives have fought for generations. Trump’s challenge is to apply Roosevelt’s tactical savvy — pressure, patience, compromise, and public persuasion — without embracing his statist goals. The Constitution’s checks, which frustrated Roosevelt and now vex Trump, are a feature, not a bug, designed to prevent any one branch from steamrolling the others.
BILL MAHER’S TRUMP TRUCE: A COMEDIAN CROSSES THE CULTURAL DIVIDE 
Trump’s clashes with the courts are more than legal skirmishes. They’re a test of whether a determined president can reshape a system rigged to resist change. Roosevelt proved it’s possible, not by bulldozing the judiciary but by outmaneuvering it. Trump, with his knack for disruption, can follow suit — not by emulating Roosevelt’s policies but by borrowing his playbook. In the process, he can tear down the administrative state Roosevelt built. 
The courts may slow Trump down, but history shows they won’t stop him. For a president who thrives on defying the odds, that’s a challenge worth relishing.
Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and the author, most recently, of Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not very rock and roll The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not very rock and roll David Polansky In April, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its 2025 slate of annual inductees, generating the now-perfunctory reactions that greet such news: disdain or exasperated relief combined with vague irritation at the Hall’s very existence, of which, cicada-like, we are reminded each year around this time.
The first two responses are fairly straightforward. The disdain stems from the admission of unworthy candidates, and the exasperated relief from the tardy admission of worthy ones. Nearly 40 years since its inaugural ceremony, one of these inevitably describes just about every nominee. The critic Bill Wyman notes in his highly entertaining ranked list of inductees, which doubles as a handy pocket history of the Hall, that it is now in its “pet rock era,” mining nostalgia from increasingly minor musicians. By now, it is either scraping the bottom of the barrel or rectifying long-standing omissions.
When it comes to the former, this year’s choices are at least less egregious than last year’s, which included such luminaries as Peter Frampton, Foreigner, Cher, and the Dave Matthews Band. The Hall also finally saw fit to recognize the great singer-songwriter and all-around wild man Warren Zevon, though in a rather backhanded appraisal, he was only admitted under the “musical influence” rather than the standard “performer” category. I confess to being flummoxed by this designation, as musical influence is notionally a major criterion for any entrant to the Hall.
But it is a third type of response that is perhaps most interesting, which is something like irritation at the very institution itself, even as one cannot help caviling about its particular decisions. This irritation is not solely traceable to the fundamental absurdity of the institution. It is beside the point by now to observe that a “hall of fame” is antithetical to the spirit of the enterprise, much less one set in Cleveland, a city that no one on Earth previously associated with rock and roll. It rather has to do with the peculiarity of this particular musical and cultural form, and rock is surely both, for there is something paradoxical about attempts to enshrine an art form that is intrinsically ephemeral and demotic. What does doing so actually accomplish? Sure, I am personally pleased to see Zevon get honored this year, especially if it leads to more people listening to “Lawyers, Guns and Money” or “Desperados Under the Eaves.” But it hardly affects one’s enjoyment of the music.
Or, let’s take another example. One of the most conspicuous omissions from the Hall to this day is New Order, the highly influential and innovative dance-rock band most famous for their slew of brilliant singles that has a strong claim to be the band of the 1980s. It is more likely than not that this minor injustice will eventually be rectified, and on that day, almost nothing will change. “Temptation” and “True Faith” will remain classic expressions of inchoate longing just as they are today.
And there is something rather … petty about those who clamor excessively for these formal recognitions, isn’t there? After all, it is not the Hall that confers legitimacy upon the rock artists it inducts, but the other way around. And of course it is! What kind of person possibly accords greater authority to the mostly anonymous board members of the Hall and its various associated industry reptiles than to the titans of 20th-century culture? Literally no one, I’ll wager, was unsure of what they thought about, say, James Brown until a formal institution built on the model of an establishment dedicated to the history of baseball, a cultural treasure that is profoundly unlike rock music in key ways, was established to honor him. This raises the key problems with a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame existing in the first place. First, it signals, like the founding of the genre of “classic rock” radio in the '80s, the end of the rock ethos as a live cultural force. And second, like so many awards shows, it involves a sort of fraud about the direction in which the honor flows. In honoring Brown, the culture mavens gathered in Cleveland were really, of course, honoring themselves by association. This is, in fact, the quintessential boomer dynamic, and the Hall is very much a boomer creation, being partly the brainchild of Rolling Stone magazine founder and quintessential boomer Jann Wenner. This was a generation that defined itself not just by its experience as spectators but by assigning that spectator status some sort of world-historical significance.
Having grown up, that generation wished to assign not just greater historical but greater artistic merit to their defining cultural touchstones. And here, an institution like the Hall of Fame collapses under the weight of its conceptual tensions. Such an institution is, after all, designed to be exclusive and discriminating — to assign rank to the worthiest of designees. But, of course, rock and roll is perhaps the quintessential popular art form. “Roll Over Beethoven”? From the start, it gleefully thumbed its nose at all manner of stuffy, elite shibboleths, which is part of why it was embraced by the postwar youth demographic in the first place. Rock’s ability to appall and enrage one’s elders, from Elvis to Eminem, both of whom are in the Hall, has historically been a huge part of its appeal.
Rock’s generally lowbrow ethos is not just a matter of style but substance, with its reliance on uncomplicated rhythms and primal chords, from Bo Diddley to the Ramones. This stuff gets tricky, of course — it’s not entirely easy to explain why, for example, ? and the Mysterians’ “96 Tears” is brilliantly dumb, whereas anything by Journey is merely dumb. But in any case, the collapse of nearly all traditional establishments is correlated with the collapse of rock’s own raison d’etre, which is why its adherents either retreat into a nostalgic past when this stuff still had some power to shock or insist against all reason that popular art forms still have to contend with some sort of sneering elite beau monde.
ANOTHER SIDE OF BOB DYLAN, WHO IS A CIRCLE
Hence, the Hall of Fame is still obliged to pay deference to the most popular exponents of this popular art form, even as it arrogates to itself the authority to designate the great practitioners of their art. Which is why, today, the very popular but also cosmically great Beatles share space with the very popular but not at all great KISS. So, what was meant to be a monument to a great art form turns out to be an absurdity of a museum-like Hall that wants to be all things to all people. Because rock does not want to be, and properly understood cannot be appreciated as, a great art form.
None of this is necessarily to insist that demotic art forms cannot have standards. An artist can appeal, in a variety of both musical and nonmusical ways, to the credentialing institutions of his culture. But isn’t it somehow in the nature of this specifically democratic form that its quality assessment remains informal and dispersed? The Hall will keep putting on its multimillion-dollar performances. And the inductors, many of whom hope one day to become inductees themselves, engage in displays of sycophancy that would make a French courtier blanch. The curators of a waning culture overwrite their own history by admitting ever more marginal figures into their ranks. But what will it matter? The rock lover knows in his heart and his soul that someone such as Warren Zevon has always belonged in the Hall, and so many others enshrined there now and in the future never, ever will.
David Polansky is a Toronto-based writer. Find him at strangefrequencies.co.
Trump shrugs at falling dollar Trump shrugs at falling dollar Taylor Millard President Donald Trump is one of the few people in the government who doesn’t seem overly concerned about a decline in the dollar’s value or its status as the world’s default currency.
Trump has traditionally favored a weakened dollar based on comments made during his first administration and on the campaign trail. He reemphasized the policy position in early April.
“This is a GREAT time to move your COMPANY into the United States of America, like Apple, and so many others, in record numbers, are doing,” Trump said on Truth Social days after his “Liberation Day” of increased tariffs on dozens of countries.
Yet Trump’s shrug at the falling dollar brings little comfort to Americans staring at the downward spiral of their 401(k) retirement plans. Still, Trump appears dead set on the plan, come hell or high water.
In Trump’s view, a weaker dollar makes American exports more competitive. It increases foreign investment and potentially domestic manufacturing, a main goal of Trump’s tariff agenda in his second term.
That approach defies the thinking of most mainstream economists. In this almost universal view, a strong dollar means cheaper import costs, lower prices for Americans abroad, and increased demand for the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Multiple economists have suggested that Trump’s thinking is flawed and will hurt the American economy.
“His trade policies are making the U.S. a less attractive place to invest,” said Dr. Donald Boudreaux, an economics professor at George Mason University.
Markets seem to agree.
Shortly after Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement, the Dow Jones fell 1,700 points while the S&P 500 dropped 10% over two days. Those levels of stumbles haven’t happened since the Great Depression.
Boudreaux and other classical liberal economists see the country’s low volatility — up to now anyway — as a key reason why America is already ripe for investment. The tariff spike signaled otherwise.
“The stock market is down close to 15% after the three days of trading since the tariff announcement,” Jai Kedia, a research fellow at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at Cato Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “This does not signal to foreign investors that America is a better place today than a week ago for their money.”
Trump attempted to calm the waters after the market whiplash.
He temporarily paused tariff hikes for countries on his infamous tariff list and instead opted for a 10% tariff on imports. Unsurprisingly, stocks temporarily rose with investors sensing a return to economic stability.
However, those gains were temporary as the White House continued its trade war with China. Tariff levels between the two countries hit 145% and could reach 245% in the future.
While the White House boasted about possible trade deals over the next 100 days, other nations publicly appeared unwilling to meet the administration’s demands. This caused some investors to worry about how a prolonged tariff war might cause long-term damage to the U.S. economy.
Tariff anxiety also hit the currency markets.
“Uncertainty will persist, and companies will need to invest in resilience and adaptability to handle it,” Karen Harris and Jeffrey Crane at Bain & Company advised. “For those companies that rely on globalized supply chains for goods, matching supply and demand cost-efficiently is now much more critical, with trade policy and uncertainty pushing companies to look for suppliers closer to home.”
The higher tariffs caused a sell-off of U.S. dollars. The U.S. Dollar Index has dropped 8.7% since January, reaching levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Banks expect foreign nations to keep weaning off the dollar.
Goldman Sachs projected the dollar would fall about 10% against the euro and 9% against the British pound and the Japanese yen. J.P. Morgan was slightly more optimistic, projecting an 8% decline against the euro.
The Trump administration doesn’t seem worried, at least for now.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Institute of International Finance that the dollar sell-off didn’t signal a looming problem.
"It’s natural that the usage [of the dollar] would come down over time, and I think that the U.S. will always, for my lifetime, be the reserve currency,” he said.
Bessent said he believes in a strong U.S. dollar.
“To me, the strong dollar means having the policies in place to deserve capital flows and have confidence," he said.
His boss feels otherwise.
Trump has long complained about the strength of the dollar.
In 2019, he said the strong dollar damaged the manufacturing sector and kept it from “competing on a level playing field.” During the 2024 presidential election, Trump said America had a “big currency problem” compared to China and Japan.
“That’s a tremendous burden on our companies,” he said.
Most economists and investors aren’t buying Trump’s gripes. However, support for Trump’s approach does exist.
Supporters, such as Oren Cass of American Compass, paint a rosy picture of the American future. He told Goldman Sachs that Trump’s trade policies will boost the economy.
“They should produce a great deal of investment and, more broadly, better economic outcomes for America," he said.
Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson chose a similar refrain on the economy and the stock markets. He predicted on April 28 that domestic and international investors would see the U.S as the best place to buy things.
“Both quality and large-cap relatively outperformance should continue,” Wilson said.
However, skeptics worry that Trump’s decisions will shake the economy.
“The weaker dollar, in short, will be a result of the U.S. being made a less attractive place to invest and not a spur to greater investment on our shores,” Boudreaux argued.
He said a weaker dollar, combined with increased investment, would increase the trade deficit, an outcome Trump routinely criticizes.
David Bahnsen of the Bahnsen Group said Trump’s strategies are dangerous.
“There are a lot of things one could do to weaken the dollar apart from this kind of substantial economic distress and recessionary pressure," he said.
Karen Karniol-tambour, co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, observed that the biggest problem remains the volatility in the marketplace.
TRUMP 100-DAY REPORT CARD: TARIFF ROLLOUT ‘THE BIGGEST UNFORCED ERROR IN AMERICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY’
She said Trump’s tariffs have yet to close America’s global trade deficit and that tariff fear has caused investors and other countries to sell off the U.S. dollar.
“Capital can move a lot faster,” Karniol-tambour said in a note to investors. “And this is what is starting to happen. This is why US assets are under such risk because of how much faster capital can move than trade.”
Taylor Millard is a freelance journalist who lives in Virginia.
Is Trump’s war with the Houthis really over? Is Trump’s war with the Houthis really over? Jamie McIntyre For 50 nights beginning March 15, the U.S. military pounded Houthi targets in Yemen with “unrelenting” forces, including bombs from fighter jets and missiles from warships, to restore freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.
In late 2023, shortly after the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel in which terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage, the Houthi rebels who control part of Yemen began a campaign to use their substantial arsenal of missiles and drones to disrupt commercial shipping, which the United States suspected was at the behest of their Iranian sponsors.
The Biden administration's sporadic bombing of Houthi targets in response to the attacks on shipping had little effect.
“Those strikes were retaliation strikes,” said President Donald Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in March. “They launch one missile, we hit the missile launcher.”
They were, in the words of former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz, “pinprick attacks months between.”
What we learned was dubbed “Operation Rough Rider” on Trump's watch was much more intense.
“We are pounding them militarily. By the way ... this isn't a one-night thing,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. “This campaign is about freedom of navigation and restoring deterrence. The minute the Houthis say, 'We will stop shooting at your ships, we will stop shooting at your drones,' this campaign will end. But, until then, it will be unrelenting.”
And so it was. However, seven weeks in, the costs of the U.S. operation began mounting, and the Houthis remained undeterred.
The U.S. lost three $60 million F-18 fighter jets to combat-related accidents, and the Houthis shot down a half dozen MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones, which run about $30 million a plane. The total cost topped a billion dollars.
Trump even expressed grudging respect for the endurance of the Houthis, who saw their leaders killed, as well as their headquarters and weapons systems destroyed, and still fought on.
“You know, we hit them very hard. They had a great capacity to withstand punishment,” Trump said following a deal with the Houthis brokered by Oman. “They took tremendous punishment. And, you know, you could say there's a lot of bravery there, that it was amazing what they took.”
But there are two versions of who blinked.
“They have capitulated,” Trump said on May 6 during an announcement that a ceasefire had been reached. “The Houthis have announced ... that they don't want to fight anymore,”
However, the Houthis said it was the U.S. that backed down, and that once it offered to stop bombing, they accepted, saying they were only firing at U.S. ships in self-defense.
"What changed is the American position, but our position remains firm,” Mohammed Abdulsalam, the chief Houthi negotiator, said in an interview with Houthi-run Al Masirah TV.
The U.S. said all along, as Hegseth indicated, that all the Houthis had to do was stop firing at ships, and the U.S. campaign would end.
“This is always [about] the freedom of navigation,” Rubio said. “A band of individuals with advanced weaponry threatened global shipping, and the job was to get that to stop. And if it's going to stop, then we can stop.”
Few details have been released about the handshake deal, except for a short post on X by Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi, which said, “In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping.”
Missing from the agreement is any promise to stop attacking Israel or its ships.
"The agreement does not include Israel in any way, shape or form," Abdulsalam told Reuters.
In the days before the ceasefire with the U.S. was announced, the Houthis managed to get a ballistic missile past Israel's vaunted air defenses and hit the Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. Israel retaliated with devastating air strikes on Yemen’s main airport in the capital, Sanaa.
Yemen's continued missile launches and the vague language of the agreement have shippers worried that the region's risks are still too high.
The top five container shipping companies told the Wall Street Journal that they were assessing the situation and have no immediate plans to return to the once popular route from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Oman.
Most companies have adjusted to the instability in the region by routing their ships around the Cape of Good Hope. While going around Africa's southern tip adds about two weeks to the trip, it saves considerably on the cost of insurance for passage through what remains a risky war zone.
TRUMP SAYS HE WON’T DROP 145% CHINA TARIFFS TO ADVANCE NEGOTIATIONS, AS REQUESTED BY BEIJING
For now, Trump said he’s taking the Houthis at their word.
“We'll see what happens. But I think, you know, I believe that, hopefully, that's over with and they'll leave the ships alone," he said.
Chris LaCivita’s homecoming: He and Susie Wiles helped Trump return to the White House Chris LaCivita’s homecoming: He and Susie Wiles helped Trump return to the White House Salena Zito
McKEESPORT, Pennsylvania — Take the left off of Nessley Avenue after climbing the switchback up from this city's once-thriving downtown business district. For the next three blocks, you’ll find yourself on the brick-paved portion of Jefferson Street.
Despite the impact weather has had on the bricks, giving them a wavy appearance, it adds a unique charm and character to the street, which is lined almost exclusively with tidy midcentury red brick homes. That is with the exception of one stone home on the slope side of the street with an architectural style that sets it apart from the rest.
Built in 1940, it was the home of Michael and Maryann LaCivita. For the first 12 years of Chris LaCivita’s life, this neighborhood was his everything. It was where he and his four brothers were born. It was the neighborhood where he would go to school and church, deliver the newspaper, play football with the other children, and build a snow-shoveling business with his brothers.
This is the place that formed Chris LaCivita, who, along with Susie Wiles, led President Donald Trump's winning campaign last year.
It took a while for LaCivita to realize how this background and rootedness guided him throughout his political career. Sitting at the head of the table of honor at the Wyndham Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh with his mother beside him, LaCivita was humbled by the attention from local Republicans as he received an award from Sen. David McCormick (R-PA) at the Allegheny County GOP's annual Lincoln Day Dinner.
