With Cuba seemingly becoming the next focus for the Trump administration, it is worth looking into previous efforts by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the country. Today, we turn toward the agency’s connection with Cuban hip-hop. In...
There is a lot of Richad Nixon rehabilitation going on these days. Before we get too far down that road, we should note that this month marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of one of the most pernicious acts of monetary destruction by modern presidents. On August 15,...
Since his sudden passing, Lindsey Graham has remained an influential force in Washington. The question, “What would Lindsey do?” has acted as a comforting source of validation for interventionist Republicans, many of whom have doubled down on aggressive foreign policy...
There is a law professor in the United States who, until last summer, could have been prosecuted by his own government for giving legal advice. His name is Gabor Rona. He teaches at Cardozo Law School in New York. His crime, in the eyes of the executive branch, was...
Donald Trump returned to office promising to treat the Western Hemisphere as America's business again, and he has spent eighteen months proving he meant it. On his first day back he ordered Latin American criminal syndicates designated as Foreign Terrorist...
Among the commentariat, America’s problem with “forever wars” is usually discussed as a failure of grand strategy. In this telling, presidents misjudge threats; generals overestimate what military power can accomplish; and policymakers confuse battlefield victories...
Six years after the COVID pandemic and nearly two years after he was pardoned for any and all crimes he may have committed since 2014 relating to his role at Health and Human Services (HHS), Anthony Fauci was back in the news last week. The former head of the National...
In an interview with conservative political commentator and best-selling author Michael Knowles released at the end of June, Vice President JD Vance repudiated the free-market elements of the pre-MAGA Republican agenda. He bemoaned the influence of many names...
With Maggie Haberman’s new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump generating plenty of headlines—including from President Trump himself—I decided to give it a listen on Spotify. One passing comment stuck with me. During a segment, Haberman...
An unseen battle is being waged across the digital landscape, turning the very devices we rely on into silent observers. Civil liberties organizations have persistently shined light a constellation of Israeli technology enterprises—many birthed by alumni of elite...
There was already a great deal of consternation among the rightwing due to the election of socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City and socialist Katie Miller as mayor of Seattle. The volume of warnings got higher after NYC Democrats gave primary victories...
The desire to ban speech, in any form, is an example of insecurity inside society and government. Knowing that certain words or images may in some way draw revulsion and offense is a risk an individual must take. Not everyone will experience the same offense or...
As the U.S.-Israel war on Iran grinds into its sixth month, it’s clear to all but the most intellectually-dishonest [Donald] Trump loyalists and war-bent Israel-sympathizers that it’s been a spectacular failure. A war of aggression that was supposed to precipitate a...
For nearly twenty-five years, Washington has quietly expanded America’s Global War on Terror across Africa. Today, U.S. military activities stretch from the Horn of Africa through the Sahel to the Atlantic coast, encompassing intelligence bases, drone operations,...
On July 29, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Donald Trump in the White House. Their relationship was “much better,” Zelensky said, because of the turning tide in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Zelensky’s narrative of the turning tide has been amplified by the...
The state has discovered that the most efficient way to manage what you believe is to reach you before you know you are being reached. Consider a man walking into a church in Prescott, Arizona on a Sunday morning. He carries a phone, as everyone does. He does not know...
When President Donald Trump declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security in a January 2026 Executive Order, the designation was accompanied by a series of sweeping claims. Among them were accusations that Cuba “provides support” to...
In this age of social media and A.I. illusions, an old Russian scam provides the best lens to understand America’s two most recent presidents. In eighteenth-century czarist Russia, a fake village was built by a Russian governor named Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin to...
