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In late summer 1944, as the Allies clawed France back from Nazi occupation, Adolf Hitler is reported to have asked one of his generals, “Is Paris burning?”

The führer’s question was more of a demand; Hitler wanted to deploy scorched-earth tactics in the French capital to slow the Anglo-American advance.

Fortunately, the German dictator’s underlings punted and Paris was spared. Today, however, Paris is in flames, along with several other French cities. Rioters have torched cars and buildings and smashed homes and storefronts. Like Hitler before him, Vladimir Putin needs the West ablaze in order to postpone military defeat.

With Russia, nothing comes out of the blue. The timing—coinciding with Donald Trump’s final, complete betrayal of Ukraine, ahead of the November US midterms and presidential elections in France next spring—is no accident.

Everything is telegraphed, and the Kremlin’s hand is plainly visible in the chaos for all those willing to see. Here is Putin’s playbook:

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Europe and NATO are stuck in the past. Linda’s guest is Renew Democracy Initiative CEO Uriel Epshtein, who just got back from a gathering of the top allied security officials at the Warsaw Security Forum. There, Uriel saw firsthand how the West is approaching Russia and Ukraine with yesterday’s playbook. Following Trump’s diesel deal with Russia and restrictions on Ukrainian use of Starlink—and with the midterms right around the corner—Uriel lays out what he thinks it will take for the West to stop Putin.

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Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.

America dealt two grave betrayals to Ukraine in the past week. More are surely coming.

Last Friday, Donald Trump announced that the United States would again buy Russian diesel. When Volodymyr Zelenskyy protested, Trump said that Ukraine needed new leadership (what is it they say about glass houses?).

Today, Ukraine is facing new restrictions on Starshield, the military version of Starlink, introducing a serious new handicap to Kyiv’s battlefield capabilities. Notably, Elon Musk—no fan of Ukraine and Zelenskyy—was quick to suggest that it was Trump who cut off access.

We cannot overstate the seriousness of these transgressions. Trump and Zelenskyy have butted heads before. Now, the administration is preparing for the next step.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor to The Next Move.

From the fire hose that is President Trump, you can only look at a few drops. I would like to look at a particular drop today.

Lately, Trump has been holding rallies, campaigning for Republican candidates. He has always been sensitive to his crowd size. And a report in The New York Times noted that there had been empty seats.

So what if there were empty seats? These arenas are big. But Trump blew a gasket, tweeting, “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country.”

Should be arrested. Don’t gloss over that. Don’t shrug and say, “That’s just Trump being Trump.” This is significant.

Every president has complained about the press, as Wednesday follows Tuesday. But how many have said—repeatedly—that reporters ought to be arrested? Trump’s instincts are authoritarian. This is obvious to some of us but not to others. Or maybe it is obvious to them, too, but too awkward to admit?

Ever since he arrived on the scene, Trump has made clear that he admires dictators, and probably envies them. I have written about this ad nauseam—here, for example. Trump reserves special warmth, and special praise, for a big three: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un.

A Republican president, adored by the “conservative movement,” enamored of communist dictators? This is a crazy age.

In a 2023 interview with Fox News, Trump said that Putin was “top of the line.” So were Xi and Kim, he said. “They’re all top of the line.”

About the Chinese dictator—who is presiding over the most oppressive period in China since the Cultural Revolution—Trump said this: “President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find—there’s nobody like that. The look, the brain, the whole thing.”

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

Almost ten years ago now, Charles Krauthammer warned of the “authoritarian temptation,” increasingly evident on the American right. I will take a second to remind readers who Krauthammer was.

Born in 1950, Krauthammer was a political theorist, psychiatrist, and journalist. He was known as a “conservative” for most of his career, and that he was. He wanted to conserve the liberal tradition embodied in the American founding.

When he was in college, trying to figure out the world, he came across Isaiah Berlin’s Four Essays on Liberty. “A great fog lifted,” he later wrote. “I was forever enlisted on the side of limited, constitutional government—flawed as it was and despised at the time as ‘the system.’”

In the summer of 2017, Krauthammer sat down to write “The Authoritarian Temptation” (published in this volume). It was the last extended essay he ever wrote. He adapted his title from the 1976 book by Jean-François Revel, the French philosopher and journalist: The Totalitarian Temptation.

“In what would have been unimaginable 25 years ago,” wrote Krauthammer, “mature Western democracies are experiencing a surge of ethno-nationalism, a blood-and-soil patriotism tinged with xenophobia, a weariness with parliamentary dysfunction, and an attraction—still only an attraction, not yet a commitment—to strongman rule.”

That attraction would become more like a commitment in due course.

The “most conspicuous symptom” of the trend, wrote Krauthammer, “is a curious and growing affinity for Vladimir Putin, Czar of all the Russias. Remarkably, this tendency is most pronounced on the right. The reversal is head-snapping.”

It was definitely head-snapping in 2017, when Krauthammer was writing. It has for years been the “new normal” (not so new).

“Today,” Krauthammer continued, “some on the right have begun to profess a certain admiration of and attraction to Putinism and his brand of Russian authoritarianism.” The writer found this “jarring,” which is akin to “head-snapping.”

“After decades of left-wing apologists for Russia,” he wrote, “it is now lifelong conservatives who are asking: What’s so bad about Putin anyway?”

Krauthammer listed some of Putin’s crimes, including the murder of political opponents and journalists. He also quoted President Trump, who, challenged on Putin as killer, said, “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

Wrote Krauthammer, “Moral equivalence so shocking, emanating from the elected leader of the United States, is not to be ignored.” Correct. But isn’t it ignored, or at least soft-pedaled, routinely?

Charles (we were friends) died in 2018. He was a hero on the right, a near-nightly commentator on Fox News. If he had lived longer into the Trump era, what would his status have been? Would he have “kept up with the times,” “gotten with the program”? Hopped aboard “the Trump train,” as so many did?

I doubt it.

Interviewed in 2013, Charles said, “You’re betraying your whole life if you don’t say what you think—and you don’t say it honestly and bluntly.” In an email to me, he said, “I must admit that when I write these days I have the feeling that everything I say is so perfectly obvious that there’s no need to write it. Except that these days, that’s all the more reason to write it.”

Yes. Many times in recent years, I have mentioned Charles and “The Authoritarian Temptation.” Why do I keep doing so? I think the following exchange will explain.

After a Krauthammer column—another one—on Israel and the Palestinians, I emailed, “Charles, I find that I can barely write about the Arab–Israeli conflict anymore, so weary am I from doing it, year after year, decade after decade. I’m glad you’re not weary—or that you push through it, to say the necessary, again.”

Charles replied: “I know exactly of your weariness. My reluctance to write about it once again is enormous. It’s only a sense of duty—and the shocking realization of how few are prepared to say the obvious truth anymore—that makes me do it.”

I know exactly what he means, always have.

Last week, Putin celebrated his birthday. Trump placed a phone call to him, to wish him a happy one. Two days later, Trump announced an oil deal with Putin, slamming the Ukrainians in the bargain.

Putin’s birthday in 2006 was a particularly happy one for him. On that day, he got the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, one of the bravest journalists in the world. I hope there are monuments to her in Russia someday. And I believe the United States should be on the side of the brave and the murdered.

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Americans aren’t the only ones going to the polls this fall. A week before the midterms, Israelis will vote for a new parliament—and possibly, a new prime minister. With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Gaza playing an outsize role in US politics, the campaign in Israel will be sure to have an effect across the Atlantic. Will Benjamin Netanyahu persevere, or will he experience the same fate as Viktor Orbán in Hungary? Linda speaks with Tel Aviv-based analyst Eli Kowaz about what it means for Israel, the United States—plus, what it’s like to raise a young family in a nation at war.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor to The Next Move.

Not long ago, I was in Washington, DC, for a few days. The visit left a bitter taste in my mouth. I have thought a little about this bitterness. Bear with me for a moment.

I am a DC-lover, from way back. I have always loved the American founding, the American story—our project, our adventure. Washington, DC, is a physical manifestation of much that is important about America.