He was a little out of sorts about a profile being written about him. “I just want to go on the record to say I hate profiles,” he said.
LaCivita is the second oldest of five boys. His father was a public relations executive with Equitable Gas, and his mother was a stay-at-home mom. His parents surrounded the boys with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all living within miles of each other.
“Sunday, there was a routine. You would go to Mass, and if it wasn't during Steelers football season, you'd go to Mass and then we would go visit one of my dad's sisters, which there were plenty of them, or at my grandmother's for Sunday supper,” he said.
LaCivita described his grandmother as “this tiny little Italian lady that barely spoke a word of English.” After she died, the family would do Sunday supper at one of his relatives' homes. “And that was quite the thing because my mom and dad were bringing in three boys, then four boys, then five boys. So you can imagine," he said. “And it was always a big lunch or a big dinner, and that's what we did on Sundays.”
LaCivita said that even at the time, he understood it was a good childhood. “My mom was home," he said. "My dad was at work in the summer months. We spent all of our time at McKeesport High School playing football or basketball. It's just what we did from sunrise to sunset.”
Every once in a while, they spent the day at Kennywood Park, a local amusement park on a ridge just across the Edgar Thomson Steel Works that was filled with old wooden rollercoasters, bumper cars, and cavernous pavilions.
“When my kids were old enough to appreciate it, the first thing I did was take them, too, and of course, they had more fun at Kennywood than they did at Disney World,” he said. “Oh, my God. And then we'd go to Pirates games. I was an altar boy at St. Pius and an altar boy at St. Mary's German.”
It was the mid-1970s, and the first sign of economic trouble was about to hit McKeesport. The Roman Catholic parish right by LaCivita's home closed at the end of his first year of grade school. It was once a thriving city, significant enough that President John F. Kennedy campaigned there in 1962. The downtown also boasted two large multilevel department stores, a luxury hotel, restaurants, supper clubs, and numerous specialized retail shops.
The world around LaCivita began to change. His father lost his job, several of his aunts and uncles died, and the community was hurting. The mills began to close, forcing people to move. Nearly 18% of the city’s residents left, eventually including the LaCivitas. This fracturing of place happened across the Rust Belt for decades.
“First of all, we were moving to Virginia, and the only thing I knew about Virginia was what I saw on the television, and well, that was The Waltons," LaCivita said. "Oh, and they did not have a football team.”
LaCivita is constantly moving. This was true back when he was in school, too.
“I was a horrible student. Horrible student,” he admitted with a smile. “I don't know what it was. I just wasn't interested a whole lot. Just wasn't interested. I didn't get in trouble. I just was bored, I guess. I would read like crazy, but I just wasn't particularly interested in schoolwork."
“I bombed my SATs. I mean, I started working when I was 15," he added. "I spent my summers cutting people's grass, winters shoveling snow, cleaning people's gutters. I was always looking to make a buck. Always moving. But studying for SATs? No. That wasn’t me."
That's not all. “I delivered newspapers. Cleaned gutters. Cut massive lawns, and that was before high school," he said. "Then, I got a job during high school working at Kings Dominion until I graduated. I worked rides and that kind of stuff at the amusement park with my older brother. And I worked at a steakhouse, washing dishes. I was also a stock boy at Food Lion, the night shift. I did everything, a little bit of everything."
LaCivita said he always knew he was conservative, but he was never very political. That all changed as he was staggering through undergraduate studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in the late 1980s. He was disillusioned. He wasn’t being challenged. Worse, he felt like he was being told what to think.
Then, a political science professor suggested that the government should be in charge of healthcare, which led to a robust debate. LaCivita eventually pursued a master's in public administration.
“So, at the time, I was somewhat active with politics, quasi-affiliated, but not really with the College Republicans," he said, adding, "I'd go to their events basically to drink their beer and to meet the girls. It was my Marine buddies and I — that's what we would do. We'd go to CR stuff, not to be CRs, but to hang out and go to all their parties.”
The next thing that changed everything was that his Marine unit got activated for the Persian Gulf War while he was in graduate school.
LaCivita left for the war on New Year’s Day 1991, returning five months later with a Purple Heart. He had been shot in the face on his mother's birthday.
LaCivita described the moment as a “pissing match with a bunch of Iraqis” in which his unit took direct fire. The scars on his face where he was hit left him with nerve damage. The Kevlar jacket likely saved his life when he took a hit from shrapnel, leaving him with three cracked ribs instead.
“I really had no idea of what I was going to do, was going to go back to school, and my energy level was like a hundred times more," LaCivita said of his return home. "I couldn't sleep. I couldn't concentrate. There was a lot of things I couldn't do.”
So, LaCivita found an outlet. His father had a friend who was running for the board of supervisors and needed help with his race: “Dad said, 'He is going to give you $500 and $50 for expenses.' And I said, 'OK.'” That candidate was George Allen, who won and went on to run for Congress in a special election.
“Here is the thing: I went from a board of supervisors race straight into a congressional race, and I knew who George Allen was, but I did not know that he was running for Congress. I just thought he was running for reelection,” he said of his upgrade from a local race to the big times.
Allen won that race, too. LaCivita then got his first taste of Washington, D.C., after taking a job in Allen’s congressional office. “I spent 14 months in Washington as a legislative assistant," LaCivita said. "Loved it, thought it was the coolest thing. And then George got redistricted out of his House seat, and he ran for governor.”
LaCivita married his college sweetheart, Catherine, and had two children. He would go on to have his hand in numerous successful and some not-so-successful political races over the next 25 years. He was the political director of the Senate GOP's campaign arm, was the principal media adviser for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and reshaped Republican politics with few people knowing his name. Until the fall of 2022, when Susie Wiles came calling.
Wiles, who did not know LaCivita at the time other than by his take-no-prisoners reputation, was looking for a certain kind of person to work with the Trump team. LaCivita fit that bill. “He's done every blue-collar job that could possibly be. He's worked in a factory. He's been a waiter. He grew up in a family where his dad worked for the government," she said. "So, he understands that pretty uniquely, too. Just the culture of the bureaucracy and how corrosive it could be. There's not much he hasn't done. He's been a Marine for heaven's sake."
“When the president decided to run [in the 2024 race], he said to me, 'Well, you ran Florida, and you won and you've been doing great,'” referring to her overseeing his successful Florida operation in 2016 and 2020.
“'I think you should run the whole thing this time, but you're not a ‘blank’ and you need to go find me one,'" Wiles said. "And so I thought, 'OK, well, I mean, this is sort of a big deal for me,' so I called my best friend in politics, Tony Fabrizio, and told him this is what the president wants."
Fabrizio didn't miss a beat. "He said, 'I got the guy, can you come to dinner next Thursday?'" Wiles said. “And by now, I thought I knew everybody at politics in our level, and I knew Chris by name, but I had never met him.”
Wiles and LaCivita had what they now laughingly call work "dates" with Fabrizio in the mix to see if they clicked. “When I decided we did, then I invited him to meet the president. He comes to Mar-a-Lago, goes out and buys a new suit, got his shoes shined, and comes for dinner.”
It wasn't a perfect first meeting. It was just one of those days when Trump was not happy. “And I said to the president, 'Well, Chris made the Swift Boat ads,'" Wiles said. "And [Trump] said, 'Everybody says they made the Swift Boat ads. You didn't make the Swift Boat ads. Everybody claims credit for that.'”
Wiles said she approached Trump again a few days later about LaCivita. “I really think he's the guy,” she said. Trump told her, "If that’s what you want, it's fine with me. Just do it."
“Chris walked in the door, thinking he was going to have another dinner, hopefully more pleasant," Wiles said. "And the president said, ‘Look, she wants you. If she wants you, I want you. Susie, you go negotiate the money thing and welcome him to the team.'”
“That was it," she added. "And when you think about it, it's such a Donald Trump thing.”
LaCivita was working on Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) reelection bid. He came on board right after that race ended.
LaCivita and Wiles are opposites in many ways, yet their partnership worked. “That's what I know best in politics, particularly at the level we just finished," Wiles said. "I don’t think it's ever happened before where there was really a partnership that worked, and he likes and is good at everything I'm not, and I like and am good at everything he’s not."
Wiles said presidential campaigns are "just so big and so multifaceted that it's hard for me to conceive of one person really doing it all by themselves."
So, it was just common sense that they became co-campaign managers.
“But it could have gone wrong in many ways. And it did not," Wiles said. "In fact, we are better friends today than when we started."
As an observer who saw the two of them dozens of times on the campaign  you could see their genuine respect and affection for each other. It was something you never see in the politics business.
Wiles laughed. “No, you don’t. And he doesn't want anybody to know it," she said. "He has a gentle side. He doesn't want anybody to know that he is a wonderful husband. His wife, Catherine, is fantastic. He's a great dad. He's very proud of his children. And so those kinds of values we both share."
LaCivita and Wiles spent much of their time together with Trump. But on July 13, Wiles was with Trump as he headed to Butler, Pennsylvania. LaCivita was in Milwaukee, where Trump was heading the next day to commence the Republican National Convention. Then came the assassination attempt that changed everything.
LaCivita was watching the rally in his hotel suite but was distracted by a staffer with a minor crisis. His door was open so staff could go in and out as needed. LaCivita's daughter Victoria, who was working the convention, burst through the door to tell him Trump had been shot.
LaCivita has a reputation for being stoic in emergencies. He quickly assessed the situation — yes, there was blood trickling down the side of Trump’s face, but he was standing, so that was a good sign. LaCivita watched the Secret Service agent who had grabbed the ex-president by the collar, and he seemed calm — another good sign.
LaCivita quickly dialed Wiles. “What the hell?”
Wiles, who was getting into the car with Trump as they headed to the hospital, promised to call back.
It took two hours for them to connect. “We ultimately go back to the FBO, and it looks like we're in the middle of a war zone," Wiles said. "Everybody has their long gun drawn, and people that I know and they know me are looking at me funny. It was a strange environment."
“He's sobbing, sobbing," Wiles said of her phone call with LaCivita. "He knew that the president was OK. But he was guilt-ridden that he wasn't there.”
LaCivita said his friendship with Wiles had only strengthened in the six months since the campaign ended.
LaCivita recently visited Wiles, now the White House chief of staff, in the West Wing. He did things he could not imagine while growing up on Jefferson Street. It was a pinch-yourself moment, LaCivita admitted, the culmination of a 35-year career.
“And to be just a small part of that, and then to be able to go to the White House and talk with the president and at the Oval next to the Resolute desk, and then the ride on Air Force One, those are such amazing, rare opportunities for any person,” he said.
LaCivita said Allen once told him while passing the illuminated Capitol dome on their way back from a reception, "If that view ever stops giving you goose bumps, it's time to get out."
“I've never stopped getting goose bumps,” LaCivita said.
The ballroom at the Wyndham was packed to the rafters, with over 800 people coming to see McCormick honor LaCivita for his accomplishment. Just before LaCivita was called up to accept the honors, Trump's familiar face appeared at the center of the room on a screen, sitting at the Resolute desk.
“Chris, I know firsthand that you are an absolute warrior, an exceptional patriot, one of the greatest fighters in American politics, and I will tell you, you were by my side, and we won the presidency. That's all we can say that has to be said. Other than that, of course, you've learned how to fight from the very best: the United States Marine Corps. You bravely served our nation in uniform, and as of last July, we now have something in common: We have both taken a bullet for our country. But I want to thank you not only for your extraordinary service on our campaign, which was just leadership and brilliance, but to take back the White House. We did something very special. It was decades of political trenches fighting to defend America, and you learned a lot, and you gave me that knowledge. You should be incredibly proud of all you've accomplished. It's an honor to call you a friend, and really was an unbelievable honor to work with you toward our big victory in the presidency. Congratulations. Enjoy yourself and have a great life.”
LaCivita’s mother reached over to hold his hand. A wave of emotion washed over his face.
“I would've never expected anything like that. I am a professional," LaCivita said. "Everyone likes to be thanked. I don't have to be, and the thanks is in accomplishing the mission and being a part of a team of people and the lasting friendships that I have — those are the most important things to me.”
FETTERMAN'S REAL SICKNESS FOR THE LEFT? ISRAEL-ITIS
“It was that much more touching for my mother to be able to experience it as well because I'm sure there were times in her life where she probably didn't know what I was doing,” he added.
LaCivita acknowledged, "Politics is a very tough, rough, and tumble business, and you don't often get to share these kinds of moments with anyone the older you get. It's harder and harder to find those opportunities to be able to share them with your parents."
"And if you have your parents, you're lucky," he added. "I just have my mother now, but I know my dad is extremely proud.”
Salena Zito is a national political correspondent for the Washington Examiner.
How Medicaid reform could pay for Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill,’ reverse Bidenflation, and ‘Make America Great Again’ How Medicaid reform could pay for Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill,’ reverse Bidenflation, and ‘Make America Great Again’ Tiana Lowe Doescher Where Republicans see the burden of finding the cost-cutting to pay for President Donald Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" to extend his signature tax cut law, true conservatives see a once-in-a-congressional-career opportunity to slash federal spending.
By wrangling back the worst of the waste, fraud, and systemic abuse of Medicaid by the states, especially states that have raided federal taxpayers to fund government services for illegal immigrants, Congress can help reduce inflation by fully paying for the permanent extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Congressional Republicans can also improve Medicaid and protect the health insurance program for the country's most vulnerable, in perpetuity.
While there isn't a framework yet for the final bill to extend the tax law enacted during Trump's first term, we can tally a rough cost estimate. On top of the $4 trillion cost over the decade of a clean TCJA extension, the stipulations likely to make the final cut are reportedly no tax on Social Security (at least $1.5 trillion total cost over the next decade), no tax on tips ($200 billion), and at least another $300 billion on increased spending for defense and border security.
In addition, five House Republicans in name only from the wealthiest Democratic districts in the country are demanding that the House Ways and Means Committee blow up the $10,000 state and local tax deduction cap. If these SALT Republicans stick together, that's more than enough to stop passage of the tax cut extension bill, since the GOP House majority is a slim 220-213, with Democrats set to win two vacant seats in special elections by November.
However, these SALT Republicans refuse to give House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) their desired number to raise the deduction and earn their vote. While doubling the cap to $20,000 for married filers would only increase the 10-year deficit by $230 billion, raising it to $40,000 for single filers and $80,000 for couples filing jointly would cost nearly a trillion dollars over a decade. The total cost of the "one big, beautiful bill" is between $6 trillion and $7 trillion.
Looking elsewhere for budget cuts, discretionary spending only comprises about a quarter of our annual $6 trillion in federal outlays. And Trump has been steadfast in his decadelong refusal to touch Social Security or Medicare.
That leaves Medicaid, the federally backed health insurance program for low-income Americans that would be unrecognizable to even the Great Society-era Democrats who created it in 1965.
Intended as a 50-50 financial partnership between federal and state funds, Medicaid originally was only available to people already on one of two welfare programs: Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which exclusively covered very low-income children and their mothers, or Aid to the Aged, Blind, or Disabled. While Congress loosened the eligibility criteria over the decades for low-income children and pregnant women, Medicaid remained restrictive enough that by the turn of the 21st century, about 12% of the nation's population was on the program.
Former President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act transformed the program. The 2010 law nominally requires any state that still participates in Medicaid to expand eligibility to all Americans, regardless of age or ability, to qualify for coverage if they earn up to 138% of the federal poverty line or below. While the Supreme Court limited Obama's ability to withdraw funding from states that didn't expand eligibility wholly, the cash incentive — Obamacare promised to initially cover 100% of the costs for those enrolled under the ACA expansion, with states only required to cover a measly 10% by 2020 — worked well enough. To date, only 10 states have held the line and refused, and now more than a quarter of the country's entire population is on Medicaid.
Combined with the 20% of boomers on Medicare and nearly 20 million more on other minor federal healthcare programs, nearly half the country is on socialized healthcare. It's going about as well as one would expect. Excluding the cost of interest, 40% of our federal spending is slated to go to Medicare and Medicaid this year, and absent reform, that figure will reach more than 50% in the next 30 years. Medicaid outlays alone are up more than 200% since 2008 and more than 50% since 2019. Medicare is estimated to cost almost $900 billion this year, and under current law, the program will tally $8.2 trillion in new debt over the next decade.
So now Congress can change the law that allows Uncle Sam to bankroll 21 million able-bodied adults, 60% of whom do not work, according to state Medicaid agency data aggregated by the Foundation for Government Accountability.
The most obvious candidate for the chopping block is Obama's absurd diktat that forces federal taxpayers to spend twice as much money on those able-bodied adults covered by the ACA expansion than on destitute children or the disabled. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that simply setting the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage Matching rate for the Medicaid expansion beneficiaries equal to the FMAP for Medicaid's originally intended beneficiaries would slash $710 billion from the deficit over the next decade.
THE FOUR FACTIONS SPEAKER JOHNSON MUST PLEASE TO PASS TRUMP’S BUDGET MEGABILL
Imposing work requirements for able-bodied adults is another option that a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found has the support of 62% of Americans, including 60% of independents and 82% of Republicans. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this would save another $140 billion over 10 years. The CRFB also projected that banning states from fleecing the federal government with the "Medicaid provider tax" gimmick would generate $720 billion in savings from 2026 through 2035.
This and several other Medicaid-related changes would bring more than $4 trillion in savings. They would shrink the size of the federal government, force able-bodied adults off the public dole, and combat inflation to fund pro-growth tax cuts that would indeed "Make America Great Again." Democrats had their shot to fundamentally remake the U.S. economy in 2010, and they took it. After 15 years of their failed experiment, it's time for Republicans to take it back.
