President Donald Trump's administration is close to implementing a rule that would end long-standing legal protections for whistleblowers among senior federal employees, according to documents reviewed by Reuters, prompting backlash from lawyers representing government workers. The rule, if finalized, would follow Trump's April proposal to change employment standards for federal workers and build on a series of actions by the administration to minimize dissent across the government...

Over the past few days, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been in China in an open attempt to pivot to China and spurn Canada’s relationship with the United States. In a jubilant press release on Friday, the prime minister’s office declared that Carney is “forg[ing] [a] new strategic partnership with the People’s Republic of China.” The government went on to repeatedly tout this “new strategic partnership,” framing the relationship as entirely overhauled. Further, Carney announced that Canada is dropping tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100 percent to 6.1 percent, opening the door to importing cheap Chinese cars (heavily subsidized by the communist government) that promise to sink the Canadian car industry. That decision signals a major break from Canada’s previously united stance with the U.S. against such vehicles. The reset is quite dramatic. Chinese–Canadian relations had been tense for years, owing to Chinese meddling in Canadian elections, secret Chinese police stations inside Canada that surveilled Chinese-Canadians, violations of Canadian sovereignty by way of Chinese ghost ships in arctic waters, the detainment under false premises of two Canadian citizens in retaliation to Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou — deemed the “two Michaels” affair, and retaliatory Chinese tariffs on Canadian agricultural goods, particularly on canola seeds. Carney further said in his press conference Thursday that the “progress” China and Canada have made in their relationship “sets us up well for the new world order.” Yet Carney seems ready to brush that all away and start fresh. He said that Canada’s relationship with China is “more predictable” than its relationship with the United States and that “you see results coming from that.” Carney further said in his press conference Thursday that the “progress” China and Canada have made in their relationship “sets us up well for the new world order.” (RELATED: Canadians Fear US Invasion After Maduro Seizure) Carney even seemed to bow to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s demand that Canada treat China with “respect,” which is clearly asking Canada to avoid speaking out against China’s dismal human rights record, including its mass detention, indoctrination of, and sterilization of Uyghurs; decades of forced abortions; suppression of freedom of speech; crackdown on political freedoms in Hong Kong; religious persecution and control; and detainment of democracy activists. Two Canadian lawmakers even departed early from diplomatic trips to Taiwan due to Carney’s desire to avoid offending the Chinese dictator. Carney went on and on praising Xi and China. “We’re heartened by the leadership of President Xi Jinping and the speed with which our relationship has progressed,” he told Zhao Leji, the third-highest-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party, according to Reuters. The news outlet further reported that Carney told the second-highest-ranking member of the CCP, Li Qiang, that Canada and China are “together” bringing their relationship “back toward where it should be.” In his press release, Carney said that Canada and China “will deepen our engagement on improved global governance,” indicating a willingness to engage China in shaping international institutions. (RELATED: The Myth of the ‘Liberal International Order’) No doubt, Chinese officials are quite pleased that Canada is moving closer into their orbit and further away from the United States. They will be benefiting quite significantly from Carney’s decision to allow Chinese electric vehicles to be imported from China. Moreover, the concession they gave in exchange for this did not compare in value or significance. They agreed to lower tariffs on canola seeds from 85 percent to 15 percent. China had raised the tariff on those seeds in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou and her extradition to the U.S. That means Canada gave a huge concession to China’s government that will harm its own economy, especially the economy in Ontario, and received only the end of a sanction made because of a lawful arrest of a woman who was years ago released back to China. Many in China are not happy that Carney’s agreements with China hurt Canadian automakers. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been outspoken and harsh in his criticism of Carney’s rollback of tariffs. “The federal government is inviting a flood of cheap made-in-China electric vehicles without any real guarantee of equal or immediate investments in Canada’s economy, auto sector or supply chain,” he said. Ford warned that Carney’s decision will likely harm Canada’s relationship with the United States. “Worse, by lowering tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles this lopsided deal risks closing the door on Canadian automakers to the American market, our largest export destination, which would hurt our economy and lead to job losses,” he said. Ford said that Carney did not speak to him or Canadian carmakers before proceeding with revoking tariffs on Chinese vehicles. Carney is motivated by his belief that Trump is making the U.S. into an authoritarian threat that must be combatted by expanding Canada’s international ties and trading partnerships with other countries. But perhaps he also is incentivized by his long-term obsession with combatting climate change, which makes China’s offer of cheap electric vehicles sound irresistible. Carney’s office said that “central” to the “new partnership” between Canada and China is “an agreement to collaborate in energy, clean technology, and climate competitiveness.” His office further said that both countries are focused on “reducing emissions and scaling up investments in batteries, solar, wind, and energy