This phrase, popularised by contemporary US political scientist Graham Allison in the early 2010s, is used to describe how two countries can drift toward war when an existing superpower feels anxious about an emerging one. Allison had China and the US in mind specifically.

It takes its name from Athenian historian and general Thucydides, who wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War, about the 27-year war between Athens and Sparta that broke out in 431 BCE.

But what did Thucydides really say on this? And what do Athens and Sparta have to do with the current state of US–China relations?

An implied fumble

The implication in the term “Thucydides trap” is that the established superpower manages the rising power badly and feels obliged to go to war when that’s not necessarily the only option.

It is based on a quote from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (book one, chapter 23). He said:

The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon [Sparta], made war inevitable.

In other words, Thucydides is saying what made the Peloponnesian War inevitable was the rise of Athenian power.

At the time, lots of Greeks were saying Athens and Sparta had gone to war again because of smaller disputes.

But Thucydides says no, the real cause was the overall fear that Sparta (the traditional superpower) had for the new powerful state: democratic Athens.

The general idea, of course, is that in its anxiety about the rise of China, the US may tend toward war when other options are available.

But many scholars of ancient Greece take issue with the way the term is used today.

A contested term

The word “trap” implies Sparta made a mistake in 431 BCE and could’ve handled things better. But that’s not what Thucydides really narrates in book one of his History of the Peloponnesian War.

He shows that, in fact, Sparta had good reason to fear the rising Athenians. Athens was, by then, a predominate naval power in the Balkans and the Aegean Sea. It was stripping allies off Sparta left, right and centre, and beating up the ones that refused to defect.

Those allies basically said to Sparta in 432 BCE: listen, you have got to do something about Athens and if you don’t act, we will join them.

It was pressure from these allies that pushed the Spartans to act against Athens.

So yes, in a sense Sparta’s own anxieties about ever-increasing Athenian power led to war. Sparta felt compelled to wage total war against Athens to maintain its system of alliances, and in 431 BCE broke the peace treaty it had with Athens.

A longer-term perspective

More generally, the term “Thucydides trap” is about how over the longer term things didn’t turn out so well for Sparta; although they won the Peloponnesian War, it took them 27 years to do so.

And after the victory, Sparta engaged in a huge expansion to become an even greater superpower. That ended up making all the other Greeks very fearful for their security. This growth in Spartan power after 404 BCE caused many of its allies to become enemies. All those Greek states then came together to confront Sparta, which was completely and utterly destroyed in 371 BCE at the Battle of Leuctra.

The whole security architecture of Sparta collapsed; they lost all their allies, all their slaves were liberated and Sparta was reduced to just a minor state.

So the lesson for the US implied in the term Thucydides trap is that fear of superpowers is a potent shaper of international affairs.

But many people who use the term Thucydides trap forget to mention what happened to Athens in the longer term.

Athens survived the Peloponnesian War and restored its democracy and military, and became a regional power. But what’s fascinating is that by the early 4th century BCE Athens was under immense pressure from the Persian empire, which was many times more powerful than any Greek state.

So Athens clipped its own wings and gave up on being this huge Mediterranean superpower; it decided to forego any attempt to reassert its imperial control over the many Greek states of Anatolia, allowing them again to be subjects of the Persian empire.

Athens decided to focus more closely on the Aegean Sea and give up on fighting Persians; it recognised the constraints of its power.

So it’s not as though Sparta’s decision to enter war with Athens in 431 BCE led, in the long run, to total world domination by Athens.

A lesson for today

The history of the Peloponnesian War provides important lessons for China–US relations today.

One is that it may be foolish for an established superpower to check the rise of an emerging one. Sparta learned that trying to do so can come at a terrible cost.

Accommodating Athens would have allowed Sparta to continue as a superpower well into the fourth century.

Another lesson is that an established superpower, such as the US, can cut back its ambitions and focus on regions closer to home.

This is exactly what democratic Athens did after the Peloponnesian War. Doing so allowed it to flourish culturally and politically and keep enemies well away until the 310s BCE.

David M. Pritchard, Associate Professor of Greek History, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The signals appear to be in place: The tropical Pacific is warming along the equator, and computer models point toward extreme conditions by the end of the year.

However, forecasting El Niño is not like predicting next week’s weather. Forecasts for El Niño typically aren’t reliable before late spring – not because scientists don’t understand the system, but because we understand its limits.

As an ocean-atmospheric scientist who studies El Niño, I spend a lot of time thinking about what scientists can forecast confidently – and what remains uncertain. Here’s what we know about the current event, what we still don’t, and why many regions should begin preparing now, even if a strong, or “super,” El Niño never fully materializes.

Why is El Niño hard to forecast in spring

The starting point for any El Niño forecast is the heat stored beneath the surface of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Computer models use data about those conditions to simulate how ocean temperatures will evolve over the coming months, and how they affect weather patterns around the world.

Right now, an exceptionally large reservoir of warm water sits beneath the surface there. In principle, this ocean heat should be a reliable signal of El Niño developing. In practice, what happens next depends heavily on what the atmosphere does.

The warm reservoir was shaped by a burst of wind activity in early 2026. Normally, the Pacific trade winds blow from east to west along the equator, pushing warm water toward Asia and leaving cooler water near South America. But in April, a pair of cyclones straddling the equator caused the wind direction to reverse. This short-lived reversal triggered a downwelling Kelvin wave – a pulse of energy beneath the ocean surface moving eastward along the equator.

That subsurface pulse has now reached the eastern Pacific, helping fuel intense warming off South America. At the ocean surface, this can resemble the early stages of a strong El Niño.

But there is a catch.

For El Niño to develop fully, the ocean and atmosphere need to lock into a feedback loop: Warmer surface waters weaken the trade winds, triggering more downwelling Kelvin waves that push warm water eastward and reinforce the warming. But that loop doesn’t engage automatically. It requires repeated bursts of eastward winds to sustain the process.

Until that feedback loop takes hold, the ocean-atmosphere system is in an unpredictable phase. It might tip into a super El Niño. It might not.

Spring is precisely when forecasts are most uncertain. Impressive early signals can fade if the winds don’t cooperate.

There’s a further complication: When models detect strong subsurface warming, they can simulate a stronger feedback loop than actually develops.

The result is that models can look too confident – even alarming – despite the system not being locked in. As of mid-May 2026, the wind patterns needed to amplify the warming have not clearly emerged.

We’ve seen this scenario play out before. In both 2014 and 2017, forecast models were pointing toward strong El Niño conditions by midyear. In both cases, the anticipated wind patterns never fully materialized and El Niño either stayed weak or returned to a neutral state. The early signals were real, but the expected follow-through didn’t happen.

So what do the forecasts suggest?

The current forecasts for 2026-27 still span a wide range in mid-May – from expecting weak to strong El Niño conditions.

How the winds behave in the coming weeks will determine what develops. If trade winds weaken again at the right moment, it could tip the system into self-sustaining warming – the kind that’s hard to stop.

As of mid-May, long-range weather forecasts weren’t showing strong eastward wind bursts on the horizon that could strengthen El Niño. In fact, quite the opposite was expected for the second half of May: a burst of winds blowing in the opposite direction. A full month without major eastward wind activity would be a meaningful brake on ocean warming.

The Pacific has loaded the dice for El Niño, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s May outlook reflects elevated odds of El Niño developing and potentially strengthening later in the year. By NOAA’s mid-June update, the picture should be substantially clearer.

El Niño intensity matters for weather worldwide

The difference between a weak El Niño and an extreme one is not subtle. It reshapes climate patterns across the globe – and with them, real-world risks.

If El Niño intensifies into a strong or “super” event, it can drive drought in the Amazon, fires in Indonesia, flooding in Peru and heavy rainfall in parts of California and southern South America. These effects could materialize by the Northern Hemisphere winter, when El Niño typically peaks.

In some regions, the stakes are immediate.

In India, the monsoon rains, which support agriculture and water supplies for hundreds of millions of people, have historically weakened during strong El Niño events. Even modest shifts in monsoon strength can bring food and water shortages, and harm economies.

At the same time, when El Niño is strong, hurricane activity in the Atlantic is typically suppressed – a rare upside – while the eastern Pacific often becomes more active with storms.

El Niño can even push global temperatures temporarily higher, as changes in cloud cover and the amount of heat the ocean releases alter the planet’s energy balance.

In contrast, a weak El Niño produces far more muted effects. This is why predicting intensity matters.

Using uncertain forecasts in real-world decisions

Because El Niño forecasts deal in probabilities, deciding how to prepare for the seasons ahead should be based on managing risk – not waiting for certainty.

El Niño’s impact does not occur everywhere at once. Some effects emerge quickly. Its impact on the Indian monsoon and Atlantic hurricane activity unfold over the summer and early fall.

Other impacts arrive later, toward the end of the year when El Niño peaks, bringing extreme rainfall to parts of South America between November and January. In Southeast Asia, scorching heatwaves often emerge even later, in April of the following year.

In regions like India, decisions about how to respond to El Niño risks cannot wait for more certainty. Communities need to prepare their water infrastructure now in case El Niño means the monsoon season brings too little rain.

Even where forecasts suggest reduced risks – such as a quieter Atlantic hurricane season – it would be a mistake to assume safety. Destructive hurricanes still hit in otherwise quiet years.

Pedro DiNezio, Associate Research Professor in Climate Modeling, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Most notably, political commentator Tucker Carlson, once one of Trump’s most stalwart loyalists, expressed remorse for his previous support for the president, declaring in April 2026, “It’s not enough to say, well, I changed my mind – or like, oh, this is bad, I’m out.” Carlson said he will be “tormented” by his support for Trump “for a long time” and that he is “sorry for misleading people.”

Growing unease with the Trump administration among these former allies comes amid some of the worst polling of Trump’s career. According to data compiled by pollster G. Elliott Morris, Trump’s popularity has been steadily declining over the past year. Americans are seriously questioning his handling of key issues, such as inflation, immigration, jobs and foreign affairs.

But beyond former prominent Trump allies, are there other Trump supporters having second thoughts about their votes in the 2024 presidential election? To answer this question, we conducted a nationally representative poll of 1,000 U.S. adults who were recruited from an online panel maintained by YouGov, a survey research firm.

We asked self-identified Trump voters about their votes in the 2024 election. Our results suggest that a growing number of them – especially moderates, African Americans and young people – are experiencing voter’s remorse.

Support for Trump remains strong

To be clear, our survey shows that most Trump voters remain in the president’s camp.

We found that 84% of 2024 Trump voters say they would vote for Trump if given the chance to vote again in the 2024 election. That’s down 2 percentage points since we previously asked this question in July 2025.

Over 90% of members of Trump’s core base of voters – including 93% of self-identified Republican Trump voters, 95% of self-identified conservative Trump voters and 92% of Trump voters over age 55 – said they would vote for Trump as they did in 2024 if given a second chance.

Regretful Trump voters

But some groups of Trump voters are having second thoughts. The most regretful are those with whom Trump made significant gains in 2024. They include political independents, African Americans, younger people and those with more education.

Roughly 3 in 10 2024 Trump voters who identify as political moderates and African Americans said they would vote differently if the election were held again. And roughly a quarter of young and middle-aged Trump voters also suggested they would not vote for Trump if they could redo their 2024 vote.

Twenty percent of Trump supporters with postgraduate degrees expressed a reluctance to vote for Trump if given a second opportunity. Voters with some college experience and those making less than $40,000 annually reported the same sentiment in similar percentages.

Perhaps most politically perilous, 31% of independents who voted for Trump in 2024 would not vote for him again in an election do-over.

Cracks in the coalition

What is pushing Trump voters away from the president?

There is no single cause, but our results suggest that negative perceptions of Trump’s performance on high-profile issues are playing a big role. A substantial portion of Trump voters who give the president a negative grade on the economy (22%), the Epstein files (37%) and the Iran war (49%) say they would not vote for him in an election redo.

Our results suggest that cracks are forming in the Trump coalition and that they are concentrated among the groups that before 2024 were less likely to vote for the president.

Trump may take solace in the continued loyalty of his strongest supporters. But in a close election every vote counts, and lingering dissatisfaction could undermine Republicans’ ability to mobilize key swing voters.

As Republicans face the electorate in upcoming midterms, Trump and the GOP will have to work to reclaim the support of regretful voters. Failure to do so could cost Republicans Congress in 2026 and, ultimately, the presidency in 2028.

Tatishe Nteta, Provost Professor of Political Science, UMass Amherst; Adam Eichen, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, UMass Amherst, and Jesse Rhodes, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Cuban government has indicated a readiness to negotiate with the Trump administration on some issues, such as migration, drug trafficking and investment openings for Cuban-Americans. But Cuba’s sovereignty is not negotiable.

After interviewing Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel last month, US journalist Kristen Welker seemed to catch on:

Nothing gets under [Cubans’] skin more than the notion that the United States can tell the Cuban government who should lead it or what it should be doing, how it should be governing, because that challenges the very idea of the sovereignty of the country.

This US obsession with controlling, influencing and coercing Cuba long predates Trump and even the Cold War. This is how President Theodore Roosevelt described the island in 1906:

I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic that I would like to wipe its people off the face of the earth. All we have wanted from them was that they would behave themselves and be prosperous and happy so that we would not have to interfere. And now, lo and behold, they have started an utterly unjustifiable and pointless revolution.

Understanding the current impasse between the two adversarial neighbours requires looking at this full arc of history. While the 1823 Monroe Doctrine sought to establish US predominance in the entire American continent, Cuba has always been a particular focus of Washington’s attention.

‘Americanisation’ of the island

From the moment the 13 American colonies declared independence from Britain, Americans assumed Cuba would become part of the union. Successive US administrations sought to purchase, annex or otherwise control Cuba, claiming this was inevitable by virtue of the laws of gravity and geography. It was also seen as part of a self-proclaimed “civilising mission”.

When the Cubans eventually defeated their Spanish colonial masters in 1898, the United States stepped in and occupied the island to thwart its independence.

At the time, at least one third of Cubans were former slaves or of mixed race. The US governor of Cuba, Leonard Wood, argued they were not ready for self-government.

Certainly, the US – especially the Southern former slave holders – didn’t want another Haiti in its neighbourhood. Haitian slaves had seized control of their island nation from the French in a violent rebellion in 1804, echoing the cries of the French revolution for liberty, fraternity and equality.

The US military occupation of Cuba ended in 1902 and Cuba formally declared independence – albeit with provisions. These allowed for future US intervention whenever Washington thought the Cuban people needed a guiding hand (which turned out to be fairly often).

In the decades that followed, US business interests deeply penetrated every sector of Cuba’s economy and had complete sway over Cuban governments.

On a cultural level, Cuba rapidly became “Americanised” through a new US-style education system. Travel to the island picked up, too. The popular Terry’s Guide to Cuba reassured US visitors in the 1920s they would feel right at home because “thousands [of Cubans] act, think, talk and look like Americans”.

Castro’s mission

All of this changed with the rise of Fidel Castro.

During the Cuban Revolution, Castro announced in April 1959 that the revolutionary government would be “Cubanising Cuba”. This might seem “paradoxical”, he explained, but Cubans “undervalued” everything Cuban. They had become “imbued with a type of complex of self-doubt” in the face of the overwhelming US influence on the island’s culture, politics and economy.

US journalist Elizabeth Sutherland similarly observed at the time that Cubans suffered from a “cultural inferiority complex typical of colonised peoples”.

For North Americans, however, Castro’s blunt statement seemed at best to reflect ingratitude, and at worst, an insult. As the US broadcaster Walter Cronkite recalled:

The rise of Fidel Castro in Cuba was a terrible shock to the American people. This brought communism practically to our shores. Cuba was a resort land for Americans […] we considered it part of the United States.

At the heart of Cuba’s revolutionary project has been an assertion of Cuba’s sovereignty, independence and national identity. The drive has been to create a new, united and socially just Cuban nation, as envisioned by its great national hero and poet, José Martí.

So, for Cubans it’s a matter of history. For North Americans, it’s a matter of self-image. They had “convinced themselves,” writes historian Louis A. Pérez, of the “beneficent purpose […] from which [the US] derived the moral authority to presume power over Cuba”.

When the Obama administration finally resumed relations with Cuba in 2014, it felt like a historic shift was taking place. The US might finally respect Cuban sovereignty and engage with Cuba on equal terms.

As President Barack Obama said at the time:

It does not serve America’s interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse. […] We can never erase the history between us, but we believe that you should be empowered to live with dignity and self-determination.

Trump has now reverted to Washington’s traditional neo-colonialist view of Cuba, proclaiming he can do what he likes with the island. Perhaps it is time to try a new approach. As the spectacular debacle of the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion showed 65 years ago, Cubans remain ready to defend their independence and their right to determine their own future.

Deborah Shnookal, Research fellow, Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In recent days, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 40 people and the military has issued evacuation orders for residents of ten villages and towns in southern Lebanon, where it has established a security buffer zone.

According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this zone is needed to protect Israel from future attacks by the Hezbollah militant group. He said it is “much stronger, more intense, more continuous, and more solid than we had previously”.

Critics, however, contend Israel is adopting the “Gaza playbook” in this buffer zone, mirroring its actions in Gaza after a fragile ceasefire was agreed to last October.

Militarily, Israel is hitting an already-weakened Hezbollah as hard as it can to deplete its capabilities and force it out of its southern Lebanon stronghold.

Israel calls this strategy “mowing the grass”. It has long viewed this strategy as the best way to establish a level of deterrence against Hamas and Hezbollah, which cannot be defeated through conventional military means.

Like it did in Gaza, Israel is also aiming to make the buffer zone uninhabitable for residents. In late March, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz declared:

All houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza, in order to permanently remove the threats near the border to northern residents.

