“in his second term he appears to be in the business of exerting American power abroad, from Greenland to Gaza. But no modern empire has ever successfully projected power globally without a competent and motivated bureaucracy. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote that the more complex a society becomes, the more it needs institutions to run it. And this is especially true of an empire, which the United States has been in functional terms since 1945. Americans may, like the elder Bush, be uncomfortable with the word empire, but our successes, challenges and even disasters have been akin to those of all the great empires of history. The Trump administration’s war on its own imagined “deep state” is essentially a war against the very institutions needed to organize society at home and especially, defend it from its enemies abroad.
American power abroad is expressed not only through presidential decisions, but through the power of institutions, notably the State Department and the Defense Department. American diplomats deal with crises in dozens upon dozens of countries in the world on a daily basis that you never read about: they include small countries and large, troubled, and complex states like Pakistan, Nigeria and Colombia. The finest linguists and political secretaries are needed in overseas embassies to manage such challenges. Weaken the bureaucracy at this crucial level — at the same time you are discouraging new generations of young people from going into public service — and you weaken American power itself. This might take time to be noticed, but its effect will be real and insidious.”
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“Trump wants to exert control worldwide, but his actions against the bureaucracy undermine that goal.”
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“The Arabists and the China experts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have been some of the finest bureaucrats I have encountered. They are the ultimate early warning system: the Arabists warned against the 2003 Iraq War and the China experts about the political and economic dangers of a conflict over Taiwan. You want the very best people in these jobs. Empires at their best encourage cosmopolitanism, that is, a knowledge of other languages and cultures required for the maintenance of good diplomatic and security relations. Yet the Trump administration is essentially telling brilliant, linguistically adroit young people not to want a career in government. It is fine to trim bloated bureaucracies in order to save money and to improve efficiency. But it is another thing entirely to make life miserable for those who remain by requiring them to fill out weekly forms about their activities and so forth. In such a circumstance, the very people you need to be motivated won’t be, and will look elsewhere for careers.”
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“USAID, through its projects often run by non-governmental organizations, has been for decades doing much more than running humanitarian programs throughout the developing world. In fact, these programs don’t operate in the abstract: Because they are on-the-ground operations often in far-flung areas of a given country, they build vital human connections that are money in the bank for diplomats and military people to utilize, especially during crisis situations where local contacts are essential. An empire is about more than guns and money, it is also about the maintenance of relationships built up on official and non-official levels throughout the world by way of, among other things, humanitarian projects. Trump has been rightly concerned about the rise of Chinese power around the world, but has seemingly not realized that China is itself spreading its influence in large part through development projects. Dismantling our humanitarian projects in places like Africa and South America leaves a vast opening for the Chinese to fill with projects of their own. It will also hurt our intelligence gathering, as USAID staffers have had their own networks in the hinterlands of difficult countries.
The postwar American-led order has been administered through three non-economic pillars: NATO, USAID, and various treaty alliances in the Pacific. The Trump administration disdains the first, is trying to gut the second, and is making the third very nervous.”
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“The British Empire lasted as long as it did through the brilliance of its diplomats and intelligence agents. As I can attest through reporting in Africa and elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s, British influence continued for decades afterwards, partly because the British embassy or high commission in each country was manned by equally brilliant people who could always be counted on to deliver a great briefing to a reporter. Nothing projects power like the quality of people in your vital institutions at home and at your embassies and other missions around the world.
The most long-lasting world powers and empires succeeded not by raw power but by various methods of persuasion: the more subtle the approach, the more longevity for the great power involved. And such persuasion involves a talented and well-functioning bureaucracy, exactly what Trump is seeking to destroy. Our bureaucratic elite is not like others around the world: its sense of seeing little differentiation between American self-interest and promoting human rights and democracy might be somewhat naïve and self-serving, but it is real and deeply felt. These bureaucrats know that without that sense of idealism, America’s foreign policy descends into a sterile, ruthless realpolitik: like China’s. And no empire or great power has lasted very long without a sense of mission. That’s why Trump’s policies toward the bureaucracy are in direct conflict with his goals abroad, even if he doesn’t know it.”
“As a congressman, he wrote what came to be known as the “McKinley tariff” of 1890, and as president he signed another increase in 1897.
But a funny thing happened after the U.S. came out of the Panic (and subsequent four-year depression) of 1893: Goosed by sharp increases in domestic iron and copper production, Americans had too many goods chasing too few consumers. And McKinley himself began agitating to tear down some of those trade barriers.
“What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad,” he said in September 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. “The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can, and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. The period of exclusiveness is past,” he continued. “The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable….If perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed, for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad?”
McKinley’s presidency was ended by an assassin’s bullet the very next day.
Even before his late-life pivot to freer trade, McKinley had long been a champion of reciprocity, i.e., the bilateral, mutually beneficial reduction of targeted, asymmetrical tariffs. Or, as he put it in his first inaugural address, “the opening up of new markets for the products of our country, by granting concessions to the products of other lands that we need and cannot produce ourselves, and which do not involve any loss of labor to our own people, but tend to increase their employment.”
In his second term, Trump has demonstrated less enthusiasm for reciprocity than he has for the other two Rs of traditional protectionism, revenue and restriction. Asked last October by Joe Rogan whether he was serious about replacing the federal income tax with tariffs, Trump said, “Yeah, sure. Why not?”—and then engaged in some historical revisionism.”
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“the tariff system and perennial adjustments thereof was a cornucopia of corruption, putting the gilded in Gilded Age. Far from being a sophisticated manipulation of import/export duties to nurture nascent industries, the tariff schedule was a Christmas tree decorated by special interests.”