storage.” (RELATED: Mark Carney’s Pseudo-Faith-Based War on CO2) Sure, Trump has been aggressive toward Canada by imposing tariffs on Canadian imports and making half-playful threats to make Canada America’s 51st state, but that doesn’t mean it’s time for Canada to cozy up to an authoritarian nation with terrible human rights abuses. Last year, Taiwan’s ambassador to Canada, Harry Tseng, attempted to warn Canada against falling into this trap of turning to China instead of the U.S. He argued that China wants to increase trade with Canada as part of its plot to grow its global influence. China, he said, is unpredictable and “not an ally.” “You’re unhappy with the U.S., I understand that,” Tseng said. “But … you and the United States have been helping each other be prosperous in the past decades.” Trump signaled Friday he was unbothered by Canada’s dealings with China. “That’s OK,” Trump said when asked about the two countries’ trade deal. “That’s what he should be doing. I mean, it’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that.” READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes: Why Is RFK Jr.’s FDA Allowing Abortionists to Flood Red States With Pills? College Fine Arts and Theater Programs Are About to Be In Trouble Gavin Newsom, ‘King of Fraud’

For decades, I led state health and human services agencies and dealt directly with federal bureaucracies that write the rules but rarely live with the consequences. I have seen honest public servants fight to protect taxpayers. I have also seen the dominant reality: fraud, waste, and abuse are not occasional glitches in the federal system. They are predictable outputs of a machine built to move money quickly, discourage oversight, and reward insiders. Take Medicaid. For 30 years, Washington has known that states keep paying benefits for people who are dead, then claim federal matching dollars anyway. The practice is so entrenched that even when watchdogs document it, the system shrugs and moves on. I laid out the history in “Medicaid’s 30 Year Refusal to Stop Funding the Dead.” And the mechanics are not speculative. The HHS Office of the Inspector General has repeatedly found wrong monthly payments to Medicaid managed care plans for people who were already dead, including a nationwide estimate of $207.5 million in unallowable payments in a single year. (RELATED: How Medicaid Made a Billion-Dollar Crime Inevitable) The point is that when Washington creates giant pipelines of money with weak verification and fragmented accountability, organized fraud will follow, and state and local governments are left managing the wreckage. Minnesota offers a different window into the same federal failure. The Feeding Our Future case was a roughly $250 million scheme that exploited a federally funded child nutrition program, and federal prosecutors have secured major convictions. The point is not to smear any community. The point is that when Washington creates giant pipelines of money with weak verification and fragmented accountability, organized fraud will follow, and state and local governments are left managing the wreckage. Now, suddenly, we are told Washington has “woken up.” The administration is invoking widespread fraud across federal programs and using that claim to justify extraordinary freezes and threats. HHS itself announced it was freezing billions in child care and family assistance grants to five states over fraud concerns. The Associated Press reports the administration is withholding social safety net funding from five states while demanding additional documentation to release funds. Reuters reports a federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze of more than $10 billion in child and family aid. Here is the uncomfortable truth. This is not a new discovery. Washington did not just learn yesterday that fraud exists. Inspectors general and auditors have been flagging these failures for years. The difference is not awareness. The difference is political theater and blunt force tactics that still avoid the root cause: a federal apparatus too big to control and too insulated to reform itself. (RELATED: Minnesota Welfare Scandal Is the Fraud Warning Americans Finally Noticed) The federal government is to blame for the larger mess across domestic policy. Immigration decisions made far from local communities create immediate costs at the state and municipal level: housing, emergency healthcare, schools, and law enforcement. Federal education policy bloats administration while outcomes stagnate. Public welfare programs, especially Medicaid, do not merely spend money; they shape entire state bureaucracies around compliance and claims-making instead of outcomes. Federal procurement feeds permanent industries: health, weapons, transportation, and the consulting layer that lives off all of them. (RELATED: Washington’s Reverse Midas Touch) When I led state agencies, the incentives were never subtle. Do not rock the boat. Do not slow the money. Do not design controls that might reduce enrollment. Do not ask for flexibility if the answer might be no. States are treated like contractors, not sovereign partners, except that, unlike contractors, states cannot walk away. They must comply, staff up, build systems, and absorb political fallout when the program fails in plain sight. Appointees arrive, discover where power and money flow, and then begin planning their next landing spot. The revolving door is an operating model. This is why agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are structurally incapable of fixing the problems they have created. The bureaucracy is too large, too fragmented, and too protected. Appointees arrive, discover where power and money flow, and then begin planning their next landing spot. The revolving door is an operating model. And the lobbying class not only influences policy, it often writes it, markets it, and profits from it. No presidential administration or Congress is immune. The incentives capture everyone eventually. And there is another reason Washington will not simplify. Too many powerful interests profit from complexity. A sprawling federal program does not just produce benefits for recipients. It produces revenue streams for Medicaid middlemen, billing and compliance vendors, consultants, contractors, and