As part of this, Israel has destroyed all the bridges across the Litani River, effectively isolating southern Lebanon from the rest of the country. It is also systematically destroying or severely damaging towns, villages and infrastructure in the region.

This “Gaza playbook” has come with a significant human cost. Since this latest conflict with Hezbollah began in early March, Israel’s attacks have killed more than 2,600 Lebanese and displaced another 1.2 million from their homes.

Netanyahu is becoming trapped

Yet, despite achieving many successes against Hezbollah, Netanyahu is in danger of overreaching in his claims to be able to defeat one of Israel’s nemeses.

For decades, successive Israeli governments, particularly those headed by Netanyahu, have convinced the Israeli public that Israel and Hezbollah are engaged in an existential struggle.

Many Israelis now expect Netanyahu to deliver on his promise and finally rid them of this threat forever.

In a recent poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute, 80% of respondents supported continuing the fight against Hezbollah irrespective of any possible peace deal between the US and Iran, and even if this created tensions with the Trump administration.

This poses a political threat to Netanyahu as he faces becoming trapped between two opposing realities.

Delivering on a false promise

The first centres on the “mowing the grass” strategy. This strategy has long served as good propaganda and as an exemplar of the government protecting its people. But it was never intended to completely defeat the threats posed by Hezbollah or Hamas.
When it comes to Hezbollah, Israel’s military simply cannot completely defeat a resistance movement that is so embedded in the social, political and cultural fabric of Lebanon. This would require not just a military victory, but the subjugation of its supporters and the delegitimisation of its ideology.

The intention of the “mowing the grass” strategy is to manage the threats posed by Hezbollah and Hamas, not destroy them.

If Israel is able to cause substantial damage to their political and military capabilities – in addition to destroying local infrastructure – the groups are then forced to focus on survival and revival, rather than on threatening Israel.

From Israel’s perspective, this provides some breathing room until the threat reemerges and it is time to “mow the grass” again.

From a political perspective, this strategy also allows Israel to justify its continuous military operations. This has been the cornerstone of Netanyahu’s political revival since the Hamas attacks of 2023, allowing him to maintain a constant sense of crisis that requires ever-increasing levels of violence.

But Netanyahu has changed the narrative, shifting from just “managing” Israel’s conflict with both Hezbollah and Hamas, to “dismantling” the groups and “finishing the job”.

It is clear the Israeli public wants Netanyahu to deliver on this promise.

Trump forcing his hand

The second reality facing Netanyahu is the potential that US President Donald Trump will agree to a permanent ceasefire with Iran that forces Israel to cease its hostilities against Hezbollah.

Since the tentative ceasefire between the US and Iran, Netanyahu has been trying to separate Israel’s conflicts with Iran and Hezbollah. This would allow him to continue the military’s operations against Hezbollah and claim a key strategic victory.

But Iran is demanding that any ceasefire it reaches with the US include Hezbollah.

This places Netanyahu in a bind. If he does agree to a permanent peace deal, this would leave a severely wounded but not-yet-destroyed Hezbollah in place. With Hamas and the Iranian regime also still intact (albeit severely wounded), this would represent a triple disaster for Netanyahu.

The backlash is already starting. Last month, Israeli opposition leader Yair Golan accused Netanyahu of lying:

He promised a historic victory and security for generations, and in practice, we got one of the most severe strategic failures Israel has ever known.

Criticism like this could have a huge effect on the Israeli elections, due before the end of this year.

Netanyahu is desperate to win these elections to forestall his long-running corruption trial. As such, he would be loath to risk breaking with the Israeli public on his promise to finish Hezbollah. However, that may mean breaking with the US and its essential military, political and diplomatic support.

While the “mowing the grass” strategy gave Netanyahu new political life after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, his failure to match his rhetoric to actual results may now prove to be his Achilles’ heel.

Martin Kear, Lecturer, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Two days before the White House Correpondents’ dinner on April 25, Kimmel broadcast what he said was a “roast” of the Trump administration. Roasts are typically quite savage comedic attacks which have become a traditional part of the dinner.

Trump, who was famously the target of jokes from former president, Barack Obama, at a dinner in 2011, had never attended the dinner while in office. This year he opted to attend, but the comedian’s spot was taken by what was described as a “mentalist”.

So Kimmel said he decided to supply the roast on his show as an “all-American” version of the Correspondents’ Dinner. In what he said was a joke about the 24-year age difference between the couple, he described Melania Trump as “having a glow like an expectant widow”. But after a would-be assassin tried to launch a murderous attack two days later at the dinner, the Trumps have demanded his sacking.

“Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behaviour at the expense of our community,” Melania Trump wrote in a post on X.

But it appears that ABC, a subsidiary of Disney, is instead standing by Kimmel, who has not been taken off air, in contrast to an episode in September 2025 when Kimmel was suspended after comments he made following the death of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, a close friend of the Trumps. After a public outcry, ABC relented and restored Kimmel’s show.

In response, Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has brought forward a review of ABC’s station licences, which were previously not scheduled until 2028 or later. Carr’s actions follow a press conference at the White House on April 26 at which press secretary Karoline Leavitt said coverage critical of Trump, including from his Democrat opponents, was responsible for the rise in political violence in the US by creating what she called a “leftwing cult of hatred”.

These examples highlight the politicisation of “free speech” by the Trump administration as a cudgel to silence disfavoured viewpoints under the guise protecting the public from harm.

First amendment protection for free speech

But these political debates are becoming increasingly distanced from the first amendment. That is, the interpretation of the first amendment by the Supreme Court and the protections it provides to individuals and entities, including media outlets and broadcast companies, from government interference. The wider this gulf becomes, the greater the space between the principles underlying the expansive protections afforded to speech in the US and the public’s understanding of the democratic principles that underpin these protections.

This is more important than ever in the Trump era. Actions taken by the administration to target broadcast networks and individuals for political speech are precisely what the first amendment protects against. It was designed, among other things, to protect individuals, entities and the press from government interference by creating an open marketplace in which ideas compete freely.

This is particularly true for dissenting political speech, which is the core of the first amendment. This explains why government interference with speech based on “the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker” – known as “viewpoint discrimination” – is expressly prohibited.

Additionally, whether and to what extent speech is offensive is irrelevant to the protection it enjoys. When it comes to the value of public debate, the first amendment is not neutral. Indeed, as a Supreme Court judgment, Baumgartner v. United States (1944) found: “One of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures.” Moreover a more recent judgment, Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell (1988), found that “robust political debate” is expressly encouraged, given that such debate “is bound to produce speech that is critical of those who hold public office”.

Importantly, the Supreme Court found in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) that such criticism, inevitably, will not always be reasoned or moderate and that public figures as well as public officials will be subjected to “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks”.

The motive of the speaker is also irrelevant, as the Supreme Court held in Hustler v Falwell that while a “bad motive” may be deemed controlling for tort liability and in other areas of the law, “the first amendment prohibits such a result in the area of public debate about public figures”.

Stakes couldn’t be higher

By expressly linking Democrat criticisms of the president, and pointed critiques (however off-colour) from Kimmel and his fellow political satirists to an upsurge in political violence, the Trump administration is trying to silence criticism of its actions. But it’s also clear that this behaviour is precisely what the first amendment prohibits.

Ironically, the media often portrays these episodes as “feuds” between Trump and his critics.

But when viewed through the lens of the first amendment and its core values in this context, the stakes are much higher. These episodes constitute an effort to wrest control of public discourse by interfering in the marketplace of ideas in order silence those critical of the government.

And history tells us that a government that can silence its critics often does so in pursuit of unchecked power. Viewed through this lens, perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy is the government itself.

Eliza Bechtold, Programmes Manager and Research Fellow, the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Two of the movement’s most prominent figures – former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson – have voiced their discontent with the leader they previously lavished with unconditional support.

Greene’s falling out with Trump was rooted in her advocacy for releasing the investigative files related to late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But it also centred on her discomfort with US support for Israel and a sense that Trump had abandoned his “America first” campaign promises.

In December 2025, Greene told CNN that “the dam is breaking” on Trump’s grip over the Republican party. As an example, she pointed to the 13 Republicans who voted with Democrats that month to overturn an executive order that allowed Trump to fire federal employees. Greene resigned from the House of Representatives in January.

Carlson’s more recent break with Trump was equally dramatic. “I don’t hate Trump,” he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview released on April 25. “I hate this war [in Iran] and the direction this US government is taking.” Carlson went so far as to apologise to the public for “misleading” them into voting for Trump in 2024.

In a week when an attempt to assassinate Trump is once again headline news, we are reminded of Carlson’s take on a previous attempt on the US president’s life in 2024. Carlson had invoked “divine intervention” to explain Trump’s survival of that attempt, declaring “something bigger is going on here”.

At that point, the president had religious-right elites firmly on his side. This fervour has dissipated in recent times. But are Greene and Carlson representative of a broader problem for the Maga movement, or are they just a pair of high-profile defections and nothing more?

Putting ‘America first’

The grievances and concerns outlined by Greene and Carlson are real. When Trump ran for president in 2016, he broke with Republican orthodoxy by denouncing the Iraq war as a catastrophic mistake. He promised to extract the US from costly foreign wars and put America ahead of global policing commitments.

His first-term record was somewhat mixed, but the key takeaway was that no new major wars were initiated. On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump repeated these earlier pledges. He said he would end the Ukraine war within 24 hours and keep the US out of new conflicts. Trump has clearly reneged on these commitments.

The Iran war is broadly unpopular with the US electorate. Polls show that more people are against the war than support it. On average, 15% more people oppose than back it, and in some recent surveys that gap is even bigger, with up to 27% more people against than in favour. About 75% of US adults also now describe the economy, which is being affected by higher prices, as “very” or “somewhat” poor.

This dissatisfaction is visible among Republicans voters, though probably not to an extent that suggests support for Trump is in danger of imminent collapse. Recent polling by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicates that, while dropping by 13 percentage points compared to a year ago, 38% of Republican voters still “strongly” approve of Trump’s presidency.

At the same time, there are some signs that Trump’s core Maga base remains largely steadfast in its support, despite the very vocal dissent from some. The same poll found that roughly 90% of Americans who self-identify as “Maga Republicans” approve of Trump’s overall job performance. Another survey by NBC suggests that 87% of these people currently approve of his handling of the war in Iran.

While these surveys are unlikely to capture the full range of sentiment within the Maga movement, they still indicate that Trump retains a solid core of support from members of this group. However, if the conflict drags on and economic pain deepens, the room for elite dissatisfaction to percolate down to the base is likely to widen.

Presidential ambitions

There may be other reasons explaining why Carlson, in particular, has broken with Trump. As Jason Zengerle, a journalist at the New Yorker magazine and the author of a biography of Carlson, put it recently when discussing Carlson’s reversal on Trump: “He’s also sort of making a political move.” Various media outlets have suggested that Carlson may be eyeing a 2028 presidential run.

Some commentators, including White House counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka, have drawn parallels between Carlson and Pat Buchanan. In the 1990s, Buchanan challenged President George H.W. Bush over the Gulf war and reshaped the Republican party’s ideological trajectory even without winning its presidential nomination.

Greene has floated Carlson for president. In a social media post in March, she wrote: “I SUPPORT TUCKER. Trump doesn’t even know what Maga is anymore.” Carlson, for his part, has publicly dismissed a presidential bid.

But this rebranding exercise, of attempting to seize the Maga label from Trump and attach it to a new vessel, is a significant development. It suggests that “America first” is no longer exclusively synonymous with one figure.

The looming question is whether this seed of elite discontent can grow into something organisationally meaningful before 2028, when Americans elect their next president.

Clodagh Harrington, Lecturer in American Politics, University College Cork

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Assassination attempts often make elected politicians more popular. In 1981, Ronald Reagan was shot in the same Washington Hilton Hotel that was the site of Trump’s latest assassination attempt. Reagan’s approval ratings jumped after he survived the attack.

Why does political violence help bolster approval ratings?

The obvious answer is that being subject to violence can humanize victims, softening criticism from supporters and critics alike.

The less obvious reason is that dodging or surviving bullets can super-humanize politicians, making them seem “touched” by God or like they have command over the vital powers of life and death.

Trump as superhero

When Trump lifted his fist in defiance, a trickle of blood on his face in Butler, Pa., a few months before the 2024 presidential election, he created an iconic image that bolstered his campaign and created a myth of invincibility.

This is the same man who claimed in 2016 that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and…wouldn’t lose any voters.” Despite two impeachments, convictions on 34 felony charges, an admission of sexual assault on a hot microphone and multiple assault allegations, Trump was re-elected in 2024. Where others might have whithered, his forward march continued.

While Trump once claimed the ability to shoot people in downtown Manhattan and survive politically, the Butler shooting gave the impression that he himself could also be shot without losing his life, that he isn’t subject to normal vulnerabilities and that he is somehow superhuman. Trump himself has cited divine intervention as key to his ongoing survival despite multiple assassination attempts.

Terror management

Terror management theory (TMT) is a school of psychology that tracks how our relationships to life and death shape political outcomes.

According to TMT, we cope with our anxieties about death by pursuing “earthly heroism” — meaning we seek esteem according to our chosen world views. There is a growing body of experimental evidence to support this hypothesis.

Trump is walking confirmation of TMT.

He is a known germaphobe obsessed with perceptions of vitality. He obsesses over his hair since he sees baldness as weakness and defeat. By ruthlessly pursuing money — the measure of worth in capitalist economies — and by stamping his name on everything from buildings, vodka and Bibles, he has sought heroism. Even before he ran for president, you could buy a Trump-branded action figure.

According to American anthropologist Ernest Becker, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death laid the intellectual groundwork for TMT:

“The real world …tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will decay and die. Illusion changes all this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some way.”

From his fixation on gold, grandiosity and golden locks despite his age, Trump is a master of illusion, crafting a mirage of super heroism for his MAGA base.

Heroism can also be pursued vicariously. This is something many of us do with our preferred sport teams, celebrities and politicians, feeling their victories and losses like our own.

Good timing?

Trump’s victory over death in Butler two years ago — an incident that is now being questioned even by his MAGA supporters — helped carry him across the finish line. His chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said Butler was a “big part” of his victory in 2024.

And so what to make of the recent apparent attempt on his life? Will it help resuscitate his historically low approval ratings?

In crass political terms, historical precedent suggests the assassination attempt couldn’t have happened at a better time. Tarred by his association with deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and prosecuting an unpopular war of choice against Iran that is costing billions while raising gas prices for voters, Trump needed a lifeline.

The timing is so good for him that conspiracy theories immediately began to swirl that the attack was an inside job aimed at bolstering Trump’s slumping approval ratings.

Avoiding political death?

It is unlikely, however, that this recent incident will stave off political death. After the political failures of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Epstein files and a risky war with no clear exit, Trump is politically weakened.

Influential members of his own base, including former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson, are no longer lionizing him, instead musing whether he might be the anti-Christ.

Images from the recent shooting suggest weakness, not vitality. Secret service agents struggled to get him out of his seat likely due to ongoing mobility issues (though Trump claims his sluggishness was due to courageously overseeing the action).

Likewise, instead of lifting his fist triumphantly like in Butler, Trump fell down as he was rushed off stage (again, he claims he was told to get down, but his exit looks weak).

While his team will spin the latest shooting as further evidence of his super humanity, Trump is looking more politically and existentially mortal by the day.

Trump had his time in the sun, but like Icarus, his hubris and overreach are finally melting his wings. While illusion can obscure the inevitable for a while, what goes up must always come down.

James K. Rowe, Associate Professor of Political Ecology, University of Victoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

With missiles and bombs raining down, Pentagon accounts began using strange turns of phrase to describe the AI-guided violence unleashed against child and soldier alike. The destruction was described as “lethalitymaxxing”. Its perpetrators were said to be “locked in” with “low cortisol”.

This lingo finds much of its origins in the manosphere: a set of defined online communities centred on male grievance and empowerment.

The fact the highest political institutions are now using the language and concepts of the manosphere suggests this community and beliefs have become far more extensive than many like to think.

An online phenomenon?

Mainstream awareness of the manosphere emerged following its rapid expansion during the COVID pandemic through influencers such as Andrew Tate.

A common understanding emerged during this time of the manosphere as a digital subculture that leads vulnerable young boys and men astray. Popular media such as 2025’s Adolescence and Louis Theroux’s latest documentary have only reinforced this perception.

In Australia, its impacts have been felt especially acutely in the classroom. There’s been a noticeable growth of gendered harassment and disorderly behaviour among male students that is directed at female classmates and teachers.

The manosphere has also acted as an incubator for a stark form of self-help for young men, known as self-optimisation. It relies on arbitrarily quantified metrics around looks, status, personality and wealth.

To succeed, one is driven to compete with others by “maxxing” these metrics of self-value and lauding them against one’s competitors.

Outdated conceptions

But today this delineation of us and them – of mainstream and counterculture – is no longer accurate. As the US government posts show us, the manosphere today isn’t limited to a handful of online communities. It’s more like a collection of ideas floating around the culture.

Although some analysts have defined this as the “neo-manosphere”, this continues to suggest it’s an unusual phenomenon restricted to the internet.

Having broken containment, manosphere ideas and logic are now becoming deeply ingrained, reproduced and transformed in significant parts of the mainstream zeitgeist.

When manosphere ideas are picked up outside their original contexts, the ideas take on a life of their own. The growing normalisation of “maxxing” as a concept within an ever-expanding array of activities (from eating enough fibre to warmaking) is one way this happens.

Similarly, there’s the concept of hypergamy, or “dating up”. It’s the idea women only date in ruthlessly strategic and socially Darwinian terms to ascend the social and material hierarchy. It’s increasingly entered normal understandings of modern romance.