Then there is the personal. Though I was born and raised in Michigan, I am from something fairly rare: an old Washington family. All four of my father’s grandparents were born within city limits. So were his parents, and so was he.

My great-grandfather had his shop at 13th and F, not far from the White House. Walter Johnson, the “Big Train,” was a customer. (He was the great pitcher on the Washington Senators.) I have a letter from FDR to my great-grandfather, thanking him for a pair of cufflinks my great-grandfather had sent him for his birthday.

In college, I spent a semester in Washington, sort of a domestic semester abroad. My program included an internship in the office of Senator Bob Dole (who was elected majority leader by his fellow Republicans that semester). Imagine me, a political junkie, in that atmosphere.

Some years after college, I lived in Washington, and experienced many wonderful things, professional and personal. So, it’s hard for me to separate the city from my own life.

Since moving from Washington to New York in 1998, I have visited DC regularly, and my heart always swelled as I emerged from Union Station and saw the Capitol dome. I hesitate to say that I am a patriot because that’s for other people to say, and the word “patriot” has been grossly abused in recent years—but I am.

A time or two, I have slipped. I remember a day during the Obama years when I saw the White House and felt my lip curl. I was particularly cross at Obama, for a reason I don’t remember. But I quickly corrected myself, uncurling my lip.

Officeholders come and go. Some we like, some we don’t. But it is always America, always our constitutional republic, our way of life.

When I was coming of age, I noticed that some people liked Israel when a Labor government was in charge but not when a Likud government was in charge, and vice versa. I didn’t want to be like that.

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On my most recent visit to Washington, I emerged from Union Station without much swelling of the heart. I thought of January 6 and the physical assault on the Capitol, meant to stop a constitutional process. Lots of rotten things happen in America. We’re not a utopia, for heaven’s sake. (“Utopia” means “nowhere.”)

But Donald Trump called the rioters “patriots,” “political prisoners,” and “hostages.” The moment he was sworn in the second time, he pardoned or granted clemency to them all. Is this American? Remotely so?

On the façade of the Labor Department now is a huge banner showing Trump’s face. This strikes me as rather North Korean. Worse, I think, is the banner of Trump hanging on the Justice Department. He has turned a department that belongs to all of us into his personal legal shop.

The sight of the White House revolted me. It is being warped, blown out of proportion, disfigured. Trump is “renovating” the house, and renovations to historic buildings are natural. But Trump is acting without any consultations, any commissions, any deliberations—simply on his own impulse and whim. “L’état, c’est moi.”

In the particular disfigurement of the White House, I’m tempted to see a more general disfigurement: of the Republican Party, of the conservative movement—of, hell, America.

I have always loved the White House. It is—or was?—a perfect republican mansion, perfectly suited to our republic. Handsome, stately, but not too grand or show-offy. Versailles belongs in France, not the US. When I was a student, my grandmother gave me a two-volume history of the White House, by William Seale. That was a gift.

On the National Mall, I walked alongside the Reflecting Pool, the subject of one of the craziest controversies of the Trump era. Crazily, Trump claimed that Democratic activists had vandalized the pool in order to make him look bad. He demanded that people be prosecuted.

Here is the headline over a news article last month: “Contractor Blames Its Own Repairs, Not Vandals, for Reflecting Pool Failure.”

Between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, Trump is planning a triumphal arch, spoiling the tableau, in my opinion and that of authorities on such matters. The arch has been dubbed the “Arc de Trump.” Last year, a reporter asked Trump about the arch: “Who’s it for?” Trump pointed to himself and answered, “Me.”

Personally, I would rather we won the Iran war than erected this arch.

The Kennedy Center was a painful sight. In January 1964, two months after JFK’s assassination, Congress said that this center would be “the sole national monument to his memory within the city of Washington and its environs.”

I spent many happy nights at the “KenCen,” especially with my grandmother. Afterward, we would usually go to Thomas Sweet in Georgetown for ice cream.

Last year, Trump put his name on the Kennedy Center—put it above Kennedy’s name. What kind of man would do such a thing? This year, a judge ordered Trump’s name removed, ruling that only Congress could rename the center. So now, there is a giant tarp on the façade, covering up the name “Kennedy.” And Trump is threatening to raze the building.

We are in a weird psychological realm here.

I walked past the State Department. Until very recently, there was a Hall of Flags, displaying the flags of all the countries with which we had diplomatic relations. I thought this was pretty neat when I was a student. All of those flags—almost 200 of them—have been replaced by American flags.

Is this patriotism? I think it’s closer to jingoism, and I think it bespeaks an insecurity unbecoming of so great a nation as ours.

Far worse, of course, is our abandonment of the Ukrainians and the administration’s tender regard for Putin. Passing the State Department, I thought of a particular official.

Darren Beattie is a “Senior Advisor for Western Hemisphere Affairs” and he is also the “President of the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.” (Trump renamed the US Institute of Peace after himself last year.) During the Biden administration, Beattie did some tweeting:

“Putin>>>>>NATO.” (That means that Putin is five times greater than NATO.) “NATO is a greater threat to American liberty than the Chinese Communist Party.” “Putin is superior to Biden in every way.” “Lloyd Austin can wash Putin’s feet.” (Austin, a retired Army general, was our secretary of defense.)

To me, this is sickening and abnormal.

Around town, I saw National Guardsmen, looking bored, listless, and, possibly, embarrassed. Trump ordered their presence in the capital. What is their purpose? As a rule, I am comforted and cheered by the sight of cops and soldiers. This seemed something else: a presidential display.

Above, I quoted Louis XIV: “L’état, c’est moi.” Trump, more comically, said, “I am the code”—he said this to an architect on his White House renovation, who had warned of fire- and safety-code violations. Last year, Trump tweeted a message that was maybe less comical: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

This is more a caesar than a president.

I am not a sunshine patriot. We must be patriotic in storms, too, including self-generated ones. But I doubt I will ever see Washington in the same glow as before. “So what?” you say. Why should my views and feelings—my dismay and disappointment—make a difference to anyone else? They shouldn’t. But to borrow from Wordsworth: oh, the difference to me.

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Extremists shouldn’t have a monopoly on inspiration. So we’re building a positive vision for a free society.

Liberal democracy is losing ground. Even though liberalism is where we get individual freedom, checks and balances, and human flourishing, the very word “liberal” has practically become a slur among extremists of all stripes. It’s code for cringe, uncool, cheugy.

That’s why we’re launching FOFcon—the Future of Freedom Convention—on December 9-10 in Washington, DC, where we’ll be laying out the blueprint for everything that a free society can be.

It’s easy to call out bad guys like Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson. But simply stating what you’re against is a recipe for political disaster.

People are tired of the resistance—it’s time to offer a positive vision for liberalism that promotes human flourishing, protects minorities, advances ideological diversity, and guarantees personal agency.

We’ll be focused on making this argument in a way that can resonate with people beyond the usual suspects. We’ll hear from military leaders about building an esprit de corps and motivating people to risk their lives for an idea that’s bigger than them. We’ll talk to religious leaders about how to inspire faith and devotion. To political leaders about what a positive vision for our society might look when we’re not solely focused on attacking the other side. To comedians as they skewer some of the subjects that people in politics usually avoid. And of course, RDI’s dissident community will talk about their vision for a free society, having experienced its alternative.

Join us at FOFcon

Expect two days filled with sharp debates and walk away with unexpected allies and a positive vision for the future that can go head-to-head with anything the demagogues are selling.

Oh, and that terminology—the Future of Freedom Convention—is deliberate. We used to run a “conference”—everyone in DC has a conference. Circular agreement, soulless meeting rooms, workshops that participants forget before they’ve even finished. We’re not doing that. FOFcon is heterodox. It’s lively. What Comic Con is for superhero fans, FOFcon is for freedom fighters.

We hope you’ll join us.

Join us in DC on December 9-10

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Political dissidents know dictatorship firsthand, and they’re telling us: “We’re worried about America.”

