This is the first of four reports on the crises that now beset Germany — what they are, the history that produced them, and how Germans think about finding their way forward once again. I thank Eva–Maria Föllmer–Müller and Karl–Jürgen Müller of Bazenheid, Switzerland, for their unsparing assistance as I reported and wrote this series.... Read More

Some people worth citing this week. They speak of different matters, but when we put all their apples and oranges into a basket we discover they belong together, their bright colors confronting us with a challenge: It is time to do something — something very few of us have considered until now. Rashid Khalidi, in... Read More

During Donald Trump’s first four years in the White House, the stranger to Washington’s infernal ways got nothing done: That cabal of various Deep State appendages — the Democratic Party’s upper echelons, the intelligence apparatus, the Justice Department and the F.B.I., and corporate media — made sure of that. Trump seems to have thought this... Read More

Mahmoud Khalil, 30–year-old holder of a green card permitting him permanently to live and work in the United States, spouse of an American, lettered in his field after study at an Ivy League university, with nothing on his record to suggest criminal activity of any kind: Mahmoud Khalil is now under arrest and awaiting deportation... Read More

Eleven days ago, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi hyped her office’s imminent release of files related to the apparently sprawling empire of vice that Jeffrey Epstein ran for many years — a scandal that has percolated at or just below public awareness for over a decade. What followed Bondi’s considerable drum roll was 200 pages... Read More

I have never been much for schadenfreude: It is always best to occupy one’s mind with worthier matters. But I cave to temptation as Volodymyr Zelensky, the puffed-up buffoon who has paraded flamboyantly across the world stage as a hero these past half-dozen years, is publicly cut to size as President Donald Trump gets on... Read More

This is the second of two essays considering President Trump’s unfolding offensive against the institutions and agencies comprising the deep state — the permanent state or the invisible government, as it is also commonly known. The first in this series is here. Trump’s telephone conversation with the Russian president, which he disclosed at noon Wednesday,... Read More

Eight years ago, at precisely this moment in Donald’s Trump’s first term, the new president was pushing his case for a restored détente with Russia. Trump went on to summit with Vladimir Putin five times and conducted at least 16 telephone exchanges with the Russian president. This was the count by mid–2019. After that and... Read More

This is the first of two commentaries examining what the writer reads as President Trump’s unfolding offensive against the institutions and agencies comprising the deep state — or, if you prefer, the administrative state or the permanent state or the invisible government. The second in this series will follow shortly. Wow. In a series of... Read More

What hath the MAGA movement wrought? I doubt the archest of Donald Trump’s arch-enemies ever imagined that in his second term he would take things this far in the direction of dangerous or dumb or both. To be clear straightaway, Trump’s full-frontal attack on the Deep State and the liberal authoritarians who collaborated to subvert... Read More

Donald Trump does not seem to have too much trouble shocking people. In the three weeks since he resumed his residency in the White House, he has shocked the Danes (America must have Greenland), the Canadians (Canada will become our 51st state), the Panamanians (the Canal is ours), and the Mexicans (It’s “the Gulf of... Read More

I simply cannot figure American liberals and “progressives”—’pwogwessives,’” as the late Alexander Cockburn used to call them. They do nothing when faced with calamitous events and call it hard work. Then, when the political process (such as it is) takes a radical turn for the worse and there is serious work to do, they announce... Read More

I honestly do not think Joe Biden ever had a chance to make sense of his four years as president. It is not merely his native stupidity, and Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s execrable record on the foreign side seems evidence enough that he is through and through, all-over stupid. This does not distinguish Biden among... Read More

Well, Tulsi Gabbard now says she is all for the unconstitutional law that permits the national security state to surveil Americans without obtaining legal warrants beforehand — a law Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence has previously and vigorously pledged to repeal. As President-elect Trump’s inauguration approaches and his cabinet appointments will be... Read More

I have long nursed a keen interest in the Cold War’s corruptions on the cultural side — who the perpetrators and who the victims and what they did in each case. I was riveted, then, when OR Books brought out Joel Whitney’s first book, Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers, in 2017.... Read More

It is some years now since a lot of people began imagining the specter of World War III in the near or middle distance. This kind of thinking has been especially common since the U.S., with determination and purpose, provoked Russia to intervene in Ukraine three years ago this coming February. A few weeks later... Read More

LONDON— “Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…” Alot of us are familiar with these lines from Yeats’s thoroughly anthologized and often-quoted The Second Coming. How can they not come to mind as the French... Read More