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

Two weeks ago, the Boston Symphony Orchestra traveled south to appear in New York’s Carnegie Hall. They opened with three scenes from Nixon in China, the opera by John Adams. As the title suggests, it’s about Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972.

Our program notes for the evening said the following: “By the 1980s, when Nixon in China was conceived, both former US president Richard Nixon (1913–1994) and the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976) were nearly universally maligned figures.”

Sure. One was one of the most blood-soaked dictators in history, and the other was a corrupt politician in a democracy, who, on the verge of impeachment, resigned and went home.

Our program notes referred to “Western antipathy to Maoist communism.” Oh? What about Chinese antipathy to that communism? What about the dissidents over the years who have given their lives in standing up to it?

One more quotation: “Adams and his creative partners, realizing the significance of Nixon’s visit, took an approach that avoids satire and latter-day political critique in spite of their inherent antipathy to Nixon and his politics.”

You have to wonder what they thought of Mao’s “politics.” According to The Black Book of Communism—published by Harvard University Press in 1999—Mao was responsible for some 65 million deaths.

The sheer horror of Chinese communism has never quite penetrated the American or Western mind. This is a source of wonder and bewilderment to Chinese dissidents and their supporters.

I have been thinking about China lately, in part because of the Boston Symphony concert, but mainly because I recorded a podcast with Yaqiu Wang. She is a Chinese human rights activist here in the United States. She is affiliated with the University of Chicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. She has also worked for Freedom House, among other organizations.

She was born in the 1980s to a family of peasants in Zhejiang Province. That’s what it said right on their registration cards: “peasants.”

“My birth is itself a human rights story,” says Yaqiu. She was the third child in the family, at a time when China had its one-child policy. The first child, a son, had been born with a disability, so the second child, a daughter, was legal. The third? Illegal.

Yaqiu’s mother hid the pregnancy, as best she could. When schooltime began, Yaqiu kept her distance from her sister (who was five grades above her). It was better for people not to know about this multiple-child family.

“When I was growing up,” Yaqiu says, “I always heard the propaganda that extra children were a burden to society.” That’s what the government called them: “extra children.”

“I carried that shame until I came to America,” she says, “where I realized that having siblings is normal.”

She came as an exchange student, at the University of South Carolina. She noticed something about Americans—something that all Chinese notice, she says: Americans have “freedom on their face.” They carry themselves in a confident manner, unafraid.

Courtesy of a congressman, Yaqiu had a tour of the White House. “I fell in love with American democracy,” she says. “I am one of those people who feel they were born in the wrong country.”

At the same time, she works for her fellow Chinese every day: arguing for their rights. She has had to cut off communication with her family back home, painful as it is. She does not want to invite any trouble for them.

In our podcast, I asked Yaqiu Wang about political prisoners. For years, I wrote about Liu Xiaobo, probably the most prominent of Chinese political prisoners. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010—received it in absentia. He died in 2017, still a prisoner.

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Liu Xiaobo was, simply, one of the great men of our time.

There are many political prisoners in China today, and Yaqiu Wang gave me the name of one of them: Xu Zhiyong. He is a civil rights lawyer, born in 1973. He comes from Minquan County in Henan Province. “Minquan” means “civil rights,” believe it or not. Xu has said that the course of his life was practically predetermined.

In 2003, he co-founded the Open Constitution Initiative, which lasted until 2009, when the authorities shut it down. In 2010, he founded the New Citizens’ Movement, which is a network of democracy-minded people (a loose network, relatively hard to track and target).

Like most activists and leaders of his kind, Xu has been in and out of prison—although mainly in. He was arrested in 2013 and imprisoned until 2017. Once out, he resumed his activism, of course. In 2020, he was arrested once more and remains in prison today.

He has been tortured, as political prisoners, everywhere, routinely are.

Campaigning for him is his partner, personal and professional: Li Qiaochu. “It’s a great love story,” says Yaqiu Wang. Li was arrested in 2021 and imprisoned for three years and eight months. Once released, she went right back to work, campaigning for Xu, risking another arrest.

“People can be ‘crazy,’” Yaqiu observes, “but in such a heroic way.”

In 2012, Xu Zhiyong published a kind of manifesto concerning the New Citizens’ Movement. “This movement is a political movement in which this ancient nation bids utter farewell to authoritarianism and completes the civilized transformation to constitutional governance.”

The “goal” of this movement, Xu writes, “is a free China ruled by democracy and law.”

At the “core” of the movement is “the citizen.” And a citizen is “not a subject” but “an independent and free entity.” The citizen “obeys a rule of law that is commonly agreed upon” and “does not have to kneel down to any given person.”

In February 2020, as the coronavirus was spreading, Xu wrote an open letter to the ruling Communist, Xi Jinping, calling on him to resign. “What China needs above all other things is Freedom!” Xu wrote. “Only with freedom will creativity truly flourish and progress be possible.”

According to Yaqiu Wang, ordinary Chinese people strongly desire freedom and democracy. But it is very dangerous to express this desire. The likes of Xu Zhiyong and Li Qiaochu are never common, in any police state. But that does not mean that Chinese as a whole are happy with their lot.

She also has a message for citizens of her adopted country: “I really want Americans to know that what they have is very good, and they should cherish it”—and, if necessary, “fight for it.”

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

Last Friday, April 17, the Renew Democracy Initiative—which publishes The Next Move—held its fourth annual Heroes of Democracy Gala, celebrating people who take risks for freedom. This year, we honored Senator Mark Kelly, Ambassador John Bolton, Ugandan Opposition Leader Bobi Wine, and former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Chrystia Freeland.

What follows are my remarks from that evening. If you joined us, thank you for your support! If you couldn’t make it, we missed you on Friday. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Standing amid all of this revolutionary pageantry, I have to remind you all: I’m not American.

Shocker, I know.

Many Americans take the past two and a half centuries for granted.

The characters, the drama; it’s all become something approaching Greek mythology. You take for granted the privileges you enjoy. (Apologies for saying you.)

Because of that, it’s often been up to outsiders—visiting admirers of this magnificent republic—to remind you of what makes this nation great.

The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville observed in his timeless classic, Democracy in America, that “The greatness of America lies in her ability to repair her faults.”

That was in 1835.

Five generations later, it was Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovakia’s great poet and anticommunist dissident-turned-president. Havel told a joint session of the US Congress, that your Constitution and Declaration of Independence, quote, “inspire us all; they inspire us despite the fact that they are over 200 years old.”

“You have one great advantage,” Havel went on to say. “Your journey toward the horizon has never been disrupted by a totalitarian system.”

That was 1990.

What the hell would Havel say about America if he were alive today?

Vaclav Havel was right that in the US, you’ve never experienced totalitarianism—not yet, at least.

In the twentieth century, you defeated, in turn, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Yet in the process, it seems America suffered a vampire’s bite, for the twin evils of fascism and communism are now coursing through the blood of this nation.

One side of the aisle rallies around men like Tucker Carlson, who glorify Russia’s dictatorship. The other side is deciding whether or not Hasan Piker, a self-identified Marxist who believes America “deserved” 9/11, belongs in the big tent.

This is a deadly infection. You must purge it from the system.

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

I founded the Renew Democracy Initiative to join in that great tradition, laid down by people like Tocqueville and Havel: to share the insights of those who know the value of freedom so well because they have experienced the opposite.

That was the inspiration for our flagship program, the Frontlines of Freedom, which has connected political dissidents with thousands of students, business leaders, and elected officials. This work brings passion and bloody reality to a conversation around liberty that is too often bogged down by academic jargon.

It is one thing to pore over political science literature, quite another to hear an activist from China, or Russia, Iran, Uganda, or Venezuela recall riot policemen’s batons crashing over the heads of protesters, loved ones kidnapped, futures snuffed out. RDI is on ten campuses already, with plans to expand to many more.

In Ukraine, as you heard today, we’ve delivered $15 million in direct aid. We remain crystal clear in our position that Ukraine must win.

We fight back against the Putin apologists who have worked their way into the Oval Office. And we push our friends too. Many people call themselves pro-Ukraine, while falling for the myth of escalation, fighting with all of the urgency of a fire truck yielding to traffic on its way to a burning building.

RDI is the real deal.

Of course, the war isn’t just being fought with drones and bullets in places like Ukraine. There’s a battle over information too. Last year, we launched The Next Move—our new media platform—to fight back against disinformation and grifters. In just twelve months, our small team has put out over 300 pieces of content. Today, we have over 100,000 followers. More than 800,000 people read The Next Move every month.

In short: RDI is a beacon for the values of liberal democracy. It is a callback to the America I grew up admiring as a young boy in the Soviet Union.

As a chess player competing abroad, I had far more access to the democratic West than the average Soviet. I visited Western Europe and eventually the US, while my neighbors in the USSR would be lucky if they got a holiday to Bulgaria once in their lives.

Once you peel away the Iron Curtain, you can’t turn back. Your perspective is changed forever. When, in 2013, I realized that remaining in Putin’s Russia would mean living out my days in a jail cell—or worse—I knew that my destination would have to be America.

I am not an American. But my children were born and raised here. They are Americans.

Unless I start taking the supplements that Alex Jones is always hawking on Info Wars… I most likely won’t be here at America’s three-hundredth anniversary, when I would be 113 years old.

What we are really fighting for is the America that our children will inherit.

We have a choice to make. We can take the easy way out; we can rest on our laurels and abandon the next generations to false prophets and golden calves. Or, with RDI, we can part the sea, pushing aside MAGA and Marxism, and lead our children and our grandchildren, into a Promised Land of freedom, liberty, and prosperity.

