The Turning Point in Ukraine

One year on, Putin is desperate for a victory and Ukraine has to avoid stalemate. Next Friday, February 24, is the one year anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It concludes a year measured in tragedies: tens of thousands of war crimes, hundreds of thousands of casualties, millions of refugees, and billions of dollars lost […]

The National Debt is Dangerous; So Is Fixing It

Cuts to welfare spending fuel populist extremism Congress is once again facing the age-old dilemma of either raising the arbitrary limit on our borrowing or tanking the economy and causing irreparable harm to the dollar’s position as the reserve currency of the world. This isn’t a piece about the debt ceiling because, God willing, Congress […]

If It Looks Like a Conspiracy and Talks Like a Conspiracy…

It’s probably just the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos It’s that time of year again where the global political and business elites meet in a Bond villain’s Swiss mountain lair to decide the future of humanity.  I’m kidding, but only barely. According to the World Economic Forum’s official mission, they convene 3,000 or […]

Sinema Won’t Find it Easy to Disrupt American Politics

Changing the two-party system takes new legislation, not lectures Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced this past Friday that she is no longer a Democrat, “declaring [her] independence from the broken partisan system.” She explained that “Americans are told that we have only two choices – Democrat or Republican – and that we must subscribe wholesale to policy […]

DeSantis Isn’t Trump. That Matters

The Florida governor does not pose the same threat to democracy as the former president One glass of wine. A salad. A second glass of wine and here it comes:  “It’s that DeSantis down in Florida. Forget about Trump––he’s the greatest threat. He’s Trump but smart. He’d actually get things done.” If dinner parties are […]

Echo Chambers Are a Myth

Engaging more with the other side can actually make us more partisan, not less. As dust from the midterm elections still settles, one thing remains clear: it seems as if Americans live in different realities. Election deniers made up a majority of GOP candidates, and events like the attack on Paul Pelosi by a wild conspiracy […]

Emperor Xi Celebrates Chinese Democracy

Why the world’s largest dictatorship keeps calling itself a model democracy The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is underway in Beijing this week, broadcasting China’s ambitions for the future. The congress meets every five years and coincides with presidential terms, so Xi Jinping, having served his two five-year stints, should be welcoming […]

A Logical Plan for Ukrainian Defeat

Elon Musk’s plan for peace in Ukraine is pragmatic, popular, and wrong. On Monday, Twitter was abuzz after Elon Musk announced his plan for peace in Ukraine: there should be new referendums on whether eastern Ukrainian oblasts would join Russia, Ukraine should formally cede Crimea and guarantee its water supply, and Ukraine should remain neutral, aligning with […]

Jeffrey Sachs says it’s all America’s fault

Why is an anti-American conspiracy theorist running a top medical journal’s COVID commission? Last week, the medical journal the Lancet released its landmark COVID report after two years of work. Anything from the Lancet’s COVID commission should be a big deal, as it promised “to help speed up global, equitable, and lasting solutions to the pandemic,” and emerged from […]

Send in the Tanks, Germany

If Germany wants peace in Europe, it should help achieve it. The Ukrainian military is on a tear. After announcing a southern counteroffensive in August, Ukrainian troops instead struck the hardest in the northeast, liberating thousands of square kilometers of land from Russian occupation in less than two weeks.  As retired Lt. Gen Ben Hodges […]