House GOP shuts down Democrats’ oversight of Trump House GOP shuts down Democrats’ oversight of Trump Kevin R. Kosar House Republicans recently sank numerous Democratic efforts to investigate President Donald Trump’s administration, but anyone who is not a close watcher of Congress would be forgiven for missing this late April development.
The roadblock was erected through a vote on a House rule, parliamentary parlance for a resolution establishing the parameters of floor debate. That can include delineating which amendments, if any, can be offered on an underlying piece of legislation. A House rule can also make substantive changes to the legislative measure itself, effectively altering its content in one fell swoop.
The Trump probe-related measure passed the House Rules Committee, where Republicans hold a 9-4 edge, as the majority party always does. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) then quietly put it on the chamber’s to-do list, though not with a flurry of press releases and news conferences.
The House rule is eye-glazing and 287 words long, too many to quote in full, none of which mention oversight.
“H.Res.354 — Providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 60) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the National Park Service relating to ‘Glen Canyon National Recreation Area: Motor Vehicles’; providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 78) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5.”
Mostly, this measure sets the limits on the chamber’s debate for five resolutions to strike down federal regulations. But the rule’s very last sentence dissonantly and cryptically stated, “Each day during the period from April 29, 2025, through September 30, 2025, shall not constitute a legislative day for purposes of clause 7 of rule XIII.”
And with those words, Republicans torpedoed a flotilla of Trump-focused resolutions of inquiry introduced by Democrats that were floating toward possible votes on the House floor. These measures covered a wide range of matters.
H.R. 255, which was introduced by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), demanded that Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio turn over all communications regarding the Signal app conversation about U.S. military strikes on the Houthis that accidentally included a journalist.
H.R. 286, a measure initiated by Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), directed the president to share all communications and documents relating to the Department of Government Efficiency’s use of artificial intelligence to mine agencies’ troves of “sensitive, personally identifiable information of American citizens.”
Other resolutions demand information on actions such as the partial shutdown of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, DOGE head Elon Musk’s possible conflicts of interest, and the deportation of certain persons to El Salvador.
Under the House’s rules, any legislator may introduce a resolution of inquiry, which then gets referred to committee. While most measures can be bottled up by the committee’s majority party, a resolution of inquiry is special, the Congressional Research Service notes.
“If the committee to which such a resolution is referred has not reported the measure back to the House within 14 legislative days after its introduction, a privileged and non-debatable motion to discharge the committee of further consideration of the resolution becomes available on the chamber floor.”
It is doubtful that any of these resolutions of inquiry would have passed the GOP-held House, to say nothing of extracting embarrassing information from the administration. Fewer than one in three resolutions of inquiry elicit a response from the executive branch, according to the CRS.
Nonetheless, Johnson and Republicans have no interest in permitting Democrats to try to force votes on controversial actions by the Trump administration, hence the provision in H.R. 354 that thwarts votes on resolutions on inquiries by refusing to tally legislative days “for the purposes of clause 7 of rule XIII,” the provision of the chamber rules that sets the 14-day legislative clock.
“We’re using the rules of the House to prevent political hijinks and political stunts, and that’s what the Democrats have, so we’re preventing this nonsensical waste of our time,” Johnson said. Democrats, he said, “showed us over the last four years, last eight years — they used lawfare, they used conspiracy theories, all these political weapons to just go after the president and make his life miserable.”
Democrats were not happy with the vote. “Mr. Speaker, I rise today to condemn the decision of my colleagues to block the House from considering resolutions of inquiry, a procedure that is designed to get members of Congress factual information from the executive branch,” Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) said. She was displeased by the kneecapping of an inquiry regarding the elimination of a bureau administering housing programs for elderly and disabled people.
Other Democrats were annoyed that H.R. 354 shielded Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from a looming resolution demanding information on his inclusion of family members on sensitive military matters.
THE FOUR FACTIONS SPEAKER JOHNSON MUST PLEASE TO PASS TRUMP’S BUDGET MEGABILL
“They are so afraid of this issue — they can't defend it — that they don't want to talk about it,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. “They just want to make the entire issue go away and not allow people to talk about it.”
This is not the first time that Johnson and his co-partisans have used parliamentary jujitsu to protect the Trump administration. They passed a rule in March that prevented the House from having to vote to extend Trump’s right to impose tariffs because of a fentanyl emergency.
Kevin R. Kosar (@kevinrkosar) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and edits UnderstandingCongress.org.
The woman who became America’s most famous preacher and then disappeared The woman who became America’s most famous preacher and then disappeared Diane Scharper
Wearing a white dress with a blue cape and carrying roses, Aimee Semple McPherson walked to the microphone, smiled, greeted, and blessed her congregation. With her reddish hair and large, expressive eyes, she was beautiful, gifted, and loved by thousands of worshipful followers.
“I gazed in breathless admiration at the copper-haired, white-clad angel on the platform above me,” her daughter, Roberta, remembered. “Mother’s arms were outstretched as she blessed the humble congregation, her face aglow with some mystical inner light, her voice vibrating joyously alive ... ”
McPherson, one of the early Pentecostal preachers, triggered the phenomenal growth of the religion, which started in America in the early 1900s. By the 21st century, one-fourth of the world’s Christians were Pentecostals. As Claire Hoffman explains in her vividly written biography, Sister, Sinner, McPherson wasn’t the only female evangelist at the time, but she was one of a few. Aside from Maria Woodworth-Etter, Mary Baker Eddy, Helena Blavatsky, Sojourner Truth, and a couple of others, religious women mostly worked in the background. 
McPherson grew up on a farm in Ontario, Canada, where she later met and married Robert Semple, a Pentecostal missionary. They traveled to China on an evangelical tour. After they arrived, McPherson and Semple became ill with malaria. He died. She gave birth to her daughter, Roberta, and returned to the United States, where she and Mildred Kennedy, her mother, held revival meetings. Kennedy took care of finances as well as organizing and preaching.
McPherson soon met and married Harold McPherson, with whom she had a son. They started in Massachusetts and eventually settled in Los Angeles, California. Their marriage ended in divorce. She disliked homemaking and childcare, but she succeeded as a preacher. 
McPherson began her career by holding tent revivals and traveling across the U.S. in an old car with the words, “Jesus Is Coming Soon — Get Ready,” painted across its sides. She preached sermons holding a megaphone while standing in the back of the car. In 1919, she held services in Baltimore at the Lyric Opera House and drew national newspaper attention as a faith-healer. Many thought this was hokum. Nevertheless, she was among the most famous women of the 1920s and 1930s. By her 30s, she had built the Angelus Temple, a megachurch that could seat 5,300 people, founded the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, and started a Bible college. 
At the time, men made the decisions, wrote the sermons, and preached to the congregation. McPherson made her own decisions. She wrote and preached her own sermons as well as several books, five operas, and more than 200 songs and hymns. McPherson fed the hungry and provided shelter for the homeless. She reached out to African Americans when segregation was the law of the land. She preached pacifism when the world was at war. And she loathed Darwinism. 
Reaching the pinnacle of success, she started a radio station to connect with international audiences. But it brought unintended consequences, including Kenneth Ormiston, McPherson’s radio technician. He was 30, married, and the father of a son. She was 36, widowed, divorced, and the mother of a daughter and son. He was a womanizer. She was infatuated with him (according to her mother).
McPherson disappeared while swimming at Venice Beach on May 18, 1926. Her mother thought she had drowned and told her followers that she was with Jesus. Soon, people noticed that Ormiston had also disappeared. The two were missing for a month. People saw them in Carmel, California. Ormiston’s wife threatened a lawsuit. National newspapers ran frenzied headlines about a tryst.
McPherson emerged in Arizona, saying she had been held in a shack in the Mexican desert. Some thought her disappearance was a money-making scheme. Others said Rev. Robert Schuller, her competitor, was slandering her. There was a supposition that California liberals spread false rumors to damage her reputation. 
Speculation inspired several earlier McPherson biographers, including Edith L. Blumhofer, Matthew Avery Sutton, and Daniel Mark Epstein. However, Hoffman generally avoids taking sides. She writes that McPherson’s story is a cautionary tale about the hazards of fame and “how poisonous the public eye can be for those who live their lives in front of it.” While she makes a good point, I hoped for more evidence regarding McPherson’s disappearance, especially since “the scandal” forms the central action in the biography. 
Hoffman, however, packs the book with facts about racism, segregation, war, pacifism, and the Great Depression. She includes particulars about McPherson’s connections to Mahatma Gandhi, whose teachings on nonviolence and women’s rights inspired her; Charlie Chaplin, who secretly attended services at the Angelus Temple; and H.L. Mencken, who, while covering McPherson’s trial for the Baltimore Sun, disagreed with her regarding evolution but liked her and sympathized with her.
A MURDER ON THE SAN FRANCISCO FRONTIER
She seemed to have several vocations, which at times contradicted each other. She was an inspired writer who put together gripping sermons that drew thousands, but concocted a less-than-convincing story about her disappearance. She was a talented performer who seemed to love the show business aspect of preaching more than anything else. She believed she was a healer, but in the end, she couldn’t heal herself.
McPherson was an insomniac who died at age 54 from accidentally ingesting too many sedatives. But her Angelus Temple celebrated its 100th birthday in 2023, and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel lives on. According to its website, it is a global church now and has 6,500 ministers in the U.S. alone, many of them women.
Diane Scharper is a regular contributor to the Washington Examiner. She teaches the Memoir Seminar for the Johns Hopkins University Osher Program.
Progressives for Christendom Progressives for Christendom Emma Fuentes The election of Pope Leo XIV during the papal conclave has put the question to rest for now, but it will return: Why do progressive commentators feel at liberty to deride Christianity?
Though not the entire story, resentment is a simple answer. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), one nominal Catholic known for her abortion advocacy and her being publicly denied Holy Communion, shared her hopes for the Church in a Politico interview.
“An Asian Francis from the Philippines is wonderful,” she said. However, when asked whether she thinks, “We’ll see female priests in your kids’ lifetime,” Pelosi answered, “Maybe my grandkids’.”
The suggestion and Pelosi’s entertaining the doctrinal impossibility were inappropriate. However, neither mockery was surprising. We hear malicious jokes about Catholicism so often that it has become difficult to take stock of them. One recent, crass comment from CBS News noted that the cardinals are “rawdogging” the conclave by forgoing any access to the internet.
Bad actors, such as those above, have attempted to implement their wants for the church by joking, wishful thinking, or politically influencing them into existence. However, this has never worked, and it happens constantly, because nothing ever changes.
Of course, this pattern maps onto the whole Christian faith. Derision and misrepresentation are so rampant because, paradoxically, Christianity is so tolerant. Its pinnacle of charity finds expression in patience and mercy, such that it bears trespasses and suffering. This sometimes happens to its detriment when Pelosi-like scandalization misguides public perception. Most of the time, though, that quality translates to an efficient spread of the faith: Christianity is universal because it is willing to endure. Thus, every nation knows of it.
The standard comparison to progressives’ treatment of Islam fails in this light. Society cannot bear to mock Islam because the same characteristics do not apply. At the same time, that relationship plays out beneficially for humanity: the only reason the American freedom template works is that most people develop out of a sense of Christian charity, and that Christian charity stops the spread of what is antithetical to it.
If it is so charitable, and still can support a set of unchanging doctrines, what gives? Why target Catholicism when distant sects already ordain women? Why can we not offload liberal Christians into liberal Christianity?
WASHINGTON STATE DEMANDS PRIESTS BREAK THE SEAL OF CONFESSION
Much of it comes down to the same reason “queers for Palestine” ignore their likely execution in the face of radical success: progressive minds are so committed to the “imagined communities” framework that few believe there is anything concrete to their advocacy. The real Islamic State is imagined — or Americans, at least, will probably always find defense against it.
In other words, they do not want Islam for their own. They want Christianity, partly because it is the cornerstone, and partly because there is something truthful about it. Their continued welcome into the faith means continued stripes, which, we know, are a worthy price.
Kamala Harris and the San Diego elephants Kamala Harris and the San Diego elephants Conn Carroll It can be hard for a losing presidential candidate to reenter political life. The topic of one’s first public speech, the venue, and the audience are all usually carefully chosen.
With this in mind, former Vice President Kamala Harris’s first public address since losing the 2024 presidential election to President Donald Trump was perhaps more telling than she intended.
The content of Harris’s speech was largely forgettable boilerplate, including false claims that Trump was “disappearing American citizens without due process” and creating a "constitutional crisis.”
But one moment did break through, and it was later clipped and shared on social media.
“Who saw that video from a couple of weeks ago?” Harris asked the audience. “The one of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo during the earthquake. Google it if you have not seen it.”
In the video, three elephants are in their enclosure when the camera starts shaking. Two other elephants are then seen running on screen, and the four larger elephants form a circle around the smaller elephant.
"Everybody has been asking what are you thinking about these days?" Harris continued. “For those who haven't seen it, here those elephants were, and as soon as they felt the earth shaking beneath their feet, they got in a circle and stood next to each other to protect the most vulnerable. Think about it. What a powerful metaphor.”
"Because we know those who try to incite fear are most effective when they divide and conquer,” Harris continued. “When they separate the herd, when they try to make everyone think they are alone. But in the face of crisis, the lesson is don't scatter. The instinct has to be to immediately find and connect with each other, and to know that the circle will be stronger," she concluded.
While Harris is correct that the video is cute, it may fail to inspire Democrats for several reasons. First, the elephants were not in any actual danger from the earthquake. Second, the earthquake was not trying to divide anyone, especially an elephant herd. It was just a random release of tension between two tectonic plates.
However, the audience for Harris’s remarks does make the elephant comparison a bit more on point. Harris’s elephant story was told at the Emerge annual gala. Emerge describes itself as “the nation’s premier organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office.” Men, apparently, need not apply for help from Emerge’s “alert circle.”
Coincidentally, male elephants are not invited into African elephants' “alert circles” either. African elephants are a matriarchal species in which a dominant female, typically the oldest, makes all the major decisions for the group, such as when and where to forage and sleep.
HARRIS WARNS OF CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS WITH CHECKS AND BALANCES BEGINNING TO 'BUCKLE'
Such matriarchal herds typically only have one male bull elephant who enjoys a sexual monopoly on all the females. All other males are chased off at sexual maturity. These adult males are then left to live alone as bachelors, except for the lucky few who are able to establish dominance over a female herd.
Harris’s comparison of the Democratic Party to African elephants is a powerful metaphor indeed.
American soccer power American soccer power Michael Taube
The beautiful game of football, or as I’ll begrudgingly call it for this review, despite being a Canadian, “soccer,” is a popular, successful, and financially viable sport in most parts of the world. Until recently, it had been a very different story here in North America, at least north of the Rio Grande.
The North American Soccer League had periods of success between 1968 and 1984, but it struggled to gain eyeballs and decent attendance numbers. Since then, several American-based soccer leagues, such as the Major Indoor Soccer League, United Soccer League, National Professional Soccer League, and a second, albeit unrelated, NASL, have come and gone. In spite of solid showings by the U.S. national team in global tournaments, and new immigrants moving here from soccer-loving countries, building a loyal fan base and profitable soccer league has been a perplexing puzzle at the best of times.
That changed with Major League Soccer. Founded in 1993, the first MLS season was held three years later with 10 teams. The league struggled in its early years, lost money, and teetered on the brink of extinction. This isn’t the case any longer. MLS has gradually become one of North America’s most widely watched, followed, and profitable sports leagues.
Rick Burton and Norm O’Reilly’s The Rise of Major League Soccer: Building a Global Giant details the fascinating story of the once-little sports league that could. The former is the David B. Falk distinguished professor of sport management at Syracuse University, while the latter is a professor, dean of the College of Business, and executive director of the Center for Sport and Business Innovation at the University of New England. Burton and O’Reilly have authored and co-authored books, and write a joint column for, appropriately enough, Sports Business Journal.
“In 2024, MLS had the second largest attendance — with more than 12 million tickets sold – of all soccer leagues on the planet,” they write. That’s an incredible achievement for this young North American league in the time of European soccer giants. “How big will Major League Soccer get in the next few years?” the authors ask. “Very big.”
The Rise of Major League Soccer delves into different aspects of MLS’s domestic and international growth. Burton and O’Reilly suggest that one of the main reasons MLS has grown in size and stature is sponsorship from the massive technology company Apple. Although the details of the June 2022 distribution package were “never formally released, it’s believed MLS selected Apple as their technology/streaming partner … because of a groundbreaking ten-year offer worth a minimum of $2.5 billion or $250 million annually which could rise higher based on the number of subscribers.” This sum was quadruple what MLS earned in previous agreements with Fox Sports, ESPN, and Univision. More importantly, Apple viewers across the globe had access to every single MLS game without local blackouts or restrictions that affect most sports leagues. This important deal enabled MLS’s visibility and viability to grow by leaps and bounds.
MLS also brought in international talent, similar to what the NASL once did with Pelé, George Best, Franz Beckenbauer, Eusébio, and others. David Beckham was the league’s first big acquisition when he signed with the LA Galaxy in 2007. He wasn’t “the first major global star to sign on to play soccer in the United States,” Burton and O’Reilly note, “but he was the first of his level.” This paved the way for other MLS teams to sign up to three players who would exceed the salary cap, which became known as the designated player, or Beckham, rule. Major stars such as Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney, Luis Suárez, Evander, and Zlatan Ibrahimović have all played in MLS. The biggest prize was Lionel Messi signing with Inter Miami CF in July 2023. “The average ticket price for any MLS game has more than doubled since Messi joined the league,” the authors note. The “Messi effect is clear.”