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A note from Garry Kasparov: Celebrate one year of The Next Move and save 30% when you upgrade to join our premium subscriber community and get invitations to exclusive Zoom conversations, early access to podcasts, and other benefits! Upgrade now and don’t miss our next premium subscriber-exclusive call where I’ll be joined by former White House attorney Ty Cobb and RDI CEO Uriel Epshtein—coming up on Thursday, April 30 at 5pm ET/2pm PT. Click here to register.

Issac Luna (Olvera) is a former US Marine Corps officer who fought for the Ukrainian military after the full-scale Russian invasion. He is the author of the book Reckoning Dreams and Fire, a memoir about his experience in Ukraine and other battles. Mr. Luna remains based in Ukraine. Follow him on X.

It was around this time in the spring of 2022 when the Russian army retreated in defeat from the outskirts of Kyiv.

Media outlets around the world rejoiced: “Irpin, Bucha, liberated.” I was there, as a volunteer in the Ukrainian army, but around me, no one celebrated. We suspected Putin’s troops might regroup and counterattack.

At the start of that year, I had been a business consultant in Houston, Texas. When Russia invaded Ukraine, I was outraged and wanted to help. Having been an officer in the US Marines, I thought my skills could be useful on the ground. So, on day four of the invasion, I quit my job and came to fight in Ukraine. I thought I might contribute as a planner or advisor, given my background. Instead, I joined as an ordinary rifleman—and sometimes as a rocket man—with no rank, no pay, and lots of unknowns.

On my first mission, we occupied an empty residential tower across from the State Tax University, an elegant century-old building, in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv. The street between us and the university was the battle line. Ukrainian forces controlled the south sides; the north was under Russian occupation—part of Irpin, and another suburb called Bucha. From our tower, we looked for Russian positions and called in artillery strikes.

On March 28, the Russians retreated from Irpin but remained in Bucha. We pushed forward to the edge of Irpin, into positions that Russians had just abandoned. Apartments had been looted—drawers emptied, closets overturned.

In the nearby forest, we found dead civilians, killed by artillery—six of them, some still wearing pajamas. We buried them. By then, Russians were also retreating from Bucha. On their way out, they indiscriminately fired more artillery. One barrage battered our position. We evacuated when the roof caught fire and collapsed. After a few days, I accepted that the Russians were not coming back, but the sense of victory was short-lived.

At the start of the occupation, the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, an elite Russian unit, established a headquarters at 144 Yablunska (Apple) Street, a kilometer behind the university.

After the Russian withdrawal, journalists and investigators entered the area. What had been a quiet, affluent suburb was now a crime scene. CCTV footage from a home on Apple Street showed Russian soldiers leading civilians at gunpoint toward the headquarters compound. It was the last time most of them were seen alive. Investigators found bodies scattered in the street. Others were found in basements with their hands bound, bearing signs of torture prior to execution. Many women reported being raped in homes that Russians had converted into barracks. These were not cases of collateral damage or victims of chaos; they were proof of a systematic terror campaign.

Volunteers, state investigators, victims, and witnesses identified many of the soldiers responsible for these crimes. They were members of units working under the command of the 76th Air Assault Division or adjacent to it. The most prominent units involved were the 234th and 237th Air Assault Regiments, the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade, and the 155th Marine Brigade. It has been four years since the massacres. Where are the perpetrators?

After their defeat outside Kyiv, those Russian units relocated to other parts of Ukraine, where they deployed the same vicious tactics. Yet while they escaped Bucha, they did not evade justice altogether—not all of them.

Igor Zharov and Aleksey Afonin, both lieutenant colonels in the 234th Regiment, were killed sometime in 2022, according to obituaries. Their commander, Colonel Artyom Gorodilov, is in prison, though not for the right reasons. In 2024, he was arrested in Russia—not for war crimes, but for corruption.

One particularly memorable update came through in July of last year. Mikhail Gudkov was a Russian officer at the center of events on Apple Street.

As a colonel, Gudkov commanded Russia’s 155th Marine Brigade in the Kyiv suburbs. He had advanced far and fast in his military career since then. By 2025, he was a major general and deputy commander of the entire Russian Navy. In July 2025, Ukrainian forces struck a headquarters inside the Kursk region of Russia. Gudkov, along with other senior officers, was killed.

For those of us who were there in Bucha and Irpin, there is no moral ambiguity in this outcome. His death, and those of his soldiers, was not a tragedy, but a consequence. We saw what was left behind. We walked through homes that had been stripped bare. We found civilians in the forest. We learned what happened on Apple Street. And then we watched the same units show up somewhere else and do it again. Whether a man like Gudkov personally ordered a specific execution or not does not change the fact that he was part of a criminal enterprise that perpetrated it. So, when news comes that one of those commanders is dead, my reaction is not complicated—it’s satisfaction, even glee.

Yet the death of Russian war criminals is also not closure. Nothing can provide that. Nothing can undo what happened. But it is at least imperfect justice.

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

In February 2023, Ukrainian troops captured a group of 17 soldiers in Luhansk province in Donbas. Among them was Nikolai Kartashev. He was not a high-ranking officer, but an ordinary soldier tied to the 234th during the occupation of Bucha. He confessed to killing civilians under orders as well as witnessing torture and the rape of a woman in a cellar. He identified co-perpetrators and commanders, yet he expressed no remorse and said he wanted to return to war. He is still in prison.

It is safe to say that many, maybe most, of the foot soldiers who perpetrated these crimes are dead. Many literally disappeared. They ended up blown apart, their remains shredded, unidentified and untraceable in the field or a morgue. Both the 155th Marine Brigade and the 237th Air Assault Regiment were destroyed in the subsequent months of the war.

In 2023, the 155th Brigade fought in the battle of Vuhledar, an absolute meat grinder. Columns of the 155th drove into minefields and kill zones. Dozens of vehicles were hit, and when the survivors bunched up, they were finished by Ukrainian artillery. More than 130 armored vehicles were destroyed in a single week, including 36 tanks. During the worst of it, between 150–300 marines reportedly died daily. The entire brigade was wiped out. Then it reconstituted and was destroyed again. And then again. This cycle of annihilation was repeated as many as eight times.

The 237th Assault Regiment left Bucha severely degraded, then relocated and experienced the same cycle as the 155th: it relocated, took staggering losses, reformed, and was destroyed again. By mid to late 2022, six months after Bucha, open-source analysts reported that the 237th effectively no longer existed. An entire criminal organization, wiped out.

The individual acts of Russian soldiers—executions, torture, rape—add to the list of charges, but they are not required to establish guilt. The war itself is a crime, beginning with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Everything that followed—Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Kherson—flows from that decision. Everyone who crossed that border as part of the invasion is guilty, as are those who commanded it—especially Putin. They are all criminals. In the countries where most people are reading this, accountability would come through courts. In this war, Ukrainians have no hope of such an outcome, and they do not wait for it. Russia will never persecute its war criminals, for Russian leaders are such criminals. Thus, for the criminals of Bucha, justice comes not by gavel, but by gun.

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The Renew Democracy Initiative and The Next Move are excited to bring you Older/Wiser with Linda Chavez. Linda is a veteran of multiple presidential administrations, author, and columnist.

This week, Linda speaks to Issac Luna (Olvera), a former US Marine who left a comfortable life in Texas to volunteer to serve in the Ukrainian military. Issac reflects on his Mexican heritage, his service in the Marine Corps after 9/11, and his decision to leave it all behind to fight for Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Along with his personal story, he and Linda discuss Ukraine’s resilience and America’s role in the war—topics he explores further in his memoir, Reckoning Dreams and Fire: Leaving the American Dream to Fight Russia’s Invasion.

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. This month marks one year of The Next Move, and, to celebrate, we’re offering 30% off of premium subscriptions now through the end of April.

Please consider upgrading your subscription—all proceeds go directly toward advancing the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative. Premium subscribers receive invitations to exclusive Zoom calls with Garry Kasparov and other pro-democracy leaders, early access to podcasts, and other perks.

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

For many of us, recent news has been a rollercoaster. If you are like me, you may be celebrating Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat in one moment, while anxiously watching the state of the war in Iran the next. World events remain complicated, to put it mildly.

But in some unequivocally good news: This month marks one year since the Renew Democracy Initiative launched The Next Move. To celebrate, I am happy to announce our next premium subscriber Zoom call, taking place on Thursday, April 30 at 5:00 PM EST.

This month, I am excited to invite you to a conversation with Ty Cobb, who served as White House special counsel in the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2018. RDI CEO Uriel Epshtein will moderate my conversation with Ty.

Mr. Cobb is a veteran attorney and former federal prosecutor who brings an insider’s perspective on the Trump administration and the challenges facing American democracy. Since 2018, he has often been a vocal critic of actions he believes threaten our democratic institutions. He is a man of law and principle, and I am looking forward to having a candid discussion with him.

On previous calls, we have had very fruitful conversations with guests such as RDI Vice Chair Linda Chavez and historian Edward Luce. I was so happy to see so many of you at these conversations, and I’m looking forward to continuing the tradition.

We hope you join us on April 30! This is a premium subscriber exclusive, but to make matters easier (and to mark our 1-year anniversary!), we’re offering 30% off premium subscriptions through the end of April.

If you are not yet a premium subscriber, you can find the link to upgrade at the top of this article. And if you know someone who may enjoy this call or our other work here at The Next Move, feel free to send them a gift subscription. I don’t receive a cent from your contributions. It all goes to our work here at the Renew Democracy Initiative: shaping the conversation on The Next Move; connecting political dissidents with students, business leaders, and elected officials; and delivering RDI’s life-saving aid to frontline communities in Ukraine.

I hope to see many of you soon. You can register for the Zoom call at the link below (the signup link is just past the upgrade button if you’re a free subscriber). We’re committed to a real dialogue, so come prepared with questions for me and Mr. Cobb!