The United States has long been a refuge for people fleeing persecution abroad. These dissidents are often the proudest Americans, with a strong belief in our democracy and values shaped by real-life experience. Now, four weeks out from the midterm elections, dissidents want their neighbors to know that they’ve seen the full movie—and they recognize the preview.

If you share these dissidents’ dreams and their concerns, share this video—and vote like you’ve waited your entire life for the chance.

Dear America was produced by David Munro and V. Scott Balcerek of the Unscripted Company in partnership with the Renew Democracy Initiative and Protect Democracy, with participation from the World Liberty Congress.

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From JD Vance to two-thirds of the Supreme Court, Catholicism is a real force among American conservatives, and the religion is attracting new recruits on the right. Journalist Nate Weisberg watched his friend from college convert, joining a burgeoning group of new, young Catholics working in right-wing politics. Linda chats with Nate about his New York Magazine piece, “The Young Catholic Elite Poised to Take Over MAGA,” and asks why an old faith is newly influential.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor to The Next Move.

In recent days, Vladimir Putin has intensified his campaign of murder and terror in Ukraine. Also, President Trump has invited Putin to attend the G20 meeting in Florida this coming December.

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said, “We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage, not just with the president, but with other world leaders. We hope that’s an invitation he’ll accept.”

Putin can “engage” with them whenever he wants—by phone, perhaps. But at a G20 meeting, while his hands are soaked in blood? The old Rubio would have cried bloody murder.

Trump, however, has always wanted Putin to resume his place at international gatherings, without preconditions. As soon as he became president in 2017, he wanted Putin to return to the G7, making it the G8 again.

The United States and other members had suspended Russia from the group after its invasion of Ukraine in 2014. But Trump wanted Russia readmitted, without any change “on the ground”—specifically, Ukrainian ground.

From the G7 summit in 2018, held in Canada, Trump said, “This used to be the G8, not the G7. And something happened a while ago, where Russia is no longer in.” That “something” was Russia’s invasion of a neighbor.

Putin has not been to a G20 meeting since 2019. He attended the one in 2014, held in Australia months after the Russian invasion. He was mingling with other leaders, slapping backs. When he got to the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, he extended his hand. After a second or two, Harper took it, saying, “Well, Vladimir, I’ll shake your hand, but I really have only one thing to say to you, and that is, get out of Ukraine.”

Putin smirked that smirk of his and said, “Well, I’m not in Ukraine.” Harper then said, “That’s why it’s a waste of my time to talk to you.”

(I got this account from Harper in a 2018 podcast.)

What manner of man, what manner of leader, are we inviting to Florida? Here is a news report from a couple of days ago: “Russian missile and drone strikes killed at least four people, including a child, in Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight …”

Another report says, “A Russian drone strike on the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv killed at least two people on Monday.”

There is footage, if you can bear it, of Russian forces dropping bombs on a man walking his dogs.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

It’s important to know some names and faces, lest the dead, the murdered, be mere abstractions. A Ukrainian soldier, Danylo Ivzhenko, posted a tribute to his wife, Maria: “Today, a Russian attack on a business center killed the most important person in my life. … Last year, we took out a mortgage and planned to have a baby this winter.”

In another attack, a 2-year-old boy named Kyrylo was killed. So were his grandmother, both grandfathers, and other relatives. His mother survived, severely wounded.

Russian forces have kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children, and now these children, older, are being forced to fight in the Russian army against Ukraine.

Then there is starvation—the deliberate starvation of Ukrainians. One headline reads, “ ‘Hell on earth’: last residents eat weeds to survive in Russian-occupied Oleshky.” Anne Applebaum commented, “Another mass famine, carried out by another cruel regime.”

In 2018, Applebaum published a book about the Holodomor, i.e., the starving of Ukrainians by the Kremlin in the 1930s. (“Holodomor” means, literally, “murder through starvation.”) In his own book—a groundbreaking study in 1987—Robert Conquest used the term “terror-famine.”

Putin’s Russia is aiming to destroy Ukraine thoroughly. The headline over this article reads, “Russian Attacks Destroy Millions of Books, the Heart of Ukrainian Culture.”

This is to say nothing of what Putin’s dictatorship is doing to Russians in Russia. In 2017, I wrote about a political prisoner, incredibly brave, as such prisoners tend to be. He is Yuri Dmitriev, a researcher associated with Memorial, the organization founded by Andrei Sakharov and other Soviet-era dissidents. (Memorial shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and needless to say it is now banned in Russia.)

A week ago, Dmitriev was “rushed from Penal Colony No. 18 in Mordovia to a prison medical facility in the village of Barashevo after a suspected stroke,” says this report. The prisoner is now 70.

Vladimir Putin is not a normal head of state or government. Every day, he directs a war of conquest, filled with atrocities. War crime after war crime. Obviously, democratic governments often have to deal with monsters such as Putin in the diplomatic realm. But they do not have to invite these monsters to routine international gatherings.

In 1931, Nancy Astor, the British parliamentarian, met Stalin and had a question for him: “When are you going to stop killing people?” That is the central question, screamingly urgent.

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Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.

For over two decades, since the moment I retired from chess to stand up against Putin’s rising dictatorship, I’ve been asked, “Aren’t you worried about your safety?”

My friend and opposition colleague Boris Nemtsov was murdered in cold blood in front of the Kremlin on February 27, 2015, and the questions redoubled.

I always tried to downplay this uncomfortable line of inquiry, relying on a set of stock answers while I was on a book tour for Winter Is Coming.

“Would it help if I were worried?”

“I don’t fly Aeroflot and I don’t drink tea with strangers.”

“I decided long ago that I was going to do what I knew was right.”

The Kremlin’s fondness for international assassinations of its critics and enemies has a long history. This year, Moscow has ramped up its covert actions and sabotage campaign across Europe. So today’s news naming me and my long-time associate and Free Russia Forum co-founder Ivan Tyutrin as assassination targets cannot be called a surprise—but it’s still a shock.

Neither I nor Ivan have been told explicitly that we were the targets whose names are redacted in the indictment of the assassins. We were, however, warned by security services in Lithuania and the US that our lives were in danger and that we should take precautions, which I did and will continue to do.

But I will not stop and I will not hide, even if I thought it was possible to do so. I believe that the best defense is a good offense. My family and I will not truly be safe as long as Putin is in power in Russia—a circumstance shared by millions. And so I will continue to do everything I can to rally the free world against Putin’s murderous dictatorship, especially by supporting Ukraine militarily and economically—and punishing Russia in similar fashion.

In fact, I’m writing these words from Strasbourg, France, where we are doing our best to bring pressure via the European Court of Human Rights. It is vital to create legal mechanisms to release frozen Russian funds, especially in Belgium, and we greatly appreciate PACE President Petra Bayr’s leadership in this regard. Expect more news on this front tomorrow.

My thanks to everyone who joins me in this cause and to those who have sent me kind words of support after this news.

A note from RDI CEO Uriel Epshtein: I’m lucky. Having been born in the US to Soviet parents, I only ever heard about life under dictatorship. But now things are getting real: I reached out to all of you on Monday noting that the security situation had changed. Now, the full story has leaked, and we can speak a bit more openly.

This is a scary situation, but as Garry said, worrying won’t change anything. The only way out is through. Our safety and the safety of countless millions hinge on Putin’s ultimate defeat. So RDI has no intention of backing down. We’ll continue to deliver aid to the frontlines in Ukraine, support dissidents here in the US, and wage the narrative battle on The Next Move. I also can’t hide the fact that doing this kind of work has gotten more expensive. We have to take more precautions and spend more money on security, both physical and digital.

We need you to help make it possible. You can advance this work by supporting RDI directly, becoming a premium subscriber, or gifting a subscription. The fight continues!