“President Donald Trump claims that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 grants him the power to deport certain Venezuelan-born aliens without due process based on the mere allegation of membership in a criminal street gang.
But the text of the Alien Enemies Act does not allow the president to do anything of the sort. “Whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government,” the act states, the president may direct the “removal” of “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized.”
The alleged crimes of the alleged members of the street gang Tren de Aragua do not meet this legal standard. There is no “declared war” between the United States and Venezuela, and there is no “invasion or predatory incursion” of the U.S. by “any foreign nation or government.” The gang is not a foreign state, and the gang’s alleged crimes, as heinous as they may be, do not qualify as acts of war by a foreign state. Trump’s frequent talk about a rhetorical “invasion” of the U.S. by undocumented immigrants utterly fails to satisfy the law’s requirements.
The fatal defects of Trump’s position are further illuminated when you compare Trump’s stance with James Madison’s 1800 “Report on the Alien and Sedition Acts.” (The Alien Enemies Act was one of the three laws that comprised the Alien and Sedition Acts.)
As Madison explained, there are two categories of “offences for which aliens within the jurisdiction” of the United States “are punishable.” The first category involves “offences committed by the nation of which they make a part, and in whose offences they are involved.” In this case, “the offending nation can no otherwise be punished than by war.” In other words, the offending nation in this case has committed an act of war against the United States. The aliens who fall within this category are “alien enemies.”
The second category involves offenses committed by aliens “themselves alone, without any charge against the nation to which they belong.” In this case, “the offence being committed by the individual, not by his nation, and against the municipal law, not against the law of nations; the individual only, and not the nation is punishable; and the punishment must be conducted according to the municipal law, not according to the law of nations.” The aliens who fall within this second category are “alien friends.”
Notice that “alien friends” may certainly be punished by the normal U.S. legal system for whatever crimes they commit while on U.S. soil. They may be deprived of their life, their liberty, and their property. But—and this is a big but—they may only be deprived of life, liberty, or property after they have received due process of law, which is what the Constitution guarantees to all persons, not just to all citizens.”
“There are many excellent reasons why Boasberg should not be impeached, including the fact that Boasberg’s judgment against Trump is both persuasive and well-grounded in the law. Trump may claim that he has the unilateral authority to deport alleged criminal aliens without due process. But the administration’s arguments in support of that sweeping claim fail to pass muster on multiple counts.
Under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, “whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government,” the president may direct the “removal” of “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized.”
Trump invoked that law in his March 15 proclamation ordering the “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal” of alleged members of the street gang Tren de Aragua, who are allegedly “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States…in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela.”
Except there is no “declared war” between the United States and Venezuela. And while Trump and his allies have certainly promoted the idea of a rhetorical “invasion” of the U.S. by unlawfully present aliens, that is merely a talking point. Such rhetoric does not alter the plain text of the Alien Enemies Act, which refers to military invasions by a “foreign nation or government.” As James Madison explained in his “Report on the Alien and Sedition Acts,” published on January 7, 1800, “invasion is an operation of war.” The alleged crimes of the alleged members of a nonstate street gang do not magically become “an operation of war” just because the president says so in the hopes of unlocking extra powers.
Speaking of James Madison, he said that the role of the judiciary was to stand as “an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” That description is probably as good of an explanation as any for why Trump, just like Roosevelt before him, is so eager to stop the courts from doing their job.”
It really looked a lot like a Nazi salute. And he did it twice. A non-troll would afterwards say ‘oops!’, my bad, I didn’t realize in the moment what that looked like.’ Instead, he just joked and claimed he’s a victim of people calling others fascist too easily. He either did it on purpose as an inappropriate joke, did it on accident and is too blind to realize it was a mistake, or did it on purpose because he’s an actual Nazi. My guess is the first one, with the second one being the next most likely…I hope it wasn’t the last one.
“If the Trump administration merely ended all formal DEI training and initiatives, I wouldn’t be too concerned. They were, after all, never a significant part of what we did. What troubles me most is the attempt to stop all conversations about race and gender. Personal relationships and teams are strengthened by having difficult conversations, conversations that can sometimes make people uncomfortable. Avoiding, or worse banning, those conversations weakens both relationships and teams. Trust, mutual respect and shared values and goals are the foundations of strong teams. All are enhanced by open and candid conversations.
Eliminating any discussion of race or gender will have three negative consequences. The Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are sending a strong message that white males are in charge again and they don’t want to hear anything about gender or racial inequities. Intended or not, that is what is being heard. Conversations I have had with leaders at all levels of the military indicate this is already having a significant impact on the morale and well-being of a large fraction of the force. Second, this is going to have a very negative effect on recruiting and retention that will deny our military the benefit of some of the most capable people in the nation. By the end of the Biden administration, we had met or exceeded all of the Department of the Air Force’s recruiting goals; I would hate to see that trend reversed. People already serving will choose to leave, and those considering service in the military will find other career options. Finally, the changes being implemented will empower the small minority of people who do have conscious gender or racial bias to act on those views. There aren’t many of these people in our military, but I can say from personal experience that they do exist.
If the Department of Defense and the nation are to move forward on gender and racial issues, we have to do it together. This means that white males like myself must join conversations that we may find uncomfortable and we must develop and display empathy for people unlike ourselves. That is called leadership. Conversations about race and gender are still going to happen no matter what policies are put in place to outlaw DEI training, ban certain words or eliminate affinity groups. Because of what the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are doing those conversations just won’t include white males. That is not going to make our military more united or stronger. It is going to make us weaker.”