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A note from Garry Kasparov: This month marks one year of The Next Move. To celebrate, we’re offering 30% off of premium subscriptions now through the end of April.

Please consider upgrading your subscription—all proceeds go directly toward advancing the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative. Premium subscribers receive invitations to exclusive Zoom calls with Garry Kasparov and other pro-democracy leaders, early access to podcasts, and other perks.

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

For a stretch of years, there was a group of US congressmen who could be depended on to speak up for human rights—human rights anywhere in the world.

There are always people who will speak up for human rights in this country or that. And who will oppose this dictator or that. But human rights for everyone, and opposition to dictators everywhere?

That’s another story.

In April 2005, I wrote a story titled “Congressional Champions.” These were champions of human rights.

Among them were two Cuban-American Republicans from Miami: Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. Other Republicans included Frank Wolf and Chris Smith. Democrats included Tom Lantos, Gary Ackerman, and Eliot Engel.

Referring to this group, Ros-Lehtinen quoted Shakespeare: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

Of that band, only Smith remains in Congress. The others are either retired or deceased. Eliot Engel died last week at 79. He served in Congress from 1989 to 2021.

Engel was a “Cold War liberal,” or a “JFK Democrat,” as he said to me. He also said that he was just about the last of the breed.

“I have always felt strongly about democracy,” he said. “We should promote basic freedom in the world. I have throughout my career been consistent in opposing both right-wing and left-wing dictatorships.”

The record proved it.

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

Engel was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1947. He was a month shy of 14 when John F. Kennedy was sworn in as president. Engel’s parents were working-class and Jewish. He was always aware of the Holocaust—it influenced his work.

Engel was alarmed by the “ethnic cleansing” of Albanians in Kosovo. And at the wholesale slaughter of Syrians, by the Assad regime and its allies. And at the targeting of the Uyghur minority by the Chinese government.

For him, the Holocaust hovered in the background.

Out of college, Engel became a schoolteacher and guidance counselor. Then he was elected to the New York State Assembly, where he served for 12 years, before going to Washington.

He wanted to sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Most congressmen, especially new ones, shun that committee, because it does them no favors. You can’t “bring home the bacon” to your district, and you can’t enhance your reelection. In fact, you may hurt it.

“He spends all his time on other countries and ignores folks right here at home!”

Engel, however, was different. As Josh Rogin noted in a 2020 column, the freshman congressman was presented with a questionnaire, asking him to list his three preferred committee assignments. On all three lines, he wrote, “Foreign Affairs.”

“I figured they would get the hint,” he said.

Throughout his years in Congress, he was opposed by the “activists,” as he called them. He meant activists and critics to his left. Engel provoked their wrath by supporting the Patriot Act of 2001, for example. And by opposing the Iran deal worked out by the Obama administration in 2015. He provoked and earned their wrath in multiple ways.

“If the activists aren’t happy with me, they’re not happy with me,” he told me. “So be it.”

They were really unhappy with him over Cuba. He was a staunch opponent of the Castro dictatorship, and a staunch supporter of Cuba’s democracy movement. “My party has a blind spot on Cuba,” he told me. “And the Republican Party has its own blind spots.”

(For The Next Move last January, I wrote an article titled “Blind Spots: On selectivity in human rights.”)

“Castro is a dictator,” Engel said, “and to me he’s no different from Saddam Hussein or any of those other guys.” Whether “it’s Somoza or Castro or that jerk in Venezuela, dictators should be opposed, and opposed vigorously.”

The “jerk in Venezuela” was Hugo Chávez.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen began a program whereby congressmen “adopted” a Cuban political prisoner, in order to call attention to that prisoner’s fate—and “Eliot was one of the first to respond,” she told me, “even though he doesn’t have any Cubans in his district.”

“He’s such a mensch, such a great guy,” she said.

This congressman from the Bronx—barely known in America—became well-known throughout the Albanian world: in Albania itself, and also in Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo. That was because he stood up for their rights—not least the right not to be killed.

In the summer of 2005, I traveled with him and his party to Albania and elsewhere, reporting on their activities and the region at large. In the Kosovar town of Peja, they named a street after him: “Eliot L. Engel Boulevard.”

After the 2018 midterm elections, he finally got the seat he wanted: the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He held it for only two years, however, as he was defeated in a Democratic primary in 2020. His opponent and successor, Jamaal Bowman, was very different from a JFK Democrat. Engel seemed like a last gasp of history.

Who today, in either house of Congress, in either party, is concerned about freedom, democracy, and human rights, all over the world? Who has taken the place of Engel and the rest? Precious few. Fewer than the “happy few,” the “band of brothers,” that Ros-Lehtinen spoke about, back in ’05.

Engel told me, “I have always felt strongly about America’s role in the world. We, as a country, aren’t perfect. We’re all human, we all make mistakes. But I think our vision—what we want to share, what can be taken from our experience—is overwhelmingly positive. I don’t agree with the Blame America crowd.”

He also said, “You can be progressive and still understand that the United States is a force for good. We don’t always get it right, but we try to. And when we have the ability to save lives, we ought to use that ability.”

Last week, after he died, I contacted Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, to ask whether she wanted to say anything about her onetime colleague. She did.

“Eliot was almost an extinct animal in the public arena: a bipartisan and principled statesman who was unafraid to call out oppressors no matter their political bent. To Eliot, an oppressor on the left was as dangerous as one on the right.”

He “sought out compromise and did not consider it heresy or treason to see issues from another person’s point of view.”

This “did not mean that he was easily manipulated. Quite the contrary. Eliot knew where he stood on issues and was always a reliable voice and vote in behalf of freedom, human rights, and democracy in every corner of the world.”

To me, Eliot Engel stood for an Americanism that barely exists in our country anymore. I look forward to a revival.

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A note from Garry Kasparov: Today is my birthday—and this month also marks one year of The Next Move. In our first year, we put out 300+ pieces of content in the past year from more than 35 of the most talented and thoughtful writers I know. Nothing would make me happier than seeing you join our premium subscriber community.

To celebrate, I’m offering 30% off of premium subscriptions now through the end of April. Supporters like you make everything we do possible: from changing the conversation here on The Next Move to delivering life-saving aid in Ukraine through our publisher, the Renew Democracy Initiative.

And as a thank you, we’re continuing to offer exciting perks to our premium subscriber community, including invitations to exclusive Zoom calls. Stay tuned for details on our next call, featuring former White House attorney Ty Cobb, coming up on Thursday, April 30!

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

In Hungary, Péter Magyar won. Viktor Orbán lost. Who says we can’t get good news anymore?

So convincing was Magyar’s victory that Orbán hastily conceded. We’ll have to wait until the new Hungarian parliament is seated to fully exhale, but it seems the worst scenarios I and others laid out may not come to pass.

For now, it might be useful for Americans to assess who Prime Minister-designate Péter Magyar is, and why he won.

Magyar is a conservative of a type that seems near extinction among US politicians these days. Many of his policy positions are genuinely right of center (more on that in a moment), but he also respects the rule of law and the tenets of liberal democracy.

As I wrote on Friday, Viktor Orbán’s government did a lot to stunt Hungarian politics by tightening the screws on independent media and civil society. Yet Orbán’s successive victories were ultimately courtesy of an ineffective, unpopular opposition.

The 45-year-old Magyar, meanwhile, came up in Orbán’s own Fidesz party before breaking off two years ago to join another faction, Tisza.

Magyar led with a sincere push to limit the powers of government after 16 years of Orbán. He is seeking changes to the constitution that will limit the prime minister to two terms (for eight years total, as in America). He says he will prioritize the rule of law.

Magyar also ran on a platform of traditional social norms and strict limits on immigration. He’s even a little cooler on Ukraine than I’d personally like (though it’s hard to be worse than Putin-crony Orbán).

Agree or disagree with the new Hungarian leader’s positions, but they’re responsive to the desires of a right-leaning electorate.

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The incoming prime minister’s take on immigration is especially interesting because immigration was among Kamala Harris’s weakest issues with voters in 2024. While the Republicans’ advantage on immigration and the border has shrunk amid inhumane ICE-led crackdowns, the GOP’s advantage over the Democrats nevertheless remains.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Democrats try to outrun Stephen Miller to the right on immigration— which would be pretty hard to do without putting on a brown shirt. But they should internalize the public’s desire for a sensible approach to the southern border and a welcoming-but-orderly immigration process that isn’t weighed down with jargon about “no human being being illegal.”

I’ll give credit where it’s due: It was Bernie Sanders, last fall, who said that “if you don’t have any borders, you don’t have a nation.”

There’s a middle lane in politics, and in America, it’s wide open. The Republicans— deeply in thrall to Trump and the far-right—probably won’t step in to fill the gap, meaning it’s up to the Democrats. If neither side pivots to the center, the Democrats will find out the hard way—as Péter Magyar’s more left-leaning predecessors in the Hungarian opposition learned—that in most societies, the default settings are right of center.

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This week, Linda is joined by Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Elliott served in multiple presidential administrations, most recently as United States Special Representative for Venezuela and Special Representative for Iran from 2019 to 2021.

With national attention on Iran, Linda and Elliott revisit Trump’s earlier intervention: Venezuela. What are the administration’s goals in Venezuela? Months later, are we seeing progress? What could the future of Latin America look like?

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.

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

If you’re an American, there is one event you should be watching this weekend, and that is the Hungarian parliamentary election—set to take place on Sunday, April 12.

Hungary right now is America in miniature.