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Where is America’s only living former Republican president, George W. Bush? Where are the titans of industry from companies like Amazon? The Supreme Court justices, lawyers at Paul, Weiss and other top firms, and politicians on Capitol Hill? The media leaders at outlets like The Washington Post? In America’s moment of democratic crisis, prominent figures who could have stood up to MAGA demagoguery bent the knee or simply disappeared. Linda’s latest guest has a new book out investigating where all of these would-be guardians ran off to. Jacob Weisberg is the author of Profiles in Cowardice and former editor-in-chief of The Slate Group. Tune in to find out why so many are sitting things out.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor to The Next Move.

In the White House, President Trump has what he calls the “Presidential Walk of Fame.” It includes portraits of all the presidents—except one. In the place of Joe Biden, there is an image of an autopen.

Trump and others contend, or pretend, that it was scandalous for Biden to use an autopen. But this is standard practice in political offices.

In 1984, I was an intern for Senator Bob Dole. I was introduced to the autopen. My teenage self was scandalized. It seemed so impure—dishonest. I had a lot to learn …

The White House website—the official, governmental site—says, “AUTOPEN. 46th President. 2021–2025.” The accompanying text begins this way:

“Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History. Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”

Let me ask you: What should future presidents, future White Houses, say about Trump? What should be pictured in the place of Trump himself? How would Republicans like that?

Last Thursday, Trump was hosting Xi Jinping. They paused in front of the “autopen portrait” and had a good laugh together. Proudly, the White House tweeted this moment around.

Who is Xi Jinping? He is the boss of the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP imprisons, tortures, and kills some of the best people in China—democrats striving for basic freedoms. The CCP is committing genocide against the Uyghur people. (This was the determination of the US State Department in 2021.) The CCP has crushed Tibet and threatens to do the same to Taiwan.

This government, the Chinese government, is a mortal enemy of the United States and all free countries.

If you think that what Trump did with Xi in the White House is wrong, you do not suffer from “TDS”—“Trump Derangement Syndrome”—as many will tell you (as they do me regularly). You are just a decent American.

I think back to an episode in 2019. Biden was launching his campaign for president. He referred to Kim Jong-un as a “dictator” and a “tyrant.” That is the least of what he is. Kim presides over one of the most monstrous regimes ever conceived by man.

Trump has always been chummy with him, even lovey-dovey. If you would like the nauseating details, consult a piece of mine published in October 2020: “Trump and Dictators.”

Kim responded to Biden, calling him a “fool of low IQ” and an “imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being.” Trump tweeted his approval:

“I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me [regarding nuclear weapons], & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?”

Among other things, note the respectful “Chairman Kim” versus “Swampman Joe Biden.”

Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, was asked about this—Trump’s chortling with Kim over Biden’s IQ, etc. She said, simply, “I think they agree in their assessment of former vice president Joe Biden.”

Again: Is it right for US presidents to joke with Communist dictators about other American leaders? Does that sit well with you? Who has the TDS? Those who object or those who think it’s swell, when Trump does it?

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In 2006, Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan dictator, traveled to New York to address the United Nations. In that address, he said, “The devil came here yesterday”—meaning the American president, George W. Bush.

Congressman Charlie Rangel of New York was a left-wing Democrat and a fierce critic of Bush. But listen to what he said:

“George Bush is the president of the United States and represents the entire country. Any demeaning public attack against him is viewed by Republicans and Democrats, and all Americans, as an attack on all of us.”

And listen to Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House:

“Hugo Chávez abused the privilege that he had of speaking at the UN. In doing so, in the manner in which he characterized the president, he demeaned himself and he demeaned Venezuela. Hugo Chávez fancies himself a modern-day Simón Bolívar, but all he is is an everyday thug.”

An everyday thug—exactly.

Can Republicans rise to the level of Rangel and Pelosi? They should be ashamed not to.

When I wrote about the 2019 episode concerning Kim, Trump, and Biden, I received a letter from a student—the president of his College Republicans club. He said that he had read my articles about North Korea and its horrors. My interviews with escapees and defectors.

Some of his fellow club members, he said, were going along with Trump on the loveliness, or admirability, of “Chairman Kim.” “But I want you to know that some of us are still holding the line and fighting the good fight.”

This student ended his letter as follows: “Though you are not a Republican anymore, I figured you would take a little encouragement in knowing that there are some Young Republicans trying to hold the line, despite the pressure to capitulate.”

To resist the pressure to capitulate: a hard thing and a great thing.

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Uriel Epshtein is the CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.

Recently, we were advised to increase our security. Then, just the other week, federal authorities released the reason why: the Russian regime is hunting opponents on American soil.

The Bureau busted a spy ring in the US. Intelligence officers from the FSB—that’s Putin’s version of the KGB—hired a Brooklyn man to surveil prominent Russian pro-democracy activists. Then the Russians offered their contractor tens of thousands of dollars to “eliminate” the target. We are grateful to the brave law enforcement officers who thwarted this scheme.

We have the privilege of working with countless dissidents here in the US, including, of course, our chairman and founder—Garry Kasparov—one of Putin’s most prominent opponents. The Renew Democracy Initiative (publisher of The Next Move) has been at the forefront of calling for the US government to do more to protect those who flee to our shores in search of freedom. We have been and remain vocal in pushing back against political extremism and dictators worldwide. Given the nature of our work, we’re not always well received in some circles, so we take security seriously. But we haven’t been directly targeted (up until recently).

Now we are taking additional precautions to ensure our colleagues’ safety.

Needless to say, these precautions aren’t free. And so, I’m asking you, The Next Move community, to stand with us.

Here’s how you can help:

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Sincerely,

Uriel Epshtein
CEO, Renew Democracy Initiative

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Paul Gross is a writer on Israeli and global politics, based in Jerusalem. He has been published in outlets in Israel, the US, and the UK. He is the author of the recently published book: To Be a Free People in Our Land: Zionism, Liberal Democracy, and Israel’s Hinge Election.

Israelis go to the polls on October 27—one month from today—with their country’s future as a liberal democracy at stake. That is not hyperbole, any more than it would have been if a Hungarian had written those words ahead of the election that brought Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party back to power in 2010.

When Orbán declared Hungary an “illiberal democracy” in 2014, he offered a template that other populist leaders would study closely: pack the courts with loyalists, neutralize the election commission, and above all, capture the media.

I moved to Israel nearly two decades ago. Watching Israeli politics in that time, especially over the past few years, it is hard not to see Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party very consciously working from the same playbook—and not only because of Netanyahu’s oft-demonstrated bromance with the former Hungarian prime minister. One Orbán ally remarked that the two men “belong to the same political family.” In 2023, a member of Poland’s own populist government (itself consciously aping Orbán’s) confirmed that Israel’s new administration had consulted Warsaw on how to “reform” the judiciary.

And that judicial “reform” (the government’s preferred parlance) was this Israeli coalition’s opening act, announced a couple of weeks after Netanyahu had successfully brought the necessary coalition of parties together following the country’s last national election in November 2022.

Much like the Republican Party in the US, Netanyahu’s Likud was once a mainstream center-right party; as with America’s Republicans, it’s now committed to an illiberal agenda.

Alongside his own Likud, Netanyahu invited in far-right religious nationalists with an explicit disregard for the rule of law, bent on expanding and solidifying the Jewish presence in the West Bank; and ultra-Orthodox parties with a narrow sectarian agenda of ensuring public funding for their educational institutions and keeping their community exempt from military service.

All the parties’ varied ambitions required that Israel’s powerful Supreme Court be effectively neutered, and so all were united in their desire to “reform” the judiciary in such a way that it would be effectively powerless to check or balance the executive.

The comparison with Hungary does break down in one crucial respect. Hungary’s illiberal transition proceeded for over a decade with only modest domestic resistance; it took the exhaustion of the public with flagrant corruption and a collapsing economy to finally topple Orbán this year.

Israel’s experience has been the opposite. When Justice Minister Yariv Levin unveiled the judicial overhaul, it triggered nine months of sustained mass protest—hundreds of thousands of Israelis, week after week, joined by hi-tech leaders, air force pilots, and even a cabinet minister who was fired and then reinstated after his warning was vindicated.