As commentators point out, when the Joe Rogan Experience, ranked the number-one podcast globally for years, regularly espouses such concepts to tens of millions of loyal followers, you are no longer talking about subculture.

Normalising the manosphere

The rapid rise and popularity of the online influencer Braden Peters illustrates how pervasive manosphere ideas have become.

Known by his online moniker Clavicular, Peters is a streamer who became famous for popularising “looksmaxxing”.

Looksmaxxing is a relentless and extreme optimisation of one’s physical appearance. It’s measured by pseudoscientific metrics of attractiveness and often achieved through invasive and dangerous practices.

Peters has repeatedly and angrily denied any connection to the manosphere community. Instead, he claims his approach to life is simply the most optimal way one can live.

Despite this, he channels a range of manosphere ideas in his content. His streams provide constant advice to their young audience on self-optimisation, whether for looksmaxxing, financemaxxing or statusmaxxing.

Peters suggests the key purpose in life for men of his generation is to relentlessly raise these numbers to “mog” (outperform) one’s competitors.

Because this status is only ever ephemeral, maxxing becomes an endless pursuit and a goal in itself.

Central to Peters’ content is performative visuals. Maxxing only rewards what can be conveyed through images: sixpack abs and a chiselled jawline, a Bugatti draped in bikini models, or even a grinning soldier, unbothered by the missiles and drones overhead on his way to rain hell on his enemies.

The maxxers don’t exist in a vacuum. All of us are encouraged to treat our world as if it is defined by interpersonal competition. We are constantly encouraged to optimise and quantify ourselves across myriad digital profiles in which we build our “personal brands” – our LinkedIns, our Tinders and our Google Scholars.

Researchers have found images can feel more real than reality. When that happens, we stop viewing other people through our shared humanity and starting thinking of them merely as quantifiable entities to compete against and dominate. This is the dehumanising worldview that now reaches into the highest offices of US political life.

The deeper roots

Thinking about the manosphere as an external threat to be contained fails to understand the bigger picture.

All this is occurring amid diminishing intergenerational economic opportunities, continual global crises and chaos, decaying social connections, and a growing disparity between rich and poor not seen since the gilded age.

For many young men who lack social connection and emotional intelligence, this intense competition over unstable future prospects is felt acutely. When influencers such as Peters or Tate offer simple, “quantifiable” solutions, vulnerable young men listen.

Initiatives around respect, building empathy, setting behavioural expectations and punishing transgressions can have a role in stemming the worst of the manosphere’s negative impacts for now. But they will ultimately fail unless the broader belief system and its structural economic and political causes are addressed.

The balm against manosphere ideas – as with many other extreme and radical beliefs – requires holistic solutions. These solutions look less like education and “respectful discourse” and more like rekindling a social contract that provides tangible material outcomes. This means meaningful, secure and achievable work, accessible housing, and ending extreme wealth disparity.

Ben Rich, Director of the Curtin Extremism Research Network (CERN), Curtin University and Paul Sutherland, PhD Candidate, Humanities, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Originally coined by legal scholar William Baude, the term “shadow docket” refers to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, which, as Baude wrote, includes “a range of orders and summary decisions that defy its normal procedural regularity.”

That’s law professor-speak for cases that are given abbreviated consideration and accelerated review by the justices, all out of public view – what The New York Times story referred to as the court “sprinting.” These cases aren’t included in the annual list of cases the justices have chosen to consider and that are presented by attorneys in public sessions, called “oral argument,” at the court.

During the second Trump administration, such shadow docket cases have proliferated as President Donald Trump has continued to push boundaries, challenge precedents and expand executive power. These cases have typically involved a request by the presidential administration “to suspend lower court orders” that temporarily block “an administration policy from taking effect,” according to liberal legal advocacy group the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

The lack of transparency in considering and ruling on the shadow docket, combined with the weight of the issues presented to the court via that docket, mean that the practice has come under strong criticism by many court watchers. Here’s how the process works and what you need to know to evaluate it.

The merits docket

The emergency docket is different from the court’s merits docket, which is the customary path for cases to reach the Supreme Court.

Ordinarily, in federal courts, a case begins in a federal district court. An appeal of the decision in the case is made to a federal appeals court. If a party in the case wants to appeal further, they can aim for U.S. Supreme Court review. That requires filing a “petition for writ of certiorari” to the court.

The Supreme Court does not take all the cases for which it has been petitioned. The court holds complete discretion to choose which cases to consider each term and always rejects the vast majority of petitions that it receives. By custom, the court agrees to consider a case if at least four justices vote to grant the writ of certiorari.

For the cases that the court agrees to consider, the parties to that case file briefs – written legal arguments – with the Supreme Court. Third parties can also file briefs with the court to assert their own arguments; these are known as “friend of the court” or amicus curiae briefs.

The justices then read those briefs and hear oral arguments in the case in a public session, during which they can question attorneys for both sides, before they meet and confer. At the end of this conference, the justices vote on the outcome in the case before assigning an author to draft the opinions.

The merits docket – the ordinary process – is methodical. It promotes deliberation and reasoned decision-making resulting in lengthy opinions that explain the justices’ rationale and provide guidance for lower courts in future cases.

The emergency docket

On the other hand, the emergency docket is a process whereby the court makes quick decisions without full briefing and deliberation, and it produces orders and rulings that almost always present little to no explanation.

As Baude wrote, “Many of the orders lack the transparency that we have come to appreciate in its merits cases.”

Most of the court’s rulings and orders in cases on the emergency docket go without explanation. On occasion, however, the court produces short opinions that provide some explanation in emergency docket cases, albeit these are often dissents from the justices who disagree with the ruling.

Transparency is important, especially for the Supreme Court, because it builds trust and legitimacy. According to Gallup, as of September 2025, 42% of respondents approve, 52% disapprove and 6% have no opinion of the Supreme Court. A 2025 Pew Research Center poll found that 48% of Americans have a favorable view of the court, down from 70% five years earlier.

As a constitutional law scholar, I’ve written elsewhere that the low approval might be attributable to the court’s undisciplined overruling of landmark cases regarding individual rights, such as the abortion rights case Roe v. Wade. In my view, it is reasonable to conclude that the court’s lack of transparency, specifically with its growing emergency docket, contributes to distrust in the court.

As the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated, “The Court’s power lies … in its legitimacy, a product of substance and perception that shows itself in the people’s acceptance of the Judiciary as fit to determine what the Nation’s law means and to declare what it demands.”

Conversely, a lack of transparency breeds distrust and erodes institutional legitimacy.

Unprecedented action

The 2016 case at the center of the memoranda published by The New York Times –West Virginia v. EPA – concerned environmental regulation. As the justices’ memoranda illustrate, West Virginia, North Dakota and several energy companies sued the Obama administration over its Clean Power Plan and sought to block the new, transformative regulation from going into effect.

The Clean Power Plan would have required states and energy companies to shift electricity production from higher-emitting to lower-emitting production methods to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

After losing at the trial court, the states and energy companies filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court asking the justices to pause the Obama regulation from going into effect while the parties litigated the case in the lower courts.

This was a highly unusual request because, as Taraleigh Davis at SCOTUSblog confirms, “nobody had previously asked the court to halt such a major executive regulatory action before any appellate court had ruled on it.”

The court granted the unprecedented stay on Feb. 9, 2016, without any explanation as to why it temporarily blocked the Clean Power Plan. It eventually struck down the plan on June 22, 2022.

Defenders of the emergency docket frequently claim that the court’s conduct is permissible because its orders are temporary. In West Virginia v. EPA, the court temporarily blocked the Clean Power Plan from going into effect until it eventually struck it down after hearing the case on its merits docket.

What is overlooked, however, is that even temporary orders from the court can have lasting implications that are difficult, and in some cases impossible, to undo.

Damage done

Consider the example of one of Trump’s immigration actions.

The administration seeks to terminate the temporary protected status for Haitian nationals, which had shielded them from deportation. But a federal district court temporarily blocked the president from doing so as the litigation continued.

The administration then filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court – still pending as of this writing – asking the court to overrule the district court. If granted, the court effectively would allow the administration to revoke TPS for Haitian nationals.

As an amicus brief in the case articulated, if TPS is revoked, Haitians “will be forced to face the untenable options of leaving behind their citizen children and/or partners, bringing family members with them to a country submerged in crisis, violence, and food insecurity, or staying in the U.S. without any legal status or work authorization and facing the constant threat of deportation.”

In other words, if the Supreme Court overrules the district court in this case on its emergency docket, then the Trump administration could deport the Haitian nationals even as their cases challenging the revocation of their TPS continue.

If the Haitian nationals ultimately prevail, reversing their deportation would be exceptionally difficult to do.

Wayne Unger, Associate Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Even as the passing weeks have left Iran still standing, Trump’s words and deeds have already inflicted severe damage on the global economy and regional peace in the Middle East.

Trump’s turn toward a wartime posture is striking, but not entirely unexpected. His second-term conduct shows a growing tendency to push an earlier taste for disruption toward outright destruction — at home and abroad.

He now routinely acts in the belief that those who dare to resist his plans deserve the severest forms of punishment that imperial presidential power can deliver.

But Trump’s conduct is grounded in centuries of American experience. The United States has an enduring tendency toward retribution and destruction.

Trump 2.0

Trump’s scorched-Earth proclivity was obvious before the war with Iran. Warning shots came on Jan. 6, 2021, with the assault on both the Capitol and constitutional provisions for presidential succession. Similarly bold efforts began in 2025.

Globally, Trump has been sweeping away leaders, regimes and multilateral systems, using both military and political weaponry: the special operations extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, for example, as well as the launch of illegal attacks on purportedly drug-running fishing boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific (now tallying more than 50 obliterating strikes and 163 deaths).

International ravaging has been a hallmark of Trump 2.0: dismantling highly integrated global trading networks; fuelling a surge in military recruits in allied countries like Canada and Denmark/Greenland; denouncing NATO.

There’s been destruction on the home front too: Elon Musk’s DOGE chain-sawed through congressionally authorized agencies and funding, for example, including the Environmental Protection Agency and 5,800 research projects at the National Institutes of Health. The anti-woke Trump administration has eviscerated diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government, the private sector and academia.

Trump has also literally bulldozed the White House East Wing.

American roots

Centuries of American history foreshadow Trump’s strategy of destruction. The precedents are complex for two reasons.

First, American personal and national interests have often mixed admirable aims with a more basic drive for wealth and power — combining genuine pursuits of democracy and civil liberties and ambitions for social welfare and community with less noble impulses.

Second, the scope and settings in which Trump-like behaviour appears have changed dramatically over more than three centuries — from a chain of Atlantic colonies to a continental nation and, ultimately, a global economic, military and cultural power. Yet across these shifting arenas, similar patterns of destructive and tragic outbursts have repeatedly surfaced.

Among countless examples, the most profound involved the treatment of Indigenous populations. White colonial appetites for land and resources always paired negotiation and repression, with superior weaponry leading to episodes of genocidal annihilation when forced migrations and “reservations” were deemed insufficient.

The names of ruthless slaughters pockmark American history: the Apalachee Massacre (Florida, 1704), the Sand Creek Massacre (Colorado, 1864), the Wounded Knee Massacre (South Dakota,1890), among numerous others.

Estimates suggest that in 1492, five million Indigenous people lived in what would become American territory, declining to 300,000 by 1900.

While the histories of Canada, Mexico and broader Latin America are also replete with such tragedies, the evidence of deep and specifically American roots beneath Trump’s virulent destructive impulses is clear.

Slaves and free men

The history of Black Americans is another heinous example of the American capacity for carnage. The experiences of Black slaves and their descendents are soaked in blood.

Prior to the Civil War, estimates suggest the brutality of chattel labour meant life expectancy that was half that of white Americans (21 years versus 43). When freedom came, life remained perilous as violence supplemented Jim Crow segregation laws.

Black homes and businesses burned — the 1921 Tulsa massacre, for example, saw 35 square blocks of Black businesses and residential neighbourhoods destroyed.

Shotguns and hanging ropes for lynchings also ended lives, stretching from the post-Reconstruction era of the 1880s to 1968.

Racialized people were the most common targets of an American appetite for total destruction — but not the only one. The U.S. Civil War remains one of the most catastrophic in world history, with Union and Confederate deaths now estimated at 698,000.

Destruction abroad

American power in the 20th century saw the periodic unleashing of destructive impulses abroad, some within living memory. Examples include:

• Theodore Roosevelt’s attempt to crush rebellion in the newly acquired Philippines between 1899 and 1902; 120,000 U.S. forces were involved, with 4,300 American and 20,000 “insurrecto” deaths and the loss of as many as 200,000 civilian lives.
• The devastation produced by the Second World War’s “area bombing” campaigns, designed to sap enemy morale by targeting industrial and civilian sites. The campaign escalated into the 1945 “firebomb” assaults on cities like Dresden and Tokyo — and the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• The ecological destruction produced by Agent Orange campaigns in Vietnam and the micro-level horror of the My Lai massacre in the 1960s.
• The Iraq War’s casualty figures: 4,492 American service men were killed and 200,000 Iraqi civilians.

No restraints

American episodes of wanton destruction are part of a broader global history marked by the cruelties of many nations and groups.

At the same time, U.S. leaders and citizens have often been guided — if not fully constrained — by countervailing ideals: respect for human rights, adherence to the laws of war and a desire for the security and opportunity that peace provides.

But how strong are those restraints in 2026? And how vulnerable are hard-won ethical and political norms to Trump’s chilling rhetoric and actions, especially alongside Republican conduct in U.S. Congress and a Supreme Court that has weakened limits on presidential power?

Rising gas prices may prove the least of the consequences.

Ronald W. Pruessen, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In his interrogation of white-collar criminal Brett, Jules delivers a heavily embellished monologue that draws from, and expands on, Ezekiel 25:17. The scene climaxes, in typical Tarantino style, with the brutal murder of Brett and his colleagues.

Hegseth’s version, which he said was recited by the Sandy 1 Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) mission in Iran, deviates only slightly from Jackson’s monologue.

The biggest difference in this case is the symbolism. The target here is not a bunch of college kids with a briefcase they shouldn’t have, but the nation of Iran. Hegseth is the mobster and the American military are the hitmen on a violent but “divinely sanctioned” war.

The tone has changed, too. While Jackson’s monologue is highly dramatic, stylised, and imbued with more than just a little irony, Hegseth’s reframe renders it serious and devotional.

Leaving aside the cognitive dissonance of an avowedly “Christian” administration conflating Tarantino with scripture, this moment speaks to a rather unsettling relationship between Trump, pop culture and religion.

From business mogul, to Jedi, to the Pope

Trump courted pop culture prior to his politics, most notably in cameos such as Home Alone 2 (1992), The Little Rascals (1994), and as the host of The Apprentice (2004-17). He even leveraged his celebrity status to boost himself to the presidential platform.

As president, he has continued to tap into pop culture dialogues. He uses the power of social media and AI to promote his brand and policies, while weighing in on the culture wars.

On May 4 of last year (Star Wars Day), Trump posted an image on X of himself as a muscular Jedi, via the official White House account. However, he seems unaware that by brandishing a red lightsaber he is actually representing himself as a Sith Lord, the epitome of evil in the Star Wars universe.

In October, he posted an AI-generated video of himself in Top Gun mode, pouring what appeared to be faeces on protesters attending a No Kings rally.

He also took advantage of the buzz surrounding the Catholic Church’s 2025 conclave, and the popular film of same name, by posting an AI image of himself as the Pope.

By using the shared texts, cultural energy and narratives of pop culture, Trump is able to slam his opponents, take advantage of a polarised political context, and whip up support from his base.

These moments allow his administration to shape public conversation and draw attention back to them, sometimes with the explicit disapproval of the content creators involved. Responding to Trump’s Star Wars post, Mark Hamill (the actor who played Luke Skywalker) said the post was: “proof this guy is full of Sith”.

Bigger than Jesus?

Trump’s supporters have historically viewed his engagement with popular culture as humorous, cheering on their hero in the White House. But detractors sense a darker side. Each of these moments symbolically elevates the Trump administration, often at the expense of others.

The May 4 post is a case in point. The target here is the “radical Left” and Trump is raised to the rank of Jedi master (or Sith Lord). In the Top Gun video, Trump demonstrates his disdain for citizens exercising their democratic right to protest.

What connects these examples is the hubris of the administration, centred around its seemingly charismatic leader. Trump’s engagement with contemporary culture has shifted from relatively harmless cameos to putting himself at the centre of a Manichaean battle of good versus evil. Using both pop culture and religious references, he frames himself as a divine figure, fighting a cosmic war for the soul of the universe.

The most recent (and most on-the-nose example) of Trump’s hubris came earlier this month. As part of his continuing war of words with Pope Leo XIV, he posted an AI photo depicting himself as Jesus.

Here, he elevates himself beyond the union of ecclesiastical and political power to the highest possible authority figure in Christianity.

In doing so, he parallels the Ancient Roman emperors who conceived of themselves as “sons of God” and demanded allegiance and worship from their subjects (often at the tip of a blade).

The emperor cult of the Roman Empire is still very much alive in Trump’s America.

In these entanglements of pop culture, religion and politics, the MAGA movement sends a clear message to anyone with a ear to listen: this is our Master Jedi, our Maverick, our Messiah, even, and he will respond with “great vengeance and furious anger” against his enemies.

Brent Keogh, Lecturer in the School of Communications, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

While questioning Trump’s mental fitness for office, various commentators have suggested he has malignant narcissism, Alzheimer’s disease or frontotemporal dementia, and is experiencing accelerating cognitive decline and a “profound psychological crisis”.