It is not quite a functioning democracy. The country’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán took back the prime minister’s office in 2010 and hasn’t left since. Orbán has taken steps to extend government control over media and academia and make it difficult for opposition parties to organize. On the global stage, Budapest is squarely aligned with Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran (and, of course, with the demagogues running the show in Washington).

Yet Hungary is not a police state either, despite Orbán’s best efforts. There aren’t really political prisoners. There is still independent media, although it’s cornered and under severe strain. And elections in Hungary, like elections in the United States, still matter.

For a more concrete assessment, we can look to our friends at Freedom House, who rate the health of democracy on a scale from a totalitarian “one” to a liberal democratic “one hundred.”

The latest Freedom House report was just released the other day. Russia scores a dismal 12. America received a 90 a decade ago; now, it’s dropped to an 81 (call it a B-). Hungary gets a 65—earning it the uninspiring label of “partly free.”

The juncture Hungary is approaching this weekend is the same one Americans will find themselves at in seven months. If current polls are to be believed, then Orbán’s opponent, Péter Magyar, will pull off a fairly convincing win.

The question is: What does the wannabe-dictator do next?

Orbán has been able to consolidate power more or less bloodlessly because he has not faced a serious challenger in the 16 years since he returned to office. There was no need to dispute election results or violently suppress the opposition because even in a perfectly fair system, they probably would not have won anyway.

That is, until now.

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Orbán is set up to declare victory no matter what. The false-flag operation kicked off with the recent discovery of “explosives” on the Hungary-Serbia border.

(A “terrorist plot”! Come on. We’ve seen that movie a thousand times before. I need an aspiring dictator who engineers something more original. How about claiming an extraterrestrial invasion? Enemies controlling the weather?)

The last time Donald Trump lost an election, he pressured state officials and incited an insurrection to try to overturn the results. Yet even then, there were a handful of people surrounding the president—people like Mike Pence—who did their duty (the bare minimum) and ensured that the democratic process was carried out.

There are no such people in the second Trump term. If the Democrats win the midterms and Trump rejects the outcome, who in the administration is going to stand in his way?

The corridors of power in Budapest are likewise crowded full of sycophants. Who in the prime minister’s Fidesz party is going to tell Orbán that he has lost?

If no one in the Hungarian government will do the right thing, what about Hungary’s international partners? Which world leader will get on the phone and inform Hungary’s leader that the jig is up? Certainly, Putin will tell the anti-Ukraine Orbán to cling to power. JD Vance and Marco Rubio, who paraded through Budapest to do stump speeches for Orbán, will side with him too.

I’d like to believe the Europeans can do something useful, but a strongly worded letter isn’t going to cut it here.

In such a situation, the people are at the mercy of the men with guns: the army and the police. It’s an ugly truth, but coming from Russia, I can tell you that this is often the final line separating democracy from dictatorship.

What the Hungarian security services do (and don’t do) after Sunday’s election could foreshadow how ICE and the US National Guard behave come November.

Democracies don’t turn into fully-fledged dictatorships overnight. There are tests along the way that determine a nation’s direction. Hungary’s test is on Sunday. America’s will follow in short order. Pay attention.

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

Last week, I spoke with a young colleague of mine about coming of age. She came of age in the early Trump era. Trump Republicanism, the Trump style—it all seems perfectly normal to her (and why wouldn’t it?).

I, conversely, came of age in the Reagan era. So I have my own sense of what is normal and right, not having quite adjusted to our “new normal.”

President Reagan always took care to distinguish dictatorships from the people ruled by those dictatorships. President Trump seldom takes any such trouble.

Without a peace deal with Iran, he said on Sunday, “we’re blowing up the whole country.” He also said, “If they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there.”

If you were an Iranian—and as anti-regime as they come—how would you feel about that? How would that sound in your ear?

Trump wrote, “Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!”

Again, how would you feel, how would that sound to you?

In a television address, Trump said, “We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

Who is “them,” exactly? The bad guys? Who belongs in the “Stone Ages”?

We used to say that the US president was the leader of the Free World, responsible for assuring people under dictatorship that, whatever we could do practically, we were on their side. (More on this in due course.)

I recall President Reagan making a television address two days before Christmas in 1981. The Polish dictatorship, under pressure from Moscow, had just imposed martial law. Reagan said that Christmas was bringing “little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government.”

Reagan announced some measures that the US was taking against that government—quickly adding, “These actions are not directed against the Polish people. They are a warning to the government of Poland that free men cannot and will not stand idly by in the face of brutal repression.”

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Habitually, Reagan marked Captive Nations Week. This is how he put it in 1987: “For nearly three decades, Captive Nations Week has symbolized the American people’s solidarity with all throughout the world who courageously seek freedom and independence from Soviet domination.”

America, he said, “offers the world a vision of inalienable political, religious, and economic rights. This vision has always been shared among peoples subjugated by Soviet imperialism; and so has resistance, ever the catalyst of liberty.”

He also cited political prisoners, not just generally but specifically, by name: “people such as Gunārs Astra, Lev Lukyanenko, Mart Niklus, and Viktoras Petkus.”

Over and over—as a matter of both conscience and policy—Reagan and other officials of the era separated dictatorships from the people under their boot.

Here is the president in 1983, during Captive Nations Week: “Today we come to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are captives, not because of crimes that they have committed but because of crimes committed against them by dictators and tyrants.”

He went on to say, “To every person trapped in tyranny, whether in the Ukraine, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, or Vietnam, we send our love and support and tell them they are not alone.”

Reagan liked to use our “radios” to communicate with people abroad: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; the Voice of America; and Radio Martí, which broadcasts to Cuba, and was established under Reagan.

Under President Trump, our radios have been all but abolished. (For a piece by me on this subject, published last year, go here.)

On December 31, 1986, over the Voice of America, Reagan delivered a New Year’s address to “the peoples of the Soviet Union.” He said, “The American people are deeply concerned with the fate of individual people, wherever they might be throughout the world. We believe that God gave sacred rights to every man, woman, and child on earth.”

This was not fare you would hear from Soviet state media. You would not hear it in Russia’s media today.

One more memory of Reagan—this one from July 24, 1987, when he went to the Ukrainian National Catholic Shrine in Washington, DC, to speak to a Captive Nations conference. He began by saying, “Let us look forward to the day when Ukrainian Catholics and members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will again be free to gather and worship in churches like this in their own homeland.”

Further on, he said, “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.”

That was the way it was. That was the principle, the ethos. We were on their side.

Do the Iranian people know it, unmistakably? I hope they do.

On Easter, Trump tweeted, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Who will be “living in Hell”? Just the ayatollahs and their goons? How about “Praise be to Allah”? Is that sincere or mocking? How would it sound in an everyday Iranian’s ear?

Six days after the terror attacks of 9/11, President George W. Bush went to a mosque to assure Muslims that our fight—the war that had been forced on us—was not against them. This was not mere politeness or political correctness. This was hard national interest—for we needed the support of countless Muslims.

Yesterday, in a post about Iran, Trump wrote, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

I ask once more: Can you imagine being an Iranian, hearing that?

In any event, a ceasefire is in place, as we go to press.

Looking back on Reagan, and beholding Trump today, I think of a French expression: Autres temps, autres mœurs—“Different times, different mores.” About five weeks ago, Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC), said, “To Donald J. Trump: You just surpassed Ronald Reagan as the most consequential Republican president since Lincoln.” He went on to say, “You’re Reagan plus, plus, plus.”

One more French expression: À chacun son goût—“To each his own.”

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Linda Chavez is the vice-chair of the Renew Democracy Initiative and chairs the Center for Equal Opportunity. A veteran of multiple presidential administrations, she is also the author of four books and was a nationally syndicated columnist for thirty years. She continues to write frequently on immigration, civil rights, and politics. Linda is also the host of the Older/Wiser podcast from RDI and The Next Move.

Last week, the Supreme Court considered Donald Trump’s signature effort to redefine what it means to be an American—with Trump present in the courtroom.

In 236 years, no sitting president has ever attended oral arguments before the Court, a co‑equal branch of government. That did not stop Trump from seating himself squarely behind Solicitor General John Sauer, glowering at the justices until he departed once the opposing attorney began taking questions. The stunt was typical Trumpian norm‑busting, but it also underscored the importance of this issue to him.

One of Trump’s first acts on Inauguration Day 2025 was to sign an executive order attempting to redefine birthright citizenship.

The United States, along with 32 other countries—mostly in the Western Hemisphere—grants automatic citizenship to persons born on its soil regardless of their parents’ citizenship, with limited exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and invading soldiers. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution provides that “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.” Trump’s executive order would sharply narrow that guarantee to the children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents as defined by contemporary immigration law. Twenty-two states brought lawsuits against the president that were ultimately consolidated into Trump v. Barbara, the case argued on April 1.

Sauer’s argument on behalf of the Trump administration in favor of redefining birthright citizenship rested almost entirely on a fringe interpretation of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” In Sauer’s reading the phrase requires that parents whose children are entitled to birthright citizenship “not [owe] allegiance to any foreign sovereignty.” In this expansive reading, simply being a citizen or resident of another country means someone bears allegiance to its government.

(I have written extensively on the 1866 Senate debate over the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in a lengthy back-and-forth with John Eastman, the architect of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.)

Eastman is largely responsible for persuading Trump that it would be constitutional to deny birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants. This case is as ill-advised as Eastman’s election denial scheme.

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In his opening statement, Sauer argued that “[t]he Citizenship Clause was adopted just after the Civil War to grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and their children, whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile.” (The full transcript is available here.) Justice Clarence Thomas alluded to this interpretation in his question during oral arguments: “How much of the historical debates around the Fourteenth Amendment had anything to do with immigration?”

