Dear Weekend Jolter,
Pity the nations with insufficient leverage and weight to throw around in the transactional Trump era.
With Ukraine apparently returning to the negotiating table, diminished, after last week's humiliation at the White House, its circumstance is a reminder of the elevated importance, when dealing with Donald Trump, of bargaining power (see Adams, Eric). It is the coin of the realm. As NR's editorial noted, Volodymyr Zelensky's misfortune is to lead a "beleaguered, relatively small country dependent on U.S. aid, putting him in the position of a vulnerable supplicant." Put another way, by Rich Lowry, Ukraine "never should have made the mistake of getting invaded."
What limited leverage Kyiv does have — at least in the tangible way Trump conceives of leverage — concerning the country's minerals, Zelensky was reportedly ambivalent about. So Trump, with all the tact for which he is known, repeatedly reminded Zelensky that he doesn't hold the cards, scolded Europe for projecting weakness, and paused military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. He told Congress on Tuesday night that he appreciates the Ukrainian president's subsequent effort to rejoin peace (and minerals) talks, setting the stage for further, uncomfortable negotiations.
Trump would never deal with Vladimir Putin in such a way, as NR's editorial also noted, though he is now threatening sanctions on Russia. But it should be clear by this point that the U.S. president, as a general value (and setting aside his strange cordiality with Putin), respects the appearance of strength. "I don't like losers," then-candidate Trump declared at a 2015 summit. Joking — but, as the poet Marshall Mathers observed, a lot of truth is said in jest. In the animal kingdom of geopolitics, Trump is not one to root for the gazelle.
"To the extent we've seen this White House challenge America's enemies, it has been passive aggressive. The real, visceral aggression is reserved for America's friends," Noah Rothman writes.
What explains the difference in approach?
The Economist has identified an emergent hierarchy, with America on top and, right below, countries with resources to sell and threats to make. In other words, leverage. "In the third rank are America's allies, their dependence and loyalty seen as weaknesses to exploit." Not shared history or values or a sense of place in the world's conventional moral order but bargaining power is what matters. The president's antagonism toward Canada and "Governor" Trudeau, his not-so-subtle pressure on Greenland to join America, his on-again, off-again trade war that makes little distinction between friend and foe — all point to a dramatic shift, for now, in the way Washington interacts with the world.
It is fair to point out that Zelensky made tactical errors in his failed visit last week. He didn't don a suit. He addressed Vice President Vance by his first name and publicly challenged him on his idea of "diplomacy" with the deal-violating Putin, giving an impression of petulance bound to irritate the men he needed to please. But in the main, the reasons cited for why Zelensky deserved to be sent packing (Noah catalogues them here) are unconvincing. Zelensky didn't adequately thank us? He has done so, dozens of times. Zelensky is a "dictator" who suspended elections? Putin is a dictator in all but title, and the extraordinary circumstances that led to Ukraine's election freeze were well understood a short time ago. Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who just slammed Zelensky on the issue, said last year that it "makes sense" to wait on elections. Jim Geraghty, fresh off a visit to Ukraine, writes, "Could the Ukrainian president have played nicer with Trump? Sure, but I try to cut a guy some slack when he's been marked for death by the Russians for three years."
But again, it's not really about the suit, or the gratitude, or the elections.
"The heart of this dispute is the cold hard fact that Donald Trump trusts Vladimir Putin a lot more than he trusts Zelensky," Jim writes. Part of this, as Jeff Blehar reminded us, has to do with Zelensky's role in the first Trump impeachment and, as Andy McCarthy writes, with Trump's mistaken thinking that he has a bond with Putin over Russiagate. But Trump clearly faults Ukraine for its vulnerability and its inability to make a "deal" — judging by his revision of history holding Ukraine responsible for Russia's invasion of it. As in his infamous swipe at the late Senator John McCain: Trump likes countries that weren't captured.
Mark Antonio Wright, for the record, challenges the idea that Ukraine is hopelessly outmatched.
Andy challenges the idea that "fading, backward" Russia is so strong.
