Fresh audio product: Trump’s strategic vision, turning the executive branch into a PE firm
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): December 11, 2025 Anatol Lieven analyzes the Trump national security strategy • Susannah Glickman on the transformation of the US government into a private equity firm (NYRB interview here)
Fresh audio product: public monuments, Trump’s Gaza scheme, Mamdani’s run for NYC mayor
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 2, 2025 Erin Thompson on the politics of public monuments as Trump talks of restoring Confederate statues • Mouin Rabbani returns for a look at Trump’s dubious Gaza peace scheme • Ted Hamm, author of Run Zohran Run!, on Mamdani’s campaign for NYC mayor
Fresh audio product: neoliberalism, eugenics branch • stablecoins, and the Trump/UAE deal
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): September 18, 2025 Quinn Slobodian, author of Hayek’s Bastards, on the eugenics/race science tendencies within High Church Neoliberalism • Molly White on stablecoins, and the Trump–UAE deal
That 3% GDP growth number was bizarre
While the jobs numbers had this big kind of mysterious revision, if they didn’t have the revision, then the jobs numbers were fully consistent with a 3% GDP growth we also so last week, and that’s even before the Big Beautiful Bill passes… — Kevin Hassett on Fox By now, the news that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported weak job growth for July and revised its estimates for May and June down very substantially has spread beyond the usual audience of connoisseurs. Though those revisions were large by historical standards,… Read More
Deporting immigrants kills native jobs too
As Trump and his ICE Sturmabteilung troop stormingly about the country deporting people, there’s an important fact that’s being overlooked: deporting undocumented workers destroys domestic jobs as well. Of course, their nativist campaign is grotesque and revolting in itself, and would be were no native-born bystanders injured by the expulsions. But we should be clear on what damage we’re doing to ourselves as well. As Ben Zipperer shows in work for the Economic Policy Institute, almost as many native-born workers could lose their jobs as deported immigrants. Using data from the experience… Read More
Fresh audio product: Trump’s world, a tour d’horizon; checks and balances and elites
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): July 24, 2025 Anatol Lieven looks at US relations with the world under the Trump regime, specifically Russia–Ukraine, Israel–Palestine, and US self-evisceration • Samuel Moyn, author of this article, on checks & balances and the need for better elites
Fresh audio product: Trump, a Constitutional product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): April 24, 2025 Aziz Rana, author of The Constitutional Bind, on how the system crafted by the US Constitution, led to Donald Trump and has constricted our ability fight him
Fresh audio product: Trump & the courts, class & elections, hipster nihilists
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 27, 2025 Samuel Moyn on Trump and the courts • Chris Maisano, author of this article, on class and politics • Evgenia Kovda on hipster nihilism (article here)
Fresh audio product: Trump and empire, is King Donald a neoliberal?
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): February 20, 2025 Anatol Lieven looks at the global dimensions of Trumpism • Quinn Slobodian muses on whether Trump is a neoliberal, and examines the three major strands of DOGE-ism (NYRB article here)
The Gaza ceasefire: an interview with Mouin Rabbani
This is a lightly edited transcript of an interview that I did with Mouin Rabbani on the January 23, 2025, edition of Behind the News. Rabbani is a journalist and analyst with a deep understanding of the Middle East. He has served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. He is the co-editor of Jadaliyya, an ezine that covers the region, where he also hosts its Connections podcast. I asked Rabbani to comment on… Read More
Fresh audio product: Gaza ceasefire, sex work today
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 23, 2025 Mouin Rabbani on the Gaza ceasefire and Trump’s plans for the Middle East • Angela Jones and Bernadette Barton, co-editors of Sex Work Today, on that topic
Tariff follies
Our new emperor has a well-advertised love of tariffs. They appeal to his grandiosity, as dramatic imperial gestures that will bring the world to heel at no cost to Americans, given his stubborn delusion that foreigners, not consumers, pay the duties. Should he carry through with his threats to slap 10%, 20%, 30%, tariffs on imports—many of them on products that aren’t even made here, so there aren’t any domestic substitutes—prices will rise significantly, quite the turn for a guy who ran against Bidenflation. I’ve written about Trump’s tariffs for Jacobin, notably… Read More
Yet another parsing of the vote
If you listen to some liberals—I’m too discreet to name names, but you might know whom I have in mind—Trump’s election was the reflection of a resurgent hegemony of white patriarchy. These arguments are typically made without any supporting evidence, because there isn’t much of that. Here’s some complicating data drawn from exit polls (sources: 2016, 2020, 2024). First, the swing between 2020 and 2024. The only demographic groups in the graph below to shift significantly towards the Democrat between 2020 and 2024 were over-65s and those with incomes over $100,000. Over-65s,… Read More
Fresh audio product: Trump and the rest of the world, Trump and the cops
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): November 14, 2024 Anatol Lieven tries to divine a Trump foreign policy out of unreliable rhetoric and early appointments • Alex Vitale tries similar on Trump and criminal justice
Fresh audio product: Trump, Israeli public opinion, the meaning of Ukraine
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): November 7, 2024 DH comments on the Trump victory, especially the role of inflation • Dahlia Scheindlin on Israeli public opinion • James Foley and Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, authors of this article, on the role of Ukraine in the Western political imagination