Yet immigration was, in fact, a contentious issue in mid-nineteenth century America. The nativist Know Nothing movement had roiled politics in the decade before the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, electing candidates at the local, state and national levels.

In 1856, the Know Nothings even fielded a presidential candidate—former president Millard Fillmore—who garnered eight electoral votes.

More than 13% of the population was foreign‑born at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, a figure only slightly below today’s level. Senators were acutely aware of the demographic changes underway, which inspired several racist, anti-immigrant statements in the floor debate. Yet no one suggested that only children whose immigrant parents had naturalized should be eligible for birthright citizenship.

It would have made little sense to condition birthright citizenship on parental naturalization since the naturalization process at the time was haphazard at best: certificates were issued without federal supervision, record‑keeping was inconsistent, and standards lacked uniformity. What’s more, the Trump executive order also creates a parental category of “permanent resident” that did not exist in 1866, since the US effectively had open borders at the time. The first restrictions on immigration were not enacted until 1882, with the Chinese Exclusion Act, and broadened to include Southern and Eastern Europeans in 1917 and 1924.

Lower courts, including the Ninth Circuit and First Circuit, rejected Trump’s executive order, treating the Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark as settled law. The government’s challenge to that precedent ultimately turns on the meaning of “domicile” as used in the ruling in that case. During Wednesday’s oral argument, “domicile” or “domiciled” was spoken 124 times, including in numerous questions from the justices. Sauer contended that the legal definition of “domicile” requires allegiance to the United States, and the absence of allegiance to any foreign power. The facts of Wong Kim Ark, however, squarely contradict that reading.

Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese parents who were living there at the time of his birth. In 1890, after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong returned with his parents to China, only to come back to California later that year. In 1895, following another visit to China, Wong was denied reentry at the port of San Francisco, triggering a three‑year legal battle over his citizenship.

In 1898, the Supreme Court held that a child born to parents domiciled in the United States “becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States,” notwithstanding ancestry. The court recognized Wong’s birthright even though his parents were, as they noted, “subjects of the Emperor of China” at his birth. But those facts, the court held, “cannot exclude Chinese persons born in this country from the operation of the broad and clear words of the Constitution.” The Supreme Court ruling in Wong Kim Ark belies Sauer’s argument that parents’ foreign “allegiance” determines whether their child can be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Certainly most illegal immigrants today could hardly be accused of holding allegiance to the governments that many of them fled.

If the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment—and the understanding and intent of its drafters—controls the outcome in Trump v. Barbara, the result should be unanimous. I doubt it will be, but I expect even the most conservative justices will resist the efforts to twist the words of the Fourteenth Amendment, the history of its enactment, and the ruling in Wong Kim Ark into something that permits a president to undo a provision of the Constitution with the mere stroke of a pen.

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This week, Linda speaks with Bill Kristol, co-founder and editor of The Bulwark and an advisory board member at RDI. Though they both led careers as prominent conservatives, Linda and Bill have split from the Republican Party. Here, they discuss how they reached their current political positions, the philosophical ties they still share with their old camp, and the future of conservatism in America.

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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David Volodzko is the news editor at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech nonprofit. He is also the author of the newsletter The Radicalist. This essay is an excerpt from his upcoming book, Memoirs of an American Dissident.

What can I say about losing a father? Now, as a father myself, if my daughter should read these words when I am gone, what would I want her to know? Perhaps I would tell her about the film Schindler’s List, in which there’s a famous scene with a little girl in a red coat. It’s a startling image because the movie is otherwise black-and-white, and then suddenly, a bouncing splash of red. You see her during a scene depicting the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. A beautiful child. Later, you see her again, her face destroyed but the coat unmistakable, as she lies on a cart stacked with bodies being wheeled toward the burn pits. It is one of the most haunting scenes in the movie.

But now, reverse the effect, and imagine instead that the whole world is full of bursting color, and that one of those colors belongs to your father. Green, let’s say. When he dies, the world carries on, of course, in Technicolor joy, as if mocking your grief. Except now all the green is gone. All the trees, all the grass, every cup of tea, grey as stone. Life is otherwise normal, but every time you see a summer field the color of gravel where others see fresh life, the pain of memory pinches. But in that painful grey, there’s a depth of beauty others cannot comprehend. The grey of the ocean deep. The grey light of dawn. In time, it becomes darkly beautiful to you. Like a dingy bookmark saving your favorite page. I lived in that grey world for a long time. But then something happened.

Shortly before my father’s death, I had returned to America after living almost 20 years in Asia as a professor and a journalist. The first thing I did upon returning was rent a cabin in the Appalachian mountains with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time. The woods were gorgeous. Fat-trunked sycamores beside rivers, towering tulip poplars, white oak on the higher ground. A blizzard locked us in the cabin for a week, but I didn’t mind one bit. We danced, drank bourbon, made love. It was good to be home again. America the beautiful. After an extended job search, I had a really good interview for a position with The Seattle Times, one of the largest newspapers in the United States, to join its team as a columnist and a member of its editorial board. Given the paper’s national ranking, and its regional influence as the largest outlet in the Pacific Northwest, I considered sitting on its board one of the most prestigious positions in American mainstream journalism.

Still, taking the job would be no easy lift. We had recently bought a home in rural Georgia. I had convinced my parents, as well as my brother and his wife, to move to the area so we could all be together. It was one of the happiest times of my life. Family dinners every Friday, summer cookouts on Lake Allatoona, camping in the bear country beneath Blood Mountain. But one evening, before I had gotten the callback about the position, my phone rang. It wasn’t Seattle. It was my mother. She was hysterical. I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. When I got to my parent’s place, she handed me the phone and a man on the other end of the line told me my father had been run over and killed while crossing the street. The man on the phone had not yet told my mother. She looked at me, her eyes wide like a child’s, and after pausing to steady my voice, I destroyed her life with a few words.

Months later, my mother moved back to her native home in the Bahamas. Shortly after that, the call came from Seattle and my wife and I made the difficult decision to move. Maybe, I thought, this new chapter would be a brighter path. My wife flew out to Seattle with our newborn daughter and began apartment hunting while I drove the moving truck up. I made my way through Chattanooga, with its river steamboat like a scene out of Mark Twain, past Nashville, past the old rail yards and stone bridges of St. Louis. I camped in the Badlands of South Dakota, waking up to see the sun spread itself over the bare, rainbow rocks. Dad would’ve loved it there.

When I got to Wyoming, I slowed down, made fire under the clean granite peaks of the Grand Tetons, and again in the dark and dense spruce woods of Yellowstone, where I awoke with a herd of bison calmly wandering past my tent. Thank God they didn’t walk over me. I saw Montana for the first time, and beheld its cathedraled spires of snow. Northern Idaho stunned me with its beauty, its smooth and rolling hills and winding rivers like mirrors, reflecting the bruised purple and rose of its perfect sky. God shed his grace on thee.

It was a magnificent trip, pure Americana, but I couldn’t so much as make a fire or hang a bear bag without thinking of the man who taught me how. All the mountain majesties and fruited plains were pale as ash. Finally, I came to Washington, first to Spokane, an outdoorsy and blue-collar city with friendly folk who had a plainspoken charm. I headed south through wine country, then over the Cascade Mountains and into the piney slopes of southern Seattle.

I threw myself into the city, studying it obsessively, and rapidly came to adore the place. I listened to every episode of every podcast about the place. I read two dozen books. I studied its history, politics, geology, climatology, and read about the tribes of the Coast Salish world—the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Muckleshoot peoples. By the time my ass hit the saddle, I was ready to ride. I interviewed city council candidates for the paper’s endorsements. I met Mayor Bruce Harrell, who explained his plans to revitalize downtown after Covid. I got a private tour of Sea-Tac Airport, trying to understand its congestion issues. It was tame stuff compared to my earlier work on authoritarian regimes, genocide, and war. But I absorbed it all and loved every minute. Yes, Seattle had a brittle and ideologically conformist atmosphere, and the polite but distant air people call “Seattle nice.” But I was charmed by its coffee culture, its strong Asian community, its loveable weirdness, and by the vanishing flavor of Old Seattle, blue-collar and grunge. This was still the city of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and though it was fading fast, you could find the shrapnel fragments if you went looking.

After writing a series of editorials on topics such as the airport and orcas, my boss Kate Riley asked me to write my first column about the city’s 16-foot bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin. I had wanted to write about the cost of early childhood education, being a new father myself, but given my Russian ancestry, I saw the Lenin statue as an opportunity to introduce myself and my family background to readers. In my column, I recalled making pelmeni by hand with my babushka Alla, my hands and face covered in flour as we worked in the cold of my grandparents’ basement in Paterson, New Jersey. I talked about my grandfather Josef, who had been a horse rancher before he came to the United States as a refugee after escaping a Nazi concentration camp. The only thing worse than that, he used to say, was the Russia Lenin had built. As I wrote in my column, “Josef knew he would never see his family again, but every holiday, my family stood around the kitchen table while he packed a box to send home, filling it with mundane but greatly needed raw cloth, buttons, paper. Josef had pre-sliced bread, but his mother needed flour. He had electric light, she needed candles.”

Then I came round to the statue. I wrote that, naturally, it offended me. Lenin was a demon of censorship whose regime had murdered members of my family. I hated him like I hated Stalin or Hitler. Though as New Yorker editor David Remnick recounted in his book Lenin’s Tomb, Vyacheslav Molotov, one of the few men who intimately knew both Lenin and Stalin, once remarked that compared to Lenin, Stalin was “a mere lamb.” Despite this, I explained that I believed the statue should not be torn down by fiat. I was personally offended, outraged even, but I believed in the principles of free expression and democracy, and if anything was to be done about the statue, I felt it should be done fairly.