There’s an interesting chapter about the 1994 FIFA World Cup that the U.S. hosted and how it shaped MLS. It’s still regarded as one of the most successful World Cups in history, with Sports Illustrated suggesting there were 32 billion cumulative viewers and a “total economic impact” of an estimated $4 billion. The 1994 competition “put the United States on the soccer map,” in Burton and O’Reilly’s view, and “set the stage for the debut and sustained existence of MLS.”
A SECOND LOOK AT HUEY LONG
I’d be remiss not to mention MLS’s most successful non-U.S. club, Toronto FC. It went from nine consecutive losing seasons and the depths of mediocrity to becoming the first Canadian team to win the MLS Cup in 2017 and a finalist on two other occasions. Toronto FC “regularly ranks among the top five of all MLS clubs on many of its business metrics” and succeeded in its “efforts to grow the sport in Canada,” which has added to MLS’s global reach.
“From a league with few teams and massive annual losses during the late 1990s,” Burton and O’Reilly note, “the leaders at MLS not only showed they knew (and know) what they are doing, but also were (and are) capable of building what was once unimaginable.” One day soon, America will wake up as a country that sees itself as a land that loves soccer. Arguably, it already is one.
Michael Taube, a columnist for the National Post, Troy Media, and Loonie Politics, was a speechwriter for former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
<Étoile_A_promising_misstep_from_the_team_behind_Gilmore_Girls> ‘Étoile’: A promising misstep from the team behind ‘Gilmore Girls’ ‘Étoile’: A promising misstep from the team behind ‘Gilmore Girls’ Tim Rice Twenty-five years ago, Amy Sherman-Palladino burst onto the scene with Gilmore Girls, which earned critical acclaim for its quirky characters and rapid-fire dialogue. After Gilmore Girls, it took Sherman-Palladino a while to land another hit. She and Daniel Palladino, her husband and creative partner, created The Return of Jezebel James, which was canceled after just three episodes. Then came Bunheads, which developed a cult following but only lasted one season.
Finally, in 2017, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel premiered on Amazon Prime. Like Gilmore Girls, Mrs. Maisel features a plucky heroine, beautiful set pieces, and lightning-fast dialogue so loaded with cultural allusions it could make your head spin. The move to streaming seemed beneficial for the Palladinos. They had more money and more creative control. The costumes are better, the episodes are longer, and some of the plots are more outlandish. When Mrs. Maisel concluded its fifth season in 2023, it did so to great acclaim.
So, when it was announced that the Palladinos would return to Amazon Prime, fans were thrilled — all the more so because their new show, Étoile, marked a return to the world of ballet, which Sherman-Palladino, a classically trained ballerina, first explored in Bunheads. The plot has all the makings of a hit: two ballet companies, one in New York, the other in Paris, agree to swap stars for a season in a desperate bid to boost ticket sales. Jack Macmillan (Luke Kirby), the hangdog director of the Metropolitan Ballet Theatre, gets Cheyenne Toussaint (Lou de Laâge), the bad girl of Parisian ballet. In exchange, Genevieve Lavigne (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Le Ballet National get eccentric choreographer Tobias Bell (Gideon Glick) and Mishi (Taïs Vinolo), a French ingenue Lavigne had cut from her company and shipped off to Manhattan.
Unfortunately, the Palladinos seem to have fallen once again into a kind of sophomore slump. Étoile has a solid cast and some funny moments, but lacks the engaging plot, charm, and wit we’ve come to expect from a Palladino production. In their defense, dance is a hard art to make a television show about. Most of us aren’t familiar with it and don’t know how to think about what we’re seeing.
This is not an insurmountable problem. Another Amazon Prime offering, Mozart In The Jungle, circumvents the fact that most viewers don’t know anything about classical music by having characters talk about classical music: how to whittle an oboe reed, how to conduct a symphony, and what being a professional musician is actually like. In so doing, the show gives every viewer the requisite background knowledge to appreciate the medium at its heart.
Étoile takes a different approach. Rather than engage in a single bit of exposition, the characters simply talk, at length, often insufferably, about how important ballet is. 
Here’s an illustrative bit of dialogue:
"Have you ever met a ballet dancer before? We’re weird. We do weird things. We stand on our toes on purpose. Why? I don’t know ... Our whole lives are spent in disgusting, unsanitary places. We smell — all the time ... Dancers don’t know what day it is, or what the weather’s like outside. We are part of a cult."
It’s a lot of that. Cheyenne, the prima ballerina who delivers that little monologue, terrifies everyone she meets. Why? Because she’s so committed to ballet. Why? Because she was born to do it.
In a later episode, Cheyenne opens up and tells Jack that she’s alone because ballet left no room for love in her heart. We're just supposed to take this as a given and something artists do.
This would maybe be forgivable if the difficult artist weren’t such a worn-out trope. But Étoile's biggest sin is that nothing is really original. Characters are either moody or quirky. Some are both. Tobias the choreographer dances in traffic, oblivious to the honking horns. Cheyenne's mother, Bruna, is, for some reason, a steampunk tinkerer who is mean to everyone. Rarely do we get a hint of motivation or backstory. 
The Palladinos' strength is that their quirky, pigheaded characters are always balanced by realists. Lorelei Gilmore's blind faith in her daughter's perfection is neutralized by her parents' hard-nosed realism, and the kookiness of Stars Hollow is cut by Luke, the surly diner owner. Mrs. Maisel strikes a similar balance between its protagonist and pretty much everyone around her. 
The problem is that this is a delicate balance — one that the Palladinos seem to miss more often than not. In Netflix’s four-part Gilmore Girls revival, A Year In The Life, we see what happens when things tilt too much toward the quirky. The plot is thin, the characters are unbelievable to the point of absurdity, and the episodes have unnecessary Technicolor musical numbers.
Étoile has the opposite problem. Everyone is an unlikable purist, and it's a drab world. The Palladinos dropped their trademark pitter-patter dialogue and cool-kid cultural references. Things are so serious that, though the show takes place in Manhattan and Paris, we barely see much of either city. Étoile is dimly lit and grayscale, save for the intricate ballets mounted every few episodes. How's that for a central metaphor?
WHO ARE THE TONY AWARDS FOR?
Still, Étoile is a fine enough show. The first half of the season drags. However, once it picks up, it’s as good as anything else on streaming, if not as good as what we’ve come to expect from the Palladinos. Cheyenne's character takes some getting used to. But when she warms up, she's pretty funny. Kirby is delightful as Jack, though one wishes he had more to work with. And Simon Callow is absolutely sensational as Crispin Shamblee, an arms dealer turned ballet patron and the show's marginal villain, whose antics shine against the show's otherwise monotonous tableau.
Ultimately, it feels wrong to render a final judgment on Étoile. Amazon ordered two seasons off the bat, and the eight episodes feel more like the first half of a season than a proper first season. There's plenty of room for the plot to advance, and the cast, which includes a number of the Palladinos' favorite featured players, is top-notch. If Étoile is a frustrating watch, it’s only because the show has a lot of promise. You know it could be great with a bit more focus, like a promising young ballerina who has yet to master her grand jeté.
Tim Rice is the deputy managing editor of the Daily Wire.
Does ‘Thunderbolts*’ make sense if you’ve never seen a Marvel movie before? I went to find out Does ‘Thunderbolts*’ make sense if you’ve never seen a Marvel movie before? I went to find out Graham Hillard Like most Marvel offerings, Thunderbolts* requires so much background knowledge that fine print seems appropriate, which may explain the asterisk at the end of the official name of the film. That typographical addendum, much discussed by Marvel fanboys during the promotional lead-up, turns out not to mean anything at all, unless one counts an in-joke “reveal” during the closing credits. To the critic, however, it is irresistible. Are our heroes not really streaks of lightning against a rollicking sky? Is Disney afraid of lawsuits? No refunds for the hopelessly confused! Yet this movie clearly has ambitions above its station. If the asterisk is directing us to look more closely, it is not an entirely wasted mark.
I went to see Thunderbolts* with an open mind and a blank slate, having never seen a Marvel movie before. It was, in one sense, easy enough to follow. The film is anchored by Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, a Russian assassin previously featured in Black Widow (2021) and Disney+’s series Hawkeye. In what is only the first of many displays of antihero glumness, Yelena opens the movie with a voiceover confession: Summertime and the killing is too easy. Instead of checking in with her CIA handler (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) after an early job, the young woman visits her father, the Kremlin super-soldier Red Guardian (David Harbour), and receives a pep talk. Service to others, even in the form of lethal violence, can be a terrific way to add meaning to an otherwise empty life.
As it happens, Yelena is not alone in feeling down as the movie begins. The same is true of fellow superheroes Captain America (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), all of whom have, to varying extents, been asking themselves hard questions. When, 20 minutes into the production, Louis-Dreyfus’s character attempts to murder the quartet, the better to bury evidence of her own corruption, one almost breathes a sigh of relief. Surely, sweet death is better than all of this griping.
Despite its surface comprehensibility, the first half of Thunderbolts* does not go well. How could it, given the practical impossibility of setting up a narrative that has, according to one online tally, more than 37 hours of backstory? Summoned to a covert lair, Yelena and company behave as if they have known and disliked each other for decades. But without the relevant context, the viewer is in no position to draw moral lines. Perhaps the Marvel addict, fresh off his day and a half of brushing up, can see past the aimless bickering into the crevices of these superhuman hearts. For the rest of us, it is a reprieve when an actual plot comes into view. An invincible madman (an effective Lewis Pullman) has appeared on the scene, and our protagonists must band together to save the nation from utter ruin.
In normal circumstances, it would be unsporting to complain that a comic-book movie has its own peculiar rhythms and rules. Just as my 12-year-old lacks the training to enjoy Tarkovsky, so I have no business jumping into the deep end of the Marvel cinematic pool. The counterpoint is that Disney has gone out of its way to market Thunderbolts* as a work of art that just so happens to feature characters with capes. The film’s trailer, titled “Absolute Cinema,” makes much of its creators’ previous credits on such pictures as The Green Knight and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Promoting the film to Empire, Pugh gushed that the final cut is “this quite bada** indie, A24-feeling assassin movie.”
About Pugh’s comment, two things must be said. To begin with, bully for production company A24 (The Lighthouse, Uncut Gems) for attaining such a reputation. More importantly, however, no, not a chance, not close. You absolutely must be kidding.
Though Thunderbolts* eventually becomes a tolerable if middling big-budget extravaganza, no person alive will mistake it for anything substantive. The film is too depthless, too willing to telegraph its every thematic move. Far from achieving the layered character work in which “indie” films specialize, Marvel’s latest might as well hand its protagonists “I AM UNHAPPY” placards, so unshaded is their performative ennui.
One could argue, of course, that such emotions are themselves interesting, signaling as they do what Disney executives think moviegoers want to hear. When I was a child in the ’80s and ’90s, the Mouse’s message was that romantic love conquers all (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast). Two decades later, it was that family trumps everything (Frozen) and that honoring one’s culture is the highest good (Moana, Encanto). With Thunderbolts*, Disney inaugurates a new idea: We are all staring into an existential abyss. If the average ticketholder is unmarried, unemployed, and uninspired, the film’s notion will make a good deal of sense. For the rest of us, it is merely strange and sad. About what, exactly, are we supposed to be so miserable?
HOW HOLLYWOOD FELL APART IN THE 30 YEARS SINCE 'WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING'
To be sure, Thunderbolts* has other problems. Louis-Dreyfus’s stilted line readings bring to mind a community-theatre novice on a bad day. The picture’s urban-carnage scenes are so unimaginatively filmed that they look like stock footage. The production has less than nothing to say about how mortal men and women live now, and it rarely grounds itself in the actual human experience. Yet the despair’s the thing. I can’t remember a mass-market movie that put quite so much emphasis on irremediable psychic pain.
A final, lighter note is worth ending on. The film’s best ingredient by far is the performance of Lewis Pullman, the son of Bill and a striking lookalike, as the supervillain Void. Should TriStar Pictures wish to remake Sleepless in Seattle with him and Colin Hanks, I will be there on opening night.
Graham Hillard is the editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.
The secret of getting good grades The secret of getting good grades Rob Long It may not surprise you to learn that I was a pretty good student. Not perfect, of course — I put everything off to the last minute and did a fair amount of late-night cramming when I was in high school and college — but when the grades went out, I was almost always near the very top.
Good grades, I assumed at the time, would reflect the intellectual effort I put into my studies and display a high level of mastery of the subject. I did especially well in English classes, and I think I devoted myself to that subject because someone told me, at some point during middle school, that if I was thinking about writing as a career, good grades in English would be especially attractive to future employers.
I have been a professional writer for 35 years, and at no time in that long (and up and down) career in the writing game has anyone ever asked me about my grades.
My entire academic record, in fact, has been utterly irrelevant to my life and livelihood. The interesting and (to me, anyway) highly original way in which I interpreted Spenser’s Faerie Queen (in a nutshell: that the Red Cross Knight does not become St. George as much as he lives up to his own identity and fate — and that the hero’s story in general is one of becoming who you really were all along but didn’t realize) hasn’t crossed my mind in nearly 40 years. The previous sentence, to be honest, is the first time I’ve ever mentioned it since sliding the smudgy-typed pages into the office cubbyhole of my English professor at Yale about two hours after it was due.
Grades, school performance, ratings, and rankings — these are all utterly useless ways we drive the students in our lives, and ourselves when we were students, to distraction and anxiety. They will never be looked at again, and they will never be measured by anyone of consequence in life from the day you leave the campus. 
And yes, I recognize that this would be one of the worst commencement speeches ever were I to deliver it. Except: Right now I am sitting in the library at the well-known divinity school where I am studying for a master’s degree in divinity, and tomorrow morning I will be taking an exam in New Testament and exegesis. And I am realizing, to my serious disappointment, that I am unprepared. 
OF RASHES AND REGULATORY BURDENS
I have a raft of excuses: It was a busy semester with a lot of personal turmoil (don’t ask), I did all the reading and attended every lecture but still forget whether it’s Romans or Galatians that has the circumcision stuff in it, I get James and 1 John mixed up even though I know it’s 1 John where the word Antichrist shows up and that James never mentions the crucifixion or the resurrection of Jesus and barely mentions Jesus at all. I know all of that, but I don’t know it know it. And the exam tomorrow is a straightforward, honest multiple choice format rather than the more forgiving essay style, where I could probably bluff my way to a good grade with an essay like, say: “Saul does not become Paul as much as he lives up to his own identity and fate, and the Christian hero’s story in general is one of becoming who you really were all along but didn’t realize.” Or something along those lines. (Hey, it’s a proven model.)
All around me in the library, my much-younger classmates are buzzing with knowledge and ready-answers, and I’m straggling at the end of the line like an old man trying to keep up with a complicated dance move. They will all do much better than I will tomorrow morning because they have studied dutifully and they know more than I do. But I know one thing that they don’t: It won’t matter. 
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
Canada already has a king: It isn’t Donald Trump, but Canadians still aren’t thrilled about it Canada already has a king: It isn’t Donald Trump, but Canadians still aren’t thrilled about it Timothy Nerozzi
Journalists from the United States reporting on Canadian politics might search for an angle that does not revolve around the nation's holy war against President Donald Trump. Such a search is in vain.
Due to the president's barrage of tariffs this year and machinations for bringing Canada under American control, every facet of the country's politics has reoriented with one mission: rally against the barbarians at the southern gates.
The outrage is palpable and inescapable. Shops across the country stock "Canada is not for sale" merchandise. Nationalist battle cries such as "Elbows up!" and "Never 51!" are plastered or worn throughout major cities. Even attempting to use an American Express credit card where it isn't accepted can prompt an unsolicited treatise about the "antichrist" in Washington.
It was hoped that the federal elections held on April 28 would produce a majority government and select a champion to march strong through the tumultuous trade wars and culture crises.
A resounding consensus did not emerge. Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away victorious without meeting the 172-seat threshold. The Conservatives had their best showing in over a decade but lost their own leader's district. The New Democratic Party crumbled to dust, and its leader resigned.
One wonders what Charles III, the king of Canada, thought as he observed the results across the Atlantic Ocean in Buckingham Palace. He is, after all, the head of state and monarch of all 40 million Canadians.
That role has been entirely ceremonial for decades, with the king's majestic title considered a relic of a bygone era. Nowadays, Canadians are known more for their embrace of multiculturalism and anti-racism than hereditary sovereignty.
Then, a message from Carney came through the wire.
“To be clear, I have made the request of His Majesty, and he has accepted. He will open parliament with the speech from the throne, and that clearly underscores the sovereignty of our country,” Carney said in the days after his election, championing him as Canada's “ultimate head of state.”
On May 26, the king of Canada will open the Canadian parliament — the first time a sovereign has done so in almost 50 years.
The invitation is strategic. Trump displays an uncharacteristic amount of respect for Charles and the rest of the Windsor family in their roles as British royalty. He is, by all accounts, charmed by their aristocratic character and impressed by their world-class celebrity.
During his reelection campaign, Trump scolded then-President Joe Biden for not attending the king and queen consort's coronation, calling the pair “two very special people” and wishing them a "long and glorious" reign. He gushed about "how handsome" Prince William looked at the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral.