Polish and Hungarian scholars who came to witness the protests—and whom I interviewed—declared Israeli civil society as a model for their own countries, where a spontaneous civic uprising for liberal democracy failed to materialize.

Israel’s civic resistance drew its language and symbolism not from abstract liberal theory but from the country’s own Declaration of Independence. In the absence of a written constitution, the Declaration of Independence has functioned as a statement of the Israeli founders’ intent. Though it has no formal status in Israeli law, it has nevertheless been invoked by Israel’s Supreme Court as evidence that Israel was established as a state adhering to the fundamentals of liberal democracy, such as freedom of the press.

That founding text brings us to a signpost of what was to come, five years before the 2023 attempted overhaul.

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In 2018, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed the Nation-State Law. Pitched by its architects as the preamble to a future constitution, the Nation-State Law—a Basic Law with quasi-constitutional status—was intended to be an authoritative statement of “what the State of Israel is,” effectively superseding the Declaration.

The “what” outlined by the new law is the nation-state of the Jewish people, but without any qualifying language alluding to democracy or equal rights for all citizens—including non-Jews. The Nation-State Law further demoted Arabic from an official language to a language with “special status”—an insult to Israel’s Arab minority, and especially to the Arabic-speaking Druze who send their children to serve in the Israeli military.

What is so revealing about its authors’ agenda is not primarily its legal substance, which was modest, but what it omitted. An alternative draft had been proposed that explicitly folded in the Declaration’s language on equality and rights “irrespective of religion, race or gender.” It was rejected. Then-Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked declared that “Zionism will not continue to bend its neck to a system of individual rights,” while the principal promoter of the Nation-State Law, Yariv Levin (the same figure who would later lead the judicial overhaul), boasted of having kept the word “equality” out of the final text altogether. The Nation-State Law was the ideological rehearsal for the institutional assault to follow.

(The Knesset member who had proposed the draft incorporating the Declaration’s commitment to equal rights was not a member of the left-wing opposition, but the veteran Likudnik Benny Begin, son of the first Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin. His father self-defined as a “liberal-nationalist” and was a lifelong believer in a strong judiciary, empowered to guard against tyranny of the majority—an indication of just how far today’s illiberal Likud has traveled from its roots.)

To be clear, criticism of Israel’s Supreme Court and calls for its reform are entirely legitimate, and have historically come from both left and right. Israel’s system genuinely is unusual: as stated, no written constitution; a legislature with almost no independence from the executive; and a party-list system that leaves individual Knesset members almost entirely beholden to their party leader rather than to voters.

The Court has de facto stepped into the breach as the principal check on executive power, leaning on a Basic Law passed in the early nineties, intending to protect “Human Dignity and Liberty”. But there is a crucial distinction between narrowing judicial power and dismantling it; or between rebalancing a system with a too-powerful judiciary and replacing it with an all-powerful executive.

Every one of the 2023 “reform” proposals—replacing apolitical legal advisors with government loyalists, an override clause requiring only a bare 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, immunizing Basic Laws from review while leaving them just as easy to pass as ordinary legislation—removed an existing check without adding a new one.

A government genuinely committed to liberal democracy would approach reform differently. Ideally, Israel would finally complete the constitution its own Declaration promised in 1948, entrenching rights and institutional limits beyond the reach of any parliamentary majority. Short of that, restraining the Court’s powers could be defensible, but only as part of a package that strengthens other checks in tandem, not as a unilateral transfer of unchecked power to the executive.

A serious, comprehensive Israeli reform could include: a second parliamentary chamber the government does not automatically control with a majority; and an electoral system that gives individual members of parliament independence from party leadership and genuine accountability to voters.

If a written constitution proves impossible, reform might focus on changes to how Basic Laws are passed and amended in the Knesset—and only then, measured restrictions on judicial power. Reform without those counterweights is not reform at all. It is simply the road to an Orbánist regime, paved with the same intentions.

Israel’s patriotic protest movement, inspired by the Zionist dream of a Jewish and democratic state, understood very well that the government’s plans were a betrayal of the country’s founding values. This looming election will tell us whether a majority of the country shares that appreciation of what’s at stake.

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Aaron Lea and Boruch Taskin are analysts and essayists working at the intersection of geopolitics and political economy. They have published in The Moscow Times, Kasparov.org, La Razón, desk.russie, and other outlets. Their book, “Special Operation Donald Trump: The Machinery of Democracy’s Replacement,” is forthcoming in 2026.

From A to Z: a partial inventory of the tactics and tools President Donald Trump is using to undermine American democracy.

America did not lose itself suddenly—it voluntarily surrendered its shame. When impunity became the norm and cynicism became a license for power, the internal prohibition disappeared. This psychological shift became the catalyst for systemic transformation. Behind the rhetoric of liberation (”now we can do anything”—straight from Fyodor Dostoyevsky) followed deliberate engineering: a set of specific legal, budgetary, and administrative instruments that allow constitutional traditions to be circumvented without formally breaking the law.

This inventory contains no moral judgments—only mechanisms documented in public sources, court decisions, executive orders, and administration reports. Each entry is a neutral category of actions Trump employed across his first and second terms. Some entries describe mechanisms already implemented; others document potential risks and announced initiatives of the second term. The goal is not moral condemnation but systematic mapping—to show how individual measures, from personnel purges to district redraws, combine into an architecture of democratic subversion. This is not a “conspiracy theory.” It is a description of institutional dynamics in which legality is formally observed while the spirit of procedures—independence, accountability, adversarial competition—is systematically destroyed. And these deliberate actions are only the opening chapter of the era of America’s dismantling: its transformation into a pure and unadulterated form of Trumpocracy—or, in other terms, electoral totalitarianism.

Democracies do not die from a single blow. They die from a political alphabet. This one, for example:

A — Attack on Independent Agencies

Instrument: firing regulatory commissioners without cause, undermining their institutional autonomy.

First term: the firing of FBI Director James Comey (2017) as an attempt to obstruct the Russia investigation.

Second term: the firing of FTC Democratic members Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in March 2025 without lawful cause; a federal court ruled the firings illegal. The Supreme Court is now considering Trump v. Slaughter, which could grant the president unlimited authority to remove independent agency heads at will.

B — Budgetary Weaponization (Impoundment)

Instrument: reinterpreting the Impoundment Control Act to allow the White House to withhold congressional appropriations without legislative approval.

Second term: Russell Vought’s OMB refused to execute appropriations lying within Congress’s exclusive authority, illegally withholding funds already approved by the legislature.

Second term: the administration withheld approximately $26 billion in budgetary obligations for fiscal year 2025, threatening funding for federal institutions and programs.

Second term: in April 2026, the White House notified Congress of the withholding of $19 billion in foreign assistance under the guise of “closing terminated programs.”

C — Career Service Purge (Schedule F)

Instrument: reclassifying up to 50,000 civil servants as political appointees, stripping them of whistleblower protections.

First term: the Schedule F executive order (October 2020) reclassified tens of thousands of civil servants as political appointees, removing their protections (later reversed by Biden).

Second term: in February 2026, the administration finalized the “Schedule Policy/Career” rule, classifying approximately 50,000 employees as at-will workers who can be dismissed without cause.

D — Delegitimization of Electoral Processes

Instrument: preemptively declaring election results “fraudulent” when outcomes are unfavorable.

First term: after the 2020 elections, Trump repeatedly pressured Vice President Pence not to certify results, calling them “stolen” without evidence.

Second term: after Republicans lost a Virginia referendum in April 2026, Trump declared the vote “rigged.”

Second term: Trump threatened “serious legal and criminal review” over California’s redistricting initiative.

E — Epistemic Fragmentation

Instrument: supporting platforms that construct hermetically sealed information realities (Truth Social, algorithmic polarization).

Second term: in 2025-26, Trump published approximately 6,200 posts on Truth Social, using the platform to spread disinformation about elections, immigrants, and the Iran war.

Second term: Truth Social became a vector for manipulative videos, conspiracy theories, and health disinformation, frequently without labeling of AI-generated content.