lobbying shops whose business model depends on ever-thicker rulebooks and ever-larger appropriations. Complexity has become the market in Washington. The more opaque the system becomes, the easier it is for insiders and fraudsters alike to siphon money while taxpayers are told the solution is, once again, more bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the middle class pays for the entire circus. Healthcare, food, fuel, housing, and basic stability become less affordable, while Washington congratulates itself for new initiatives that mostly expand staffing and paperwork. And the national debt keeps climbing. The U.S. Treasury’s Fiscal Data site currently puts federal debt at about $38.43 trillion. (RELATED: Is the Middle Class ‘Shrinking’ or ‘Struggling’? The Difference Is Important.) This is exactly the sort of regime the American Revolution was fought against. The Founders detested distant rule, concentrated authority, and a governing class that taxed, regulated, and dispensed favors while ordinary families bore the costs. They rejected a system where decisions were made far from the people affected, by officials who did not answer to local communities. They warned that power accretes, factions form, and the public treasury becomes prey. Every action of the federal government has a negative reaction at the state and local levels. When Washington expands, states must expand to keep up with the chaos. More federal rules require more state compliance offices. More federal money requires more state claims and reporting. More federal mandates require more state administrators, lawyers, and contractors. The bureaucracy balloons in tandem, and citizens are told it is modern governance rather than the predictable result of centralization. So what do we do, beyond venting? If Washington is going to fund programs, it must stop subsidizing negligence. That means more frequent eligibility redeterminations and stricter verification in Medicaid, especially for able-bodied adults, and mandatory routine cross-checks against death data to stop payments for deceased enrollees. The new law in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill requires quarterly audits against the Social Security Administration’s Full Death Master File starting in 2027, a recognition that the old trust model has failed. States with persistently high wrong payment rates should face real financial consequences, not polite letters and technical assistance. Washington must also stop encouraging financing gimmicks that inflate federal matching dollars without real state contributions. Hospital tax schemes and special payment deals used to draw more federal matching funds have become a cottage industry, and as long as the federal match is open-ended, the game will continue. The federal government cannot keep pretending it is buying integrity while rewarding manipulation. (RELATED: How Great Is the Great Healthcare Plan?) Across all programs, we need real work incentives and targeted enrollment, not permanent dependency and open-ended growth. Work requirements, properly designed with reasonable exemptions, are not a punishment. They are a boundary and a signal: benefits are a bridge, not a lifestyle. This is the moral logic of welfare reform aimed at independence and fiscal responsibility. We should also use modern tools to prevent fraud upstream rather than celebrate prosecutions after the money is gone. Review claims before paying them. Share data across states to stop duplicate enrollment. Build automated flags that catch suspicious patterns immediately. Prosecutions matter, but prevention is the only scalable strategy. Overall spending caps, block grants, or block grants with basic federal guardrails deserve serious consideration. Open-ended matching creates perverse incentives: expand rolls, expand claims, expand spending, then blame need. Fixed funding with flexibility changes the incentives. It caps federal exposure, reduces the over-enrollment temptation, and forces states to design programs that match local reality. Critics will warn about uneven outcomes, but the current system already produces uneven outcomes, plus fraud, plus exploding costs. Rhode Island achieved real success with a model like this in 2009. Their Global Waiver gave the state budget certainty through an overall spending cap and allowed faster program redesign without constant federal micromanagement. In its first three years, the waiver saved Rhode Island approximately $100 million while holding Medicaid spending far below what the old trajectory would have produced. Enforcement must be real. Dedicated anti-fraud units, clear audit authority, and tougher prosecutions matter. Even here, the federal government should follow best practice rather than improvisation. GAO’s fraud playbook is basic and correct: assess fraud risks, design an antifraud strategy, build controls that prevent and detect losses, and measure results. These approaches are not substitutes for the larger point. Ultimately, the only lasting solution is to shrink Washington’s role in domestic policy and return authority to states and localities where programs can be tailored, monitored, and corrected in real time. Welfare reform that genuinely empowers recipients and restores fiscal responsibility requires structural devolution, not just new slogans or new grant conditions. If Washington truly wants to fight fraud, waste, and abuse, it should begin with humility and subtraction. Fewer mandates. Fewer blank checks. Clear lines of accountability and performance measurement. Stronger state authority to design, verify, and enforce. Technology that prevents losses before they happen. Incentives that reward accuracy, not volume. The fraud is real. The waste is enormous. The abuse is chronic. But the deeper scandal is this: the system is working exactly as a bloated, centralized, incentive-driven bureaucracy will always work. The question is whether Americans are ready to admit that and demand a different design. READ MORE from Gary D. Alexander: Medicaid’s 30-Year Refusal to Stop Funding the Dead The ACA’s Unraveling: Fifteen Years of Unintended Consequences The Bureaucracy Has Become the Mission Gary D. Alexander served as Rhode Island’s and Pennsylvania’s secretary of health and human services.