When rumors appeared earlier this year in the pages of the Sun claiming the king was considering inviting the United States into the Commonwealth of Nations, of which he is the head, Trump shocked Revolutionary War-obsessed patriots with his enthusiasm — “I love King Charles. Sounds good to me!”
Even first lady Melania Trump expresses affection for the monarch. Having met the royals on multiple occasions over the years, she revealed in her memoir that she "exchange[s] letters with King Charles to this day.”
Yet, for all the devotion the king receives from Canada's public enemy No. 1, the Canadians have wanted little to do with the Windsors.
When Ipsos polled Canadians on the monarchy following Queen Elizabeth II's death, over half responded that they would like to see all ties to the royal family cut, and that was an improvement from the previous results.
The king's lack of meaningful presence in Canada is considered progress by moralists who feel the institution is outdated, unmeritocratic, or, God forbid, dripping with the unforgivable sin of colonialism.
But no matter how much they tear away at the pomp and circumstance of the institution, it remains the central authority that undergirds the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the federal government.
The prime minister derives his legitimacy from the king. Government-owned territory is often referred to as "Crown lands." Anyone seeking to become a Canadian citizen must swear an oath of allegiance to His Majesty.
In practice, the monarch's few legitimate powers are exercised by his federal and provincial representatives, known as the governor general and lieutenant governors.
Once upon a time, these viceroys were adorned in court uniforms and bicorne hats. They carried ceremonial sabers and lent a sense of grandeur to Canadian politics that elevated it above the utilitarianism of American government.
In most provinces, these affectations are a thing of the past. Disinterest or disdain for solemnities has warped the governorships into bureaucratic middlemen, dressed in suits and acting more like federal human resource officers than royal representatives.
Nova Scotia is an exception. Locals in Halifax, including bartenders and shop managers, speak glowingly of their lieutenant governor, with one woman remarking how nice it is to have something like their own "little king" just down the street at Government House.
Nova Scotia Lt. Gov. Mike Savage was sworn into office in December last year. Formerly the mayor of Halifax, he is among the last lieutenant governors to accept the elegance of the position still, even though he isn't entirely at home with the fancy clothes and pomp.
"I believe that with the turbulence in the world, people are clutching on to institutions, traditions that they knew were there but have a renewed value," Savage told the Washington Examiner in an interview at Government House in Halifax. "I think the monarch is one of those things."
Savage is a broad-shouldered, deep-voiced gentleman who looks like he would be more at home in a war room than a government estate.
He never intended to become a representative of a monarch, a role that might have seemed absurd when he was a child in Northern Ireland.
"I would be one of those people when I grew up, that, if I thought about the monarchy at all, it would have been 'Meh — doesn't really impact me all that much.' But as an adult, as someone who's been a member of parliament and the mayor of a city, I've seen the role the monarchy plays," he said.
"Eighty percent of this role is ceremonial and constitutional as opposed to decision-making powers. But what you discover very quickly is people value this position. They value this role. They value that we have a representative of the king in Nova Scotia," Savage told the Washington Examiner. "Here, people seem to have a very strong belief in the fact we should maintain our connections to U.K. [traditions] and particularly to the monarchy."
He emphasized that he's only joking when he says he texts with Charles every night. But he is expected to report to Buckingham Palace alongside the other lieutenant governors, and the king listens intently to their provincial reports.
The finer points of courtly duties are a complex and sometimes baffling business for those as unfamiliar as Savage when he first received the appointment. Fortunately, he had a guide to help him find his feet in the position.
Christopher McCreery is the lieutenant governor's private secretary and an unabashed fanatic for the Canadian crown. He's written 17 books on monarchy, Canadian orders of merit, and the nation's orders of chivalry. From his ornate office on the lower level of Government House, he tends to every detail of the lieutenant governor's affairs, from aesthetics to practicalities.
It is McCreery who orders his boss's ornate court uniforms, curates the display cases of medals, and offers extensive lessons on the monarch's role in defining the Canadian nation.
"When you see new Canadians when they're sworn in, there is still a connection to the king and the crown through them swearing their allegiance to the king of Canada and becoming a part of the Canadian family in that way," McCreery told the Washington Examiner.
It is monarchy nerds and royal enthusiasts who keep the crown relevant despite efforts to tear it down in the name of total egalitarianism.
The Monarchist League of Canada is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering greater national pride in the sovereign. It acknowledges it is fighting an uphill battle against a government and citizenry that treat the crown as a formality instead of a paternal figure.
When Elizabeth died in 2022, her portraits were taken off the walls of government buildings across Canada.
Tradition dictated that the federal government commission and distribute portraits of Charles to replace them. The new portrait didn't manifest, and the Monarchist League grew impatient as it received inquiries from people and institutions looking to adorn their walls with their monarch.
It eventually pressured the Department of Canadian Heritage to create the portrait and now collaborates with the government to send it to any citizen in the country who requests one, asking only for a flat shipping fee.
Karim Al Dahdah is the senior officer for the Monarchist League in Quebec. It's a thankless job in a province filled with French Canadians who are not only ambivalent to the crown but actively hostile to it due to its distinctly British heritage.
"It's a system that works. It has proven over the years that it works," he told the Washington Examiner with visible enthusiasm. "It brings a sense of stability and continuity to the country, and it contributes to the preservation of the traditions and symbols and heritage of the country."
Al Dahdah, an illustrator and graphic designer by trade, immigrated to Canada from Lebanon in 2014. He obtained citizenship in 2019, swearing his oath of allegiance to Elizabeth, and is an outspoken advocate of his adopted sovereign.
It is his hope that "renewed interest in what makes us different from the United States" will encourage more citizens to embrace their monarchist roots.
Canadian nationalism often defines itself in opposition to the U.S., emphasizing points of Canadian society that Canadians believe elevate them above the barbarous Yankees.
KING CHARLES III TO OPEN CANADIAN PARLIAMENT TO UNDERSCORE 'SOVEREIGNTY' OF COUNTRY
The universal healthcare system is practically a divine institution, a point of pride to be contrasted against the Americans' pay-for-care model.
Left-wing politics are championed as a patriotic alternative to the populist conservatism of their southern neighbors. America is a homogenizing melting pot, Ottawa elites say, but Canada is a diverse salad.
If this anti-American sentiment continues to swell as it has in the era of Trump, Canadians may soon be singing the praises of their once-discarded king — even if only as a jibe against the White House.
Timothy Nerozzi is the foreign affairs reporter for the Washington Examiner.
Golden State rising: California cities pivot from progressive policies and see results Golden State rising: California cities pivot from progressive policies and see results Barnini Chakraborty SAN FRANCISCO - When Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) went to San Francisco a couple of years ago, his luggage was stolen. Every bag. He wasn't the only one.

At the time, smash-and-grab jobs were the preferred method of thieves looking for a quick score. Almost everyone who went to the airport and left their luggage in the car to grab a drink or get something to eat returned to find a lot of broken glass but little else. 
Schiff was in the House of Representatives at the time. He went to a Target in South San Francisco for toiletries, and he had to flag down a clerk to open a locked shelf. Inside was the usual: toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, and deodorant. Stores in the area had been forced to lock up items because of progressive policies that were soft on crime. Anyone could walk into a store, steal less than $900 worth of items, and walk out scot-free. If they were arrested, which they rarely were, they were back on the street within hours or minutes in some cases. It was all part of a progressive push to decriminalize large swaths of criminal activity in the name of good governance. It was anything but and, in turn, forced retailers to start locking up items. 
The clerk at Target had a message for Schiff. "She basically said — in not so many words — that Democrats are a**holes," Schiff recalled. 
Schiff knew then what Democrats seemed blind to. If they had such a big messaging problem in arguably the most progressive corner of one of the bluest states in America, they would be royally screwed elsewhere.
He was right.  
Over the past two years, California voters have made it clear they are fed up and want change. They booted out progressive prosecutors in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Alameda County. 
They voted in San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a no-nonsense centrist who has made extraordinary advances in his city's homelessness, crime, and accountability problems. This has made him the enemy of progressive Democrats who have criticized his approach, and yet, crime is lower, homelessness is being handled, the streets are cleaner, and the quality of life is better under his mayoralty. 
In Oakland, ground zero for California's progressive movement, voters flirted with the idea of having a much more centrist mayor in last month's special election. Ultimately, they voted in Mayor Barbara Lee, a 30-year congressional titan of progressive politics. But even she realized the city craved change, and she reflected it in her transition team, which included more centrists than the city had seen in years. 
In San Francisco, voters were frustrated with how Democratic Mayor London Breed did her job. San Francisco didn't feel any safer, tourists stopped coming, crime rose, businesses fled, and the city, once one of the most naturally stunning in the country, had turned into a human toilet bowl. The city also failed to bounce back as quickly as others in the area had after COVID-19. 
"Japanese tourists would come all the time," George Huang, who has worked in the hospitality industry in the city's Union Square area for 17 years, told the Washington Examiner. "They all went back and told their friends they can't get help from the police if they are robbed or need help. They went online and took videos of San Francisco and all of the drugs and homeless people, and everyone across the world saw how San Francisco had become. They stopped coming. Today, I saw two Japanese families at the restaurant. That's more than I have seen in weeks."
In November, San Franciscans pinned their hopes for a turnaround on Daniel Lurie, a political novice. 
Lurie is the billionaire heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and the founder of the anti-poverty nonprofit group Tipping Point Community. He pledged to clean up the city, eliminate destructive progressive policies, slash unnecessary regulations, take only a $1 salary, and promote good governance. Even though he had never held an elected office in city government, the city was ready to bet on him, and so far, he has mostly delivered. 
He has gotten help and insight on drugs, homelessness, and bringing back business from some interesting and deep-pocketed sources, including his friends and family members. He has also received some pushback from nonprofit groups that say his commonsense policies don't gel well with theirs. Another common complaint is that they believe he overpromises and underdelivers, something that will be put to the test when he rolls out his budget later this month.  
When it comes to drugs and homelessness, Lurie has been listening to Tom Wolf. 
Wolf spent six months living on the streets of the Tenderloin neighborhood, San Francisco's notorious 50-block district steeped in crime, prostitution, and every vice imaginable.
He had a well-paying job as a child support officer, but things took a turn for the worse for the father of two in 2015 when he needed foot surgery and was prescribed a 30-day take-home supply of opioids. 
“I started going out to the street to purchase more because I couldn’t get any more from my doctor, and I got full-on addicted,” he told the Washington Examiner. “At the peak of my addiction, I was taking 560 milligrams of oxycodone every single day.”
Wolf said the levee broke when his wife found out that their house was in foreclosure because he had stopped paying the mortgage to buy drugs. She cut him off from their money. He went into withdrawal and started to buy cheap heroin. When she found out, she kicked him out and got a restraining order. 
Wolf returned to the Tenderloin, where he became a mule for drug dealers. He got arrested — a lot. But in San Francisco, at the time under interim Mayor Mark Farrell and then Breed, that only meant a slap on the wrist. 
“I got arrested six times in a three-month period, and finally, after the sixth arrest, they kept me in custody for three months,” he said.
He went to jail, got clean, and entered a six-month residential treatment program at the Salvation Army because it was free. 
“I found recovery, and I have been clean and sober. I'll have seven years on June 24,” he said. “And I am back with my wife and kids.”
These days, Wolf is trying to help those with addiction get off the streets, something he believes starts with a get-tough approach to crime, homelessness, and drugs that the state has lacked under Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Wolf testified before the legislature and is pushing a "recovery first" drug strategy that prioritizes abstinence and long-term remission. 
On May 5, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Lurie, Assemblyman Matt Haney, Supervisor Matt Dorsey, and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins in front of city hall in support of Assembly Bill 225, which allows state homelessness programs to support permanent drug-free recovery housing projects across the state. 
Haney's bill would allow local governments to use up to 25% of state homelessness housing funds to support sober living programs — an option currently off-limits under California law. The bill seeks to patch a hole in the state's "Housing First" policy, which was adopted in 2016 to lower barriers to housing and prohibits programs receiving state funds from requiring sobriety. That means even if someone gets off the streets and off drugs or alcohol, he or she would be placed in an environment that allows those vices and the temptation to be constantly around that person. 
"People who want recovery shouldn't have to live next to active drug use," Haney said. "Sober housing works because it builds a community of accountability, compassion, and shared commitment to staying clean."
Haney's bill has passed the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee, cleared the Health Committee with bipartisan support, and is headed to the Appropriations Committee. 
Dorsey, a recovering addict, has pitched a "Recovery First" ordinance that would redefine "remission" from substance abuse disorder as "living a self-directed and healthy life, free from illicit drug use" and enshrine long-term remission through the process of recovery as San Francisco's primary substance abuse disorder policy goal. 
The effort has infuriated critics in a city that has pioneered harm reduction. They argue that forcing addicts to stop doing illegal drugs alienates those who are not ready to quit. The city now prioritizes handing out clean needles, foil, and cans of Narcan. Dorsey's proposal says the city should pivot. 
Drug addiction and homelessness go hand in hand in San Francisco. 
As mayor, Lurie has also made decreasing homelessness a priority. On the campaign trail, he promised to solve street homelessness in six months after taking office. That obviously hasn't happened, but he has stood by a goal of adding 1,500 interim housing units to the city this year. He will rely partly on some projects from the previous administration, but he is betting he can get it done in record time because he was successful in getting an ordinance passed that would give priority to city contracts related to homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health services. 
The city will open nearly 300 treatment and interim housing beds by the end of the summer, which will be spread across five sites: four in the city's South of Market neighborhood and one in the Marina. 
“People struggling on our streets deserve a chance to get better. To give them that chance, we must be able to bring them indoors and provide the services they need, and these five interim housing sites will help us do that,” Lurie said in a statement.
Last month, he announced the consolidation of San Francisco's nine homelessness street-outreach teams into six and put them under the umbrella of the Department of Emergency Management. The teams will refocus their efforts on five neighborhoods. Under previous leaders, the teams lacked communication with one another. A 2023 city audit found that they often had overlapping functions. 
When the Washington Examiner spoke to Lurie during his mayoral campaign in October, he stressed public safety as his priority. Crime reports have dropped in the first quarter, and Lurie has pushed for more aggressive police enforcement in places such as Sixth Street and 16th and Mission. 
“We’re off to a good start in our first four months in office — property crime is down 35%, violent crime is down 15%, and car break-ins are at a 22-year low, but I’m far from satisfied," he told us last week. "Our work is not done until residents and visitors feel safe on our streets and downtown is the vibrant area we know it can be.”    
The crackdown on crime has made a difference for people like Huang, who say they have started to walk to work again.  
"It was so bad, but slowly, very slowly, it's getting better," he said. "I know it will take some time, and we have to be patient, but I have seen changes." 
So has Bianca Pal. 
Pal is from the East Coast and travels to the Bay Area for business about six times a year. She told the Washington Examiner that she is no longer afraid to walk near the Tenderloin during the day, though she mostly keeps to the Union Square area and other touristy spots. On a recent Saturday, she decided to treat herself to some retail therapy at Williams Sonoma, followed by a trip to the Apple Store and Tiffany & Co. before settling in for five days of back-to-back work meetings. 
"I would have stayed holed up in my hotel room, but I took advantage of the weather, and if you look around, San Francisco has cleaned up its act, at least in [Union Square]," she said. 
That's good news for the city, which had seen a huge dip in tourists and had to deal with an exodus of businesses. It will suffer another loss on Sunday, May 10, when luxury retail store Saks Fifth Avenue, a staple in San Francisco, will close its doors for good. The departure follows Macy's announcement that it would close by 2027 and is the latest of several legacy stores that have announced they are leaving the city's tourism and shopping district. San Francisco's vacancy rate is at 35.8%, according to real estate data. While it has improved slightly, San Francisco leaders are already pushing the next big thing. 
SAN FRANCISCO'S PUSH FOR 'RECOVERY FIRST' DRUG ABUSE PLAN FACES CRUCIAL VOTE
OpenAI's Sam Altman co-founded a World Network company, the retail location of which opened recently in Union Square. 
Nintendo, which has a splashy Mario-themed billboard, will open its store on May 15.
Barnini Chakraborty is a senior investigations reporter for the Washington Examiner.
Review of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s ‘Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity’ Review of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s ‘Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity’ Emma Collins There’s a certain admirable honesty in those rebellious souls who turn away from religion entirely: the preacher’s daughter who gets a lip piercing and declares herself polyamorous, and libertarian firebrands such as the late Christopher Hitchens, who relished verbal battles with befuddled clergy. Stranger, however, are those cases who choose to remain in their chosen or inherited church, and while professing to seek its improvement, actually receive pleasure from undermining it. Such a case is Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, a distinguished Oxford historian whose latest doorstopper is Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity. At almost 700 pages, the account of Christianity’s origin and its flowering into the Christendom that defined the West also tells the story of the faith’s attitude toward human sexuality.
MacCulloch declares that “there is no such thing as a Christian theology of sex. There are multiple Christian theologies of sex.” He talks about the emergence of marriage in Christian life as a middle way between promiscuity, which has traditionally been viewed as something that separates us from God, and the professed chastity of celibates such as monks and nuns, who sublimate their erotic desires to enter a mystical bond with Christ. He provides an exposition of the ancient cultures that influenced Christianity and the thrust, if you will, of its mainstream teachings on sexual behavior. MacCulloch illustrates how “self-control was a prime masculine characteristic in the Classical world,” and how early Jewish reflections on the Hebrew Bible emphasized wedlock as “the only permissible setting” for physical pleasure. The idea of intercourse happening only for the purpose of creating new life, or the “procreational rule on sex,” was a principle of the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras.