Second term: researchers described Trump as the “first generative AI president” for his deployment of deepfakes to mock opponents.

F — Federal Grants as Leverage

Instrument: conditioning the distribution of funds (representing up to 36% of state revenues) on the political loyalty of governors.

Second term: in January 2026, the White House demanded compliance reports on federal grants from 14 Democrat-led states (California, New York, and others) under the guise of fraud prevention.

Second term: federal bureaus notified 13 Democrat-led states of delays in homeless housing grant payments due to their “sanctuary” status.

G — Gerrymandering

Instrument: the systematic redrawing of electoral districts to lock in structural advantage for one party (REDMAP, the post-Rucho reality).

2010s (REDMAP): the Republican Party invested tens of millions of dollars in state legislative races ahead of the 2010 census, gaining control over mapmaking for a decade.

Second term: the Supreme Court permitted Texas to use a new district map giving Republicans up to five additional House seats.

Second term: Florida’s Governor DeSantis drew a map converting 24 of 28 districts into Republican seats, despite a direct constitutional prohibition.

Robinson v. Callais (April 29, 2026)—six to three—partisan justification now fully shields racial gerrymandering from challenge. Tennessee/Memphis as the immediate consequence.

H — Hubris Syndrome: Arrogance and the Hypertrophy of Executive Power

Instrument: the expanded use of executive orders to circumvent the legislative process.

Second term: in February 2026, Trump threatened to impose national voter ID requirements and enact election law by executive order if Congress failed to act.

First term: the administration planned to sell $7 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia, bypassing Congress to avoid a legislative block.

I — Immunity for Loyal Structures

Instrument: exempting the defense-industrial complex and private prisons from independent audit and competitive bidding requirements.

Second term: private prison company GEO Group received a $426 million security contract through Donald Trump’s Super PAC and filed a Supreme Court petition seeking immunity from lawsuits over its use of forced prison labor.

J — Juridical Selectivity

Instrument: using the Justice Department to prosecute opponents and protect allies.

Second term: the Justice Department reopened criminal proceedings against former FBI Director James Comey over an Instagram post featuring seashells reading “86 47”—allegedly an implicit incitement to kill Trump.

Second term: Republican Senator Thom Tillis called the case “political retribution” and “deliberate persecution.”

K — Negative Selection of Personnel

Instrument: appointing to key positions on the criterion of personal loyalty rather than competence.

Second term: the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi for a “passive approach to prosecuting political opponents.”

Second term: the appointment of Trump’s personal attorney Todd Blanche as acting Attorney General (April 2026).

L — Legitimization of Impunity

Instrument: mass pardons for participants in political violence (January 6, 2021).

Second term: on the first day of the second term (January 20, 2025), pardons issued to nearly 1,600 participants in the January 6 Capitol assault.

Second term: the pardon of businessman Paul Walczak after his mother attended a closed MAGA Inc. fundraising dinner, paying $1 million for access.

M — Media Pressure

Instrument: public discrediting of independent media, construction of alternative information channels.

Second term: Trump called CNN “losers” and “fake news” for questioning claims about uranium removal from Iran.

Second term: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered ABC to undergo an early license review of Disney and its employees, following Trump’s demands for the firing of Jimmy Kimmel.

N — Normative Erosion

Instrument: replacing unwritten norms of restraint with the demonstrative violation of taboos as a loyalty signal.

First term: refusal to release tax returns (2016-2020), breaking a forty-year transparency norm.

First term: public demands for “loyalty” from FBI Director Christopher Wray in 2020.

Second term: Marjorie Taylor Greene acknowledged that their “side was trained to never apologize, never admit when you’re wrong.”

O — Circumventing Professional Associations

Instrument: threatening to revoke the licenses of doctors, lawyers, and experts for holding “incorrect” views.

Second term: executive orders declared law firms “national security threats,” blocking their access to government buildings and federal contracts.

Second term: the Trump administration threatened to revoke the accreditation status of law schools affiliated with the American Bar Association.

P — Pattern Import of Authoritarian Governance

Instrument: adapting authoritarian governance models (loyalty hierarchies, personality cults) to the American context.

Second term: an AP-NORC poll in January 2026 found that 25-30% of Americans agreed that “we need a president willing to break some laws and rules to restore order.”

Second term: the criminal case against James Comey rests on an ambiguous interpretation of a social media post, creating a chilling effect on political dissent.

Q — Quasi-Judicial Mechanisms

Instrument: using administrative procedures to build parallel accountability structures answerable to the administration.

First term: creation of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (2017) to delegitimize electoral processes under the guise of “protecting elections.”

First and second terms: pressure on state election commissions through threats of criminal prosecution for “technical errors.”

Second term: use of impoundment as a de facto quasi-judicial lever—the White House overrides GAO rulings on impoundment violations, effectively arrogating to itself the judicial function of deciding which congressional laws are “valid” and which are not.

R — Rhetorical Dehumanization of Opponents

Instrument: the systematic use of language that excludes the legitimacy of political competition.

Second term: Trump described political opponents as “vermin” to be “rooted out,” as well as “terrorists,” “liars,” “losers,” and “perverts.”

S — Selective Law Enforcement Instrument: cases such as the Epstein file as precedents for the effective unaccountability of elite-constructed networks.

Second term: President Trump claimed to be “fully exonerated” in the Epstein matter, despite never having faced charges.

T — The Transactionalization of Foreign Policy

Instrument: concluding international agreements bypassing diplomatic channels and allies.

Second term: Saudi Arabia granted major non-NATO ally status following $600 billion in investment commitments and F-35 sales.

Second term: threats to withdraw from the G-20, annex Greenland, accusations that NATO allies were shirking combat—foreign policy as a deal.

The Trump family earned $4 billion from the presidency (The Atlantic, April 2026). The G20 summit was held at his hotel. Pardons for donations. Syria sanctions lifted when a golf course bearing his name was proposed. Outrage fatigue as a goal, not a byproduct.

U — Unification of the Judiciary

Instrument: accelerated appointment of conservative judges to secure a long-term ideological supermajority.

Second term: 26 judges confirmed in the first year of the second term; many under 40, nominated by the Federalist Society.

Second term: appointment of former Trump personal attorney Emil Bove to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, despite objections from 900 former prosecutors.

V — Vice Signaling: the Visual Normalization of Vice

Instrument: the public display of privilege and violations as a marker of membership in the new elite.

Second term: Trump posted Christmas messages about “radical left scum,” describing missile strikes on Nigeria as a “Christmas gift.”

Second term: open boasting of ties to crypto-oligarchs, pardons for Capitol rioters, and a million-dollar immunity market.

Kristi Noem’s husband, submerged in bambification.

W — Weaponization of Federalism

Instrument: using presidential control over the National Guard and state legislatures to override state authority.

Second term: August 2025: federalization of the National Guard in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland using out-of-state units without the consent of governors, triggering lawsuits.

X — Export of Epistemic Fracture

Instrument: promoting narratives that make compromise impossible by generating incompatible versions of reality.

Second term: ahead of the 2026 congressional elections, 89% of Americans anticipated high levels of political conflict, and nearly half attributed political violence to rhetoric rather than “mentally unstable individuals.”

Y — The Legal Paradox: Racial vs. Partisan Gerrymandering

Instrument: the divergence between protections against racial (Allen v. Milligan) and partisan (Rucho) gerrymandering, which effectively legalizes manipulation on partisan grounds.

Second term: the Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering is a “political question” not subject to judicial review, while racial gerrymandering remains prohibited.

Z — Substitution of Internal Restraint

Instrument: the erosion of shame and conscience as informal mechanisms of civic accountability, replaced by calculation and fear of consequences.

Second term: the doctrine of “never apologize, never admit when you’re wrong”—the institutionalization of cynical shamelessness, displacing internal moral barriers.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”—Trump, May 2026. The institutionalization of indifference as state doctrine.

This list is not exhaustive. The alphabet ran out. The dismantling of democracy has not.