Marseille has become a case study in how disorder embeds itself when authority retreats unevenly. This is not about perception or media framing. It is about sustained violence, parallel authority, and the normalisation of behaviour that would once have triggered national alarm. In 2023, Marseille recorded its deadliest year on record for drug-related violence, with more than 50 killings directly linked to narcotics trafficking. Prosecutors and investigators described the city as operating under a regime of “narcobanditry,” in which criminal networks control territory, regulate access, and enforce discipline. This violence is not random. Open-air drug markets are dismantled and re-established within days. Arrests remove individuals, not structures. Criminal order persists because it fills a vacuum created by inconsistent enforcement. The state remains present in theory. In practice, it governs selectively. The political response has followed a predictable pattern: ministerial visits, tactical deployments, press conferences, withdrawal. These interventions create visibility, not permanence. Authority becomes intermittent. Criminal governance does not. Marseille’s trajectory cannot be understood without confronting demographic scale. Roughly 18 percent of the city’s metropolitan population is foreign-born, with far higher concentrations in the poorest northern districts. Over the past decade, the city absorbed successive waves of migration at a pace that outstripped its capacity to integrate. Over the past decade, the city absorbed successive waves of migration at a pace that outstripped its capacity to integrate. Across the European Union, hundreds of thousands of irregular arrivals via the Mediterranean have been recorded annually, overwhelming reception systems, housing, and administrative oversight. The result was not diversity without friction, but density without cohesion. Integration was treated as optional and deferred. Enforcement thinned. Informal authority filled the gap. Criminal networks recruit where social control is weakest. In Marseille, gangs now target minors because penalties are lighter and replacement is easy. Prosecutors acknowledge that many active gang affiliates are under 21. Violence reproduces itself structurally. Migration does not create crime. But unmanaged arrival without integration creates availability: young men disconnected from work, education, and civic authority. Criminal economies absorb that availability efficiently. (RELATED: The Vanishing Englishman: Inside the Schools Forecasting the UK Future) In 2024, Le Monde reported that drug networks in Marseille increasingly recruit newly arrived migrants and undocumented men as expendable street-level labour — lookouts, runners, dealers — paid minimal sums and replaced without consequence. In parts of the city, nearly half of those arrested for street-level drug offences were foreign nationals, many homeless or awaiting asylum decisions. That erosion of authority has carried a visible social cost. Marseille has seen a sharp, localised surge in antisemitic abuse and intimidation, particularly since October 2023, concentrated in districts where public order is already weakest. France’s Interior Ministry recorded a more than threefold national increase in antisemitic incidents, and Marseille — home to one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities — has emerged as a pressure point. Jewish schools and synagogues now operate under constant police protection. Parents report children concealing religious symbols in public. CRIF reports that the most recent antisemitic acts are not driven by organised far-right groups but by routine street-level abuse, intimidation, and threats, often emanating from neighbourhoods already shaped by weak enforcement and gang presence. This is not incidental. Minorities are always the first to register the retreat of public order. Antisemitism in Marseille is not an ideology searching for converts. It is a signal that rules are applied unevenly and protection is no longer assumed. Security failures have also exposed systemic weaknesses. In October 2017, Ahmed Hanachi, an illegal immigrant from Tunisia, murdered two women at Marseille’s Saint-Charles train station. He had been detained the previous day for theft and released due to identity confusion and lack of detention capacity. Europol later classified the attack as Islamist terrorism. A year earlier, French authorities dismantled a Strasbourg-Marseille jihadist cell that included an asylum seeker arrested in Marseille carrying funds intended for weapons procurement. The network was in contact with ISIS handlers in Syria. The plot was disrupted through intelligence cooperation, not routine asylum screening. Marseille’s position as a Mediterranean gateway compounds all of this. In 2025, authorities dismantled a Marseille-linked smuggling network that moved more than 1,700 migrants illegally into France, operating across borders with logistical discipline and financial incentive. Smuggling routes do not only move people. They move money, criminal infrastructure, and leverage. Despite all this, Marseille continues to function. Services run. Commerce continues. Elections are held. But increasingly, this functionality depends on adaptation rather than authority. Residents modify behaviour. Institutions lower thresholds. Enforcement becomes selective. Gunfire no longer shocks. Child involvement no longer surprises. Administrative language cushions realities that would once have been intolerable. Disorder is not denied. It is managed. If Marseille were unique, Europe could dismiss it. But the same conditions are visible across many European cities: migration outpacing integration, enforcement retreating under political pressure, and public trust thinning where authority feels negotiable. Marseille, therefore, does not ask Europe whether it remains tolerant. It asks whether Europe still believes that plural societies require enforcement, integration, and limits to function at all. READ MORE from Kevin Cohen: After the Illegal Immigrant Surge Britain’s Boat Crisis Comes Into Focus Age Fraud and the Collapse of Child-Only Safeguards

