I’ve largely avoided commentating on recent events. The murder of Charlie Kirk was a horrific crime. Even as I think that he employed a style of debate that was needlessly provocative (to put it mildly), and he took positions that I think are terrible, no one should be murdered while engaging in peaceful debate and conversation. I was listening to a podcast earlier and I thought the host spoke very powerfully about our politics.

David French had a really good newsletter this week. I’m pretty sure it’s gated to subscribers, but it’s about Article II of the Constitution and the ambiguity of the opening sentence: “The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America.” The problem is in the vagueness of the phrase “executive power”. It’s so open ended that we end up with a chief executive officer who can in a sense do whatever they want as long as they are executing some action, at least in theory.

This week Trump implemented his tariffs universally at 10% and much higher tariffs than that on some countries in particular. Although a few Republicans protested, the vast majority have been deathly silent. The party that claimed to stand for economic freedom has been completely silenced as they have been bound to their leader. I take no delight in this as I wasa a Republican because I believed (and still do) in the freedom of the individual to pursue their lot in life as much as possible as they see fit in both the economic and civic spheres of life.

One of the things I want to use this blog for is documenting my thoughts and feelings over the next four years of the Trump presidency. Obviously there is much to be uncertain of as we ultimately don’t know what he is going to do. As Matt Yglesias has pointed out in his latest newsletter at Slow Boring Trump is a liar and his followers know he is a liar and that is part of the reason they like him.

This is a short piece following on one that Nate Silver wrote in his substack on the growing split between liberals and leftists. His article is anchored to the Israeli-Hamas conflict that grew out of the attacks of October 7. He focuses on the leftists who support the Palestinians versus the liberals who largely support Israel. Nate uses the example to model the spectrum slightly differently as a triangle with MAGA conservatives in one corner, social justice leftists in the other corner, and liberals in the bottom corner.