But Trump doesn't appear to see it that way. If his worldview is indeed forging a new world order, the race for bargaining chips will be a prominent feature of it.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On Trump's speech: Trump's Victory Lap
Turns out it doesn't take an act of Congress to enforce immigration law: Trump's Early Success at the Border Exposes Biden Lies
No, these are not male role models: The Loathsome Tate Brothers
Trouble ahead in the courts: The Supreme Court Should Not Encourage a One-Judge Constitutional Crisis
ARTICLES
Rich Lowry: Trump 2.0, the Sequel: More Trump Than Ever
Audrey Fahlberg: Divided on Strategy, Democrats Keep Playing into Trump's Hands: 'We're Coming Off as So Clueless'
Brittany Bernstein & Audrey Fahlberg: 'We Have Been Ripped Off': Trump Defends Sweeping Tariffs in Address to Congress as Trade Wars Kick Off
Brittany Bernstein: Bezos's Critics Pretend He's the First Newspaper Owner to Shape the Opinion Page
Elliott Abrams: The Dream Palace of Gaza
Jim Geraghty: What I Saw in Syria
Charles C. W. Cooke: Congress Can Stop This Tariff Madness Right Now
Lee Zeldin: Trump's EPA Is Giving Us a Cleaner Environment and Increased Prosperity
James Lynch: Dozens of School Districts Nationwide Separating Staff into Racial 'Affinity Groups' — Despite Trump Orders
James Lynch: Trump Puts Limits on Elon Musk's Power at DOGE After Cabinet Meeting
Dan McLaughlin: Federal Appeals Court Lets Schools Deceive Parents About Child Gender Transitions
John Fund: Will Mayor Brandon Johnson Become Chicago's Undertaker?
Michael Brickman: Trump Should Polish a Hidden Gem in D.C. for America's 250th Birthday
Becket Adams: Good Riddance to Joy Reid
Kayla Bartsch: The Vibe Shift Comes for the Oscars
CAPITAL MATTERS
Dominic Pino has got tariffs figured out: Why Wait to Use the Tariff Magic Wand?
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen explains how one of the nation's best art museums is about to get even better: A French Coup for the Art Institute of Chicago
THE EXCERPTS ABIDE
Audrey Fahlberg reports on Democrats' continuing difficulty finding their footing in the Trump age:
A little more than a month into Donald Trump's second term, there is a growing divide between Democrats over how to resist the president's governing agenda.
In one camp are Democrats such as former Bill Clinton adviser James Carville who believe that the out-of-power party should engage in strategic retreat from the congressional political discourse and wait for inevitable Republican dysfunction, at which point Democrats can steer persuadable voters back into their fold. In the other camp are Democrats who, facing immense pressure from resistance grassroots groups still shocked by Trump's victory, feel the need to engage in reflexive opposition to the president's every move.
This fracture was on display inside the House chamber Tuesday evening, where dozens of progressives bucked party leadership in various acts of protest, from heckling Trump during his speech to holding up signs, brandishing "resist" T-shirts, and walking out of the chamber during his remarks. The disruptions by 77-year-old Representative Al Green (D., Texas), right at the beginning of Trump's speech, were so persistent that he earned himself a one-way ticket out of the chamber (escorted by the sergeant at arms), along with a GOP-authored House censure resolution.
Broadly speaking, it's hard for the minority party to cut through the noise in joint addresses before Congress. For such events, presidents poll-test their message and present their agenda in ways that appeal to broad swaths of the American public. But in general, the out-of-power party should try to abide by the do-no-harm principle.
Put more simply, "the minority party should not have negative stories coming out at the State of the Union," said former Representative Tim Ryan (D., Ohio).
It's safe to say that Democrats failed to clear that low bar Tuesday evening. What's more, Ryan told National Review that his former colleagues came off as cruel and unfeeling when the vast majority of them declined to clap or stand when Trump singled out several special guests during his remarks. Those mid-speech shoutouts included the mother and sister of Laken Riley, a University of Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an illegal immigrant last year; DJ Daniel, a 13-year-old cancer patient whom Secret Service director Sean Curran swore in last night as honorary agent; Jason Hartley, a high school senior who Trump announced had just been accepted by West Point, the school of his dreams; and Marc Fogel, a teacher imprisoned in Russia for almost four years, recently returned home through Trump's efforts and accompanied at last night's speech by his joyful 96-year-old mother.
"You should clap because you're a human being," Ryan said. "If you're trying to convince people Trump is callous, and he does something like that, and you don't clap? That makes your job all the more difficult."
