THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

There has been no shortage of explanations for the devastation wrought by the wildfires still burning across greater Los Angeles. Some commentators have argued that sclerotic local governance left the region unprepared to respond to such a large-scale disaster. Others have invoked the impact of climate change or the perils of the Santa Ana winds. And some have blamed the Ukrainians or Israel.“We sent $250 billion to Ukraine,” Charlie Kirk, the CEO of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, wrote on X. “And yet we can’t get water to fight fires in California.” The post received more than 100,000 likes and 10 million views, and was echoed by other pro–Donald Trump surrogates. “California is literally on fire right now so of course Biden gave Ukraine more money,” quipped Not the Bee, a popular right-wing commentary site, in response to the administration announcing its final military-aid package this week.[Read: The… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Donald Trump, for reasons no one fully apprehends, is preparing for his looming second term by talking like a 19th-century imperialist. At a press conference this week, he pointedly declined to rule out the use of military force to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, while insisting on renaming the Gulf of Mexico. He also has repeatedly alluded to a takeover of Canada, including using his social-media platform to share an imagined map of the United States consuming its neighbor to the north.Rationalizing these statements in either moral or strategic terms is challenging. But the conservative columnist Dan McLaughlin is up to the task. “In fact, Trump is sending a message to the world and America’s enemies: We’re serious about protecting the Western Hemisphere—again,” he writes. Trump, he explains, is shrewdly analyzing the strategic importance of the Panama Canal and Greenland and seeking to ward off Chinese influence, and is… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Donald Trump has had a remarkably vocal pre-presidency, particularly on foreign policy. Against the background of a no less astonishing silence from President Joe Biden, Trump has threatened to unleash hell on Hamas unless it cuts a deal with Israel before he is sworn in, mused about seizing the Panama Canal and Greenland, and advocated the annexation of Canada—not to mention that he has promised to end the war in Ukraine and inflict tariffs on friend and foe alike.That Trump observes none of the foreign-policy decorum that presidents, let alone presidents-elect, are supposed to maintain should come as no surprise. We have long known that he has no filters; that he makes outlandish, boorish, menacing, ridiculous promises and threats.It does not help, however, when the foreign-policy commentariat responds by shrieking in justifiable but futile outrage. It only gratifies Trump and that portion of his followers, who—like J. K. Rowling’s Crabbe… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Last week, President-Elect Donald Trump nominated Morgan Ortagus, a longtime State Department official, to serve as a deputy special envoy for Middle East peace—and immediately undercut her. “Early on Morgan fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson,” Trump wrote when he announced her hire on Truth Social. “These things usually don’t work out, but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them.”It might seem bizarre for an executive to employ someone they consider at odds with their agenda. But there is a design behind this seeming dysfunction, and it reflects one of Trump’s strengths: He is a nakedly transactional coalition leader with few, if any, core beliefs. This enables him to balance the demands of opposing constituencies without alienating them. Because Trump has few real commitments, he can take contradictory positions and appease rival factions—in this case,… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

In his 1970 Nobel lecture, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” The problem presently before the United States is that the Trump administration will be staffed in its upper reaches by political appointees who, without exception, have failed this test.To get their positions, these men and women have to be willing to declare, publicly if necessary, that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that the insurrectionary riot of January 6, 2021, was not instigated by a president seeking to overturn that election. These are not merely matters that might be disputed, or on which reasonable people can disagree, or of which citizens in the public square can claim ignorance. They are lies, big, consequential lies that strike at the heart of the American… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.