Despite present-day American Christianity’s somewhat pushy emphasis on pronatalism, MacCulloch demonstrates how the faith has historically been built and upheld by childless celibates. He talks about the ascetic practices of early Christian monasticism, and his detailing of the progression from eremitic renunciation to the establishment of clerical celibacy in the 11th century is indeed prodigious. An ax-grinding Anglican, he has little patience for the deep Catholic tradition of abstinence in pursuit of higher spiritual goals, and in typical modern fashion, he characterizes sex as mere “fun” instead of a force of mystic power and significance. It could be said that all religion, deep down, is a search for the proper attitude toward sex — it is our orientation toward eros and its meaning, more than anything else, that determines our spiritual beliefs. Celibacy should not be equated with sex-negativity, and the notion that Christianity is not sex-positive is a profound misconception.
Sex-positivity in the contemporary sense implies cherishing sex as a good, even seeing it as a gift, perhaps. This is precisely what traditional Catholic theology emphasizes, both in works such as Saint John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and in the catechism itself, which calls human sexuality a rightful “source of joy and pleasure.” The body is a way to God. Is it salutary for our sexual fulfillment, however, to deny all necessity of restraint, and to regard all attempts at regulating erotic decisions as delusions? One gets the impression that for MacCulloch, the many inquiries into how Christians should constrain their sexual choices are so many flies on his crème brûlée.
He is equally uncomfortable with passionate displays of emotion, calling D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover a “pretentiously overheated celebration of integrating mind and body in human love.” Lawrence was not a practicing Christian in any conventional sense, but he knew how to defend the earthly, pre-Protestant Church. MacCulloch vigorously defends the Reformation, calling its hero, Martin Luther, a “great man,” but for Lawrence, and for perhaps all faithful sensualists, this was the moment when our tradition lost its “togetherness with the universe, the togetherness of the body, the sex, the emotions, the passions, with the earth and sun and stars.” It is essential, Lawrence writes, to have “a proper reverence for sex.”
MacCulloch seems to have been radicalized by an experience in his youth. The son of an Anglican clergyman, he was ordained a deacon before withdrawing his application to the priesthood when his homosexual relationship became a problem — the Church of England has since allowed gay and lesbian priests in civil partnerships. Admitting that he envisioned Lower Than the Angels as a “well-placed hand grenade,” the historian has long devoted his considerable energies to sneering at conservatives and traditionalists. The book is sprinkled with tired oppositional language: “problematic,” “subversion,” and “resistance” all make an appearance, and MacCulloch sighs wistfully over the horrors of the “male gaze,” a concept the poet and critic Alice Gribbin astutely calls a conspiracy theory.
Most tiresome of all is MacCulloch’s insistence that women are perpetual victims in Christian religious history. After hundreds of pages of reading about how oppressed I am by the faith that has saved my life, I was also struck by the omission of numerous female saints such as the 16th-century Carmelite Teresa of Avila: Not only a prolific spiritual author and enterprising founder of monasteries, she is something of an erotic icon, having been depicted in sculpture at the heights of mystical ecstasy.
MacCulloch similarly considers but ultimately dismisses groundbreaking work by the late gay scholar and Catholic convert John Boswell, whose 1980 title Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality suggested that much of Christian tradition was not as antagonistic toward sexual minorities as is commonly portrayed. This was “wishful thinking,” he declares, and Boswell was simply “overexcited” — perhaps admitting that many Christians throughout time have not been as concerned about gayness as the author insists would give him less of a reason to continue his bitter drumbeat.
The book is funny, especially in passages outlining the genesis of the codpiece, or recalling outrageous quotes such as Samuel Johnson’s insistence that “a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs.” MacCulloch is amusingly dry, and defends a scholarly sense of detachment as “an ideal to which to aspire” — he intends to treat the Bible “with all the skills of critical textual scholarship.” Something is lost in this approach, however, and one is left wondering what a similar account by an unequivocally believing writer would sound like. For all MacCulloch’s picking apart of religious history, he provides little genuine explanation for the phenomenal growth of Christianity or why so many people have risked their respectability and even their lives to spread it throughout the world.
His explanations for historical developments, particularly those having to do with folk spirituality, are unrelentingly cynical. The purpose of Creeds, he states, was “to eliminate alternative lines of argument,” not to ground and comfort the faithful; clerical celibacy was about defending property and held no deeper meaning concerning chastity or holy vocation; and evangelical revivalist passion was simply a reaction by beleaguered people who had “little sense of agency” due to “economic or political revolutions.” MacCulloch uses coldly transactional language to describe popular devotion to beloved Christian figures such as Saint Joseph, calling increasing affection for the Savior’s earthly father an example of his “stock” rising “higher.”
HOW ROMANCE, RELIGION, AND PUNK CREATED GOTH
Toward the end of the book, the author gloats that “American churchgoing is now belatedly following European patterns of decline.” But some recent studies reveal a turnaround. Analyst Ryan Burge released data in 2024 showing that the number of religious “nones” in the United States has stopped increasing, with Generation Z in particular turning toward affiliation with faith. An April report from the United Kingdom, titled The Quiet Revival, alerted the public to a dramatic increase in church attendance by British youth. Growth in Catholic and Pentecostal congregations is outpacing that of the Church of England. “Many in the generation coming to adulthood decide that their parents’ religious practice and moral outlook are not for them,” MacCulloch smugly notes. This is true, though not in the way he’d like. Many of us are turning away from the empty permissiveness of the recent past and embracing conservatism instead.
There is unmistakable acrimony toward Christianity in this scholarly offering, an odd posture for a man who claims to be a friend of the faith. In recent years, spiritual and political writers such as Charles Taylor and Rod Dreher, among others, have spoken of the concept of enchantment — the notion that society ought to consider a sacramental view of life once more, and that frigid rationalistic inquiry isn’t enough to satisfy the human soul. For such enchanting subject matter, MacCulloch’s history of sex and Christianity is a remarkably disenchanted book. I don’t recommend it: neither for Catholics, whose ascetic inclinations it drains of meaning, nor for evangelicals, whose rapture it dissects. If you’re a foe of religious tradition, however, with a bee in your bonnet or a bone to pick, it just might scratch your itch.
Emma Collins is a writer based in Washington. You can find her newsletter, A New Heaven, on Substack.
Turning Colorado into California: Damage from left-wing wins is mounting Turning Colorado into California: Damage from left-wing wins is mounting Wayne Laugesen
My home state of Colorado used to shine as a Western American land of promise, where economic vigor and free-spirit vibes lured diverse transplants from around the globe. Migrants from great coastal cities likened it to a real-life version of Ayn Rand’s fictional, Colorado-based Galt’s Gulch, where industrialists, inventors, entrepreneurs, and artists established themselves to escape a collectivist society that manifests mediocrity and oppression.
Growth in population and wealth was the norm through the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Business leaders and top-ranking executives flocked to Colorado, with the state becoming a permanent home for at least 12 billionaires and 170,223 millionaire households by 2020 — not bad for a state with fewer than 6 million residents. It was an environment in which liberals, conservatives, libertarians, hippies, cowboys, rednecks, hillbillies, artists, tech entrepreneurs, and free-spirited people of all philosophical and political persuasions led safe and stable lifestyles in a cultural and economic cocoon.
Then came 2018, when the far Left won majorities in both chambers of the legislature, and voters elevated Democrats to every statewide office, including Gov. Jared Polis, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, and Attorney General Phil Weiser. By 2021, the Left held both of Colorado’s U.S. Senate seats and four of the state’s seven House seats (the state gained an eighth district in 2023, first held by a Democrat).
Seven years into this dark blue tsunami, the signs of damage are mounting. At first, Colorado’s stumbles looked eerily like those made notorious by California. Nearing the end of the 2025 legislative session, Colorado has outdone what center-right Coloradans call the “Left Coast.” This year’s legislative agenda — including a countercultural push to rework the state’s Labor Peace Act, tilting the scales toward unions and away from production — hints at more trouble ahead.
For decades, Coloradans have grumbled about “Californication,” the influx of Californians jacking up home prices and hauling in left-leaning politics. It was one part jest, another part gripe, and a nod to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ riff on culture creep. “Colofornia” became a term of consternation among natives and others witnessing the influx. But it’s no laughing matter in 2025. The numbers show a genuine shift, and the fallout — economic strain, cultural friction, and a state generally losing its footing — is hitting hard.
Despite a doctrinaire, radicalized legislature, what’s the matter with Colorado is far from intractable. Colorado cities and towns consistently rank among the top 10 for livability, as ranked on lists by U.S. News & World Report, WalletHub, and other research organizations.
Colorado has become a draw for the country’s booming aerospace industry. Parks, trails, open spaces, ski slopes, and awe-inspiring vistas complement a four-season climate conducive to year-round recreation. A modern proliferation of art venues, museums, and concert arenas gives Coloradans cultural amenities more common in major coastal cities.
What we have here is a governmental leadership crisis of one-party control, with rippling consequences of death, homelessness, addiction, despair, and growing unemployment, disproportionately burdening the most vulnerable among us.
Pre-2018, Colorado reliably flexed economic muscle no matter which party controlled the famously swingy purple state. Studies consistently ranked Colorado in the top five for economic performance, and the state shone as a beacon for go-getters. By 2024, the Centennial State slumped to the bottom 10. It is California’s slow bleed redux: Regulations pile up, costs soar, and growth fizzles. Personal income growth, a bragging right at third nationally pre-2018, crashed to 39th by 2024, even with Polis and company supporting some of the country’s highest minimum wage mandates, consistently projecting themselves as champions of the state’s dwindling working class.
Though wage hikes raise some paychecks, jobs thin out and businesses hesitate to grow or relocate, handing Colorado a growing “income inequality” dilemma like the divide between California’s Silicon Valley/Hollywood crowd and ordinary households.
Housing is referred to as a “crisis” by the legacy media. Median prices hit $541,352 in February, based on Zillow sales and listing data, landing Colorado among the five least affordable states. Apartments.com shows apartments in Denver going for 32% more than the national average.
Inflation across goods and services has risen 15.4% since 2021, outpacing the rest of the country. Colorado’s new and troubling status as the sixth-most-regulated state raises a growing concern: Will top employers continue doing business in what free-market, supply-side defenders view as a freakishly controlling regulatory environment, much less choose Colorado as a good place to start, grow, or relocate a business?
The regulatory excess goes beyond wage mandates, expensive requirements to save the planet by forcing the abandonment of natural gas heating, and countless other regulations that are hostile to businesses. In April, the legislature and Polis banned the sale of most common handguns, rifles, and shotguns except for those with enough free time and money to buy themselves past required training courses and licensure fees.
If that’s not enough to discourage doing business in Colorado, the legislature crafted a bill that penalizes parents, with consequences that include losing custody, if they use a child’s given name instead of one the child prefers. That proposed law alone has families planning to move and much of the country rolling its eyes.
The workforce is taking hits. Oil and gas, a godsend for smart workers without college degrees, dropped 25% in active rigs by 2023, based on industry tallies. Compliance costs from post-2018 rules — $590 million a year, as found by the Common Sense Institute — push layoffs and send firms packing.
The proposed 2025 Labor Peace Act overhaul, making it easier to require “closed shops” in Colorado, could jack up costs for employers running on fumes. The bill now on the table at the legislature to scrap the act would make Colorado join the ranks of the minority of states where one simple majority vote is all that’s needed to force all employees in a workplace to fork over union dues, like it or not. The net effect, worried Colorado development recruiters point out, would be to scare off a lot of employers looking to locate in Colorado or expand their operations here. California, under a union chokehold, is the poster child; employers have been fleeing its closed shops for “right to work” states where unions cannot make nonmembers pay fees or dues. Colorado’s 3.8% unemployment in late 2024 looked rosy. Expect it to rise if this bill becomes law.
Colorado’s energy production provides a case study in control creep. Senate Bill 19-181, signed in 2019, flipped the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from industry booster to eco-enforcer. Industry seats shrank from three to one, swapped for environmentalists. Local governments gained free rein to tighten drilling regulations that the state had long prohibited to protect property rights and the country’s energy supply.
The oil and gas permitting process has become an engineered slog. Permits that took an average of 319 days in 2021 ballooned to 647 days by 2023. A per-barrel fee imposed in 2024 siphons cash for transit and wildlife. Colorado, the country’s fourth-largest energy producer, harvests less than it did in 2019, costing the state high-wage jobs and tax revenues essential to funding schools and infrastructure.
In March, Colorado had the second-highest unemployment rate, 4.8%, falling far below Mississippi, West Virginia, and other states that traditionally struggle economically. That compares with 2017, when Colorado tied for the country’s second-lowest unemployment rate at 2.7% before the left-wing, uni-party tsunami.
In 2017, Colorado’s job-growth rate was the envy of the country at 2.4%, compared with the national rate of 1.5%. The state’s most recent job-growth rate has fallen to 0.17%, compared to the national rate of 1.2%, landing Colorado 43rd in the country for job growth between March 2023 and March 2024, with neighboring Utah and Wyoming in the top 10 for job growth.
As with oil and gas producers, commercial real estate owners also feel the squeeze of excessive regulation. House Bill 1286 (2021) mandates that buildings over 50,000 square feet track energy and cut emissions by 7% by 2026 and 20% by 2030. Owners pay for retrofits, and the electrification mandates ban gas furnaces in buildings erected since 2024, with electric swaps due by 2027.
A 2024 rule tacks on gender-neutral restrooms and baby-diaper changing stations by 2026, raising construction costs even more. Polis pitches sustainability and fairness, but for business leaders, it is the importation of California-style regulatory excess they can choose to reject by moving operations next door to Utah or to any of the other less-regulated states surrounding Colorado.
Since 2019, Polis has backed policies such as House Bill 19-1124, tying the hands of state and local law enforcement when asked to cooperate with federal holds requested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. By 2025, more than 40,000 unvetted immigrants had poured in, landing in a state with 5.8 million permanent residents. Most have no jobs, cash, or prospects for employment and long-term housing.
The economy creaks under the weight of what Denver Mayor Mike Johnston gleefully calls “new arrivals.” It is a view from the perch of an Ivy League politician who grew up in Vail, where the median home price hovers around $2 million. Before the immigrant invasion, housing was a pipe dream for the young, and now these taxpayers shell out big to care for immigrants. Denver dropped $36 million on shelters in 2023, based on city budget data. Culturally, it’s a jolt, as schools strain under language gaps, and neighborhoods grapple with a new population of homeless people on top of scarcities in healthcare, social services, and housing that were problematic before the immigrant surge dramatically increased demand.
Illegal immigrant prison gangs, most notably the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, have notoriously spread from Denver. They have taken over apartment complexes in Aurora, and several of their victims told a member of the Colorado Springs Gazette’s editorial board that the problem is far worse and more widespread than the public has been told.
Similarly, California’s open-door experiment tanked affordability and stretched resources. For a state with seven times fewer residents than the Golden State, 40,000-plus “new arrivals” are a wave too high for the public to surf. Polis might call it compassion, but it amounts to a bill the average Joe and Jane Six Pack can’t afford.
Crime, especially violent crime, was for Coloradans a problem mostly found in distant coastal and Midwestern cities throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. People lived here to avoid crime.
Then, the left-wing cabal decriminalized every illicit drug, on the heels of voters enacting full legalization of marijuana, and indulged a “criminal justice reform” agenda that eased penalties for nearly every crime. The ideology said criminals need reform, but the result has been criminals flocking to Colorado, including Tren de Aragua gangsters, who made Colorado their North American headquarters.
The Common Sense Institute pegged Colorado’s 2022 monthly crime rate at 530 offenses per 100,000 residents, up 7.3% from 2019 and 20% from 2008. Car thefts jumped 13.6% that year, hitting 40,000-plus and topping the nation. Violent crime is at 423 per 100,000 since 2018, above average, with homicides and assaults creeping up. Walking the streets of Denver alone at night — where one risks life and limb in Washington Park, on Capitol Hill, or in other traditionally safe neighborhoods — makes little more sense than walking the streets of south-central Los Angeles.
The Left’s soft-on-crime policies culminated in national notoriety when U.S. News & World Report ranked Colorado the third-most dangerous state in 2024.
Most of Colorado’s 1,927 public schools are faltering, California-style. Post-2020, Colorado Measures of Academic Success found math proficiency at 27.4% of the student population, down from 32.7%, and literacy at 43%, down from 44.5%.
The scores reveal a dilemma nearly identical to California’s 2022 slump to 33% proficiency in math and 47% in English. Gaps for minorities, low-income children, and special education students widened after 2018 gains faded. More funding is the cry, but experience proves it doesn’t buy results.
The state slid from the top 10 for legal in-migration for three decades to the bottom 10 by 2025, perhaps the result of high living costs, crime, and a one-size-fits-all, intolerant political climate incapable of interparty cooperation. Homelessness festers in Colorado’s metropolitan areas, linked to housing woes and limp policies. Tents and shanties make Denver streets and parks look similar to those in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
In the wake of hard-drug decriminalization and full-scale cannabis legalization, fentanyl deaths soared 101.3% from 2019 to 2022. Illegal marijuana trafficking persists. A federal forest official years ago told the Colorado Springs Gazette’s editorial board of large plantations hiding in some of Colorado’s 11 national forests, complete with makeshift buildings and armed guards.
It turns out Latin American cartels prefer producing the drug in a state where illegal products meld right in with their licensed and legal counterparts. So much for the belief that legalizing marijuana would kill the black market.