The claim of frontotemporal dementia in particular has stuck. This form of dementia can affect judgement, empathy, language skills and impulse control.

Trump’s critics say frontotemporal dementia explains his escalating threats, profanities and tendency to ramble.

But is frontotemporal dementia really the answer?

Diagnosing someone with this condition from afar is not only irresponsible – it’s impossible. It may also inadvertently give Trump an “out” for offensive but intentional behaviour, while increasing stigma for those who live with dementia.

What is frontotemporal dementia?

Frontotemporal dementia describes a group of neurodegenerative disorders that mostly affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. These are regions involved in behaviour, personality, language and decision-making.

Unlike dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia rarely begins with memory loss. Instead, early symptoms involve changes in social conduct, emotional regulation or language abilities.

There are several variants. The most common is behavioural-variant, which presents as a gradual decline in how a person behaves, interacts with others and expresses their personality.

Frontotemporal dementia is rare. Each year, around two or three out of 100,000 people are diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia worldwide. At any time, roughly nine out of 100,000 people live with the condition.

How is it diagnosed?

Diagnosis is complex and cannot rely on observation alone.

To make a diagnosis, a multidisciplinary team of clinicians will examine the person’s personal and medical history. This includes information from family members, neurological examinations and formal cognitive testing to consider possible diagnoses.

Brain imaging, such as MRI or PET scans, are used to identify changes in the structure and function of the brain. In some cases, genetic testing may be used when family history suggests inherited risk.

A “possible” diagnosis requires someone to demonstrate at least three of six core features. These are:

• disinhibition
• apathy
• loss of empathy
• compulsive behaviour
• hyperorality (excessive tendency to examine objects using the mouth)
• loss of executive functions, the set of cognitive abilities that underpin our ability to plan and make decisions.

Importantly, these features must also show clear progression over time.

But that is only the beginning. To reach a “probable” diagnosis, there must be imaging evidence as well as clear changes in a person’s ability to function independently in daily activities.

A “definite” diagnosis can only be confirmed through genetic testing or brain changes linked to disease. This can only happen after death because it requires physically examining the brain itself.

Even with these criteria, frontotemporal dementia remains one of the most challenging diseases to diagnose accurately. Its symptoms often overlap with psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and its presentation varies widely between people.

Careful differential diagnosis, which rules out other conditions, is therefore required.

Why we shouldn’t diagnose from a distance

Diagnosing frontotemporal dementia – or any form of dementia – is a complex process. Any “diagnosis” made without meeting the person, or looking at clinical evidence, is just speculation.

But there are other dangers in blaming controversial actions on dementia, such as Trump’s recent threat to wipe out “a whole civilisation” if Iran did not comply with US demands.

First, attributing behaviour we don’t like to dementia reduces accountability for intentional actions.

We know frontotemporal dementia affects brain regions that control impulse and social understanding. It does not explain political extremism, strategic decision-making or ideological conviction – especially where it has been longstanding.

Second, it further stigmatises those who live with the condition, reinforcing the idea that people with dementia are erratic, dangerous or morally compromised.

This stigma remains a major barrier to effective dementia care and prevention. Misconceptions can delay diagnosis, discourage families from seeking help, and make people with dementia feel more isolated.

In frontotemporal dementia, where changes in personality are already misunderstood, the risk of mischaracterisation is particularly acute.

The ethics of restraint

Humans are driven to make sense of troubling events. This negativity bias that has served us well in evolution. But it creates an asymmetry worth noting.

When leaders behave admirably, their actions are rarely attributed to neurological health. But when behaviour is troubling, the impulse to medicalise it can be strong. This selective framing turns diagnosis into a rhetorical tool rather than a clinical question.

The health of political leaders is a legitimate public concern. But there is a difference between evidence-based reporting (grounded in disclosed medical information) and speculative diagnosis based on observation from a distance.

Medical professionals have long recognised this boundary. Ethical guidelines warn against diagnosing individuals without examination, in part because doing so undermines trust in both medicine and the media.

Speculation about dementia may feel like a way of making sense of behaviour that is difficult, unsettling or even morally questionable. But it is a poor substitute for clinical rigour.

For those living with frontotemporal dementia, it risks turning a serious neurological disease into a casual metaphor that explains little and harms a lot.

Joyce Siette, Associate Professor | Deputy Director, The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University and Paul Strutt, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This is not the classic kind of confrontation that Trump has often had with foreign heads of state and government in the past, such as in recent months with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, whose refusal to fully back the US and Israel in their war against Iran attracted Trump’s ire. Rather, it is a clash rooted in fundamentally different moral and political visions: between a president who treats power in transactional terms and a pope who frames war, migration and human dignity as matters of moral principle.

When Cardinal Robert Prevost was named as Pope Leo in May 2025, Trump and his administration initially appeared to welcome the new pontiff warmly. In fact, in a post to his Truth Social platform the US president appeared to take credit for his election as pope, writing that Prevost “was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”.

But the war in the Middle East launched by the US and Israel has made the differences between their positions clearer – further heightening tensions between them. On Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, it became clear that Leo had decided to take a firm line against the war in Iran, saying that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood’”.

His Easter message was equally clear: “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.”

Day’s later the pope denounced the US president’s apparent threat to destroy the whole of the Iranian civilisation as “truly unacceptable” in comments which roundly criticised the war and called for a “return to dialogue, negotiations”.

Trump responded in harsh terms, describing the pope in a Truth Social post as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy”. He went on to say that he did not want a pope “who thinks it is OK for Iran to have nuclear weapons”, adding that “Leo should use common sense, stop doing the bidding of the radical left, and focus on being a great pope rather than a politician”.

Returning to Washington from Florida, Trump also told reporters: “I don’t think he’s doing a good job. I’m not a fan of Pope Leo.” The pope replied on Monday by saying that he was not afraid of the Trump administration and would continue to speak out against war.

Trump did not stop there. He went so far as to publish an image portraying himself as Jesus Christ, a move that appeared to go too far even for many of his conservative supporters. The reaction was strong enough to force him to delete the post and backtrack.

This could hurt the US president

Trump has clashed with the Vatican before, but this confrontation unfolds in a very different setting. Pope Francis, the first Argentine pope and the first pontiff from the global south, was often openly critical of Trump, particularly on migration. In 2016, he famously suggested that a leader who thinks only of building walls rather than bridges is “not Christian”, crystallising the tension between them.

The key difference was that Francis was also a divisive figure within sections of the American Catholic Church. He was frequently targeted by conservative Catholic commentators and church networks in the US, and in 2019 he remarked that “it’s an honour that the Americans attack me”.

Leo, by contrast, is the first US pope – and that changes the political equation. His voice is likely to carry different authority among Catholic voters, who are an important part of Trump’s electoral base.

In the last presidential election, 55% of Catholic voters supported Trump, including 62% of white Catholics. Senior Catholics also occupy prominent positions in his administration, including Vance and Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio.

That is why Leo’s criticism may prove more politically consequential. It does not come from an external moral voice alone, as was often the case with Francis, but from an American pontiff speaking into a church and an electorate that Trump cannot afford to ignore.

Early reactions suggest that many Catholic voices in the US have rallied behind Leo, making this not only a diplomatic clash, but a potentially significant domestic one too. (This could also really hurt J.D. Vance. As the likely contender to succeed Trump on the Repulican ticket, he is deeply invested in his Catholic faith and is about to publish a book devoted to his conversion.)

From an international perspective, the break with the pope has also had visible repercussions. Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, long regarded as Trump’s closest ally in Europe, went publicly in defence of Pope Leo, the bishop of Rome, drawing criticism from Trump himself, who defined the Italian prime minister’s behaviour as “unacceptable”.

To conclude, this is not a political confrontation like the many others the world has become used to with this US president. The stakes are higher at home and on the world stage. At home, it risks alienating many Catholic voters whose support will matter not only in the midterm elections but also in the next presidential race. Internationally, it may complicate Trump’s relationship with European conservative parties, many of which have long sought close association with the Vatican.

The pope, as the leader of a vast global community, cannot be treated as though he were just another political opponent.

Massimo D'Angelo, Research Associate in the Institute for Diplomacy and International Affairs, Loughborough University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trump’s Republican party currently controls both branches of Congress. However, polls are indicating a swing to the Democrats that would see them retake the House. A current RealClear generic congressional vote poll, in which people are asked whether they will vote for Democrats or Republicans for Congress, gives the Democrats a five percentage point lead over the Republicans at 47.4% to 42%.

One major variable that is likely to affect the outcome of November’s elections is the war in Iran. Some Republican political operatives believe the conflict and its repercussions, namely the increased cost of living, could prove fatal to their party’s hopes of securing a slim retention of the House.

A March poll by the Pew Research Center revealed 61% of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the conflict. One voting demographic of particular concern for Republicans is people aged 18 to 29. An Economist/YouGov poll also from March showed that 63% of these people opposed the war.

Men within this age bracket were an important factor in Trump’s 2024 election victory. Philip Wang, political reporter for Time magazine, argued in an article on April 8 that this “same voting bloc … is showing far less interest in voting in the midterms”.

William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has asserted that the affordability issue is affecting Trump’s standing. He has also stated that, for a majority of Americans, the president’s “priorities do not align with theirs”. A recent survey conducted by American non-profit Consumer Action for a Strong Economy revealed that voters’ most pressing concern was the price of groceries, with the cost of healthcare coming second.

Over the past year, both parties have also engaged in redistricting efforts designed to increase their respective chances of controlling the House. In a number of mainly – though not exclusively – Republican controlled states, legislators have redrawn congressional maps in an attempt to secure more seats.

The redistricting war has come down to two final states: Democratic-led Virginia and Republican-dominated Florida. On April 21, voters in Virginia will decide the fate of proposed new congressional boundaries heavily favouring Democrats. Florida’s legislature will vote days later on a revised Republican-leaning electoral map.

However, there are growing concerns in both political camps about these votes and their impact on the result of the midterms. Florida Republicans fear Trump’s low approval ratings could cost them redrawn districts, while Democrats are encountering tepid backing from their supporters for their aggressive redistricting in Virginia.

Growing Democrat momentum

There have already been significant election results in recent weeks that have shed light on the trajectory of the upcoming midterms. In Republican-led Texas, a fascinating race is shaping up between both parties for a Senate seat. The last time a Democrat won here was in 1988.

In primary elections in March, Democratic voters chose state representative James Talarico as their candidate for November’s election. Republicans are yet to confirm theirs, with incumbent Senator John Cornyn facing Texas attorney-general Ken Paxton in a run-off election in May.

Primary voting numbers in Texas are encouraging for Democrats. For the first time in six years, more of its supporters cast early vote ballots in a March primary than Republicans. Democrats also saw a major shift in Latino voters to their side, a voting bloc that had swung to Trump in record numbers in 2024.

According to analysis by American broadcaster NPR: “In the ten most populous counties in Texas that are also at least 50% Latino, votes in the Democratic primary increased by an average of 128%.” The same analysis concluded that, in those same counties, the Republican primary saw an average drop in votes of 4.8%.

Then, in early April, liberal judge Chris Taylor won a seat on the state of Wisconsin’s supreme court. She secured 60.1% of the vote to her conservative opponent’s 39.8%. Taylor’s statewide vote is an impressive 21 percentage points higher than Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s vote share was in the state in 2024.

Also in early April, an election took place in Georgia to fill the congressional seat vacated by former Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene, who has publicly broken with Trump over his handling of the Epstein files, won in 2024 by almost 29 percentage points. Her replacement, Clay Fuller, held the seat for the Republican party by a much narrower margin of just 12 percentage points.

The forecasts for November’s midterm elections are moving in the Democrats direction, especially for taking control of the House. But there is some reason for hope among Republicans.

Figures from CBS News and CNN/SSRS show that at the same point in 2006 and 2018 – also midterm election years where a Republican president was in office – Democrats were ahead on party favourability by 18 points and 12 points respectively. At this stage in 2026, the data reveals Republicans are actually sitting with a five-point favourability lead.

Seven months out from November’s midterms, Democrats have momentum on their side as well as a Republican president whose poll ratings are plummeting. The most likely outcome is that the Democrats will emerge with control of at least one branch of Congress.

Richard Hargy, Visiting Research Fellow in International Studies, Queen's University Belfast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For Hungarians, opposition leader Péter Magyar’s emphatic defeat of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz Party ends 16 years of corruption and quasi-authoritarianism.

The outcome will also be felt widely, from Moscow to Washington and beyond.

In a contest characterised as a referendum on whether Hungary should pivot west or continue its authoritarian drift, Magyar’s victory is a stern rebuke to the dark, transnational forces of nativism, division and the politics of resentment that have become part of mainstream political discourse.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the election was not the turnout (more than 74%, shattering previous records), or even the result (a two-thirds supermajority for Magyar’s Tisza party, winning at least 138 of 199 parliamentary seats).

Both had been predicted for some time, and Orbán’s soft authoritarianism had always left the door ajar for a possible opposition victory at the polls.

Rather, the biggest surprise might have been Orbán’s immediate concession. He didn’t try to manufacture a crisis or use his security services to hold onto power. Given the strength of anti-government sentiment in Hungary, such a move could have led to a “colour revolution” – the type of massive street protests seen previously in Ukraine, Georgia and other countries.

This could have turned bloody. Liberal Hungarians, and the European Union more broadly, will be heaving a collective sigh of relief.

Why Orbán was suddenly vulnerable

Having won office, Magyar will need to move quickly but also carefully to bring change, so as not to alienate too many former Fidesz voters.

He has already asked President Tamaś Sulyok to resign, along with other Orbán loyalists. The Tisza supermajority in parliament is important here. It will be required for constitutional amendments to dismantle the architecture of Orbán’s authoritarian state.

Fortunately, this will be easier in Hungary than fully fledged autocratic systems. Indeed, Orbán’s longevity can somewhat be attributed to the fact that his brand of authoritarianism was only partial.

Certainly, it had the structural elements of an autocracy. That included widespread, government-controlled gerrymandering to ensure Fidesz victories, and the cynical diversion of state funds to cities and provinces controlled by Orbán’s political allies.

In addition, the nationalised media ecosystem was heavily supportive of the government, although alternative voices kept debate alive via foreign-owned news organisations.

But Orbán’s success also came from facing weak and easily fragmented or coopted oppositions. Magyar – a former Orbán ally – ran a disciplined campaign that nullified the electoral advantage for Fidesz.

Ultimately, though, when voters have a choice – even a constrained one – they will eventually reject governments that rely on blame and victimhood to mask their inability to offer people a better future.

Under Orbán, Hungary was consistently ranked the most corrupt nation in Europe. In 2025, it ranked last in the EU on relative household wealth. It had also suffered rampant inflation and economic stagnation after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Video footage of country estates built by Hungary’s elites, complete with zebras roaming the grounds, perfectly symbolised the popular outrage with wealth inequality.

A setback for Putin, Trump and right-wing populism

Hungary’s new start also sends a powerful message to other nations. Clearly the biggest loser from the election is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which had hastily tapped Kremlin powerbroker Sergey Kiriyenko and a team of “political technologists” to assist Orbán.

Under Orbán, Hungary was the strongest pro-Kremlin voice in the EU. It regularly stymied aid packages for Ukraine, tied up decision-making on the war in bureaucratic processes, and held the European Commission to ransom by threatening hold-out votes.

In fact, just days before the election, Bloomberg published a transcript of a phone call between Orbán and Putin from October 2025, in which Orbán compared himself to a mouse helping free the caged Russian lion.

This came on the back of revelations that Orbán’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, and other Hungarian officials had regularly been leaking confidential EU discussions to Moscow.

Another loser from the Hungarian election is the Trump White House.

The pre-election Budapest visit by US Vice President JD Vance to shore up support for Orbán was breathtakingly hypocritical. Vance farcically demanded an end to foreign election meddling, while engaging in precisely that. The White House then doubled down, with Trump promising on Truth Social to aid Orbán with the “full Economic Might of the United States”.

Now, though, Trump is very publicly on the losing side. And like the debacle of his Iran war, he tends to chafe at losing.

The election also shows that US foreign interference campaigns are not invulnerable, though the White House will doubtless continue excoriating Europe. The Trump administration’s view that Europe is heading for “civilisational erasure”, necessitating US efforts to “cultivate resistance” and “help Europe correct its current trajectory” is documented in its 2025 National Security Strategy.

But the broader movements representing what Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar calls the “Putinisation of global politics” have been repudiated by Hungary’s election result.

Under Orbán, Hungary was a hub for ultraconservative voices. Think tanks like the MAGA-boosting US Heritage Foundation and Hungary’s Danube Institute regularly held prominent dialogues bemoaning Europe’s capitulation to wokeism.

The Hungarian iteration of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), sponsored by the American Conservative Union, was a key calendar for Western right-wing politicians and commentators, including former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

China will also be keenly watching Magyar’s new government, especially since it has viewed Hungary as a soft entry point to the EU. The large-scale investment in electric vehicle manufacturing, especially battery production, are part of a growing Chinese business footprint in the country.

For Beijing, the question will be whether Magyar seeks to sacrifice this lucrative investment to burnish his European credentials.

What about the winners?

In addition to Hungarians outside Orbán’s orbit of elites, the EU will welcome the news that it remains an attractive force.

Ukraine, too, may find it easier to secure European assistance. At the very least, smaller Ukraine detractors like Slovakia will have to choose between acquiescing quietly or thrusting themselves uncomfortably into the open.

Yet, although Hungary’s result is promising, the world is still trending towards illiberalism.

And with the US midterm elections fast approaching, far-right American politicians, including Trump himself, will be studying Hungary’s lessons closely. If they conclude that Orbán’s brand of authoritarianism was too soft, a more hardline path looms as an ominous alternative.