I’ve put on a little weight this Christmas. National Geographic called to offer me a job: starring in a documentary on the high seas. My role is the whale. Gaining weight is awful. Now my ankle creaks like a goat’s knee, and I walk with an unsteady, hesitant gait, like John Wayne after a few drinks. I should get back into sports. Some people do it to lose weight, and others do it for fun. I’ve run out of necessity enough in the last 40 years to have lost all desire to do it for pleasure. And besides, I’ve been at war with mainstream sports ever since I learned that the truly enjoyable competitions aren’t good for losing weight. I’m talking about darts, billiards, chess, or, when I’m in extraordinary shape, pétanque. January is a month of almost obsessive-compulsive exercise. Suddenly, guys who were used to double cheeseburgers are switching to mixed salads, walking to work, and joining badminton academies on weekends, as if it were perfectly normal to spend Saturday hitting a feathered ball that flies up high and comes down in a whirlwind. Perhaps it’s because of my own weight, or other people’s, or because the Winter Olympics are coming up, but lately my friends have been inviting me to try strange sports. Just the other day, they suggested I play tennis. A few weeks ago, they suggested swimming down a river. And a few days before that, they suggested I participate in a beginner’s taekwondo championship. What have I done to deserve this? Tennis is the most mundane sport in the world after weightlifting, which consists of coating your hands in chalk and causing one or more hernias with the sole aid of a barbell with two heavy weights at the ends. Tennis is the most mundane sport in the world after weightlifting, which consists of coating your hands in chalk and causing one or more hernias with the sole aid of a barbell with two heavy weights at the ends. There are true masters at breaking their backs in a single movement thanks to this Olympic discipline. Trump imitates them very well. It’s also good for ripping T-shirts and underwear of all kinds. The most advanced players, at the moment of maximum effort, always lose a tooth, which flies across the gym and crashes onto the mat, to the thunderous applause of those present, who recognize the power of the weightlifting mule. Tennis, like all ball sports, has slightly more excitement than weightlifting. Two players stand facing each other, separated by a net. The game consists of striking a small ball with a racket so that it passes over the net and preferably lands within the boundaries of the state, the county, or whatever administrative unit happens to contain the original striker. The opponent, in turn, must intercept the ball with his own racket, refining his skill until he manages to match or surpass the original feat. And so pass six hours, ten chocolate bars, fifteen liters of energy drinks, and roughly three hundred white towels. A real tennis player never wipes his face twice with the same towel. Of the three offers received, swimming down the river might seem the most entertaining at first glance. However, those of us who have stared death in the ever-deceptive waters of a river know that, apart from barbecues and certain basic needs, everything you can do in a freshwater stream is either boring or deadly. And in the worst cases, like fishing for large salmon, it can be both at once. Finally, regarding the taekwondo proposal, it’s wise to thoroughly understand this discipline before forming a mistaken impression. Initially, the idea of ​​walking into a gym and starting to dish out kicks and headbutts to a horde of crazed Koreans is very appealing. But unfortunately, reality isn’t as glamorous as it looks in the movies. In real taekwondo, as in almost all combat sports, just when you’re finally starting to have fun, someone blows the whistle, stops the game, and gives you a warning. Conversely, when you’re the one getting hit, the person hitting you walks away happy, without the referee calling a foul. And if you logically decide to retaliate and smash a stool over your opponent’s head in response to the barrage of blows, you could face a severe sporting sanction and lose a fortune, something that will put you off massacring Koreans for the next fifteen years. Furthermore, the first experience with this type of martial art is very different from, say, your first day of beach volleyball in the Caribbean. Taekwondo for beginners consists of a very long theoretical lesson in which, suddenly, when you least expect it, a Chinese man dressed in white pajamas invites you to get on a mat to move on to the practical part. Then, he slowly explains how you should block the kick he’s about to deliver. He explains it in Chinese, but gestures in your language and smiles a lot, so you’ll trust him. You nod like an idiot, as if you’ve understood everything perfectly, because you like to act like an expert on the subject. And then he gets up, straightens his pajamas, smiles at you with an angelic face, gives you a brief bow, and while you’re intently protecting your face with both hands in a butterfly shape just like he taught you, the Chinese guy delivers a spectacular flying kick straight to your balls, which, admittedly, teaches you to speak Chinese with miraculous fluency. And then you decide to leave the classes through the back door, legs wide apart, hopping about, and cursing the Koreans, the friend who got you into it, and the inventors of each and every Olympic sport. And there’s no doubt about it now. You’re never too fat to have to resort to taekwondo. READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: It Was Bound to Happen: Brooklyn Hipsters Now Want to Return to the ’90s Internet I Have a Knack for Divination A Merry Ballad for a Weeping Mustache

Fluellen. If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb? in your own conscience, now?  — Shakespeare, Henry V Certain philosophical concepts possess such striking clarity as to be readily comprehended by the common mind. One need not have inhaled the rarified air of an upper-level philosophy seminar to come to grips with cogito ergo sum, Ockham’s Razor, and the Allegory of the Cave, it being entirely feasible at the average epistemic baseline to appreciate how the very act of thinking tends to prove one’s own existence, how the explanation with the fewest assumptions is likely to be true, and how the shadowy, unenlightened world of appearances is very different from the sunlit world of genuine knowledge. These are the sorts of axioms one is likely to encounter in the wild, as it were, in popular literature, podcasts, and casual conversation. Most philosophical propositions resist such simple formulations, and it is a mark of distinction among thinkers to achieve that level of conceptual coherence and public intelligibility. Friend good, enemy bad, and whoever has the heaviest cudgel makes the rules. For better or worse, the German jurist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) is noteworthy