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The column ran without controversy. Many people in the community wrote to thank me for my words. One man told me his Russian mother fell to her knees and wept when she saw a statue of Lenin, the monster who had slaughtered her parents, standing in the heart of an American city. Communists also wrote to tell me I was a fool to disrespect Lenin. Others criticized me for arguing to tear the statue down, which was the opposite of what I’d said.

Then I shared the column on Twitter, observing the moral hypocrisy of tearing down statues of Confederate generals while defending one of a communist dictator. Someone replied that America has a special relationship with the Confederacy, so this was not a fair comparison. Good point, I replied, but then what about Hitler? Both Hitler and Lenin were genocidal European dictators whose evil cursed humanity around the same period of time, in roughly the same patch of land, yet we would never tolerate a statue of Hitler, for obvious reasons. In a lengthy thread in which I made my views on Hitler’s evil crystal clear, and even noted that my grandfather had survived a Nazi concentration camp, I explained that “Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself did not believe were harmful in any way.”

Still, Twitter being Twitter, my comment was ripped from its context, and the response was immediate and hysterical. What happened next was like watching a fire spread across dry grass. Accounts with communist flags in their bios and “Leninist” in their handles came for me. They called me a Nazi. They called me a Holocaust denier. They told me to kill myself. They threatened to kill me.

The whole thing was like a contagion. Each new person arrived not having read my column or my comments, but reacting to someone else’s reaction to someone else’s outrage, like a drunken game of telephone in which the original message is replaced entirely by the emotion it generated. At one point, a disinformation analyst, whose literal expertise was identifying exactly this kind of cascade, reposted someone’s comment calling me a Nazi. When I wrote to him privately, asking him to take even a few seconds to review what I had actually said, he came back in under two minutes with an apology. “No worries,” I said. But I remember thinking, if the guy whose job it is to spot this can’t spot it, what chance does anyone else have? Was this not what my grandfather had fled Russia to escape? The intolerant silencing. The threat of death over an opinion.

As the mob grew, I told my boss Kate, but she simply replied, “Nobody cares what happens on Twitter.” And yet the death threats kept pouring in. I called her back later, and she could see that I was rattled. I asked her for advice. “I can’t tell you what to do with your Twitter,” she said, “but log off and have a glass of wine and play with your daughter.” She recommended that I stop engaging folks online, saying it was just feeding the furor. I knew she was right. But later that day, I saw a local journalist posting that my ancestors were literal Nazis who had “killed tens of thousands of Jews.” I replied that, in fact, my ancestors were killed by Nazis, not the other way around. But no effort to explain myself made any difference to anyone. As one friend told me, “David, they’re not misunderstanding you. They’re pretending to misunderstand you so they can act high and mighty.”

As the furor grew, my bosses, Kate and Melissa Davis, decided to review all my online comments and concluded the accusations against me were utterly false. They told me my job was secure. Kate said, “We’ve got your back, David. We’re not going to stand for a lying Twitter mob coming after one of our own.” I breathed a sigh of relief. In some way, I had never really let myself grieve my father, having had to keep it together for my family, as the eldest son. But the weight of a thousand voices telling me I was evil had affected me. It’s a strange fact, but however certain you are of a thing, having enough people tell you you’re wrong can shake even the surest mind. Psychologists call this the Asch effect. I had studied it as a grad student. But knowing a thing and knowing a thing are two different things. The attacks had shaken me deeper than I had realized. Maybe it was fear for my daughter. Maybe it was buried grief over my father. But when Kate said they had my back, the relief hit me like a wave and I almost wept.

The decision was put before the editorial board, and no one objected. Two hours later, Kate called. I was home, rocking my daughter in my arms. I handed her to my wife and took the call. “Effective immediately,” she began. I was quiet for a moment. The official reason was that I had continued posting online after being told to stop. Even though, when I had asked Kate for advice on what to do about the mob, she had told me, “We can’t tell you what to do with your Twitter account.” But she had given me the advice to log off, and now that was being presented as if it had been an order. An order I had violated. So the official reason they fired me was because I told a “journalist” online that Nazis killed my family. But when I pointed this out on the phone, an HR representative who had apparently been on the line the whole time, interrupted to say, “We’re not here to debate this. The decision has been made.” Clearly, I was not actually being fired for telling someone my family was killed by Nazis. I was being fired because the “lying Twitter mob” was becoming a PR nightmare, and someone higher up had decided to override the board and feed me to the wolves to lighten their sled.

I have since explained in detail precisely what I meant by my commentary on Lenin versus Hitler, and if people hear me out, weigh the evidence for my claim, and yet wholly disagree, that’s fine. In fact, it’s healthy. That is my honest read of the facts, but yours may differ. Good-faith disagreement is the nature of open discourse and free expression, two principles that lie at the very heart of journalistic ethics—and American democracy. But firing an opinion columnist for having an opinion? For comparing one dictator to another, the obvious point being that both are evil? Is that really what we’re doing now?

The media had a field day with me, but the headlines bore no resemblance to anything I had said or believed. Even The Daily Beast, which had published my work exposing Nazis (and so its editors knew better) smeared me without a word of context. The Free Press gave me a chance to tell my own story in an essay aptly titled, “My family was hunted by Nazis. But I was fired for ‘defending Hitler.’” In the days after, I did what writers do when the institution collapses beneath them—I built my own floor. I had been attacked for my speech, so I chose to keep speaking. Louder now. I started a Substack, The Radicalist, where I write about the extremist movements I had spent my career studying. Slowly, the work found its audience. People wrote to me. Katie Couric expressed support. Elon Musk said he would fund the legal fees for anyone fired over a tweet, adding that my case looked like a good one. And I got to interview some of my lifelong heroes, people like the Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff and the legendary Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one of the world’s greatest living dissidents, who told me, “You are also a great dissident. Just keep at it and keep doing what you’re doing.”

Finally, the scales of truth had turned my way. But even weeks later, the death threats had not slowed, and we had a baby girl to consider. Breaking our lease ended up costing us over $10,000. Fortunately, Blocked and Reported host Katie Herzog and her partner offered to put us up while they were out of town. They lived not far from the city, and we gratefully said yes. My daughter ended up learning to walk in their home. Of course, I will never be able to repay Katie for being life-changingly kind to me and my loved ones. But I often think of it, my girl’s first steps, taken in a borrowed house, outside a city we had fled, at the end of a year that had burned everything down. But my little girl didn’t know any of that. She just stood up and walked across the room one day, clear out of nowhere, and watching her, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I burst into laughter. As she waddled away from me in the funniest way, I noticed her socks were blindingly green.

Not everything in life has to make sense or math out. Sometimes shit happens. Sometimes there is no takeaway. But looking back on it all, I suppose what I would want my daughter to know, if she reads these words when I am gone, is that you must never let the unlistening crowd decide what you can say. Freedom of speech is the freedom to be yourself, and there are no mistakes when it comes to that, my love. But also remember to always carry on, because in life, winter will come—but eventually, the green grows back.

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

“It’s Not Trump,” a recent New York Times opinion headline proclaims, “It’s America.”

It’s an incendiary take. For columnist Lydia Polgreen, it’s not enough that America has a terrible president (and I agree, he is terrible!)—America, Polgreen insists, is a terrible country.

“Trump has revealed a much older malady,” she writes. That affliction is America’s “unshakable faith in its ability to shape the world to its liking.”

Ms. Polgreen’s piece follows in a long tradition of arguments that twist the facts to cast the United States as a nation of sin. The war in Iran provides the hook for her case that America is an inherently overconfident bully.

To prove her point, she cites Trump’s “popular-vote triumph” two years ago, sounding almost like the president himself in turning a razor-thin electoral victory into a mandate to recast all of America as MAGA country.

According to Polgreen, this is what Americans wanted (well, 49.8% of the 64.1% of eligible voters who cast their ballots), and so, this is what America is.

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From Iran, Polgreen reaches back into America’s actions in the Cold War. Here, her analysis becomes even sloppier.

The Korean War is bafflingly listed as a US-led “disaster” alongside Vietnam.

Of course, the truth is that it was North Korea with Soviet and Chinese support that aggressed against its neighbor. US intervention in Korea is what spared half the peninsula from Stalinist tyranny under the Kim dynasty.

Yes, the history isn’t so neat—it never is. South Korea was an authoritarian government, but it was not a closed prison state like the north. American protection allowed it to flourish into a successful democracy and economic powerhouse (and I am certain that some of you are reading this article on a phone or computer made in South Korea—that wouldn’t be the case had 36,000 Americans not sacrificed their lives to save the country from communist invasion!).

In the post-Cold War era, the author pins the blame for rising Chinese autocracy on American leaders who “persuaded” Beijing to open its economy. For one thing, this process had been underway since Mao’s death in the 1970s. For someone who thinks American “omnipotence” is a dangerous illusion, Polgreen sure ascribes a lot of power to Washington.

More than that, dictators have agency. Authoritarianism is a choice. I grew up behind the Iron Curtain, witnessing the arbitrariness and cruelty of communist rule from childhood. Frankly, as a chess prodigy, I had it easier than most. Still, I can assure you that there were no US puppeteers forcing the Party’s hand. The imperfect freedom I know in America is vastly superior to what I saw in the USSR, and its zombie successor, the Russian Federation.

There are kernels of truth hidden amid Polgreen’s distortions. Yes, the problem is not Trump alone. Yes—as I have written—the presidency has become too powerful and unrestrained. I embrace self-reflection; what I reject is self-flagellation.

Anyone who makes blanket condemnations of the US (“America does not know how to exist in a world it does not control”) is more interested in appearing righteous than in winning back their country. If Americans want to reclaim their democracy, then they need to carve out a middle ground in their self-image between the ideologically-blinkered history of the 1619 Project and the state-sponsored whitewashing of Trump’s 1776 Commission.