Matthew Sussex, Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The president, the judge wrote, was the “steward” of the residence, not its “owner.” In response, the Justice Department filed an emergency motion, asking that construction be allowed to resume due to security risks caused by the project being in a state of limbo.

Presidents of the United States, unlike other world leaders, have not typically sought to impress their own architectural tastes on national monuments.

In this regard, Trump is the exception. His approach to remaking federal architecture has mirrored his approach to university funding and immigration enforcement: move fast, break things.

But Trump’s imposition of his aesthetic preferences doesn’t just threaten to erase chapters in the story of the nation’s federal architecture. It also risks undoing the legacies of presidential wives, influential designers and the egalitarian ideals that many of these buildings embody.

Gaudy grandeur

Since his second term began in January 2025, Trump has paved over the storied White House Rose Garden – established by first lady Ellen Wilson in 1913 and redesigned by renowned horticulturalist Bunny Mellon in 1962 – complaining that ladies’ high-heeled shoes sank into the ground. The art deco bathroom off the Lincoln Bedroom now reflects Trump’s penchant for polished marble. And gold-colored decorative elements have been affixed to the simple woodwork throughout the White House, with some of the ornamentation brought from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate.

Most notably, the East Wing, which housed the offices of the first lady and her staff, was flattened in fall 2025 to make way for a grand ballroom projected to cost some US$400 million. The building, if completed as planned, will dwarf the historic White House.

The ballroom also reflects Trump’s taste for grandiosity and opulence – the same aesthetic that’s reflected in the 250-foot “Independence Arch” that Trump has proposed for Washington.

Trump has repeatedly complained that public buildings in Washington lack grandeur. He was even quoted by Golf Magazine in 2017 as having described the White House as a “real dump,” although he later denied it.

Yet many of the structures he has demolished or has sought to revise embody, in their form and decoration, certain republican ideals, such as government by the people, civic virtue and opposition to concentrated power.

Buildings that embody egalitarianism

Trump has added accents to the White House to mimic the imposing homes of British and European monarchs. But the residence’s original “republican simplicity” – a concept attributed to Thomas Jefferson – actually had a purpose: It signaled the egalitarian outlook of the founders.

In 1792, when Jefferson was George Washington’s secretary of state, he anonymously entered the competition to design a new presidential home. His submission, which didn’t end up winning, was inspired by Renaissance architecture like Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda. Completed around 1570 in northern Italy, the Villa Rotonda features symmetrical facades and harmonious proportions that have been equated with Renaissance humanism and rationalism.

Elsewhere, Jefferson advocated for modeling the young nation’s government architecture on the classical tradition, due to its associations with ancient Greek and Roman democracy. This often meant using classical design principles like restraint, order and geometric harmony, and adapting them by either simplifying the elements or using locally available materials instead of the expensive marble and other stones favored by the ancients.

A repudiation of ‘republican simplicity’

In August 2025, Trump signed an executive order, Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again, directing that this same classical style inform the design of all future federal buildings.

Yet Trump’s own vision for the White House design doesn’t align with this directive. For one, the sheer enormity of the proposed ballroom transgresses the foundational belief in classical restraint.

The columns that will support the ballroom’s south colonnade have Corinthian capitals, the most ornate type of decorative top for a column. In contrast, Ionic capitals, which are more restrained, currently grace the columns at the entrance of the White House. One of Trump’s appointees, however, wants to swap these out in favor of Corinthian capitals.

And the temple-style portico on the east façade of the planned ballroom is awkwardly shifted to the far north end, rather than being centered as the classical tradition would dictate.

Glossing over history

This is not to say that classical principles have never run up against contemporary design trends.

In 1888, architect Alfred B. Mullett completed the State, War and Navy Building, now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Mullet had been inspired by Boston’s Old City Hall, which had been completed in 1865 and was itself inspired by the government architecture of the French Second Empire.

Trump has said that he finds the Eisenhower building’s gray granite façade dreary, and that he’d like to paint it white. Yet the material itself is a crucial element, tying the structure to the “Boston Granite Style.”

If the office building is painted white – in a process that would degrade the granite – a visual key to understanding its architectural and political history would be lost.

Architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock argued how forward-looking the building was for its time, and showed how how it mirrored the first skyscrapers erected in New York City: Richard Morris Hunt’s Tribune Building and the Western Union Building designed by Hunt’s pupil George B. Post.

For these reasons, preservationists have sued Trump to try to prevent these alterations.

Design that’s bottom up, not top down

I think it’s also important to note that in the original design and construction of many of the buildings Trump disparages, women played outsized roles.

As I note in my 2025 book, “Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism,” which I co-authored with Mary Anne Hunting, the contributions of women in architecture and design have often been overlooked.

The Trump administration’s projects in and around Washington will only further obscure the women who shaped the federal buildings and landscapes of the capital.

While the Rose Garden reflected the efforts of Bunny Mellon and Jacqueline Kennedy, the East Wing came under the watchful eye of Edith Roosevelt, the wife of President Theodore Roosevelt. Edith worked hand-in-hand with famed classicist architect Charles Follen McKim on its redesign as the primary entrance, in 1902. And had it not been for the public fundraising efforts of Jacqueline Kennedy, the capital may never have had a performing arts venue of national significance, the Kennedy Center for the Arts. In early 2026, the Trump administration announced that the center would close for two years to undergo an estimated US$200 million renovation.

While all buildings are living organisms that are frequently adapted to changing functional requirements, they are also the repositories of national memory.

In 1961, a young Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who, as a U.S. senator from New York, would later go on to advocate for historic preservation, penned “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture” on behalf of an ad hoc government committee on office space.

“The development of an official style must be avoided,” he wrote. “Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government, and not vice versa.”

As Judge Leon made clear in his ballroom ruling, no government officials – not even presidents – “own” federal architecture. The American people do. And it’s up to their representatives in Congress to decide whether to destroy or renovate it, bearing in mind that it’s an inextricable part of the country’s history.

This article was written with the collaboration of Mary Anne Hunting, Ph.D., an independent scholar in New York City.

Kevin D. Murphy, Professor and Chair of History of Art, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

His persistent false statements about crowd sizes, electoral outcomes and the birthplace of his father barely garner press coverage today.

What’s more, the admission that Trump lies seems to have had little impact. On the campaign trail during the 2024 presidential race, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance acknowledged that Trump’s story that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Ohio had been “created.” That confession had no discernible effect on Trump’s popularity. In fact, some measures indicate that Trump’s supporters admire his untruthfulness.

More recently, however, things have changed. Data now indicates mounting regret and disappointment among his base.

The administration’s failure to sustain convincing messaging about the Iran war, the Epstein files, the tariffs and inflation have left some supporters feeling duped and abandoned by Trump.

The president’s recent approval numbers are registering this shift.

This might suggest that fact-checking efforts are paying off. But, as a philosopher who studies the cognitive and emotional aspects of citizenship, I think this is incorrect. There is a better explanation for why, at this point, Trump’s followers are reacting negatively to his assertions.

When falsehoods aren’t lies

Although fact-checking can be successful in establishing the facts among people who have not already made up their minds, it is generally ineffective among true believers. Once someone has formed an opinion, debunking their belief can backfire, driving them to commit even more strongly to their mistake.

To explain the emerging shift among Trump’s base requires looking elsewhere. Specifically, I think it requires abandoning the idea that Trump’s more outlandishly false statements are lies at all.

I realize that this may sound odd.

To explain, let’s begin by noting that it is surprisingly difficult to give an adequate definition of lying. Intuitive characterizations – “A lie is something that isn’t true” – fall short.

For example, lying isn’t merely uttering a falsehood. Honest mistakes and statements made from lapses of memory are not lies. You could say instead that lying is deliberately asserting what one knows to be false.

But that won’t work, either.

President Bill Clinton lied when he claimed that “there is not a sexual relationship,” which, at the moment he said it, was true.

At the very least, the definition of lying must include speaking with the aim of causing one’s audience to adopt a falsehood. But that would make stage actors liars.

We should say instead that lying is a matter of speaking with the intent to deceive. Though difficulties remain, that’s a workable definition.

Betrayal by contempt

Given the ease with which many of Trump’s false statements are debunked, I think it’s unlikely that he aims to deceive anyone. No one really believes that Trump has stopped eight wars, defeated inflation, brought gasoline prices below US$2, cut a deal with the CEO of Sharpie or has 100% approval for his military incursion in Iran – all things he has said.

As he is not attempting to deceive, Trump isn’t lying when he makes such claims. Rather, he is doing something else entirely, something arguably more pernicious.

From my perspective as a political philosopher, these and other similar claims indicate he is speaking falsely as a way of demeaning or taunting his detractors. By resolutely asserting unbelievable falsehoods, Trump is expressing contempt. He is deriding the enterprise of journalism, in effect forcing reporters to write stories about his incredible statements, thereby indirectly controlling the news cycle.

It seems to me that his purpose is not to convince anyone, but rather to declare to the press, and perhaps also to his opposition, “You cannot stop me.” For a political movement rooted in the idea that U.S. politics is a swamp in need of draining, Trump’s defiant style has been successful.

But here’s the catch. It appears that Trump’s supporters are now beginning to feel that they, too, are on the receiving end of his contempt.

His recent claims that grocery prices are falling, his tariffs are working, the economy is roaring and the operation in Iran is a “little excursion” that has already been successful are not only obvious falsehoods.

In asserting them, Trump belittles those who must bear the effects of a struggling economy and an ill-conceived war. From this perspective, the shift among his base is not due to their realization that Trump lies. It’s that he has betrayed them.

Robert B. Talisse, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

His relentless campaign to destroy Carthage has been described as the first recorded incitement to genocide.

The genocide actually happened: Rome destroyed Carthage and its entire civilisation.

Fast forward to today and the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world, the president of the United States, has declared a “whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, in reference to Iran.

Donald Trump’s words were even stronger than Cato’s. Fortunately, the follow-up was not and the episode ultimately ended in a two-week ceasefire between US-Israel and Iran.

Is this language unprecedented?

Put simply, yes. Since the beginning of the war with Iran, Trump’s language has been consistently aggressive and extreme.

But the “death of a civilisation” comment crossed a threshold that is striking even measured against his own record.

It came shortly after another expletive-laden social media post.

Trump’s words are unprecedented both in form and in substance.

While US presidents have used plenty of profanities and expletives in private conversations, with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon probably winning any foul-language competition anywhere in the world, Trump is believed to be the only president to have ever deliberately used “f---” in public.

In substance, no modern US president has ever threatened or incited genocide.

Trump’s infamous “a whole civilisation will die tonight” comment, though, can only be interpreted as an open threat to all 93 million Iranian citizens.

The closest parallel anywhere in the modern world may actually be the Iranian chants “death to America” and “death to Israel”, which have featured prominently in pro-regime rallies since the 1979 revolution.

But even there, the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in 2019 the chants weren’t aimed at the US or the American people themselves, but at America’s rulers.

Is this language illegal?

Trump’s language, and that of other members of his administration, is deeply concerning and disturbing.

This includes statements by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that US forces would deny quarter to the enemy and that the US does not fight with “stupid rules of engagement”.

If these words turned into action, they would certainly constitute war crimes.

If Trump really meant he was willing to use the US military against Iran’s civilian population, this action would fall squarely within the definition of genocide provided by Article II of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

In other words, any action taken in the spirit of that post would constitute genocide and blatant violation of international law.

More broadly, the legality of the whole US attack on Iran is deeply contentious: most international and US law experts seem to agree the war violates the UN Charter.

There are also serious questions pertaining US constitutional law. The US Constitution does not grant the president the power to declare war – this power belongs to Congress.

Presidents should therefore seek congressional approval before waging war. At the time of writing, the war has been going on for 41 days and no Congressional approval has been obtained.

What can be done about this?

Probably nothing. The US political system does not include an easy way to remove a sitting president.

In the few hours between the infamous statement and the ceasefire declaration, several US political leaders talked about invoking the 25th Amendment.

Under that provision, the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can remove a president from office when they believe the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”.

It is unlikely JD Vance and most of the cabinet would be willing to make this case.

The only other avenue would be impeachment by the House of Representatives followed by removal by the Senate. Trump was impeached twice during his first term and acquitted by the Republican majority in the Senate both times.

Currently, Republicans control both chambers, making this option also very unlikely.

Will this have lasting consequences?

Definitely. As political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr – who identified the concept of soft power – famously explained, soft power is “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies”.

The US has enjoyed significant soft power throughout the Cold War and beyond.

Now 93 million Iranians have been threatened with the destruction of their entire civilisation by the president of the US, we must ask how far American soft power can realistically go in Iran and around the world moving forward.

In ancient Rome, Cato the Elder died three years before Rome destroyed Carthage. He never saw his words become action.

Hopefully neither Trump nor anyone else will ever see the destruction of Iranian civilisation. But Trump is definitely overseeing the instantaneous destruction of American soft power.

Rodrigo Praino, Professor & Director, Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Iran and its sympathisers responded to the strikes by flooding social media with outdated war footage allegedly from the current conflict alongside AI-generated content depicting attacks on Tel Aviv and US bases in the Persian Gulf.

More recently, viral video clips reportedly created by a team of Iranians depict Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Satan, Benjamin Netanyahu, Pete Hegseth, Ayatollah Khamenei, and others as Lego figurines.

Welcome to the brave new world of slopaganda.

The rise of slopaganda

Late last year, in a paper published in Filisofiska Notiser, we coined the portmanteau “slopaganda” to refer to AI-generated slop that serves propagandistic purposes.

By propaganda we mean communication intended to manipulate beliefs, emotions, attention, memory and other cognitive and affective processes to achieve political ends. Add generative artificial intelligence and the result is slopaganda.

The slopaganda situation has since become far worse than we expected.

In October 2025, US President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting himself piloting a fighter jet while wearing a crown and dumping faeces on American protesters. More recently, he posted an AI-generated video envisaging his presidential library as an enormous gaudy skyscraper, complete with a golden elevator.

Lego-themed Iran-created slopaganda is just the latest example. The material isn’t just videos. It can also be images, text, or whatever else AI can generate.

How slopaganda slips through our defenses

What is the point of all this slopaganda? We have several answers so far.

First, through repeated exposure in both legacy and social media, slopaganda can penetrate our usual mental defences. It works when it is attention-grabbing, emotionally arresting – typically in a negative way – and delivered to a distracted audience, such as people scrolling social media or switching between browser tabs.

Second, it is a very effective way of diluting the epistemic environment – the world of what we think we know – with falsehoods and half-truths. As philosophers have argued, ChatGPT and other generative AI tools can be machines for bullshit, in the sense of content that is indifferent to truth.

Slopaganda can be understood as a special kind of AI bullshit, but its unique features become clearer when we look at its use in campaigns such as the Iranian Lego videos.

This is not just bullshit. No one is misled into thinking Trump can pilot an F-16 and drop faeces out of it. No one (we hope) believes plastic Trump Lego figurines are in cahoots with a plastic Satan figurine.

Rather than aiming for accuracy, the slopaganda is expressive and emblematic of feelings and emotions, and meant to create an association. The intended linkages are something like Satan is associated with Trump while the United States is associated with evil, and so on.

What slopaganda means for shared truth

A third point is that some slopaganda is indeed misleading. This may be by design, or because a joke or trolling escapes its intended context and is misunderstood as serious – a phenomenon scholars call “context collapse”. Misleading slopaganda, including deepfakes, can be generated quickly during conflicts, crises and emergencies, when people want information but authoritative sources are scarce.

Once misleading information or a particular association enters someone’s mind, it can be hard to shake. Because slopaganda can reach huge audiences, even a small misleading effect in the general population may have significant consequences. State actors, corporations, and private individuals can potentially influence group beliefs and decisions, including election results, protest movements, or general sentiment about an unpopular war.

Fourth, the prevalence of slopaganda may make us doubt everything else. People will no doubt become better at spotting this kind of material, but they will also become more likely to misidentify authentic content as slop. As a result, public trust in genuinely trustworthy individuals and institutions may also fall.

When this occurs, the overall effect is likely to be a general lowering of public trust in genuinely trustworthy individuals and institutions, leading to a kind of nihilistic doubt in really knowing anything.

When it’s hard or impossible to identify trustworthy sources, you can choose to believe whatever you find comforting, invigorating or infuriating. In increasingly polarised societies struggling with interlocking economic, political, military and environmental crises, the breakdown of shared sources of truth will only make things worse.

3 ways to stave off slopagandapocalypse

What can be done about the slopaganda shitstorm? In our paper, we discuss interventions at three different levels.

First, individuals can become more digitally literate, for instance by looking for telltale signs of AI in text, images and video. They can also learn to check sources rather than merely glancing at headlines and other content, as well as to block sources that routinely spread slopaganda, rather than attempting to evaluate each piece of content in a vacuum. This will help them avoid falling for slopaganda while still trusting authentic sources of news and other information.

Second, industry and regulators can implement technological fixes to watermark AI-generated content. Some content may even need to be removed from platforms where people see news and other important information.

Third, large tech companies such as OpenAI, Google and X can be held accountable for what they have made. This could be done through taxation and other interventions to fund both regulatory efforts and education in digital literacy.

Slopaganda is probably here to stay. But with sufficient foresight and courage, we may still be able to adapt to it – and even control it.

Mark Alfano, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University and Michał Klincewicz, Assistant Professor, Department of Computational Cognitive Science, Tilburg University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The resurrection of Columbus made good on Trump’s 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”.

The statue is in fact a replica of the original thrown into Baltimore Harbor by protesters on Independence Day 2020 during the Black Lives Matter upheavals of the first Trump presidency.