for having advanced two such notions, now ubiquitous in articles, social media flame-wars, and gladiatorial debate web series, namely the Friend-Enemy Distinction (die Unterscheidung von Freund und Feind), and the State of Exception (Ausnahmezustand). Here we have a pair of ideas that could be grasped not just by the average person, but by any of our femur-wielding Cro-Magnon ancestors. Friend good, enemy bad, and whoever has the heaviest cudgel makes the rules. Not exactly aspirational stuff, but modern-day Schmittians will counter that the controversial German political theorist was merely being descriptive. As we do seem to be experiencing something of a “Schmittian Moment” in our democracy, these principles surely warrant further consideration. It is a curious development indeed that Carl Schmitt — the lapsed Catholic, opportunistic Nazi Party member, editor-in-chief of the Nazi legal journal Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, Prussian State Councillor and Reich Professional Group Leader, and author of “Der Führer schützt das Recht” (“The Führer Protects the Law”), who demanded that German law be purged of jüdischem Geist, of “Jewish spirit” —  should be as influential today as he was in the 1930s, if not more so. “Carl Schmitt remains a challenge,” admit Jens Meierhenrich and Oliver Simons in their introduction to The Oxford Handbook to Carl Schmitt, “for in addition to having been an incisive thinker, he was a committed Nazi and lifelong antisemite.” But the Plettenberg-born jurist was not just a thinker, a writer, a theorist. We are not dealing here with someone like Degas or Céline, whose artistic or literary legacy is darkened by the shadow of antisemitism, but a political actor whose conduct had disturbing real-world consequences. Schmitt was instrumental in the collapse of the Weimar Republic, arguing during the 1932 Prussian coup d’état and the Prussia Contra Reich case that followed that legal norms cannot constrain existential political decisions, and thus that the Machtstaat (state of power) takes precedence over the Rechtsstaat (rule of law), thus paving the way for Hitler’s Machtergreifung (seizure of power) not long thereafter. For all his moral failings and catastrophic politico-legal maneuverings, he has nevertheless become a kind of mascot for postliberal public intellectuals like Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, and Chad Pecknold. That such prominent American Catholics should be seduced by the writings of Carl Schmitt is an interesting turn of events. The ideology propounded by the so-called “crown jurist of the Third Reich” is quite alien to our own political traditions of democracy, limited government, toleration, civic bargaining, the peaceful transfer of power, and an intricate system of checks and balances. Michael Doran, writing in Tablet, has noted the success of both Eisenhower and Reagan in employing a “broad, nonsectarian language of faith [that] could bind religiously and racially diverse Americans into a single political community,” a credo so different than that of the postliberal critique of the American order articulated by the “Catholic Integralists,” writers like Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule. Their argument — that the liberal founding of the United States carries within it the seeds of its own decay — has become a kind of catechism for alienated young men who believe the system turned against them. Schmitt’s theories are evidently in the ascendant in certain corners of the Information Space, but at the same time, they remain reductionist, authoritarian, utterly lacking in moral constraints, and incompatible with constitutionalism and the rule of law, although for postliberals this is, of course, a feature rather than a bug. Now, an unfamiliar tradition has arrived on the scene, in the form of Schmitt–inspired postliberal thought, like a fox in the ideological henhouse, and what happens next will in no small measure determine conservative statecraft going forward. Phillip Magness and Jack Nicastro, in the pages of Reason, have issued a warning that “America’s ‘radical defense of classical liberalism’ has made the United States exceptional. With Schmittian philosophy resurgent on the New Right, it’s time for conservatives to defend our founding principles from a vicious ideology that seeks to arrogate supreme power to the state and abrogate the natural rights of the individual.” The age-old debate between classical liberals, with their emphasis on individual liberty, free markets, limited government, and natural rights, and conservatives, with their emphasis on tradition, social order, and established institutions, has long shaped the evolving nature of the Right. Now, an unfamiliar tradition has arrived on the scene, in the form of Schmitt–inspired postliberal thought, like a fox in the ideological henhouse, and what happens next will in no small measure determine conservative statecraft going forward. The notion of American Schmittians is strange enough, but the notion of Catholic Schmittians is, if anything, even more surprising. Schmitt himself was a lapsed Catholic, in part due to the canonical consequences of his second marriage, and he described his own Catholicism as “displaced” and “de-totalised.” His conflictual, Manichaean approach to politics, with its emphasis on existential opposition, is hardly in keeping with mainstream Catholic political theology. Reinhard Mehring, Schmitt’s biographer, found that there was “no underlying Catholic theme” in The Concept of the Political, while Raphael Gross held that the German jurist’s philosophy “cannot be reduced to Roman Catholic theology given a political turn. Rather, Schmitt should be understood as carrying an atheistic political-theological tradition to an extreme.” The friend-enemy distinction and the despotic state of exception run counter to long-established Catholic theories of social contract, consent, and subsidiarity, and the supremely conservative Pope Pius XI, in his Quadregesimo Anno of 1931, made it quite clear that “of its very nature the true aim of all social activity should be to help members of the social body, but never to destroy or absorb them.” Christ was even clearer on this point in the Gospel of Matthew: You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this? Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. Perhaps Herr Schmitt knew better? Regardless, his theories provide eminently useful rationalizations for tribalism, and so they have made their way to our shores, carried along by the tides of rampant polarization. Not so long ago, it was possible for George Will to employ the quintessentially American sport of baseball as a metaphor for our shared political character: Baseball suits the character of this democratic nation. Democracy is government by persuasion. That means it requires patience. That means it involves a lot of compromise. Democracy is the slow politics of the half-loaf… You know when a season starts that the best team is going to get beaten a third of the time, the worst team’s gonna win a third of the time. The argument over 162 games: that middle third. So it’s a game that you can’t like if winning’s everything. And democracy’s that way too. These days, a fractured political landscape has made the idea of “the slow politics of the half-loaf” look positively quaint. With politics treated as a zero-sum competition, all law becomes what Schmitt called “situational law,” and “the high points of politics are simultaneously the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy.” If only more people were reading Bertrand de Jouvenel’s On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth (1948), as opposed to The Concept of the Political, then we might have a better collective handle on the ways in which Power, being parasitic on crises and manipulative of social divisions, accumulates at the expense of intermediate institutions and social buffers like churches, guilds, and other local institutions, eroding both social pluralism and individual liberties in the process. Instead, we are increasingly deferential to the author of “The Führer Protects the Law,” much to our detriment. The result of these sharp partisan cleavages is an almost total lack of grace in the political arena and the public square. Consider some of the more notorious reactions to recent events like the assassinations of Charlie Kirk and Melissa Hortman, the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, the cancer diagnosis of Ben Sasse, the death of Brigitte Bardot, which I do not care to cite at length here, but which were morally repugnant and ethically indefensible, in situations where it would have been so much easier to issue formulaic, humane statements of sympathy and move on. Treating politics as an existential engagement between Freund und Feind has created an atmosphere of pervasive hostility and generalized conflict, to the point where rival blocs can exist in completely different moral universes, even occupying different realities. This is how two vying camps will view the same three or four angles of the January 7, 2026 shooting of Renee Good by an United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, and conclude either that the 37-year-old mother of three was “was totally innocent, and they murdered her in cold blood,” or that she was a “deranged lunatic woman” and “domestic terrorist” bent on vehicular homicide. This phenomenon has been variously called “value-driven inference,” “motivated cognition,” “outcome-oriented thinking,” or even “cognitive illiberalism,” and taken to extremes, it can serve not just as a symptom, but as a catalyst for further societal division. There are those who revel in the increasingly unsightly spectacle of American public life, and that is certainly their prerogative. No doubt it makes good copy, lifts engagement numbers, increases “unregretted user-seconds” on social media platforms, and reinforces in-group/out-group dynamics. It is not, however, beneficial for the body politic, which risks being reduced to a state of total moral inanition. Already, the converging ends of the political horseshoe, the self-flagellating Third Worldist de-growthers and the juche-style protectionists, have started to embrace geopolitical declinism, but moral declinism presents just as serious a threat. Attempts to collapse the wide range of American political life into a single antagonistic axis (which makes very little sense, with a record-high 45 percent of U.S. adults now identifying as political independents) will result in ever more elaborate and febrile exercises in performative escalation. The result is a republic of endless virtue signaling and vice signaling, of nihilism and resentment, of rage-bait and agit-slop, of systemic paralysis and institutional sclerosis, with the attendant loss of asabiyyah, the shared sense of purpose and belonging that allows us to confront existential threats. Postliberals tend to view America’s Founding Fathers with skepticism and even outright contempt — recall Curtis Yarvin’s assertion that “every legal and political argument for our revolution was a bald-faced lie. A congenital cancer.” But those of us who do not view the origins of our nation in such calumnious terms would do well to return to the sources of our political tradition and draw upon the wisdom of the drafters of our Constitution and the architects of our Republic. It was John Adams, in a letter dated February 3, 1812, who wrote to his former rival Thomas Jefferson with the following eloquent words of warning: Your Memoranda of the past, your Sense of the present and Prospect for the Future Seem to be well founded, as far as I See. But the Latter, i.e the Prospect of the Future, will depend on the Union: and how is that Union to be preserved. Concordia parvae res crescunt, Discordia maximae dilabuntur [In harmony, small things grow; in discord, great things decay]. Our Union is an immense Structure. In Russia I doubt not a Temple or Pallace might be erected of Wood, Brick or Marble, which Should be cemented only with Ice. A Sublime and beautiful Building it might be; Surpassing St. Sophia, St. Peters St. Pauls, Notre Dame or St. Genevieve. But the first Week, if not the first day of the Debacle would melt all the Cement, and Tumble the Glass and Marble the Gold and Silver, the Timber and the Iron into one promiscuous chaotic or anarchic heap. I will not at present point out the precise Years Days and Months when; nor the Names of the Men by whom, this Union has been put in Jeopardy. Your Recollection can be at no more loss than mine. Regardless of one’s position on the political spectrum, it seems impossible to deny that a republic dominated by the Friend-Enemy Distinction, and existing in a perpetual State of Exception, is a fragile edifice cemented only with ice, and liable to be reduced to an anarchic heap. Our forebears understood this all too well, but those who prefer the doctrines of the Crown Jurist of National Socialism must know, and must know that we know, that they have adopted a worldview predicated on domination, not justice, cloaking the most bellicose forms of political