In conclusion, a dialogue from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Demons*:*

“...in essence, our teaching is the negation of honor, and by the open right to dishonor it is easiest to lead a Russian man after you.—Excellent words! Golden words!—cried Stavrogin.—Right to the point! The right to dishonor—why, everyone will come running to us, not one will remain on the other side! And tell me, Verkhovensky—are you not from the secret police?”

It turns out, an American can be led by the right to dishonor no less easily. Golden words indeed.

And Trump—he is not from the Moscow police, and his alias is not Krasnov. Is it Verkhovensky?

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor to The Next Move.

Gulchehra Hoja has had a rough couple of months. On August 3, her brother died. (He was her only sibling.) On September 3, her father died. They were in faraway Ürümqi, the capital of East Turkestan, in northwestern China.

They were Uyghurs. Gulchehra is a Uyghur-American journalist, who worked for Radio Free Asia for 25 years. Xi Jinping, the Chinese dictator, is in America this week. Gulchehra hopes that we will spare a thought for the Uyghurs.

Radio Free Asia was established in 1996, and its Uyghur service two years later. RFA, along with other such broadcasters, was shut down last year. It has resumed broadcasting, however, though in rump, shoestring fashion.

For all these years, RFA has provided the only independent news service in the Uyghur language. In the last decade, this service has been especially important, as the Chinese government has unleashed ferocious persecution on the Uyghur people.

It was RFA’s reporting that led the State Department, in 2021, to designate this persecution a genocide.

Gulchehra Hoja is an old friend of mine, and I will refer to her as “Gul,” the name she goes by. Anything else would seem too stiff or formal to me. I wrote about Gul’s life in 2021, here. Today, I will offer a brief sketch.

She was born in 1973, in Ürümqi. Her father, Abduqeyum Hoja, was a well-known archaeologist and author. Her mother, Qimangul Zikri, was a pharmacist and professor of pharmacology. Her brother, Kaisar, came a year and a half after Gul herself.

Her plan was to become a teacher, but she went into television instead—and was very successful at it. She created and hosted children’s programs, in both Uyghur and Chinese. She was rather famous.

In 2001, she took a fateful trip to Europe. There are many sights to see on that continent, but Gul spent a lot of time on the Internet. This was impossible back home. And she learned things: about the Uyghur diaspora, about Chinese propaganda. Also, she discovered the existence of Radio Free Asia.

Bowing to conscience, she offered her services to RFA.

Once in America, she placed a call to Ürümqi. She told her father where she was and why. There was a long pause—10 or 15 seconds. Finally, her father said, “Oh, my brave daughter.”

Then it started—the targeting of Gul’s family and friends by the Chinese government. Her parents were forced to retire. They were essentially under house arrest. Kaisar had been set to marry, but that went up in smoke. The authorities put pressure on the young woman’s family.

This has always pained Gul, as many things have.

In January 2018, she published an interview with a survivor of the gulag: Omurbek Eli. By “gulag,” I mean the concentration camps set up by the Chinese government to confine and brutalize the Uyghurs. Gul’s was the first interview with a survivor ever to appear in the media.

Three days later, the authorities rounded up 25 of Gul’s relatives—a full 25. Some of them, she had never met, as they were born after her defection.

Her mother was imprisoned for about two months. Her father would have been in prison, but he was in the hospital, having suffered a stroke.

In prison, in the camps, Gul’s mother saw and experienced horrible things. The food, such as it was, was so wretched, she did not want to eat it. But she did. She later told her daughter, “I did it for you. I had to survive, because I did not want you to blame yourself for my death.”

Gul’s brother, Kaisar, was arrested several times and imprisoned for three and a half years.

Traditionally, a Uyghur daughter takes care of her elderly parents. This, Gul very much wanted to do. But the responsibility fell to her brother, who never married. This weighed on Gul, heavily. He would reassure her: “You are doing important work. We’re all proud of you.”

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In 2019, Gul won a Magnitsky Human Rights Award. The Chinese government labeled her a “terrorist” and put her on its Most Wanted list—where she remains.

Routinely, the Chinese government has retaliated against the families of RFA journalists. We can only try to imagine the guilt and agony that comes with this.

Shortly after President Trump was sworn in last year, his administration set about abolishing the country’s foreign broadcasting services: RFA, the Voice of America, etc. Dictatorships could hardly believe their luck.

I wrote about this in a piece titled “Radios and Lifelines.”

An editorial in the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party organ, said, “The so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag.”

A former editor-in-chief of GT, Hu Xijin, put out a statement of his own: “Voice of America has been paralyzed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which is just as malicious toward China. How truly gratifying!”

RFA ceased operating in October of last year. Many could not help noting an irony: For 30 years, the Chinese dictatorship had tried to block and jam RFA. Now the US government was accomplishing the task.

This year, RFA has resumed operations, though in “rump, shoestring fashion,” as I have said. The agency has a handful of contractors, who report stories. These are valuable stories nonetheless.

In this article, Shöhret Hoshur reports that Uyghur children are being forced out of school and into manual labor. In this article, Tahir Izgil tells us about a Uyghur family, arrested for sending food and the like to a relative in Turkey.

Gulchehra Hoja is contributing stories here and there—to Reporters Without Borders, for example. She is working while mourning. Her father had been bedridden for 11 years, looked after by her mother and brother. Her brother was 51 and had been in good health. He was found dead, shocking and puzzling the family.

Gul and her mother have their doubts about how natural Kaisar’s death was. Can anyone fault them for that? I think of an expression from Garry Kasparov: “I believe in coincidences, but I also believe in the KGB.”

(Kasparov, the chess champion and Russian dissident, is the founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative and its publication, which you are reading: The Next Move.)

“My father was so hopeful that he would see me again one day,” says Gul. Her brother was hopeful too. In fact, “he was the most optimistic person I knew.” Gul’s mother is left, and she will turn 80 this year. It goes without saying, but I will say it anyway: Gul longs to see her mother, embrace her, take care of her.

My friend is not giving up hope. “Even in the camps,” says Gul, “my mother and my brother did not give up hope, so why should I?”

Through tears, though in defiant tones, Gul says, “The Chinese government thought they could intimidate me into silence. But I am still speaking.” She further says, “Freedom begins when we refuse to be silenced.” A person has to fight through the fear.

On Thursday morning, President Trump tweeted the following: “I met President Xi at the plane (Airport!) yesterday and he looks strong, vibrant, and fit - Better than ever. Madam Xi, of course, BEAUTIFUL!”

How are the Uyghurs in the gulag looking? How about the Chinese political prisoners?

Trump and Xi, says Gulchehra Hoja, are “the two most powerful people in the world.” They are in a position to do much good. “The Creator gave them this chance, and He is watching how they will use it!”

Gul is grateful to have the chance “to tell the truth, to live with dignity, to be a real human being.” Where does the real power lie? “We will see in the end,” says Gul, “and I am hopeful.”

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Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.

Donald Trump is pining for 1776 again.

Trump’s nostalgia is not the patriotic “spirit of ‘76,” nor even the whitewashed version of US history presented in his first term’s “1776 Commission.” In fact, it has nothing to do with America’s 250th anniversary.

The president simply wants to reign like an eighteenth-century king.

Last Friday afternoon, I was recording a segment with Jake Tapper on CNN about my last column on The Next Move. I found myself waiting a while at the network’s studios; the news cycle had been overtaken by Trump’s decision to ban CNN and two other media platforms (MS NOW and Politico) from the White House grounds.

The affected outlets’ offense, in Trump’s words, was “their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”

Would King George III be proud? In 1776, agents of the Crown could raid a newspaper’s offices for publishing critical commentary about the royal regime. The Stamp Act was imposed to smother America’s nascent free press in the cradle. Authorities in London charged publishers sympathetic to the rebels under Britain’s seditious libel laws.

Perhaps the jilted King George can find some relief from beyond the grave. Two and a half centuries after the American Revolution, the colonists—one colonist in particular—are finally coming home to the monarchical tradition.