Finally, I’d like to challenge Polgreen’s central conceit: her rejection of America’s “unshakable faith in its ability to shape the world to its liking.”

The United States was the first country founded on principles rather than ethnic or religious affiliation, or upon the hereditary right of kings. It remains unique today, painting a sharp contrast to Russia’s blood-and-soil nationalism or Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

It makes sense that Americans, who belong to a community of democratic ideas, a mission-driven organization, believe they can shape the world. People like Lydia Polgreen belong to a community of ideas too, and they would surely like for their ideas to shape the world. Their outlook is just one that is deferential to authoritarians (so long as the authoritarians are not American).

I wouldn’t call Americans’ belief in global democracy “unshakable,” as Polgreen does. Yet that commitment is there, and, I’d argue, a good thing to fight for. The United States is not perfect, but the idea of freedom is.

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

A week and a half ago, CPAC, an American organization, held one of its regular jamborees in Hungary. Hungary, under Viktor Orbán, is a seat of the “postliberal” Right. Many such rightists have visited Hungary in recent days, boosting Orbán for a sixth term in office.

Marine Le Pen of France was there. So was Matteo Salvini of Italy. So was Geert Wilders of the Netherlands.

Both the Kremlin and the White House are going all-out for Orbán’s reelection. I wrote about this two weeks ago, here (“Putin and Trump for Orbán”).

President Trump did not attend the recent CPAC conclave in Hungary, but he sent a video. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, was scheduled to attend in person, but the war with Iran kept him at home, and he, too, sent a video. For good measure, his son Yair spoke to the gathering.

Prime Minister Netanyahu told the CPAC-ers, “I want to thank you for standing up for Western civilization.” Then, speaking about his Hungarian counterpart personally, he said:

“I want to thank my friend Viktor Orbán. He has been like a rock. … I know many world leaders, and I can tell you he is right there at the top. Viktor Orbán means stability, safety, security.”

As a rule, a country is the ally of another country, regardless of who is in office. In democracies, leaders come and go. But things have gotten very personal lately.

Standing alongside Orbán in February, and addressing him, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “Especially as long as you’re the prime minister and the leader of this country, it’s in our national interest that Hungary be successful.”

Ponder this business of “Western civilization” for a second. It is an article of faith among Orbán fans that he is a champion and protector of that civilization. Here is a tweet from Steve King, an Iowa Republican who was in Congress from 2003 to 2021: “History will record PM Orban the Winston Churchill of Western Civilization.”

(My comment was, “Personally, I would accord that honor to Churchill.”)

To some of us, Western civilization includes liberal democracy: the rule of law, an independent judiciary, independent media, etc. In 2018, Prime Minister Orbán declared, “The era of liberal democracy is over.”

Also, does Orbán’s alliance with Putin square with Western civilization? How about his hostility to Ukraine and its cause? Does that speak to you of Western civilization?

Orbán supporters point out that he is staunch against immigration, particularly of the Muslim kind. I must say, I agree that countries should retain their national character. There was a slogan, and a song, in the 1970s and ’80s: “Let Poland Be Poland.” Yes, and let Hungary be Hungary, let France be France, and so on.

It’s up to immigrants to assimilate to the countries they go to; it’s not up to countries to assimilate to the immigrants.

But here is what I deny: that it takes authoritarianism to have a sensible immigration policy; that it takes a partnership with Putin to have a sensible immigration policy.

Back, now, to Benjamin Netanyahu, who is my main subject today.

I have been a Netanyahu admirer for a long time. You could even have called me a Bibi fanboy. At a young age, I was drawn to the Israeli Right. I regard Menachem Begin as one of the outstanding political figures of the second half of the twentieth century.

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The survival and flourishing of Israel is very important to me. I wrote about this in 2015, in a piece called “Hung Up on Israel.”

I think I first became aware of Netanyahu in the early 1980s, when he was deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington. Then he was Israel’s ambassador to the UN.

In my opinion, there was no better spokesman for Israel and its cause. He articulated principles and ideals—and facts—that were important.

Then, too, there was a mystique surrounding his family, as his valiant brother Jonathan was the only Israeli soldier killed during the raid on Entebbe. (This was the operation to rescue Israeli hostages in Uganda.) The raid took place on July 4, 1976, America’s Bicentennial Day.

Benjamin Netanyahu first became prime minister in 1996. His spokesman was David Bar-Illan, a pianist, whom I knew. Pianists as politicos—Israel is an unusual country.

In a later government, Netanyahu was finance minister. He was a liberalizer. Critics accused him of being “Thatcherite”—which was fine with me.

He returned to the office of prime minister in 2009 and has been there almost continuously since. Over and over, he clashed with President Obama—on Iran and other matters. I sided with Netanyahu. Did that make me unpatriotic? “America First!”

Well, tough. I thought Netanyahu was right.

In those years, I referred to him as the “Leader of the West.” (I applied the same designation to Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada.) In a forum once, I asked Paul Johnson, the British historian, “Whom do you regard as a major and impressive statesman today?” He named Netanyahu. “A man of destiny,” he said.

That sounded right to me.

As Netanyahu’s years in office wore on, my doubts set in. For one thing, I thought he was staying too long. He was not letting others in his party rise. Also, it seemed to me he was equating Israel’s security with his hold on power. But if the survival of a country depends on one man, who is mortal, it has no chance.

David Ben-Gurion, too, had a hard time exiting the scene. Frankly, I think my beloved Margaret Thatcher stayed too long. Speaking of beloved British prime ministers: Did Churchill really need that extra premiership in the 1950s? Did it do anything to burnish his record?

There was a touch of megalomania about Netanyahu. At his rallies, they chanted, “Bibi, King of Israel!” The democrat in me balked at that.

We should then note the charges of corruption. “But it’s the Left, it’s the media!” some of my friends say. That is reflexive in conservatives. “The Left, the media!” I understand this well.

Let me tell you something. I admired Reagan, and maybe over-admired him. I defended him at every turn: Iran-contra, Bitburg … Yes, I liked him, even loved him. But perhaps even more, I hated his enemies.

And you cannot let the “other side” win, ever.

In the summer of 2019, I was walking in Tel Aviv and saw the biggest campaign poster I had ever seen. It was on a skyscraper. I’m not sure how many storeys high it was, but—many. It showed Netanyahu and Putin in a chummy pose. The words read: “Netanyahu: In a league of his own.”

I was revolted—because I know who and what Putin is. I realize that nations must pursue their interests, and that the world is grubby, but I also know that there was a moral component to the founding of modern Israel.

Is Israel merely “another pleasant country on the UN roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe,” to borrow Bush 41’s words?

At the end of 2022, Netanyahu formed another government—not especially conservative. It includes such figures as Itamar Ben-Gvir, a bona fide extremist. In Israel, my conservative friends were disquieted. In America? Not so much. They knew less. And the watchword had always been, “Bibi good, his critics bad.”

So too, the conservative or right-leaning media in Israel published robust debate about Netanyahu. Our own conservative or right-leaning media were less robust in this respect.

I also thought it was not especially good for Israel to be closely tied to the Republican Party—or any single party in America. The US-Israel relationship must be bigger than Trump and Netanyahu.

Here is a typical headline, from last month: “Trump demands immediate pardon for Netanyahu to focus on Iran.” (The article is here.)

Above, I mentioned Churchill and also Paul Johnson. In the 1930s, Johnson’s father had a negative view of Churchill. And he referred to him as “Churchill.” When the war came, the elder Johnson said something like, “We’d better get Winston.”

Paul Johnson, who was about twelve, noticed this: it had gone from “Churchill” to “Winston.”

I caught myself starting to say “Netanyahu” instead of “Bibi.” When I’m feeling warm toward the man, it’s “Bibi.” When I’m not, it’s “Netanyahu.”

About October 7, I will be brief: How could the government let Israel be naked unto its enemies, especially on the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War? I figured that the ensuing commission would make the Agranat Commission—the one that investigated the failures in 1973—look like a picnic.

But there was a war to fight, and Israeli and pro-Israel wagons circled, more or less.

Now the Iran war is upon us. Netanyahu realizes that Putin is an ally of Iran, right? And that Orbán has had cozy relations with Tehran, too?

In October 2022, Netanyahu published an autobiography: Bibi: My Story. This was eight months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the book, Netanyahu describes Putin as “smart, sophisticated and focused on one goal—returning Russia to its historical greatness.” We all have different ideas of “greatness.”

Putin has re-Sovietized Russia, abolishing civil society and independent media. There are more political prisoners in Russia today than in the last stage of the Soviet Union. Putin exiles, imprisons, maims, or kills his critics. He is committing war crime after war crime in Ukraine, as he seeks to subdue that nation and re-subjugate it.

If this is “greatness,” then to hell with greatness.

February 24, 2025, marked the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion. In the UN, Ukraine offered a resolution condemning Russia for its aggression and calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. The resolution passed 93 to 18.

Voting against the resolution were Russia, North Korea, Belarus, and Nicaragua. And Hungary (of course). And the United States. And Israel.

Of course?

Personally, I was sickened to see my country on that side of the vote—on the same side as Russia, North Korea, and the rest. Though it’s not my country, I was sickened to see Israel on that side too.

A question for you: If Benjamin Netanyahu puts paid to the Islamist regime in Iran and its tentacle Hamas—and maybe its tentacle Hezbollah, to boot—will anything that can be said against him pale in comparison?

Here at the end, I should “pull the trigger.” That’s what the late, great Norman Podhoretz instructed writers to do, especially in an opinion piece. You have to pull the trigger. You have to say what you believe, take a stand. Don’t leave the reader wondering.

