The View from Abroad

Below is an English translation of a spot on speech made last week by Claude Malhuret, a French senator who is largely unknown outside France. Seems like

Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is slipping, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

Washington has become the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a jester high on ketamine in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose higher tariffs on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The ‘king of the deal’ is showing what the art of the deal is on his stomach. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down in front of Putin, but Xi Jinping, seeing such a submissiveness, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a US President capitulated to the enemy. Never has any one of them supported an aggressor against an ally, trampled on the US Constitution, issued so many illegal executive orders, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military senior staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to bend or resign.

What Real Censorship Looks Like

Frequently spearheaded by figures like Elon Musk, the political right often criticizes fact-checking and the suppression of hateful rhetoric on platforms like TwiXter as severe censorship. However, governmental censorship poses a far greater threat. Since Donald Trump initiated his purge of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, climate change facts, and historical records of courageous women and men of color from Defense Department archives, we have witnessed a stark increase in actions that feed his authoritarian ambitions

As David French write in a NYTimes essay:

One of the most frustrating elements of our post-election national conversation was the insistence in some quarters that the election represented a repudiation of censorship and cancel culture. It did not.

Instead, nearly half the American people voted against the party that was actively moving away from extremism — including the far-left censorship regime that has long afflicted America’s elite campuses — and instead voted for the party that didn’t just weaponize government against dissenting voices (through book bans, various anti-“woke” bills and prohibitions against drag shows), it also created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation against its political enemies.

The MAGA movement relentlessly attacked election workers, school board members and anyone else who defied its will to power or dissented from MAGA’s version of American history. Trumpian political correctness is becoming so absurd that The Associated Press reported on Thursday that at the Pentagon “tens of thousands of photos and online posts” have been “marked for deletion,” including a photo of Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, presumably because its name included the word “gay.”

I spent much of my legal career combating censorship and defending free speech and religious liberty. I defended people from across the political spectrum, but I was also very familiar with censorship from the left. I filed lawsuit after lawsuit against universities that, among other things, imposed speech codes, discriminated against Christian student groups and retaliated against conservative professors.

When I filed those cases, I believed the American right had a basic commitment to individual freedom. Today, it does not. It is far more committed to fighting the left now than it was to defending liberty then. As the right rejected libertarianism, it turned against the First Amendment.

And now Trump’s administration and his MAGA movement are the most dangerous and powerful censors in the United States.

When an administration blatantly attacks the First Amendment, it attacks our national identity. The First Amendment is core to the idea of the United States of America. The Supreme Court has protected it even in our nation’s darkest and most dangerous moments.

Read the full essay.

The Wood Chipper Distraction

Do not be distracted, the wood chipper is not about waste. It’s crucial not to be misled: the focus on cutting programs like food stamps is not genuinely about eliminating waste. While the ostensible goal may be to root out waste and fraud, the selective scrutiny applied by Elon Musk’s administration tells a different story.

Programs vital to low-income Americans are being disproportionately targeted. Yes, like any large program, there may be inefficiencies or even fraud within food assistance programs. However, this focus obscures a more significant issue: the lack of scrutiny applied to far more costly initiatives.

Take, for instance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s subsidy programs, which funnel over $20 billion annually to predominantly affluent farmers. As highlighted by Michael Grunwald’s guest essay in The New York Times, these beneficiaries also enjoy a plethora of additional supports: subsidized loans, minimal-condition loans, price supports, import quotas that artificially inflate food prices, generous ad hoc aid for weather and market fluctuations, and mandates that promote environmentally harmful biofuels.

Since the real goal is to further redistribute wealth to the wealthy, these unfair programs are left in place.