Colorado’s anything-goes drug orgy, with the second-highest teenage fentanyl overdose rate, has fueled a booming drug rehab sector that has elders liquidating retirement funds to pay the costs of saving their children and grandchildren from substance abuse.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported 413 substance abuse treatment facilities in Colorado in 2020, up from 382 in 2016. By 2022, its national directory listed 448 facilities, suggesting an uptick in corporations feeding on a growing addiction epidemic.
Though numbers tell the rehab story, for the public, it is palpable. Consider the Tri-Lakes region of mountain villages north of Colorado Springs. There, a former Ramada Inn hotel and two luxury mountain resorts have transitioned into rehab centers. The community’s former bowling alley and family fun center houses a large cannabis grow operation and recreational marijuana store.
The California-to-Colorado pipeline has been flowing for years, with estimates showing tens of thousands of California transplants annually for the past three decades.
Though diminishing, the California influx brings Left Coast policies and more. Because of Colorado’s relatively small population of 5.8 million, the demand created by deep-pocketed Californians contributes to housing prices rising so sharply that retirees struggle with property tax bills that rival old mortgage payments.
Politically, Californication has tilted Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins leftward while eating away at the consistently conservative tendencies of Colorado Springs — the veritable Orange County of Colorado, mimicking shifting political trajectories in south Los Angeles suburbs and San Diego.
In a state with living costs and crime approaching levels endured in California, bringing up children becomes increasingly challenging for many and a near impossibility for the working class.
Birth rates signal the growing unease. Polis, a married parent of two children, frequently champions what he calls family-friendly legislation and insists the state could use more children. Yet, births in his state fell from 62,949 in 2021 to 61,494 in 2023, based on the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and March of Dimes data.
Fertility has fallen as low as 50.2 in recent years for every 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, nearly a 25% fall since 2010, and the steepest decline nationwide. Fertility is at 1.48, which falls below the replacement rate. A slate of new laws, including a tweak to the state’s Medicaid program, encourages and subsidizes terminations of unborn children. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reports abortions increased from 8,873 in 2017 to 14,691 in 2023 (latest available) — a 65.5% increase.
The 2024 Colorado Political Climate Survey from CU-Boulder shows 33% approving of the state’s economy, with a 52% buy-in from Democrats and 16% from Republicans. The gap resembles California’s, in which wealthy tech executives and celebrities don’t typically know or care about the struggles of those living on or below the state’s $96,000 median household income.
Although Colorado’s median household income mirrors California’s, a recent study found that a household of four needs an income of $108,000 in 2025 just to scrape by. In Denver proper, the median household income is $94,157 — nearly $14,000 short of affording a modest family lifestyle.
Similar factors, throughout Colorado’s metropolitan areas, render the state comfortably livable only for those with solid six-figure wages, high net worths, or what frustrated Boulder residents commonly refer to as “trust funders” or “trustafarians” — residents gifted with inherited wealth.
When my wife and I moved to her native Colorado from Washington, D.C., in 1993, the state was indisputably America’s playground — a magnet for workers, young professionals starting families, and free spirits of all sociopolitical and cultural backgrounds. Today, not so much.
THE CALIFORNIACATION OF COLORADO
Colorado’s new economic strains, high crime rates, and the sanctuary misstep have tested its historic grit. High costs, red tape, and policy pivots since 2018 echo California’s stumbles, hitting a smaller state harder and faster. Workers and families feel it as homes slip away, jobs dwindle, and sidewalks and other public spaces head toward blight.
Polis, a well-intentioned optimist, anticipates a brighter tomorrow. Yet, data portend a future that could make California look stable and equitable by comparison. Colorado is far from hopeless — the climate, awe-inspiring terrain, and entertainment amenities will outlive trends, and even humanity’s existence — but the culture and economy tell a cautionary tale of a far-left, central planning agenda gone mad. As the Chili Peppers tell it, “Born and raised by those who praise control of population — it's Californication.” 
Wayne Laugesen is editorial page editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette, from which this is reprinted.
Race to the bottom Race to the bottom Dominic Green If you know who Lenny Bruce is, you’re old. You’re either a boomer or a member of the cohort that is now blamed for blowing it in the '60s, despite the warning from Peter Fonda’s character in Easy Rider. Or you’re one of their children, a Gen Xer who resents the parental grip on family assets and public office while sharing your parents' reverence for the '60s. Boomers remember Bruce as a foul-mouthed stand-up comedian, the Abbie Hoffman of the comics, ruined by McCarthyite prurience and politicized prosecutions. Gen Xers, curators of a museum culture, know Bruce as the inventor of modern comedy and a free-speech martyr through the 1974 movie Lenny, in which Dustin Hoffman reenacted Bruce’s stage routines and legal disasters.
Boomer liberals are given a hard time, but they are right that race was the founding problem of American society and that Jim Crow laws were obscene. Bruce’s answer was not just legislative, but also linguistic. Disempowering the bigots in law only created legal equality. To live as equals, the language of discrimination needed to be disempowered. For his routine on this theme, Bruce turned the house lights on the audience and named them by insult like a racist auctioneer: “Three more sheenies, eight more guineas, seven wops, six greaseballs. I pass six dykes, four k*kes, and eight n*ggers.”
His argument was that as suppression increases the “power” of words, so their release defuses them. As only some of his insults require an asterisk, it would appear that Bruce was correct in linking suppression and the power of language. But was he right about the social benefits of release?
However, two recent cases suggest not. At a Rochester, Minnesota, playground on April 28, a white woman named Shiloh Hendrix was filmed seemingly calling a 5-year-old boy of Somali background a “n*gger” after, she alleged, he stole from her 18-month-old son’s diaper bag. The video went viral. Hendrix was racially abused online, and her address and phone number were publicized. She set up a GiveSendGo donation page, requesting $50,000 for “protecting” and possibly relocating her family. By May 8, the page had raised over $725,000, and Hendrix asked for a million dollars.
Many of Hendrix’s donors were enraged by an earlier GiveSendGo fundraiser. At a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas, on April 2, Karmelo Anthony, a black 17-year-old, stabbed Austin Metcalf, a white 17-year-old, through the heart after being told he was in the wrong seat. Anthony is now charged with first-degree murder. By April 30, his anonymously run GiveSendGo page had raised more than $500,000 of the $600,000 it sought for legal assistance and possible relocation. Unlike Hendrix’s page, Anthony’s page offered donors the pleasure of sending “a powerful message of community care and resistance in the face of injustice.”
Meanwhile, at the Barstool Sports bar in Philadelphia, patrons waved a bottle-service sign that said “F*ck the Jews” while ordering drinks. Viral footage showed a group of young people who thought it was hilarious. The clip's poster, Temple University student Mohammed Khan, who discussed “Jewish supremacy” in a podcast with Holocaust denier Stew Peters, accepted $100,000 worth of Peters’s cryptocurrency $JPROOF, which purports to offer “Jew-proof” investment that bypasses “usurious Jewish bankers,” and opened the obligatory GiveSendGo page. Donor comments include “Zionist/Jewish/Israeli supremacy destroys infrastructure, nature, people, children, animals, values, morals, and anything else good and wholesome in this world,” “thank you for standing up to the six million lies,” and “I am Mexican but thank you for standing up to the Synagogue of Satan.” 
A white supremacist and a Mexican give a brown-skinned Muslim funny money to own the Jews. It sounds like a Bruce skit, but it’s no joke. Liberalize speech, Bruce thought, and you turn the language of collective spite into a bantering, individualized equality. Speech was liberalized in the '60s and further liberalized online after the '90s, but collective identities strengthened. Legislative cures for racism, such as civil rights laws and affirmative action, defined Americans by racial grouping. As the government operated like GiveSendGo, Americans learned the new rules of racial identity and how to claim, as Khan now does, that “I am the victim.” 
Bruce’s time was a honeymoon period when the old race politics were crumbling and the new had yet to arrive. Liberalization has emptied the cultural reservoir of restraint and compassion, the infinite depth of which Bruce presumed. What remains is a barren ground of collective, zero-sum resource competition. The Anthony, Hendrix, and Khan cases released the language of collectivized racism in its socially polarized, partisan modes. Anthony’s boosters, like Khan, speak the college-educated, Democrat-sponsored cant of racialized “resistance” and “speaking truth to power.” Hendrix speaks the antipodal argot of the MAGA base: unreformed, know-nothing, nothing to lose.
“If that’s what he gonna act like ... ” Hendrix said at the playground. 
BORGIA LIBERALISM
One reason the Democrats lost in 2016 and 2024 is that most Americans don’t want to be governed as identitarian collectives. The Republicans will suffer a similar repudiation if the second Trump administration becomes identified with white racism and the online or woke Right. Most Americans still have something to lose, not least their rights as free individuals. That much, Bruce got right.
Dominic Green is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Find him on X @drdominicgreen.
Hollywood doesn’t deserve a tariff bailout Hollywood doesn’t deserve a tariff bailout Zachary Faria President Donald Trump’s obsession with tariffs is driven in part by a desire to restore industries to the American communities they have increasingly abandoned. Maybe we would all be better off, though, if Hollywood weren’t a beneficiary of these tariff bailouts.
Trump announced a 100% tariff on foreign films in a Truth Social post this month, declaring, “The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
Is it so bad, though, that “Hollywood” is “being devastated”? It has become, after all, a haven of anti-American liberal propaganda. Embedded in uber-liberal Los Angeles, Hollywood studios have frozen out conservative voices and foisted their anti-American narratives on the rest of the country through their films and through their influence on the culture. Hollywood is home to millionaire left-wing celebrities who work to elect terrible Democratic politicians. That infamous fundraiser where then-President Joe Biden wandered around lost onstage was in Los Angeles, where George Clooney and others helped Biden’s campaign receive $28 million.
The California Democratic Party has been responsible for Hollywood’s hollowing out. Regulations, taxes, and California’s inflated prices just make everything so much more expensive, including film productions. Studios that make films in Georgia pay less in taxes than if they did in California, on top of the lower cost of labor and materials. Shooting in California is just too expensive and too burdensome for too many studios.
You can take it from the experts. Actors Rob Lowe and Adam Scott earlier this year detailed the decline of Hollywood in Hollywood, with Lowe saying that the “union stuff” and the “economics of it all” just make it cheaper to fly people around the world for productions than actually shoot in Hollywood. Lowe would know. His game show, The Floor, flies 100 contestants to Dublin, Ireland, rather than filming in Los Angeles. Lowe said Parks and Recreation, the hit show he and Scott starred in, would be shot in Budapest, Hungary, if it were made today.
How have Hollywood celebrities repaid Georgia for offering the tax breaks that celebrities such as Lowe want to see? They lined up in droves to lecture the state about its abortion restrictions, calling them “evil” and threatening to pull productions, or pressure studios to pull productions, out of the state.
TRUMP LETS NEWSOM OFF THE HOOK FOR WRECKING HOLLYWOOD
If anything, it would possibly be better for the country if we shipped all of these Hollywood celebrities off to Ireland or maybe even Xinjiang, China. Disney’s Mulan team apparently had a great time there!
Whatever the case, the country has far more pressing matters than bailing out a bunch of entitled Hollywood celebrities to save the dying city that is being killed by the very politicians they support. Hollywood doesn’t deserve a bailout, especially while studios keep churning out liberal propaganda.
One cheer for the UK trade agreement One cheer for the UK trade agreement Dan Hannan
First the good news. A trade agreement between the largest and the sixth-largest economies on the planet is (in every sense) a big deal. Former President Barack Obama threatened to put Britain at the “back of the queue” if it voted for Brexit. In the event, Britain has ended up at the front.
Now the bad news. U.S. tariffs on the United Kingdom are still higher than they were before the craziness of April 2. The two justifications for those tariffs, that they would make other countries open their markets and that they would eliminate U.S. trade deficits, have been shown to be nonsense. The U.K. has further reduced its negligible tariffs against the United States, and American trade with Britain was already in surplus, but the 10% rate has not been removed. Despite some quotas and exemptions, trade between the two great English-speaking democracies is still more restricted than it was two months ago.
Things won’t necessarily end there, of course. Ever since the “Liberation Day” announcements, British negotiators have thought in terms of a two-stage deal: A stopgap agreement to suspend tariffs, followed by a comprehensive deal later in the year. This second deal would be the big one, covering services, procurement, digital regulations, and other nontariff barriers. Although President Donald Trump is obsessed with trade in physical goods, invisibles are vastly more important to both the American and British economies.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke explicitly of extending the deal, which his ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, called a “springboard.” Trump was more ambiguous, referring to the deal just concluded as “comprehensive” and “maxed-out,” but then adding, “This is a very conclusive deal, but we think we can grow it from that.”
Here, as the Brits saw it, was an emergency measure to suspend the 25% tariff on British cars, a rate that would have decimated the luxury brands that dominate exports to the US: Jaguar, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, Bentley.
The serious stuff, on this reading, is still being finalized, and we should look forward to a proper signing ceremony toward the end of the year when Trump makes his second state visit to the U.K. If all goes well, the Balmoral Trump Accord or whatever it is called (my guess is that, in deference to the president’s sensitivities, neither “free” nor “trade” will be in the title) will be ratified before the midterm elections.
That, at any rate, is the theory. In practice, I wonder whether the will is there. I had thought that, at least in Britain, there was still some support for free trade, a policy with which no other country has been so historically associated. Recent weeks, though, have seen the very sudden growth of a British MAGA tendency on trade.
Two days before the U.S. deal, the U.K. had signed a free trade agreement with India — the fourth (soon to be third) economy in the world. Unlike the American accord, this one genuinely was comprehensive, covering services as well as the meaningful removal or tariffs. The previous Conservative government had negotiated 95% of it, and the current Labour administration took it over the line. It should have been an unequivocally positive story.
But within minutes, Nigel Farage had suggested that the deal would somehow make it easier for Indian migrants to come to the U.K. In fact, it had nothing to do with migration, being a trade deal. Farage was latching on to an agreement to avoid double taxation and presenting it as an immigration measure.
Depressingly, the Conservatives soon followed him in making this bogus claim and, before the ink was dry, the whole treaty was being denounced as some kind of globalist scam against working people. Who needed Indian imports anyway, asked politicians and pundits who knew better. Why couldn’t we just make what we needed ourselves?
INDIA AND PAKISTAN ARE OUR FUTURE
We could, obviously; and we would enjoy the medieval levels of poverty that went with it. The trouble is that no one wanted to say so. Those of us who pointed out that the deal would not increase migration were told to “read the room”. I was reminded of the demented summer of 2020, when any claim made by a BLM supporter, however obviously untrue, had to be entertained because it represented someone’s “lived experience”.
As the mood on both sides of the Atlantic turns introverted and autarkic, it is harder to imagine the kind of deal that would make a big difference, one based on across-the-board mutual recognition, getting through either Parliament or Congress. Tragically, this week’s limited accord may be as good as it gets.
A portrait of two masters of landscape A portrait of two masters of landscape Varad Mehta
The names of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner have been linked so closely for so long that it comes as a surprise to learn, about a third of the way through Nicola Moorby’s engaging joint study of Britain’s two greatest painters, that they didn’t meet until 1813, when the two men had been in London pursuing artistic glory with varying levels of success for a decade and a quarter-century, respectively. Given their vastly different temperaments, personalities, upbringings, and aesthetic sensibilities, perhaps the bigger surprise is that they should have met at all. As near as they were in time and space, they remained, thanks to their contrasting and conflicting visions, worlds apart. Yet different as they were, they were bound by a mutual conviction in the dignity and validity of landscape not only as a legitimate genre of painting, but as a distinct and unique art form in its own right. 
On the surface, the portrait of Turner and Constable painted by Moorby in her new book about the two artists is one rendered in familiar colors. One was the child of a London barber and an emotionally disturbed mother, the other scion of a prosperous country miller and raised in comfort if not gentility. The former, born in 1775, was a striver, restless, always on the go; there was something inescapably urban about him. The latter, born in that monumental year of 1776, was firmly rooted in his beloved Suffolk. One, if not exactly cosmopolitan, evinced a lifelong wanderlust. The other reveled in his provincialism. 
The older had liaisons and children, but, “secretive to a fault,” much about his family life is still obscure, the filial affection he showed toward his father translating not at all into paternal affection for his offspring. The younger, “an open book” on the other hand, was a devoted husband and doting father who cherished domestic bliss. If one was the paragon of motion, movement, and “the inevitable transience of life,” the other became “a byword for nostalgia, tradition, and quintessential English countryside.” One was “fire and heat” and a “radical modern,” the other “water and coolness” and an “anti-modern conservative.” 
Several ironies emerge from Moorby’s diptych. For example, it was Turner, from a much less respectable background, who proved himself more adept at navigating the rigid hierarchies of the Royal Academy of Arts, thus securing favor and advancement far more rapidly than his rural counterpart. Yet in a sense, this made Constable, ostensibly the more conservative of the two, the true radical, shunning the expectations of patrons and purveyors alike. Turner had no compunction about painting whatever was asked of him. Not so Constable, who for a time abandoned the London rat race for the more welcoming climes of his native East Bergholt, where he sought “an original artistic voice — an expression of the truth of nature through means he did not believe, as yet, to exist.” And although it was Turner who traveled extensively on the continent, it was the resolutely immovable Constable who gained the only success in Europe either enjoyed in their lifetimes when The Hay Wain (1821) made a considerable splash in France in the 1820s. 