control in the ersatz language of legality, and promising all the chaos, moral compromises, and precipitous reversals of fortune that will inevitably follow therefrom. Looking back on Carl Schmitt’s career, it would seem more appropriate to view the disgraced state councillor in Hitler’s Reich as an unsettling object lesson, rather than an exemplar worthy of emulation, but to each his own, I suppose. It would be fitting to give the last word here to another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, who in his First Inaugural Address of 1801 enumerated the “essential principles of our Government,” ranging from “equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political” and “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations” to “the support of the State governments in all their rights” and “the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason,” all of which form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety. A safer course, I should think, than the importation of the alien, authoritarian mind-virus of Schmittianism, and something well worth bearing in mind as we mark the semiquincentennial of our Nation. READ MORE from Matthew Omolesky: A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter: Ghost Stories for Christmas Genius Loci: Byung-Chul Han’s In Praise of the Earth The Weary Atlas

Right now, the United States is crawling with more than 86 million white supremacists! That’s according to Cea Weaver, New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani’s pick to head the Office to Protect Tenants. Weaver in 2019 stated on X/Twitter, “Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”  According to iPropertyManagement statistics, roughly 86.285 million people owned homes in the United States as of 2024. So, using Weaver’s logic, if you can call it that, those horrid Americans might as well don white hoods and salute a Grand Kleagle, whatever the hell that is. (RELATED: What Doctor Zhivago Teaches Us About New York City’s Housing Debate) Weaver hates private property the way the Grinch hates Christmas. The only difference is that the Grinch’s heart could swell with goodness. I’m not sure Weaver’s can, based on what she said during one of her many cringe-worthy interviews. “For centuries, we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good,” she said in a Democratic Socialists of America video. “In transitioning to treating it as a collective good and toward a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that families, especially white families but some POC (people of color) families who are homeowners as well, are going to have a different relationship to property than we currently have.”  It sounds like Weaver wants us to enter into an abusive relationship… When she says families (mine included) will have a different relationship to private property, do we get any say in the matter? If not, it sounds like Weaver wants us to enter into an abusive relationship, based on a June 13, 2018, Twitter post stating, “Seize private property!” (RELATED: The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Comes to New York) Another frightening aspect of Commissar Weaver’s worldview is that “some POC families” will have their homes seized. Will she hold a warped Hunger Games lottery to pick which POC families get kicked to the curb? Will Oprah and Dr. Ben Carson stand before Weaver, who will point to Carson, smile, and give a thumbs-down? It would be laughable if Weaver weren’t so scary. Here’s another gem from 2018: “There is no such thing as a ‘good’ gentrifier, only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and people who aren’t.” Did you know Weaver, who is not a city native, has helped to gentrify Crown Heights for a decade, likely spending $4,000 a month?  After enough New Yorkers suddenly realized what they had voted for, Weaver told NY1, “I don’t think I’m out of my mind.” While I’m sure Mamdani was relieved to hear that from one of his appointees six days into his administration, what she said afterward sounds more concerning: “You know, I think that some of some of those things are certainly not how I would, how I would say things today, and are and are regretful.” Mamdani dodged a bullet by not appointing her to the Office of Coherent Sentences. Notice, she didn’t disavow what she said. She regrets how she said it. She believes every word of her communist philosophy and is upset that people noticed. That’s why she broke down crying when reporters pressed her on her beliefs and, we can only assume, her white supremacist mother’s owning of a $1.6 million home in Tennessee. (RELATED: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Utopian Future?) “People like home ownership because they like control, which is rooted in a racist and classist society,” she once said.  Not convinced? How about a November 2018 social media post in which she said, “home ownership is racist/failed public policy,” and called for politicians to “impoverish the *white* middle class.” That message surely will resonate in the suburbs. Weaver also endorsed a “no more white men in office platform.” Weaver cannot fall back on “I was taken out of context” when so many examples of her hatred and racism abound. Substitute “black” for “white” in her toxic diatribes, and she’d be fired.  She also cannot claim to have been a misguided teenager when she posted her bilge. This all happened in the past decade when she was a grown woman. Even though I would’ve never hired Weaver in the first place, she shouldn’t resign. First, as much as she’d like him to, Mamdani simply cannot seize private property without starting a gentrified war. Second, rather than turning into a simpering baby, Weaver should explain to the public why white people are terrible and should never own property (along with certain unfortunate to-be-determined POC families). Weaver owes the public a hearty and proud defense of communism and how it could benefit New York if correctly implemented. This is the Mamdani administration, less than a few weeks in. For you Star Wars fans, if you vote for Greedo, you’re going to get the rest of the cantina. And, boy, are the Modal Nodes playing. READ MORE from Matt Manochio: 2025: Everyone Won, Everyone Lost, and Everything Burned The Disastrous KJP New Yorker Interview

by Larry C. Johnson, The Unz Review: During a Zoom meeting today I listened to a retired US General make the case for going to war against Iran… He was not advocating that Trump do so, but he provided a fascinating summary of how he, and most Americans, view Iran as a threat that must […]