The truth is, I’m ambivalent about Netanyahu. About “Bibi”! My only comfort is that others of my acquaintance are in the same boat.

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

Kharkiv is a city of cognitive dissonance.

Located in eastern Ukraine, just over the Russian border, Kharkiv has borne the brunt of Russia’s onslaught. Moscow targeted the city in 2014 and again in 2022, when Russian forces occupied much of the Kharkiv Oblast (province) until Ukraine was able to liberate the territory.

Despite Ukraine’s military success, Kharkiv city (and the rest of the oblast) remains under fire today.

In Kharkiv, military vehicles share the road with sports cars. You’ll see an elegant restaurant that wouldn’t look out of place in Soho or Georgetown. Across the street from that restaurant, you’ll see a bombed-out building or a crater.

A quarter of the city’s buildings have been destroyed. Yet I watch municipal workers whitewashing the trees lining the streets. It’s a measure designed to protect the trees from pests and environmental damage. Amid all of the missile and drone attacks, the people of Kharkiv still care about their hometown’s appearance. That commitment pays off: The city—minus, of course, the areas where Russian forces have struck—is genuinely clean! Certainly, it’s better-maintained than much of New York City.

Above all, Kharkivites are proud of their resilience. We see that strength—sometimes grim, other times optimistic—on display everywhere we go.

Allow me to illustrate that spirit for you as best I can.

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Photo: Chris Lawson, Renew Democracy Initiative Ukraine leadership delegation, March 2026

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Editor’s Note: The Renew Democracy Initiative—publisher of The Next Move—is in Ukraine! We’ll be sharing daily dispatches from our delegation. Premium subscribers will receive each Ukraine Dispatch 24 hours before anyone else. Be the first to get on-the-ground news from the frontlines of freedom by upgrading to join our premium subscriber community today! All proceeds go to support the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including humanitarian assistance to communities in Ukraine.

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

I can’t tell you where I’m headed.

I’m writing this from the bus. After spending the past couple of days in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, we’re turning east. However, the name of the city we’re going to will have to remain secret, at least until we’ve left.

There have been inspiring blips of normalcy throughout the journey, but this country is still at war.

Our next few days will be particularly sensitive.

Allow me to explain.

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Ultimately, our delegation will end up in Kharkiv. It’s Ukraine’s second-largest city. But we’re not going to be staying over in Kharkiv.

If you look at a map, you’ll see that Kharkiv is located right up against Russia. The outskirts of the municipality are just 13 miles from the border. This means that people living there take the brunt of everything that Moscow’s forces are throwing at Ukraine.

Because of the precarious situation, we’re going to have to commute from a third location, another city located a couple of hours’ drive from Kharkiv. In order to protect our group and our colleagues, I’m going to refrain from disclosing the name of this city.

Our security coordinator, the government ministers we’ve chatted with, “Arkadiy” (the Azov commander I met on Monday), and the mayor of Kharkiv himself have all advised us that overnighting in the city proper would bring unnecessary risk to our group.

This certainly complicates our plans. We’re taking other precautions too. I didn’t think that procuring bulletproof vests and faraday boxes was part of the job description when I signed up to run a non-profit. But here we are.

Yet being a visitor still is a luxury. Truth be told, our local hosts have gone to great lengths to keep us safe. Meanwhile, even though Russia has destroyed a quarter of Kharkiv’s buildings, hundreds of thousands of people continue to live there. They put up with the danger we were advised to avoid every single day.

This is why the bulk of RDI’s aid to Ukraine—roughly $10 million of our $15 million raised—has been committed to the Kharkiv area. Many organizations are doing admirable work supporting refugees, but someone also needs to ensure that Ukraine will be a viable nation the day after the war rather than a depopulated wasteland.

As we continue on, I notice more and more military vehicles taking up the road. We’re clearly getting closer to the actual military front. I watch convoys of trucks painted in olive drab, tarps shielding their cargoes from the elements—and from prying eyes.

There are other signs of the war. Palatial homes juxtaposed against craters where missiles and kamikaze drones exploded.

Meanwhile, the sky is empty. This is especially jarring for someone who lives in the DC area. There are choppers constantly ferrying officials around Washington and its environs. My house is on the flight path of Reagan National Airport, meaning I hear the roar of jet engines during all hours of the day.

Not so in Ukraine. It’s too dangerous for routine flights and even most official travel with the frequent Russian bombardments. So it came as a surprise when, right before leaving Kyiv, I caught two helicopters flying off into the distance. I was having a private meeting with some military officers.

One of them explained. “They’re picking up the most badly injured soldiers… the ones who wouldn’t survive without being evacuated like this. That’s one of the only things our pilots will risk flying for.”

Speaking of the sky: The natural landscape I’m watching from our bus is an imperfect reflection of the Ukrainian flag. In peak season, clear blue skies over shimmering wheatfields make it clear where Ukraine got the inspiration for its national banner.

Today, it’s slightly overcast, and the crops are a little more grey than gold. Yet every so often, the clouds will break and I’ll see the contours of the flag.

P.S. Because of the situation in Kharkiv, it looks like a dispatch will not be in the cards for tomorrow. I’d wanted these dispatches to be truly daily, but I’ll make it up to you!

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Editor’s Note: The Renew Democracy Initiative—publisher of The Next Move—is in Ukraine! We’ll be sharing daily dispatches from our delegation. Premium subscribers will receive each Ukraine Dispatch 24 hours before anyone else. Be the first to get on-the-ground news from the frontlines of freedom by upgrading to join our premium subscriber community today! All proceeds go to support the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including humanitarian assistance to communities in Ukraine.

I got into an argument with a congressman last week (this is normal for me these days).

The representative in question is Don Bacon, a Republican serving Nebraska’s second district in the House. He’ll be retiring after the midterms.

Bacon is a rarity in the modern GOP—a sincere supporter of Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. He’s also one of the few who seems to actually want to carry on the example set by President Ronald Reagan.

Yet sincerity is no substitute for action, and this is where he and I came to blows.

It’s clear that Trump is working hand in glove with Vladimir Putin against Ukraine. A Russian delegation is in Washington, hosted by several of Bacon’s fellow Republicans (and, it seems, one Democrat).

The administration recently lifted sanctions on Russian oil.

The White House is teasing an invite to the Kremlin’s Belarusian puppet, Alexander Lukashenko—also newly freed from sanctions.

Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department is about to divert $750 million in funds paid out by NATO allies for life-saving military aid away from Ukraine. This is just shameless theft.

The president continues to insult Ukraine and its leaders—conditioning aid upon the surrender of territory to the Russian aggressor. He does all of this while Kyiv sends drone experts to rescue US troops in the Middle East. Think about it: to show just how much goodwill they have for the American people and save American lives, the Ukrainians are sacrificing resources that could be put toward their existential fight with Russia.

And Donald Trump spits on them.

I believe the Nebraska congressman is being genuine in his statements of support for Kyiv. Bacon has criticized President Trump before, which sets him apart from sycophants like Senator Lindsay Graham.

That is why I insisted to Bacon (who’d just posted an inspiring Churchill quote) on more action, less tweeting. Bacon muted me in response.

(To those inclined to call me a hypocrite for admonishing someone for tweeting with a tweet of my own—I am not a congressman, but I’m doing what I can—have a look at what my organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative, is doing to provide material support for Ukraine.)

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Representative Bacon doesn’t realize the power that he holds. Republicans hold a razor-thin majority in the House. If Bacon plays hardball for Ukraine, he’d could put Mike Johnson’s speakership on the line with just two more defections (perhaps Michael McCaul of Texas, another pro-Ukraine diamond in the Russia-supporting rough, and Kevin Kiley, a Republican-recently-turned-independent).

That leaves the Nebraska congressman in a strong negotiating position to demand the administration change course on Ukraine. With no election to worry about, Bacon is free from many of the typical political constraints.

I recognize that opening the door to a Hakeem Jeffries speakership is a difficult pill to swallow for a principled conservative like Bacon. I have my issues with today’s Democrats, and while I’m not an American, many of my political heroes come from the Republican old guard.

Yet Ukraine’s cause demands more from those of us in the US. If young Ukrainian men and women can sacrifice their lives to defend the Free World, can’t an outgoing congressman sacrifice his partisan loyalty to defend Ukraine?

Congressman Bacon, I know you are a good guy. The problem is that simply being a good guy is not enough. You have the power and influence to act on your words.

If you can do that, I’ll forgive you for keeping me muted on Twitter. I do post a lot.

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Editor’s Note: The Renew Democracy Initiative—publisher of The Next Move—is in Ukraine! We’ll be sharing daily dispatches from our delegation. Premium subscribers will receive each Ukraine Dispatch 24 hours before anyone else. Be the first to get on-the-ground news from the frontlines of freedom by upgrading to join our premium subscriber community today! All proceeds go to support the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including humanitarian assistance to communities in Ukraine.

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

Ukrainian UAVs—that is, unmanned aerial vehicles—are in the news.

In my last dispatch, I mentioned this week’s massive Russian drone attack. Over the last four years, Moscow has launched around 60,000 Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones at Ukraine, killing innocent people and wrecking civilian infrastructure.

Now, Russia’s Iranian allies are using those same Shaheds against American servicemembers and allies in the Middle East. Kyiv’s expertise in drone interception is in high demand because of the Iran war.

So what better time to meet with one of the senior-most officers in Ukraine’s military?

The Renew Democracy Initiative’s delegation had the opportunity to get together with Colonel Pavlo Yelizarov, deputy commander of the Ukrainian Air Force. He built out Ukraine’s most effective UAV unit, and I want to share some of his insights in drone warfare with you.

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