Constable was a notorious homebody by practice and inclination. He was the painter of the body’s eye, Turner that of the mind’s. Constable had to see it to paint it. His art was grounded in the present and the concrete, and when he finally came to the public notice, it was his “realism” that was one of the main sources of praise; no one, critics proclaimed, was able more exactly to capture nature’s likeness. Turner had no difficulty traveling in space (and time) mentally, and unlike Constable, he did so physically, too. “Painting is but another word for feeling,” Constable wrote in 1821, and he could not feel other places. “I should paint my own places best.” 
So far, so conventional. Where Moorby, a British art historian and curator, challenges received wisdom, and this is the chief strength of the book, is in her reconsideration of the nature of Turner and Constable’s relationship and how its reduction to a rivalry has colored perceptions of their legacies. That legendary rivalry, she insists, was more apparent than real, and she marshals a strong case. For one thing, Turner had been established for a decade in his career before Constable embarked on his. Turner also came to public attention long before Constable did. It wasn’t until the 1820s that they came together in the critical and popular imaginations, for it took that long for Constable to make a name for himself. They were never really in competition with each other, never interacted with each other that much until Constable was finally elevated to full membership in the RA (a full quarter-century after Turner, who garnered that accolade at the nearly unheard age of 26). “Posterity expected and wanted a rivalry, and therefore may have engineered one” by making conflict the defining feature of their association. But, Moorby writes, it is “more helpful to see these men in unison.”
In particular, Moorby contests the long-standing understanding of the two most renowned (indeed, really the only two) episodes of their putative antagonism, Turner’s supposed dressing down of Constable for his placement of a Turner piece between two of his own at the 1831 RA exhibition and Turner’s adding a smear of red paint to his painting Helvoetsluys at 1832’s, an incident memorably recreated in Mike Leigh’s 2014 film, Mr. Turner. Moorby reframes these occurrences as the kind of hijinks and joshing that occur between peers and colleagues, and not evidence of animosity. In contemporary terms, this was locker room trash talk, not a diss track. 
The Turner-Constable rivalry, Moorby contends, was factitious, the result of happenstance and the posthumous continuation of the pairing and juxtaposition imposed on them in life. Not least because the Turner usually opposed to Constable is one Suffolk’s favorite son never encountered. Turner didn’t become Turner until after Constable’s death in 1837. It is his late pictures, those created in the last years of his life, for which he is best known, all of them painted after his purported rival’s demise. 
TRUMP'S LONG PURGE: THE PRESIDENT IS TRYING TO UNDO THE FOUR YEARS HE WAS GONE
Constable died just before Victoria ascended the throne. Turner lived to see the Crystal Palace. Simply surviving long enough to die in the 15th year of the reign of a queen who herself lived into the 20th century confers on him a sort of spurious modernity. Constable saw steamboats, but they are conspicuously absent from his paintings. They are all over Turner’s, including at the forefront of arguably his greatest, The Fighting Temeraire (1839). Even as he saw the future, Constable refused to paint it. Turner couldn’t stop doing so. 
Both men spoke, then and now, through their art. And here, at least, they can speak to and about each other. “Turner’s life and works are an illuminating guide to Constable’s, and vice versa.” In this dialogue, avers Moorby, we can see that they were using the same language. “Turner’s recurring theme was the inevitability of one epoch succeeding another. Constable’s was the fleeting moment.” But both “understood landscape as uniquely suited to exploring the passage of time.” In time’s ceaseless flow, landscape gives us something to hold on to. “Their art is a reminder of what the natural world makes us feel as individuals, grounding us within life’s bigger picture.” As different as they were, together, Turner and Constable changed the way we see the world and our place in it.
Varad Mehta is a writer and historian. He lives in the Philadelphia area. Find him on X @varadmehta.
George Ryan, 1934-2025 George Ryan, 1934-2025 Daniel Ross Goodman
When George Ryan, a small-town pharmacist turned Illinois governor, stood before the world in 2000 to halt his state’s death penalty, he didn’t just pause executions — he ignited a global conversation about law, mercy, and the fallibility of human justice. Ryan, who died this week at age 91 in his hometown of Kankakee, Illinois, lived a life that was equal parts triumph and tragedy: a political ascent marked by bold reforms, a catastrophic fall fueled by corruption, and a late-life redemption that never quite erased the stains of his past. He was a man who reshaped a state’s moral landscape while wrestling with his own flaws, leaving a legacy as complicated as the land he served.
Born in 1934, Ryan grew up in the heart of Illinois, where his family’s pharmacy was a community cornerstone. A sturdy, plain-spoken man with a knack for connecting with people, Ryan learned the art of service early, dispensing prescriptions and advice with equal care. After earning a pharmacy degree from Ferris State College in Michigan, he returned home, married his high school sweetheart, Lura Lynn, and built a life rooted in the values of hard work and civic duty. But the pharmacy counter couldn’t contain his ambitions. By 1968, Ryan was on the Kankakee County Board, the first step in his political climb, which would span three decades.
Ryan’s rise was steady and deliberate. In 1973, he was elected to the Illinois House. He served with a pragmatist’s zeal, becoming speaker in 1981. His tenure as lieutenant governor under James R. Thompson from 1983 to 1991 honed his ability to navigate Springfield’s fractious politics. As secretary of state from 1991 to 1999, he championed anti-drunk driving laws, saving countless lives with stricter regulations. By the time he won the governor’s mansion in 1998, Ryan was a Republican stalwart — a law-and-order man whose career seemed destined for a quiet, honorable capstone.
But destiny had other plans. Ryan’s governorship, from 1999 to 2003, became a crucible. In 2000, haunted by mounting evidence of wrongful convictions — 13 death row inmates were exonerated after Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977 — he declared a moratorium on executions.
“I cannot support a system so fraught with error,” he said in a steady voice but with seismic decisiveness.
Three years later, days before leaving office, Ryan went further. He commuted the sentences of all 167 death row inmates to life imprisonment and pardoned four outright. The move stunned the nation, drew praise from figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and earned Ryan a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. It also alienated his allies, including then-governor of Texas George W. Bush, whose state executed more prisoners than any other. Ryan’s act of conscience didn’t just challenge Illinois's justice system. It set the stage for the state’s abolition of the death penalty in 2011 under former Gov. Pat Quinn.
Yet, even as Ryan reshaped history, shadows from his past closed in. His time as secretary of state, once a point of pride, became his undoing. A federal investigation uncovered a sprawling scandal: commercial driver’s licenses sold for bribes, with the proceeds allegedly funneled into Ryan’s campaign. The most damning blow came from a 1994 crash caused by an illegally licensed truck driver, which killed six children. The tragedy, tied to Ryan’s office, fueled public outrage and a relentless prosecution. In 2006, Ryan was convicted on 18 counts of racketeering, conspiracy, tax fraud, and lying to the FBI. Sentenced to 6 1/2 years, he served over five in federal prison, leaving his reputation in tatters.
“I never intended to harm anyone,” he maintained, but the jury saw a system that had become rotten under his watch.
Released in 2013, Ryan became a quieter man but not a defeated one. He co-authored a book, Until I Could Be Sure, with Maurice Possley, reflecting on his death penalty decision with unapologetic conviction.
“You gotta have a perfect law if you’re gonna have death as a penalty,” he told Capitol News Illinois in 2020.
He advocated criminal justice reform and lived modestly in Kankakee. Friends such as former House GOP leader Jim Durkin recalled a man who, even in his 80s, was greeted as “governor” by Kankakee locals, a nod to the respect Ryan still commanded. Yet, the corruption conviction loomed large — a reminder that heroism and hubris often share the same stage.
ROBIN KELLY JUMPS INTO ILLINOIS SENATE RACE FOR DURBIN'S SEAT
In the end, Ryan’s life was a paradox. He saved lives by questioning justice, only to lose his freedom to its verdict. He leaves behind Lynn, six children, and a state forever changed by his choices. As Kankakee gathers for his memorial, one can imagine Ryan, ever the pharmacist, mixing equal parts principle and pragmatism, with a wry smile for the bitter pills he swallowed along the way. Maybe he’d chuckle at the irony: a governor who freed others from death row, only to find his legacy caged by history’s judgment.
Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and the author, most recently, of Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America.
The unthinkable: An American pope The unthinkable: An American pope Jeremiah Poff It was long assumed that an American pope was an impossibility. Vatican insiders would dismiss the idea of a pope from the world's preeminent superpower as completely out of the question and barely even worth a thought.
That was until around 7 p.m. Rome time on May 8, 2025, when Cardinal Dominique Mamberti emerged on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica to announce to the world that Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost had been chosen by the College of Cardinals to be the 267th pope and the successor of St. Peter as the head of the Catholic Church and had taken the regnal name Leo XIV.
The election of Pope Leo XIV was as much a signal to the faithful of the Catholic Church that aspects of the pontificate of Pope Francis would continue as it was a message to the world that the first American pope could only be someone who had spent the majority of his adult life and priestly ministry in Latin America. And whose active social media presence included critiques of President Donald Trump's administration and Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert.
Before his election, Leo had effectively become a Vatican bureaucrat. In 2023, Francis appointed him to lead the Dicastery for Bishops, the Vatican office charged with assisting the pope in the appointment of new bishops all over the world.
In the coming days, weeks, months, and years, Leo will lay out his agenda, and the character of his pontificate will become more clearly known. But the moment his new name was announced and he stepped out on the balcony, he made clear that, while he would continue aspects of the Francis agenda, his pontificate would be its own.
In 2013, the newly elected Francis, a name no pope had ever taken, appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica wearing only a white cassock. Both of those details were stark deviations from tradition. Taking a previously unused name (John Paul I notwithstanding, who took the names of his two immediate predecessors) had not happened in centuries. As for the vestments of a new pope, the newly elected pontiff typically wears a white garment known as a surplice over his white cassock, as well as a red capelike garment called a mozzetta and a gold-decorated red stole. Francis wore only the cassock and briefly put on the stole when he blessed the crowd.
But Leo emerged on the balcony wearing the full complement of vestments for his new office. And unlike Francis, who greeted the crowd with a jovial "buona sera" or "good evening," Leo began his remarks to the crowd with "peace be with you," a far more religious greeting. And with those two actions, he tied himself much closer to the many popes who came before Francis than to Francis himself.
In choosing the name Leo, however, the new pope sought to tie himself to Leo XIII, who was pope from 1878 until he died in 1903 and was known for his critiques of socialism and capitalism.
But as much as Leo's public appearance gave the impression that he is not a carbon copy of his predecessor, it is hard to interpret his election as anything other than at least a partial message from the College of Cardinals to the Trump administration.
POPE LEO XIV: CARDINAL ROBERT PREVOST BECOMES FIRST-EVER AMERICAN PONTIFF
In one of his last posts on X before becoming pope, Leo questioned the morality of Trump's willingness to deport illegal immigrants to a prison in El Salvador. In February, he shared an article that criticized Vance for invoking the "ordo amoris" to justify the administration's deportation agenda. How the first American pope engages with the government of his home country and its outspoken Catholic vice president will be a major source of fascination worldwide.
No one knows yet exactly what kind of pope Leo will be. Pope Pius IX was famously elected as a liberal reformer in 1846, but by his death in 1878, he was seen as a conservative reactionary. Pope John XXIII was supposed to be a transitional pope, but he called the most consequential event in recent church history: the Second Vatican Council. In an office full of surprises, Leo is already one himself.
Jeremiah Poff is Restoring America editor for the Washington Examiner.
‘Viva il papa!’ Catholics celebrate new pope ‘Viva il papa!’ Catholics celebrate new pope Timothy Nerozzi VATICAN CITY — If you are ever graced with the opportunity to be in St. Peter's Square when the white smoke billows out of the Sistine Chapel chimney, the moment your eyes lock onto the plume will be etched in memory throughout earthly life.
I stood under the piazza's colonnade, sweaty and lugging my cumbersome duffle bag. It was only Day Two of the papal conclave, and already I was exhausted by the routine: come to St. Peter's Square at the designated time, stand around waiting, and wait a lot longer than you expected. You end up telling roaming fellow reporters you don't want to be interviewed. When you see the black smoke, everyone groans and goes home.
With my camera dangling around my neck, I jostled through the crawling line of tourists and fellow Catholics trying to get into the inner portion of the square. I just wanted to take a few photos, confirm the lack of a successful vote, go back to the hotel, and get back to writing.
The Vatican security took their sweet time shuffling bins back to those waiting in front of the metal detectors. I wondered if I should just hop the short fence and head back early.
Then, like rolling thunder, an overwhelming roar erupted on all sides of me. Cheers that rang so loud in all directions that it was nothing but white noise. I whipped myself around and there, pouring out of the chimney, framed by the columns and backlit by the slowly setting sun, was the white smoke.
May God forgive me, my first reaction was a shouted profanity: "Now? Already? I'm not in position! I haven't finished prewriting the cardinals' profiles! It's too soon! I'm not ready!"
Flags from just about every nation under the sun were raised and waving in the plaza. Members of the clergy in monastic robes bounced up and down. Little old ladies burst into tears from their seats on the sidewalk a football field away from the basilica.
I squinted. "The smoke looks a little grey," I thought. "Mix-ups have happened in the past. Maybe they didn't burn the ballots correctly. Maybe it's a false alarm."
Then, the bells of St. Peter's Basilica boomed through the square, and there could be no doubt. They rang and rang. The crowd never stopped cheering. There really was a new bishop of Rome.
I frantically took my belt off and threw every object in my pockets into the bag, scurried through the metal detectors, and walked out into the inner square.
It is shocking how close you can get to the basilica if you're already in the square when the bells ring out across Rome. You've got a massive head start against the hordes of Romans flocking from their restaurants and cafes.
If you are among the increasing number of young Catholic men who study and obsess over the rituals and ceremonies of the church, you will know, on an intellectual level, the majestic demonstrations that come next. But no book, documentary, or drama can convey exactly how it feels to stand in the middle of it all.
Standing elbow to elbow with fellow observers, there is no Wi-Fi. Cellphone networks are overloaded to the point of being unusable. No text messages, no social media. Those watching a livestream at home can communicate, but you, staring at the balcony of the basilica, couldn't call someone to share the news if you tried.
You are, in many ways, forced to live consciously in the moment and let it wash over you.
The occasion comes at you fast and from all angles. Up the partitioned lane that cuts to the basilica came the Swiss Guard and the military bands. Once on the steps, the soldiers played the Pontifical Anthem. The words went unsung, but I remembered them as the trumpets played.
"O happy Rome — O noble Rome
You are the seat of Peter, who shed his blood in Rome,
Peter, to whom the keys of the kingdom of heaven were given.
Pontiff, you are the successor of Peter."
Drones, operated by the Vatican media office, flew overhead. "Ciao, ciao, ciao!" shouted the crowd as it hovered by, broadcasting them to the massive monitors installed on each side of the square under the statues of Sts. Peter and Paul.
Overcome with excitement and having no one to share it with, I noticed two Americans standing next to me.
John Breeden and Peter Alig are Catholics who work as United Airlines pilots. They strategically chose to fly routes that would put them in Rome during the conclave.
"I traded into this," Alig excitedly told me. "I was doing the math."
Breeden, who is also a deacon of the Catholic Church, was the mastermind behind the plan and invited all other members of his flight crew to come to the Vatican just in case the pope was decided before they flew out the next morning.
"I started thinking, 'Oh man, this might work,'" he told me.
Work out it did — they were inside St. Peter's Basilica attending a Mass when they heard the roaring crowd cheer. They, like everyone else inside, turned and dashed straight out into the square.
When the protodeacon of the College of Cardinals appeared, the now swelling crowd cheered as loudly as ever. He recited those awaited words: "Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Habemus Papam!" — "I announce to you news of great joy: We have a pope!"
But when the actual naming of the pope came, there was widespread confusion over the Latin.
Using a dead language to communicate important news is charming — but hardly effective. While the TV anchors and remote journalists might have linguists and consultants available to parse the announcement for their audience, many of us standing in the square were putting our heads together, trying to understand.
Questions among the crowd were only met with shrugs. Was the cardinal named Matthew? Was he from Boston? Was his new name John XXIV?
None of the above. After a banner embroidered with the papal tiara and keys was unfurled, onto the balcony stepped Pope Leo XIV, formerly known as Cardinal Robert Prevost.
There had been rumors that Prevost was being floated as a centrist alternative to the front-runners, but they had always seemed so questionable. An American? Americans do not become pope. It just isn't done.
An American attendee not far ahead of me frantically shook the Stars and Stripes over his head, frenzied and overjoyed.
As Leo gave his speech, beginning with "peace be upon you," I impotently began taking photographs. I didn't know what I was trying to capture or what the purpose was. It just felt like I should be doing something, anything, to document the moment.
But as the monitors broadcast HD images of our new American pope and Vatican drones flew overhead, it all began to feel so pointless. Cameras from every country in the world were pointed at this man. Back in Washington, D.C., my Washington Examiner colleagues were already writing up the event while I was stuck without service. What was I capturing that was so unique? Why experience it all through a lens?
I switched my camera off. I stopped trying to text my editor and put my phone in my pocket. I looked away from the displays at the front of the square and instead focused my eyes on the tiny, distant man on the balcony — Pope Leo XIV.
The bishop of Rome. The supreme pontiff. The shepherd of shepherds. The servant of the servants of God and the Vicar of Christ.
He was speaking to everyone in the world and to me specifically at the same time.
POPE LEO XIV: CARDINAL ROBERT PREVOST BECOMES FIRST EVER AMERICAN POPE
"Viva il papa!" the crowd cheered. "Viva il papa!"
I joined them in their chant.
Timothy Nerozzi is the foreign affairs reporter for the Washington Examiner.