Because Ukraine wasn't enough, Jim Geraghty added a Syria leg to his latest reporting trip. What he saw:
The opportunity to visit a country three months after it toppled its dictator and is in the process of putting together a new government doesn't come often. Syria may well have had the worst past 15 years of any country on earth. The Syrian civil war began in 2011 and waxed and waned over nearly a decade and a half, never really stopping — and it included not just terrorist attacks and wholesale slaughter of civilians, it also featured at least 336 chemical weapons attacks by February 2019.
Remember that massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, in August 2020, which was the largest non-nuclear blast in modern history? An estimated 2,750 tons of unsafely stored ammonium nitrate exploded. Former Assad regime officers have reportedly admitted that they were smuggling ammonium nitrate in through Beirut for the Assad regime's "barrel bombs" — barrels filled with explosives and pieces of scrap metal — low cost, high-casualty weapons.
The Assad regime transformed Qasioun Mountain in Damascus, "a restricted area for civilians, into a barrel bomb production facility during Syria's civil war," and dropped nearly 82,000 barrel bombs in nine years, killing 11,087 civilians, including 1,821 children. As of March 2024, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had documented the names of 507,567 people who have died in Syria since the outbreak of the conflict in March 2011.
When a regime's air force — along with an estimated 34,000 combat sorties from the Russians — drop bombs on rebel forces, and the rebels have no air defense, you get results like the Damascus suburb of Jobar. (Keep that in mind when the question of whether to send additional Patriot missiles to Ukraine comes up.) There's nothing left. It's just block after block, mile after mile of destroyed buildings — husks, a ghost of a community that had thrived, and that once featured a synagogue founded in the eighth century. Now it's just acres and acres of rubble — wiped off the map.
Lots of countries have problems, but Syria had catastrophes that tore it to shreds.
When Assad fled to Moscow, Trump declared on Truth Social that "this is not our fight."
And that is correct, but the fight is over. There's a new government in place. There are some positive signs — for the reasons described above and more, lots of Syrians are thrilled that the Assad regime is gone, and the man who ruled their country with an iron fist is now freezing up in Moscow.
But there are plenty of signs that the new government has a long and difficult road ahead.
James Lynch reports on how the more things change, the more they don't:
School districts nationwide are giving staff the opportunity to participate in affinity groups based on race and other demographic characteristics, in apparent violation of several of President Trump's recent executive orders intended to strip left-wing dogma around race and sex out of publicly funded institutions.
Over 100 districts in 26 states and Washington, D.C., have offered employees identity-based affinity groups to separate staff and provide "safe spaces" for "underrepresented" people to express themselves, according to Parents Defending Education, an activist group opposed to left-wing indoctrination in schools.
PDE's investigation lists school districts in various states that have either allowed for affinity groups in the past or currently offer them to teachers and other staff. Most of the school districts with affinity groups are in blue states such as California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont. Illinois has close to two dozen school districts with the identity-based groups, twice as many as any other state.
Affinity groups are school-sponsored organizations that intentionally separate people based on their immutable traits and sexual orientation. Activists, educators, outside consultants, or administrative staff with diversity, equity, and inclusion roles often facilitate the affinity clubs.
An example PDE's investigation highlights is Denver Public Schools, which offers "Belong" groups for individuals from similar backgrounds to create community and build a more "inclusive" environment. The "Belong Group" offerings include associations for black, "latinx," "managers of color," "women of color," and a special one devoted to "deconstructing privilege."
The "deconstructing privilege" group seeks to "equip ourselves with the knowledge and skills to dismantle oppression" and "collectively explore and confront issues related to privilege," PDE discovered.
Another example PDE focuses on is Portland, Maine Public Schools, where affinity groups are available for "BIPOC" and LGBT employees. On its webpage about affinity groups, Portland links to an article about why racial minorities "need spaces without white people." The school district also extends "BIPOC" employees the opportunity to get free one-on-one counseling sessions with social workers and access to monthly "mutual support and healing spaces" put together by a "BIPOC" social worker.
CODA
I was watching Severance last week (and if you're not watching the show, there's still time to remedy this) and was startled in a good way when a brassy, soulful cover of "Sunshine of Your Love" roared in the credits. "Who could this be?" I wondered. Silly me — it was Ella Fitzgerald, who took to covering the song live shortly after Cream recorded it.
Enjoy, thanks for reading, and have a restful weekend.
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