The protests targeted monuments “honoring white supremacists, owners of enslaved people, perpetrators of genocide, and colonizers”. But damaged pieces of the Columbus statue were later salvaged and became a model for the copy.

Trump has since championed Columbus as “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth”.

He might have chosen any statue of the explorer and navigator from Genoa who pioneered European colonisation of the Americas. But clearly reinstating one removed by his opponents sends a more powerful message.

‘Improper partisan ideology’

Restoring statues to their original location isn’t simply about undoing their previous removal. It’s designed to reverse what some see as attempts to “erase history”.

And it has a long history of its own. Roman emperors once feared being condemned to obscurity through “damnatio memoriae” – having their statues destroyed, coins melted down and names chiselled from the facades of buildings.

Trump’s executive order was very much about retaliating against those who want to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology”.

Relocating a memorial to a more prominent location – from Baltimore to the White House, for instance – goes one step further. It amplifies the significance of the historical figure and the symbolic restoration of their reputation.

But sometimes just restoring a statue to its original site is symbolism enough.

The memorial to Albert Pike, for example, was and is the only outdoor statue of a Confederate general in Washington DC. Pulled down by protesters in 2020 and returned in 2025, its merits have long been debated.

Pike was a disgraced figure, accused of misappropriating funds and allowing his troops to desecrate the bodies of Union soldiers. There are also alleged ties to an early version of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the words of congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, “Pike represents the worst of the Confederacy and has no claim to be memorialized in the Nation’s capital.”

Advocates for the statue’s retention note there is no mention of the Confederacy or depiction of a military uniform, only Pike’s contribution to the American Freemasons.

But when the statue was pulled down in 2020, Trump certainly took sides: “The DC police are not doing their job as they watched a statue be ripped down and burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our country.”

‘Woke lemmings’

Of course, history isn’t always simple, as memorialising the American Civil War shows.

Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia was established in 1864 as a national military cemetery, with a Confederate section dedicated in 1900 as part of the effort to promote reconciliation between the North and South.

Its Confederate Memorial (designed by a Confederate veteran) features a female figure representing the South holding symbols of peace. A bronze relief below depicts sanitised images of slavery: a woman caring for white children, and a man following his owner into battle as his servant.

A biblical quotation below preaches peace: “They have beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

But another quote in Latin – “Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton” – references Julius Caesar’s victory in the Roman civil war and casts the South’s defeat as a noble lost cause.

The monument was erected in 1914, removed by Congress in 2023, and is scheduled to return in 2027. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed on social media it “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history – we honor it.”

Defiant choices

Similarly, an equestrian statue of Founding Father Caesar Rodney – installed in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1923 and removed in 2020 to prevent damage by protesters – highlights these contested readings of history.

Rodney is famous for riding all night from Delaware to Philadelphia, through a thunderstorm, to break a deadlock and cast the deciding vote in favour of American independence in 1776.

But as well as being a brigadier general and signatory to the Declaration of Independence, he owned 200 slaves on his family’s plantation.

The statue is now scheduled to reappear for six months, this time in Washington DC, to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. It will be installed in Freedom Plaza, named in honour of Martin Luther King Junior.

Placing the contested statue of a famous slave owner in a space dedicated to a Black civil rights leader is a provocative, if not defiant, choice. And it shows again how powerful symbols and symbolic actions can be.

The argument that removing statues also erases history doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It conflates public visibility and symbolic placement with actual knowledge of the past.

In that sense, reinstalling controversial memorials is, in itself, an attempt to rewrite history by erasing a more recent past and returning to an old, disputed status quo.

Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As The New York Times reported the previous day, Trump was disappointed with “Ms. Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which has become a political liability for Mr. Trump among his supporters. He has also complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and vented about what he sees as the Department of Justice’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his foes.”

The president has long indicated that whoever served as attorney general in his administration should see themselves as his lawyer rather than as someone representing the U.S. government.

During his first presidential term, Trump was gravely disappointed with Jeff Sessions, his first attorney general, who recused himself from the investigation into alleged political interference in the 2016 election. He replaced Sessions with William Barr, who abandoned Trump when the president did not accept the results of the 2020 election.

Having learned from those mistakes, Trump set out to find a political ally and loyalist to take the helm at the Justice Department in his second administration.

As a scholar of law and politics, and someone who has written about the role of the attorney general, I think Trump’s desire has a familiar ring to it. It is not unusual for presidents to put people who share their views and policy preferences into the role. But Trump has gone far beyond what is usually done.

Bondi’s ascent

Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz was Trump’s first choice for attorney general during the president’s second term. Many commentators viewed Gaetz as a firebrand who was temperamentally unsuited for that position. Some criticized him for calling the president an “inspirational leader of a loving and patriotic movement” in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In the face of growing opposition generated in part by allegations of his misconduct, Gaetz withdrew.

Trump turned to Bondi a few hours later. She had served as Florida’s attorney general and drawn praise from across the political spectrum for her professionalism.

A bipartisan group of former state attorneys general wrote a letter attesting to their “firsthand knowledge of her fitness for the office” and her “wealth of prosecutorial experience and commitment to public service.”

In addition, as PBS noted at the time of her appointment, Bondi was “a longtime Trump ally and was one of his lawyers during his first impeachment trial, when he was accused — but not convicted — of abusing his power as he tried to condition U.S. military assistance to Ukraine on that country investigating then-former Vice President Joe Biden.”

She also showed her loyalty by attending Trump’s New York trial for paying hush money to porn actor Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair.

At the time of her nomination, Bondi seemed to have the attributes of an attorney general. She had the credentials to take on the job of running the DOJ and the confidence of the president who appointed her.

From confirmation to downfall

During her confirmation hearings, Bondi promised to safeguard the Justice Department’s independence and bolster its transparency. She also vowed to not serve as the president’s personal attorney.

And in response to a question from Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, she pledged in January 2025 that “there will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice.”

But she also showed her willingness to joust with Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She hewed to the MAGA script by refusing to say that the president had lost the 2020 election. And she mounted a spirited attack on the Biden Justice Department, which she claimed had been “weaponized for years and years and years.”

Once in office, Bondi took on the difficult task of leading the Justice Department while also pleasing the president. She stood by when Trump used an appearance at the department to give, according to The New York Times, a “grievance-filled attack on the very people who have worked in the building and others like them.” The Times added: “He appeared to offer his own vision of justice in America, one defined by personal vengeance rather than by institutional principles.”

Bondi apparently did not do enough to deliver on that version of justice.

Last year, Trump had to urge Bondi to take action against his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, California Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Leticia James.

“They’re all guilty as hell,” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, “but nothing is going to be done. "We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” he added. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Bondi took her marching orders and launched investigations of those the president named. However, she was not able to secure any convictions. NBC News quoted a former official in the Trump White House who said that failing to secure indictments “is a problem for job security with the president.”

If that wasn’t enough, Trump was also reportedly frustrated with the way Bondi had handled the release of the Epstein files, first promising full disclosure and then botching the rollout of the files.

Contending visions of the attorney general’s job

Bondi’s tenure illustrates the conflicting visions of what an attorney general should do that animate today’s American politics.

The questions Democrats asked her during her confirmation were designed to get her to commit to their view of what the attorney general should do. Those questions signaled their belief that anyone occupying that office should maintain their distance from the president and uphold the Justice Department’s independence.

But right from the start of the republic, presidents have chosen close political allies to serve as attorney general.

It’s common for presidents to appoint their friends and supporters to be attorneys general. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, many presidents have chosen their campaign manager or their party’s national chairperson to be attorney general of the United States.

But even compared with this history, Trump and his allies have a radically different vision, seeing the attorney general as just another Cabinet member whose responsibility is to carry out the president’s policies and implement his directions. As Trump put it in a 2017 interview with The New York Times, he has the “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.”

In the end, it seems that Bondi was fired for her failure to be effective in the political role assigned to her. It is likely that the president will want to replace her with someone even more political than she was, who promises to deliver more of the results he wants.

Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

With the Iranian regime having mounted a robust response, the Middle East has been plunged into an unnecessary confrontation with no end in sight.

When US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started this war a month ago, they didn’t have a clear understanding of the nature of the Iranian regime and its defensive capability.

They didn’t expect Tehran to counter their offensives with an unprecedented level of preparedness, striking US bases across the Persian Gulf and hitting Israel hard.

Nor did they anticipate Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz, partially or fully, to cause a shortage of oil and gas with severe consequences for the global economy.

Driven by an embrace of military power, they acted on a belief that American and Israeli might from the air and sea would force the Islamic government to quickly capitulate, enabling the Iranian people to instigate a favourable regime change – something that has not transpired.

With a military victory now looking increasingly elusive, Trump will need to pivot to a diplomatic solution – and force Netanyahu to comply.

Why Iran has proven so resilient

Prior to the war, the Islamic government was under enormous domestic pressure and international criticism for its suppression of widespread public protests that left thousands of Iranians dead.

The regime was also struggling to come to terms with Israel’s degradation of its regional affiliates, Hamas and Hezbollah in particular, not to mention the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in Syria.

While distrustful of Trump, it felt compelled to enter into negotiations with the US once more for a viable settlement of its controversial nuclear program. In late February, the chief mediator, the Omani foreign minister, said a deal was within reach.

When the US and Israel attacked instead, it gave the Islamic government a different sort of opportunity: it could demonstrate the resilience it had spent decades building.

Iran’s system of authority, governance and security was structured to withstand the loss of its leaders and commanders. The regime had shown this in the 1980s in the face of stiff internal opposition, the eight-year war with Iraq, US efforts to contain it and regional hostility.

The Islamic government has also managed to survive despite its theocratic impositions, frequent public uprisings and domestic and foreign policy shortfalls. The reasons for this include:

• the belief of many Shia Muslims in revolutionary Islamism
• its combination of ideological rigidity and pragmatic flexibility, and
• a dedicated and entrenched security, intelligence and administrative apparatus whose survival is dependent on the regime’s survival.

While many Iranians have wanted to see the back of the Islamic government, most are still very proud of their cultural and civilisational heritage. They don’t like to see Iran being subjected to outside aggression, destruction and humiliation.

A war of endurance

This explains why many Iranians have rallied around the flag, as they have historically done against outside aggression.

Knowing it cannot match the firepower of the US and Israel, the Islamic government has shown ingenuity in creating a “mosaic defence” strategy of asymmetrical warfare. This entails adapting and responding to US military weaknesses (for instance, by targeting US bases in Persian Gulf countries with drones and missiles) and decentralising its command structure so leaders can quickly be replaced when they are killed.

The regime has been assisted by Russia and China with supplies of dual-use technologies and revenue from oil imports. Russia has also reportedly been giving Iran intelligence on the location of US assets in the region.

And although Iran’s regional affiliates have been degraded, they are still capable of backing the Islamic Republic in the conflict. Both Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis have entered the war by targeting Israel. The Houthis may also attempt to disrupt shipping through the Red Sea.

In short, the Iranian government is resolved to deny the US and Israel a victory at all costs. Given this, the conflict has become a war of endurance.

A deal is the only way out

How long the US, Israel and Iran stay in the fight is a matter of conjecture. However, as the situation stands, the space for a diplomatic resolution has very much tightened. Iran has not shown a desire to back down, and the US and Israel are not united in their goals.

Trump may eventually settle for a deal on Iran’s nuclear program and a potential reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, given the costs of the war and his falling poll numbers in a year of mid-term elections.

But Netanyahu seems adamant in his pursuit. He wants to destroy the Islamic government and weaken the Iranian state as a regional actor.

What is increasingly clear is the war is unlikely to end by military means. The only way forward is a negotiated settlement. The onus will therefore fall on Trump to pull Netanyahu into line and take the lead on trying to strike a deal.

Some analysts have already concluded that no matter how the war ends, Iran is prevailing.

Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Australian National University; The University of Western Australia; Victoria University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This is not the first time Trump has been compared to Hans Christian Andersen’s bumbling emperor, who marched unclothed through the streets while claiming to be dressed in finery – a fiction many of his subjects willingly indulged.

Who was Andersen, what aspects of his life informed this particular story and why might this be useful to know in the age of Trump?

Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, in 1805. While his grandfather supposedly claimed noble origins for the family, Andersen’s father was a cobbler and his mother an illiterate washerwoman.

After his father died, Andersen moved to Copenhagen for work, where he found a patron, theatre director Jonas Collin, who paid for his education. Andersen started writing after graduating from university, becoming well known for his fairy tales, which he began publishing in the 1830s.

The Emperor’s New Clothes is in his 1837 work, Fairy Tales Told for Children, which featured other memorable tales such as The Steadfast Tin Soldier and The Little Mermaid.

The story follows a vain and clothes-obsessed emperor who commissions clothing from two travelling conmen. These men, posing as weavers, visit his court to show off a new kind of material, which is supposedly rendered invisible to a man “unfit for the office he held”, or “extraordinarily simple in character”.

Afraid to reveal that he cannot see the material, the emperor sends in several aides to review the process, who all lie about being able to see the clothes being made.

Once the “outfit” is finished, the emperor dons it and parades unclothed through the town. The townsfolk compliment the garments, until a small child bursts the bubble, yelling out that the emperor has no clothes.

Unable to admit this, the emperor continues on his way. But the townsfolk now laugh.

This simple tale powerfully criticises rulers who tell untruths, performing intelligence and leadership, as well as those who uncritically allow this.

An outsider looking in

Like many fairy tales, the origins of this one stretch back centuries. Older versions date to medieval times. All feature people in power being duped by conmen who play on their vanities about their own intelligence. Literary scholar Hollis Robbins suggests Andersen’s version reflects a newly-emerging working class culture where “professional competence” was “quickly overtaking legitimacy and heritage as a source of aristocratic anxiety”.

In his book The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films, fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes claims Andersen was “embarrassed by his proletarian background” and “rarely mingled with the lower classes” once he found success as a writer.

Andersen never married and more recently, has been understood as a bisexual man. He had infatuations with both men and women, including Edvard Collin (the son of his patron Jonas) and Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind. After a fall in 1872, from which he never recovered, he died in 1875.

Andersen’s lower class background, argues Zipes, meant he was particularly well suited to biting cultural commentary about the difficult path for those escaping poverty.

In one translation of The Emperor’s New Clothes, the child who proclaims the nudity of the emperor is called “the voice of innocence” by his father. This voice spreads through the crowd, leading to the comical image of the unclothed emperor’s aides striving to lift the invisible train of his outfit even higher.

Regardless of one’s position in life, this story suggests you cannot escape “suffering, humiliation, and torture,” writes Zipes.

Indeed, many of Andersen’s tales feature characters (often frail, young women) who suffer immensely before dying nobly. The Emperor’s New Clothes, with its child character as the voice of reason, has an ending that, while not “happily ever after”, is as lighthearted as Andersen gets.

The power of fairy tales

The fairy tale is one of the most recognisable literary genres. We hear them from such a young age it is almost like we were born knowing them. Beginning as oral folktales, many of the tales we know today were first written down in 16th and 17th century France, Italy and Germany as social commentary and educational stories.

It is difficult to identify the “originals” of many tales, given their folkloric origins. Still, while it is almost stereotypical now to note that the “original fairy tales” (before contemporary Disney adaptations) were surprisingly dark Andersen’s are noticeably, and notably, bleak.

The Emperor’s New Clothes has been retold many times, with print, screen and musical adaptations. As Donald Trump, in the words of one pundit, continues to “construct a narrative, declare it to be true and relentlessly force the world to submit to it”, the story resonates today.

Indeed, literary academic Naomi Wood has argued that in a post 9/11 world, a “terrifying possibility” emerges in readings of the tale.

The truth of the fairy tale is not its glorification of the voice of innocence, free from corruption and untruth. Rather, it is that adults will continue to believe their own lies, even when they are clearly revealed. As a result, we allow the parade to continue, even while knowing it is farcical.

Nicola Welsh-Burke, Sessional Academic in Literary and Cultural Studies, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order removing the recognition of citizenship for the U.S.-born children of both immigrants here illegally and visitors here only temporarily. The new rule is not retroactive. This change in long-standing U.S. policy sparked a wave of litigation.

When the justices weigh the arguments, they will focus on the meaning of the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, known as the citizenship clause: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Both sides agree that to be granted birthright citizenship under the Constitution, a child must be born inside U.S. borders and the parents must be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. However, each side will give a very different interpretation of what the second requirement means. Who falls under “the jurisdiction” of the United States in this context?

As a close observer of the court, I anticipate a divided outcome grounded in strong arguments from each side.

Arguments for automatic citizenship

Simply put, the argument against the Trump administration is that the 14th Amendment’s expansion of citizenship after the eradication of slavery was meant to be broad rather than narrow, encompassing not only formerly enslaved Black people but all persons who arrived on U.S. soil under the protection of the Constitution.

The Civil War amendments – the 13th, 14th and 15th – established inherent equality as a constitutional value, which embraced all persons born in the nation without reference to race, ethnicity or origin.

One of the strongest arguments that automatic citizenship is the meaning of the Constitution is long-standing practice. Citizenship by birth regardless of parental status – with few exceptions – has been the effective rule since the time of America’s founding.

Advocates also point to precedent: the landmark case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898. When an American-born descendant of resident noncitizens sued after being refused re-entry to San Francisco under the Chinese Exclusion Act, the court recognized his natural-born citizenship.

If we read the Constitution in a living fashion – emphasizing the evolution of American beliefs and values over time – the constitutional commitment to broad citizenship grounded in equality, regardless of ethnicity or economic status, seems even more clear.

However, advocates must try to convince the court’s originalists – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – who read the Constitution based on its meaning when it was adopted.