Of course, not everyone understands King Trump’s wisdom in banning those upstart “fake-news” outlets. Let me amend that statement—evidently, no one understands. Not even Trump-friendly Fox and Trump-curious CBS are defending his press ban. Oh well; it was ever thus. They called George III “mad” too.

Will anyone challenge King Trump’s royal prerogative? Only if his opponents do not aspire to kingship themselves. The powers of the American president have long been described as “imperial”; members of both parties swept away concerns about this. They always assumed that the next king would be a good one.

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A Democratic presidential nominee could mobilize significant appeal among the masses if they were to run on a platform of limiting executive power.

They could return much of the spending, war-making, and diplomatic authority that have slid from Congress to the White House over the decades. They might commit to not rule by decree—or, if you prefer the American euphemism, “executive order.”

Maybe a future president would even support codifying that presidential communications must run through official channels: no monarchical musings on Truth Social or X.

King George would say that voluntarily ceding power cuts against human nature. When another George, Washington, was set to resign his military command and retire a victorious civilian, the king exclaimed disbelievingly that “if [Washington] does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

This takes me to the central question Americans confront in the person of their elected king. With a president playing the George III of 1776, can any American leader emulate his opposites, the men and women who defeated the Crown, those whom the king himself begrudgingly named “the greatest…in the world”?

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Donald Trump is 80. Joe Biden left office at 82. Americans are living longer than ever before—concentrating political power and resources among an aging demographic.

Yale Professor Samuel Moyn is the author of the new book Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It. He has some ideas for dealing with our disproportionately senior ruling class, and there’s no better place to discuss those ideas than on a podcast literally called Older/Wiser.

So, can the boomers be stopped? Host Linda Chavez (a baby boomer herself) and Professor Moyn debate proposals from weighting votes based on age to upper age limits for office—and the question of how to transfer wealth to the next generation.

If you’re a premium subscriber to The Next Move, you are among the first to hear this episode of the Older/Wiser podcast—24 hours before the rest of the world gets to tune in. Early access to this podcast is just one of the ways we’re saying “thank you” for your support. Premium subscribers also receive automatic entry into exciting raffles and contests and invitations to Zoom calls with Garry Kasparov and other pro-democracy leaders.

If you’re not yet a premium subscriber and you’d like to get access to these perks and support our work, there’s never been a better time to join our community. Your support drives the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including bringing political dissidents to meet students, business leaders, and elected officials, as well as providing humanitarian assistance to frontline communities in Ukraine. Click here for an update on our on-the-ground work in Ukraine.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor to The Next Move.

President Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” and all hell broke loose. I remember it well. I was a freshman in college, alive to the drama of the world.

Reagan was speaking in March 1983 to the National Association of Evangelicals. He said we should beware treating the United States and the Soviet Union as moral equals. We should resist the temptation to regard the arms race as a “giant misunderstanding.” We should remember “the struggle between right and wrong, and good and evil.”

Many, many were aghast. Henry Steele Commager, the famed historian, said, “It was the worst presidential speech in American history, and I’ve read them all.” Anthony Lewis of The New York Times, in his column about the speech, said, “Primitive: that is the only word for it.”

Further, he said that Reagan had “applied a black-and-white standard to something that is much more complex.” (We will return to those colors, black and white, in due course.)

In his 1990 autobiography, Reagan addressed the controversy. His critics thought that the speech showed him to be “a rhetorical hip-shooter who was recklessly and unconsciously provoking the Soviets into war,” he said. But he made the speech, and others like it, “with malice aforethought.” (That is a typical Reagan touch—funny, sly.) “I wanted to remind the Soviets we knew what they were up to.”

Many found the speech refreshing, even cleansing. I call on Natan Sharansky, who, some 20 years later, gave this testimony:

“In 1983, I was confined to an 8-by-10-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an ‘evil empire.’”

How was the speech received in the Gulag?

“We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the Free World had spoken the truth—a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.”

Years ago, a friend told me about meeting a Polish businessman, shortly after the end of the Cold War. Making conversation, my friend praised John Paul II, the Polish pope. “He was a hero of the Cold War,” he said. But the Pole wanted to talk about Reagan.

He said he used to listen to the Voice of America in the middle of the night on a transistor radio. The radio was hidden in his house, unknown even to his family. When they were asleep, he would go into a room with no windows. He would put a towel underneath the door and an earpiece in his ear. And then listen.

One night, he heard about Reagan’s “evil empire” speech. And he knew the Cold War was over, and that the Americans had won. It was only a matter of time.

Mere truth-telling, and not so mere, can have a potent effect in a dark struggle. A little moral clarity can go a long way.

For years now, Putin’s Russia has unleashed evil on Ukraine: mass murder, mass torture, mass kidnapping. The depredations of Russian forces in Ukraine have been far worse than those of their Soviet predecessors in Hungary, say, or Czechoslovakia.

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Last month, an article from National Public Radio quoted Robert Hamilton, a professor of international relations who spent 30 years in our military: “War crimes are part of Russia’s strategy in Ukraine, retired US Army colonel says.”

A week ago, Anne Applebaum, the historian, wrote, “People are now dying of hunger in Russian-occupied Ukraine. Another mass famine, carried out by another cruel regime.”

In 2018, Applebaum published a book about the “terror-famine,” or “Holodomor,” committed by the Soviets against Ukraine in the early 1930s: Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine.

Ten days ago, Alexander Dugin, the Russian ideologue often known as “Putin’s brain,” weighed in by saying, “The end of war in Ukraine can mean only the end of Ukraine. Nothing less.” Genocidal language, and intent, have been normalized.

Who will call it evil? Anyone?

Last Monday, a news report carried the following headline: “Trump calls on Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian diesel fuel, citing a global shortage.” If you wait to hear our president call on Russia to stop murdering civilians in Ukraine—men, women, and children—you will wait a very long time.

Recall those colors, black and white. Garry Kasparov spoke about them in April 2022, weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion. For 20 years, he was world chess champion. He was also a Russian dissident. Today, he is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.

I will quote from his remarks, made those four and a half years ago:

“When I retired from chess in 2005 to form the anti-Putin opposition, many said, ‘Garry, this is not chess! Politics is not black and white!’ Putin’s war on Ukraine is not chess, it’s true. But it is black and white, good versus evil.”

Kasparov also said, “You cannot look at the images from Ukraine in recent weeks and say there is no pure evil.” And: “Meeting evil halfway is still a victory for evil. Evil tempts us with our weakness, with our desire for comfort.”

Things are not supposed to be black and white. They are supposed to be gray, nuanced, multilayered—complex. But it is not always so. I will now call on David Petraeus, the retired Army general and former CIA director.

In April 2023, he said that the Ukraine war is “about as clear a right-versus-wrong as we’ve seen in our lifetime.”

You may not think that the United States ought to help the Ukrainians, as they try to fight off this evil, although I hope you do. But, again, I cite President Reagan, this time speaking in July 1987 at the Ukrainian National Catholic Shrine in Washington, D.C.:

“Our global commitment to freedom does not mandate the sending of arms or troops, but at the very least it means that any people whose liberty is denied or whose independence is violated—that these people know we Americans are on their side.”

Do the Ukrainians know that we are on their side? I doubt they do. Moreover—are we?

President Trump is not shy about accusing a government of genocide. Repeatedly, he has made this accusation against the government of South Africa. He did so with the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, sitting next to him in the Oval Office. Trump claims that the South African government is committing genocide against its white citizens.

He is not shy about using the word “evil.” When Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement from Congress, Trump was asked what he thought. He began his answer by saying, “I think she’s an evil woman.”

Elon Musk used that same word in the early days of the second Trump administration, when he was a senior adviser to the president. Speaking about the National Endowment for Democracy, founded at the instigation of President Reagan, he said, “That evil organization needs to be dissolved.”

America needs its head screwed on right. We need the kind of leadership that clears away the fog of obfuscation, moral idiocy, and lies.

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