The originalist argument in favor of birthright citizenship is that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” was meant to invoke only a small set of exceptions found in traditional British common law. In the Wong Kim Ark ruling, the court relied on this “customary law of England, brought to America by the colonists.”

One exception to birthright citizenship covered by this line of rulings is the child of a foreign diplomat, whose parents represent the interests of another country. Another exception is the children of invading foreign armies. A third exception discussed explicitly by the framers of the 14th Amendment was Native Americans, who at the time were understood to be under the jurisdiction of their tribal government as a separate sovereign. That category of exclusion faded away after Congress recognized the citizenship of Native Americans in 1924.

The advocates of automatic birthright citizenship conclude that whether the 14th Amendment is interpreted in a living or in an original way, its small set of exceptions do not override its broad message of citizenship grounded in human equality.

Opposition to birthright citizenship

The opposing argument begins with a simple intuition: In a society defined by self-government, as America is, there is no such thing as citizenship without consent. In the same way that an American citizen cannot declare himself a French citizen and vote in French elections without consent from the French government, a foreign national cannot declare himself a U.S. citizen without consent.

This argument emphasizes that citizenship in a democracy means holding equal political power over our collective decisions. That is something only existing citizens hold the right to offer to others, something which must be decided through elections and the lawmaking process.

The court’s ruling in Elk v. Wilkins in 1884 – just 16 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment – endorses “the principle that no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent.” By making entry into the United States without approval a federal offense, Congress has effectively denied that consent.

Scholars who support this view argue that the 14th Amendment does not provide this consent. Instead it sets a limitation. To the authors of the 14th Amendment, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” conveyed a limit to natural citizenship grounded in mutual allegiance. That means if people are free to deny their old national allegiance, and an independent nation is free to decide its own membership, the recognition of a new national identity must be mutual.

Immigrants living in the United States illegally have not accepted the sovereignty of the nation’s laws. On the other side of the coin, the government has not officially accepted them as residents under its protection.

If mutual recognition of allegiance is the meaning of the 14th Amendment, the Trump administration has not violated it.

The opponents of birthright citizenship argue that the Wong Kim Ark ruling has been misrepresented. In that case, the court only considered permanent legal residents like Wong Kim Ark’s parents, but not residents here illegally or temporarily. The focus on British common law in that ruling is simply misguided because the findings of Calvin’s Case or any other precedents dealing with British subjects were voided by the American Revolution.

In this view, the Declaration of Independence replaced subjects with citizens. The power to determine national membership was taken away from kings and placed in the hands of democratic majorities.

For opponents of birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment does not take that power away from citizens but instead codifies the rule that mutual consent is the touchstone of admission. The requirement to be “subject to the jurisdiction” provides the mechanism of that consent.

Congress can determine who is accepted as a member of the national community under its jurisdiction. In this view, Congress – and the American people – have spoken: Current federal laws make entry into U.S. borders without permission a crime rather than a forced acceptance of political membership.

What might happen

The court will likely announce a ruling in summer 2026 before early July, just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The court will ultimately decide whether the Constitution endorses the declaration’s invocation of essential equality or its creation of a sovereign people empowered to determine the boundaries of national membership.

The court’s three Democratic-appointed justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – will surely side against the Trump administration. The six Republican-appointed justices seem likely to divide, a symptom of disagreements within the originalist camp.

The liberal justices need at least two of the conservatives to join them to form a majority of five to uphold universal birthright citizenship. This will likely be some combination of Chief Justice John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

The Trump administration will prevail only if five out of the six conservatives reject the British common law foundations of the Wong Kim Ark ruling in favor of citizenship by consent alone.

America should know by July Fourth.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Dec. 5, 2025.

Morgan Marietta, Professor of American Civics, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Amid war, economic challenges, democratic backsliding, the Epstein files and Americans shot dead in the street by government agents, Trump’s support is softening and his vow to bring a “golden age of America” is looking more like a political winter for Trump and his MAGA movement.

This is my big takeaway from this year’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. The event, organized by the American Conservative Union, launched with an international summit on March 25, 2026, and runs through March 28 in Grapevine, Texas.

Don’t get me wrong. The attendees are decked out in red, white and blue MAGA merch: sequined “Trump” purses and jackets, USA flag bags, ties and headbands, and, of course, iconic red MAGA caps. As always, they chant “USA,” even if not as often or as loudly as before.

Starting with the first talk by Rev. Franklin Graham, speakers here are still singing Trump’s praises. They underscore what they regard as major Trump 2.0 accomplishments: combating illegal immigration, cutting taxes, a budding economic boom, deregulation, U.S. gas and oil output surging, administrative state winnowing, pro-Christian policies and pulling the plug on the “woke” agenda.

These issues are foregrounded in sessions with titles like “Walls Work,” “Don’t Let Woke Marxists Raise Your Children,” “MAGA vs. Mullah Madness,” “Commies Go Home” and “Cancelling Satan.” In between, pro-Trump advertisements checklist Trump’s accomplishments.

This rose-tinted view is to be expected. After all, CPAC – a cross between a political rally, networking mixer and MAGA Comic-Con – is all about galvanizing the conservative base. Beneath the surface, however, MAGA is churning.

Major grievances

An anthropologist of American political culture and author of the book “It Can Happen Here,” I have been studying MAGA for years and attending CPAC since 2023. Attendees at last year’s CPAC, held a month after Trump’s inauguration, were jubilant, with nonstop talk of “the comeback kid” and “the golden age.”

Why is the mood at this year’s CPAC more subdued?

Enthusiasm for Trump is dampened because some of his supporters feel he has betrayed America First principles, failed to fulfill key campaign promises and been unable to supercharge the economy. Here are their major grievances:

‘America First’ vs. ‘Israel First’

“America First” is the guiding principle of MAGA. It encompasses border security, prioritizing the U.S. economy and ensuring rights such as free speech. It also means avoiding unnecessary wars.

This is why Trump’s support of the June 2025 “12-day war” on Iran led Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other MAGA influencers, who have tens of millions of followers, to criticize Trump. The conflict, they contend, served Israel’s interest – their phrase is “Israel First” – not those of the U.S.

Their criticisms became even more pronounced after the U.S. again began bombing Iran on Feb. 28, 2026. The criticism is part of a growing MAGA fissure with pro-Israel stalwarts such as conservative activists Mark Levin, Laura Loomer and Ben Shapiro, who support U.S. intervention in the Middle East. Things got so bad that after Levin called his fellow conservative media personality Megyn Kelly “unhinged, lewd and petulant,” she dubbed him “Microp---- Mark.”

But the MAGA unease with the war extends well beyond the “America First” influencers.

It includes figures from the fringe far right such as provocateur Nick Fuentes, center-right “brocaster” Joe Rogan, and even the Trump administration itself – as illustrated by an intelligence officer whose resignation stated, “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Notably, none of the main Trump critics have been scheduled to speak at this year’s CPAC. Some now call it “TPAC,” or the Trump Political Action Conference.

The Epstein files

MAGA also has a strong populist and anti-elite streak of conspiracy thinking.

Large numbers of Trump supporters, for example, believe there is an elite plot to what they call “replace” the white population with nonwhites through mass immigration. Many also bought into the QAnon conspiracy theory, which centers on the idea that Trump is fighting Satanic, deep state elites who are running a child sex trafficking operation.

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to take down political, deep state and global elites. He also promised to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, which QAnon conspiracists and others believe prove elite debauchery, including pedophilia.

Trump didn’t deliver. He backtracked and stonewalled on the release of the Epstein files, raising MAGA suspicion that Trump himself is implicated or is protecting elites. Remarkably, one recent poll found that roughly half of Americans, including a quarter of Republicans, believe the Iran war was partly meant to distract from the Epstein files.

Economy and immigration

Trump is also facing headwinds on the bread-and-butter issues of the 2024 election: the economy and immigration.

At CPAC, speakers have repeatedly given him kudos for shutting down the border. Acknowledging the MAGA in-fighting, conservative commentator Benny Johnson said he wanted to “white pill” – or buck up – the audience by reminding them that Trump had stopped an “invasion” and brought “criminal alien border crossings down to zero.”

As a photo of Trump’s bloodied face after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, was displayed, Johnson claimed, “Our God saved President’s Trump’s life for this moment.”

But fewer Republicans approve of his handling of immigration compared with a year ago. Like many Americans, a growing number have misgivings about the strong-arm tactics used by government immigration enforcement agents in places such as Minnesota.

For many, the economy remains a serious worry. A recent poll, conducted before the Iran war, found that the vast majority of Americans, including large numbers of Republicans, are concerned about inflation, jobs and the cost of living. Health care, including the lost Obamacare subsidies, is also a source of consternation.

Few people believe the economy is “booming” – let alone that a “golden age” has arrived – as Trump and his allies often proclaim. The war with Iran, which has led to stock market declines and gas pump hikes, has only added to the unease.

MAGA ‘shattered’?

Amid the recent MAGA in-fighting about the Iran war, conservative podcaster Tim Pool proclaimed, “The MAGA coalition is shattered.”

Not exactly. Despite the many challenges Trump is facing, the vast majority of his MAGA base voters still support him – including almost 90% backing his war with Iran.

But Trump’s support has eased in several ways. First, even his hardcore supporters worry about the economy, and they want him to declare victory and exit the war. And second, Trump has lost support on the edges. Many people in the key groups with which he made crucial inroads in the last election – such as young men and nonwhite voters – have turned from him. The same is true for independents and other Trump voters who don’t identify as MAGA.

Trumpism isn’t dead, as the MAGA-merched crowds here at CPAC make clear. But Trump is struggling through a political winter that could signal the early stages of his MAGA movement’s decline.

Alex Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University - Newark

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If Iran is, by Trump’s own admission, a “high-level” opponent, then the sudden revival of a 15-point plan previously rejected by Iran a year ago suggests a disconnect between how the adversary is understood and how it is being approached. It’s a plan already examined in negotiation by Iran and dismissed as unrealistic and coercive. Despite this, the Trump administration is once again framing the “roadmap” as a pathway to de-escalation. Tehran has once again dismissed the gambit as Washington “negotiating with itself – reinforcing the perception that the US is attempting to impose terms rather than negotiate them.

The US president is right about one thing – Iran is not an opponent that can be easily dismissed or overwhelmed. Trump’s own description is a tacit acknowledgement that this is a far more capable and complex adversary than those the US has faced in past Middle Eastern wars, such as Iraq. And that is why the odds are increasingly stacked against the United States and Israel.

This conflict reflects a familiar but flawed imperial assumption: that overwhelming military force can compensate for strategic misunderstanding. The US and Israel appear to have misjudged not only Iran’s capabilities, but the political, economic and historical terrain on which this war is being fought.

Unlike Iraq, Iran is a deeply embedded and adaptable regional power. It has resilient institutions, networks of influence, and the capacity to impose asymmetric costs across multiple theatres. It knows how to manage maximum pressure.

The most immediate problem is lack of legitimacy. This war has authorisation from neither the United Nations or, in the case of America, the US Congress. Further, US intelligence assessments indicate Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear programme following earlier strikes – contradicting one of Washington’s justifications for war. The resignation of Joe Kent as head of the National Counterterrorism Center on March 17, was even more revealing. In his resignation letter Kent insisted that Iran posed no imminent threat.

This effectively collapses one of the original narratives underpinning the US decision to start the war – a further blow to legitimacy.

A majority of Americans oppose the war, reflecting deep fatigue after Iraq and Afghanistan – hardly ideal conditions for what increasingly looks like another "forever war” in the Middle East. Current polling shows Trump’s Republicans trailing the Democrats ahead of the all-important midterm elections in November.

The war is both militarily uncertain and politically unsustainable. International allied support is also eroding. The United Kingdom — often trumpeted as Washington’s closest partner — has limited itself to defensive coordination, while Germany and France have distanced themselves from offensive operations. European allies also declined a US request to deploy naval forces to secure the strait of Hormuz. This reflects not just disagreement, but a deeper loss of trust in US leadership and strategic judgement.

US influence has long depended on legitimacy as much as force. That reservoir is now rapidly draining. Global confidence is falling, while images of civilian casualties — including over 160 schoolchildren killed in an airstrike on the first day of the war – have shocked international onlookers. Rather than reinforcing leadership, this war is accelerating its erosion.

Israel faces a parallel crisis of legitimacy – one that began in Gaza and has now deepened. The war in Gaza severely damaged its global standing, with sustained civilian casualties and humanitarian devastation drawing unprecedented criticism, even among traditional allies. This confrontation with Iran compounds that decline.

Striking Iran during active negotiations — for the second time — reinforces the perception that escalation is preferred over diplomacy. The issue is no longer just conduct, but credibility.

Strategic failure, narrative defeat

The conduct of the war compounds the problem. The assassinations of Iranian leaders, framed as tactical victories, are strategic failures. They have unified rather than destabilised Iran. Mass pro-regime demonstrations illustrate how external aggression can consolidate internal legitimacy.

The issue is no longer just the conduct of the war, but the credibility of the conflict itself. Regardless of how impressive the US and Israeli military are, it doesn’t compensate for reputational collapse. When building support for a conflict like this – domestically and internationally – legitimacy is a strategic asset. Once eroded across multiple conflicts, it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.

Rather than stabilising the system, US actions are fragmenting it. Allies are distancing themselves, adversaries are adapting, and neutral states are hedging.

The most decisive factor may be economic. The war is already destabilising global markets – driving up oil prices, inflation, and volatility at levels that combine the effects of 1970s and Ukraine war oil shocks.

This is a war that cannot be contained geographically nor economically. The deployment of 2,500 US marines to the Middle East (and reports that up to another 3,000 paratroopers will also be sent), reportedly with plans to secure Kharg Island – and with it Iran’s most important oil infrastructure – would be a dangerous escalation.

For Gulf states, the assumption that the US can guarantee security is increasingly questioned. Some states are reportedly now looking to diversify their partnerships and turning toward China and Russia, mirroring post-Iraq shifts, when US failure opened space for alternative powers.

Iran holds the cards

Wars are not won by destroying capabilities alone, but by securing sustainable and legitimate political outcomes. On both counts, the US and Israel are falling short.

Iran, by contrast, does not need military victory. It only needs to endure, impose costs, and outlast its adversaries. This is the logic of asymmetric conflict: the weaker power wins by not losing, while the stronger one loses when the costs of continuing become unsustainable.

This dynamic is already visible. Having escalated rapidly, Trump now appears to be searching for an off-ramp — reviving proposals and signalling openness to negotiation. But he is doing so from a position of diminishing leverage. In contrast, Iran’s ability to threaten energy flows, absorb pressure, and shape the tempo of escalation means it increasingly holds key strategic cards. The longer the war continues, the more that balance tilts.

Empires rarely recognise when they begin to lose. They escalate, double down, and insist victory is near. But by the time the costs become undeniable – economic crisis, political fragmentation, global isolation – it is already too late. The US and Israel may win battles. But they may be losing the war that matters: legitimacy, stability and long-term influence.

And, as history suggests, that loss may not only define the limits of their power, but mark a broader shift in how power itself is judged, constrained, and resisted.

Bamo Nouri, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of International Politics, City St George's, University of London and Inderjeet Parmar, Professor in International Politics, City St George's, University of London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This led to a considerable amount of commentary speculating that Hispanic voters, historically more supportive of Democrats, might continue shifting toward the GOP.

News reports suggesting Latinos were critical to Trump’s 2024 victory were, in our view, overblown. Even if Latinos had not shifted, Trump still would have won in 2024.

Yet there is no question that over the past three election cycles, Latino voters – Latino men under 40, in particular – have shifted right. That change has benefited GOP candidates, even as the majority of Latinos still voted for Democrats.

However, evidence from general elections in 2025 in places such as New Jersey, New York and Virginia, as well as special elections in 2026, suggest an abrupt correction is underway, with some of the Latino voters who backed Trump now swinging back to the Democrats.

As political scientists and pollsters who study Hispanic voting trends, we are concerned with the question of whether these latest movements are real or simply a function of fluctuating Latino Democratic turnout rates. In other words, are Latinos broadly changing their votes back to Democrats, or are Latinos who remained loyal to the Democrats now more angry and fired up?

Survey and election data suggest it’s a bit of both. So what does this portend for the future of American politics?

Latino voting trends

The history of the Latino vote nationwide had for decades been one of long-term stability. Historically, Democrats enjoyed an approximate 65% to 35% advantage over Republicans.

That advantage shrank marginally after Republican President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, providing a path to citizenship for millions. But the more familiar two-thirds advantage for the Democratic Party returned following passage of Proposition 187, a 1994 anti-immigrant initiative in California that ultimately mobilized Latinos against Republicans.

Another effort at GOP outreach to Hispanic voters culminated in President George W. Bush taking approximately 40% of the Latino vote in 2004. That growth, however, soon eroded in the wake of anti-immigrant legislation passed by the Republican-controlled House in 2005 and 2006.

The successful campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, as well as Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 campaign against Trump, saw Democrats reaping a relatively high level of Latino support, peaking at a 3-to-1 advantage in 2012.

That made Trump’s improvements among Latinos in 2020 and 2024 feel, for some, particularly unexpected. He lodged notable breakthroughs in parts of Florida, where he carried Miami-Dade County, and Texas, where he flipped the historically Democratic Rio Grande Valley.

Some Latinos question whether Democrats have delivered

It should not have been such a surprise. There has been a history of sizable shares of Latinos supporting Republican candidates. For instance, both former President George W. Bush and his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, performed well with Latinos in Texas and Florida.

For two decades, Democrats have campaigned among Latinos on the promise of comprehensive immigration reform and an economic policy that would level the playing field, including raising the federal minimum wage, providing universal pre-K education and promoting affordable housing.

Many Latinos feel they are still waiting for these Democratic policies to be enacted, let alone improve their lives.

Democratic trifectas in 2009-10 and 2021-22 – when the party held both chambers of Congress, along with the presidency – failed to produce meaningful movement on immigration policy. Many Latinos felt their daily lives had not improved, as they faced high costs of living, expensive housing markets and rising health care costs. While House Democrats did pass numerous bills to address these topics, Senate moderates proved difficult to persuade.

Given these shortcomings, running on the message that “the GOP are bad guys” only gets Democrats so far. In 2024, surveys and focus groups of Hispanic voters made it clear that not everyone was convinced by this characterization. The frustrations of working-class families during the Biden administration were real, whereas fears of mass deportations and other social chaos that a second Trump term might portend were, at that point, conjecture.

The Trump campaign specifically promised widespread action against immigrants, but many of our Latino focus group participants felt this was bluster. They believed that Trump’s actions would be targeted against blatant criminals and that his policies would not affect their families and friends.

They did not believe the worst-case scenarios presented by Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats during the campaign. Despite often not liking Trump, his economic promises felt good during the 2024 affordability crisis.

Latinos shifting back left?

Many Latinos are now quite upset with Trump. The 2025 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia point to dramatic 25-point changes in the Latino vote in the Democrats’ direction, compared with Trump’s 2024 performance.

In December 2025, the first Democrat was elected mayor of Miami since 1997, with Latino support. A Democrat won a heavily Republican state legislative district in Texas in February 2026 with an estimated 79% of the Latino vote. Most recently, Latino voter turnout surged to record levels in the March Democratic primary in Texas.

Majorities of Latino voters believe that their economic fortunes have declined since Trump returned to the White House. Moreover, they expect the situation to worsen over the next year. In March 2026, The Economist reported that Trump’s support among Latinos had fallen to 22%.

In a bipartisan poll by UnidosUS released in November 2025, only 14% of Latino voters said their lives were better after one year under Trump, while 39% said they had gotten worse. Looking ahead, 50% expected things to get worse still in 2026, while only 20% were optimistic about their economic future. Two-thirds of Latino voters felt that Trump and the Republicans were not focusing enough on improving the economy for people like them.

What’s more, mass deportations have happened under the second Trump administration. The vast majority of those detained for deportation, including those who have died, had no criminal record.

Latinos are overwhelmingly opposed to federal troops in U.S. cities, according to our polling; 41% fear legal residents and U.S. citizens getting caught up in enforcement actions. The No. 1 immigration concern for Latino voters remains a path to citizenship for Dreamers – the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children – and for immigrants who have worked and paid taxes in the country for more than 20 years but lack formal status.

Among Latinos who actually voted for Trump, many would not do so again. Our poll suggests that 22% of Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 would not vote for him again. By contrast, Democrats retain support from 93% of their 2024 Latino voters.

The long-term effects of the Trump presidency on the Latino electorate are difficult to predict, but for now party preferences have shifted firmly back toward the Democrats. Among voters in the UnidosUS poll, 55% said they felt the Democrats “care a great deal” about Latinos, compared with 29% saying they felt that way about the GOP. At the same time, 33% of Latino voters see the GOP as “hostile,” compared with just 7% who believe this about the Democrats.

If the recent leftward shift is sustained, or the earlier shift to the right was illusory, the effects on the politics of 2026 could be large, potentially putting control of Congress in the hands of Latino voters. There are 46 House districts where the number of registered voters who are Latino exceeds the total margin of victory for those seats in 2024, with 23 currently held by Republicans and 23 currently held by Democrats.

Latino voters need to believe that politicians truly care about their concerns and will work to implement a plan to create equal opportunities for the nation’s largest minority group to achieve the American dream. We believe the candidates able to make that pitch convincingly will be the most successful.

Matt A. Barreto, Professor of Political Science, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Gary M. Segura, Professor of Public Policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

According to some complaints, American military commanders have told their troops the attack on Iran is a holy war, and that U.S. President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

In a recent interview with Democracy Now!, the MRFF’s president, Mikey Weinstein, said the foundation was “inundated” with calls from soldiers indicating that commanders across the armed forces “were euphoric” because the war would serve as a way to “bring their version of weaponized Jesus back.”

The comments are among other violent religious rhetoric to come from U.S. officials. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, caused a diplomatic row when he suggested Israel had a biblical claim to take over much of the Middle East.

The language also comes as some American officials have sought to characterize the Iranian government as fanatical. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iran was run by “religious fanatic lunatics.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said: “Crazy regimes like Iran, hell-bent on prophetic Islamic delusions, cannot have nuclear weapons.”

Meanwhile, American televangelist John Hagee recently claimed that Russia, Turkey, “what’s left of Iran” and “groups of Islamics” would soon invade Israel and be destroyed by God.

American evangelicalism

During my PhD in Christian theology, I’ve asked why some American evangelical religious movements, which have gained increasing visibility and power through President Donald Trump’s MAGA politics shaped heavily by white Christian nationalism, embrace violent interpretations of what theologians refer to as “eschatology” (a theology of end times).

While the term “evangelical Christian” is notoriously difficult to define, historian David Bebbington, who focused on these movements in the United Kingdom, delineated four broad charactersitics: a strong belief in the Bible, the death of Jesus for sins, a conversion experience and social activism.

My own research specialization is how modern Protestant Christians, including evangelical Christians, understand the significance of Jesus’s death, also referred to as the atonement, and its relationship to the end times.

Seeking Armageddon

Rhetoric about wars being religious, and Trump being divinely anointed and about to cause Armageddon, is deeply disturbing and has catalyzed condemnation from Christians in the U.S. and beyond advocating non-violent and diplomatic foreign policy.

Violent U.S. religious rhetoric being amplified with the U.S.-Israel war against Iran is associated with beliefs that once Israel is restored as a nation and the temple in Jerusalem is rebuilt, Jesus will return and judge humanity.

Christians adhering to these views read the Biblical Book of Revelation, with its vivid symbolic apocalyptic language, as making literal claims about history. They maintain their inspired and authoritative Biblical interpretation allows them to know that conflicts in the Middle East initiate God’s final act in history, with Trump seen as the dominating and aggressive man who can help usher in God’s violent judgment of his enemies.

Interpretations of Jesus’s death and violence

It’s relevant to consider how some Christian beliefs about Jesus’s death correlate with a willingness to support or justify violence.

Protestant Evangelical theologians, such as J. I. Packer and John Stott, argue that Jesus’s death primarily “paid the penalty” for human sin. They emphasize that God’s holiness requires a payment for this sin. In this framework, God orchestrates the violent death of Jesus to satisfy God’s penal justice to forgive humanity.

Non-evangelical Christians, on the other hand, like 19th-century Congregationalist Horace Bushnell and contemporary Mennonite theologian J. Denny Weaver, understand the death of Jesus as an example of God’s love.

In this interpretation, Jesus doesn’t endure violence to pay a debt to God. Instead, the death of Jesus is more akin to that of a martyr’s tragic death. These theologians reject violence as a condition for forgiveness.

A 2012 debate in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) about a hymn demonstrates this tension, with a proposed change of hymn lyrics from “on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied” to “the love of God was magnified.” Ultimately, the authors rejected the proposal.

But the conflict demonstrates that Christians are passionate about their different interpretations of Jesus’s death.

Divine violence in atonement

Researchers have shown that penal atonement beliefs predict a negative association with a sense of responsibility for reducing pain and suffering in the world. This is not surprising when violence is incorporated as redemptive into theological frameworks.

I make a connection in my PhD dissertation between accepting divine violence in the atonement and divine violence in eschatology. Of course, this topic is far more complex and nuanced. Nonetheless, Christians are always going through a process of interpretation and negotiation when it comes to sacred texts.

For example, is Jesus the warrior Christ of Revelation 19 riding a warhorse to go into battle against his enemies or the teacher of peace in Matthew 21 who commands his followers to love their enemies just as God perfectly does?

Biblical interpretation and political beliefs

For those who see violence as a tool for redemption, they are more apt to subvert Jesus’s nonviolent teaching with images found in the Biblical book of Revelation. For those who see violence as incompatible with Christian ethics, they will interpret this allegorically, and with humility, paying attention to signs of God not just in their own lives and “insider” group. These two approaches will also inform political beliefs as well.

Consider a recent social media post by Reformed Baptist theologian and pastor John Piper. The post simply quotes Leviticus 19:34:

“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

Piper was quickly labelled “woke” and pushing an “irresponsible” theology by Trump supporters. American theologan Russell Moore noted years ago:

“Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — ‘turn the other cheek’ — to have someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’”

A more responsible evangelical theology

I argue Christians should not believe in a God of violent death, but life. Violent atonement and eschatology portrays a God who is not above revenge and a God who leaves most of humanity hopeless.

We are left asking a series of disturbing questions if God is indeed about to end the world with violence. Why does the tone of this theology resemble the tone of empire, which crushes enemies instead of building bridges with them? Why does Jesus, as One Person of the One God, expect his followers to love their enemies — if God the Father ultimately does not?

All Christians in the U.S. and beyond need to reject violent theology as incompatible with the love of God that was magnified on the cross.

Matthew Burkholder, PhD Candidate, Theological Studies, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trump did not make a public case for the war before it began, because he preferred quick, surprising strikes preceded by theatrical suspense. He presented the vast military buildup in the Persian Gulf as a high-pressure negotiating tactic in the short-lived bargaining sessions over Iran’s nuclear enrichment.

Trump was undoubtedly emboldened by the tactical success of his removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, though that too was not very popular with Americans.

Wars are not necessarily better when the US government invests a huge effort in justifying them. The justification for the disastrous Iraq War, after all, was based on misperceptions, distortions and falsehoods. But by completely disregarding US public opinion before the war, Trump now finds himself in all kinds of trouble as he tries to fight it.

Americans don’t like seeing themselves as aggressors

Political scientist Bruce Jentleson argued that public support for war in the United States depends not just on how the war is going, but on the public’s understanding of the war’s aims. The US public is much more likely to support wars aimed at imposing restraints on aggressive powers than wars aimed at bringing political change to other countries.

That theory explains why the Bush administration made such an effort to claim Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was linked to the September 11 terrorist attacks, even though “regime change” was the aim of the Iraq war.

Regime change is also, quite clearly, the aim of the Iran war. Trump has been talking about it for months, and is still talking about it.

It was only after the bombs started falling on Iran that Trump and his administration began to make the case that Iran was an “imminent threat” to the US. It wasn’t very convincing.

After all, Trump had been boasting until recently that he had “completely obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program the year before. In a video released shortly after the attacks, Trump complained about the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis, the 1983 Hezbollah attack on US marines in Beirut, and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which he said Iran was “probably involved in”.

It was left to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make the convoluted argument that the US was acting in preemptive self-defence, because it knew Israel was going to strike Iran, and that Iran would retaliate against Americans in the Middle East.

That did not play well in a country increasingly wary of Israel. A Gallup poll released just before the war began showed that, for the first time this century, more Americans said their sympathies were with Palestinians than Israelis. Recently, the biggest drop in support for Israel has been among political Independents, whose views have shifted significantly during the Gaza War.

Tucker Carlson, the loudest critic of the Iran war on the right, immediately labelled it “Israel’s war”. Joe Rogan, an influential figure among Trump’s 2024 support base of disillusioned young men, said they felt “betrayed” by the war.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has tried to sell the war to Americans by gloating about the death, destruction and fear being inflicted on Iran. Even as investigations show the US military was responsible for the bombing of a school that killed more than a hundred children, he dismisses rules of military engagement as “stupid”. The most recent Quinnipiac Poll showed Hegseth’s approval rating at 37%.

Americans are unprepared for sacrifice

Despite high-profile opponents like Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump still has most of the MAGA base with him for now. They were never really opposed to foreign wars. What they hated was losing foreign wars, and Trump is promising them swift victory in Iran.

But Trump has not prepared them or anyone else, including his own cabinet, for the costs this war will incur. Especially the disruption to global oil markets, which the International Energy Agency is calling the largest in history, and which will elevate the cost of everything from travel to food.

Trump’s rhetoric about the price of war has hardly been Churchillian. One night he posted on social media that a short term increase in oil prices is “a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”

But the next day he was forced to calm markets by claiming the war was nearly over.

The Iranian regime, whose main goal is survival, is well aware of the political and economic vulnerabilities of the US and its Middle Eastern allies, and these appear to be what it is targeting.

At the beginning of the war, Iran’s seemingly scattered attacks on infrastructure, embassies and hotels in Gulf states were a source of mirth for some American commentators. But these were eventually enough to shut down large swathes of energy production and shipping, and inflict far more pain than Trump or his supporters were expecting.

Trump was already facing the same domestic problem that Joe Biden faced. It doesn’t matter how much you tell Americans about positive GDP, stock market and employment numbers; if they are struggling with the cost of living, their view of both the economy and the President will be bleak.

Trump’s glib dismissals of the price of oil are sounding a lot like his airy reassurances at the beginning of the pandemic.

Few Republicans in Congress have been prepared to stand up to Trump over the war. But as midterm elections approach, many of them will be silently praying he finds an excuse to end it as soon as possible.

David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Scholars have described Trump’s rhetorical style as “unbalanced vituperation”, stressing his constant use of demeaning language, false equivalences and exclusion.

Even more strikingly, a recent study found Trump’s use of violent vocabulary, especially language linked to war and crime, represents a radical departure from US political tradition.

Since the beginning of the war with Iran, Trump’s rhetoric has become even more combative and outrageous, marking an even sharper shift from the language used by his predecessors in similar occasions.

What effect does this have and what does it tell us about the commander-in-chief’s state of mind?

Demeaning opponents

Trump announced the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by calling him a “wretched and vile man”. Later, in a Truth Social post, he called him “one of the most evil people in history” and referred to “his gang of bloodthirsty thugs”.

A few days later, he continued denigrating leaders of the Iranian regime, describing them as “deranged scumbags” whose killing was for him a “great honor”. He has also insulted Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as Iran’s Supreme Leader, describing him as “unacceptable” and a “lightweight”. He also stated during an interview that he believes Mojtaba is alive but “damaged”.

Americans are no strangers to their presidents using strong language to describe adversaries. Ronald Reagan famously referred to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire”, and George W. Bush warned of an “Axis of Evil”.

Yet such rhetoric rarely extended to personal insults against individual foreign leaders. Leaders generally bring a mood to these speeches that recognises their words will be frightening for many people. It also acknowledges that in a war situation, lives will inevitably be lost.

George W. Bush, for example, simply stated that US forces “captured Saddam Hussein alive”. Barack Obama announced to the nation Osama bin Laden’s killing by addressing the mastermind of the worst terrorist attack on US soil simply as “Osama bin Laden, leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist”.

Constant threats

Trump has also shown little restraint in issuing threats. At the beginning of the conflict he stated in an interview that they had not even started hitting Iran hard and that the “big wave” was coming soon. He later posted on Truth Social that he was ready to hit Iran “twenty times harder” and threatened to “make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again”, adding that “death, fire and fury will reign [sic] upon them”. At one point, he even suggested that he might strike Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub again “just for fun”.

This language is not only vitriolic. It also is in sharp contrast with the rhetoric of past US presidents who often emphasised restraint in the use of force and showed willingness to de-escalate military conflicts.

Previous presidents have been very clear about the strength of the US military, but they have also tried to focus on diplomacy and negotiation.

Obama, talking about Syria, famously remarked that “the United States military doesn’t do pinpricks”. Yet, moments later, he asked Congress to postpone a vote authorising the use of force while his administration pursued diplomatic options.

Nixon stated during the Vietnam war that “The peace we seek to win is not victory over any other people, but the peace that comes ‘with healing in its wings’; with compassion for those who have suffered; with understanding for those who have opposed us; with the opportunity for all the peoples of this Earth to choose their own destiny”.

Trump’s threats of escalation also raise concerns about the safety of civilians and the protection of critical infrastructure. He recently stated he “didn’t do anything to do with the energy lines, because having to rebuild that would take years”. This remark suggests some awareness of the consequences of such actions.

Even so, earlier presidents often distinguished explicitly between military targets and civilian populations. George H. W. Bush, during the Gulf War, declared “our quarrel is not with the people of Iraq. We do not wish for them to suffer”.

In 2003, George W. Bush warned Iraqi military and civilian personnel: “do not destroy oils wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people”.

Words matter

It is still unclear why Trump’s rhetoric is so violent and so far removed from the language of virtually every US president before him. A 2020 study found Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric often aims to create a sense of crisis to mobilise his domestic base – or distract from political troubles at home.

Some observers argue Trump has used, or even manufactured, national crises as a mechanism to expand executive power through emergency declarations. Whether this is the case in the current war with Iran remains to be seen.

But words certainly matter.

On December 19 1945, US President Harry S. Truman issued a special message to Congress recommending the Department of War and the Department of the Navy be merged into a single “Department of National Defense”. Between 1947 and 1949, Congress and the executive branch implemented this proposal. Many other countries went through a similar process in the postwar period, replacing the language of “war” from the name of their departments and ministries with the more restrained term “defence”.

Seventy-six years later, in 2025, Trump reversed that tradition with an executive order renaming the Department of Defense as the US Department of War.

This same executive order clearly states that the new name demonstrates a willingness to fight wars at a moment’s notice. And the reason is not only to defend, but to “secure what is ours”.

Viewed in light of the current war with Iran, those words provide some insight into the administration’s thinking. They also invite reflection on other words coming out of the administration and its supporters, including the “Gulf of America”, the idea of Canada as the “51st state”, and even the far-fetched “Trump 2028” chant.

Rodrigo Praino, Professor & Director, Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.