Politics Will SCOTUS Bless the ‘Obstruction’ Tool for Speech Suppression? Fischer v. United States is about more than Trump and J6. The Department of Justice charged approximately 350 people under the obstruction statute for their role in the January 6 Capitol riot. One of them is Donald Trump. All of them, including Trump, may see those charges dropped based on an expected Supreme Court ruling. The ruling, if favorable, would also significantly protect First Amendment rights. Between the start of Trump’s criminal “hush money” trial in New York and oral arguments in his immunity case, a ..read more

Books America as Seen From Budapest János Zoltan Csák surveys America in all its glorious contradiction—and renders trenchant warnings for our future. Credit: CCat82 The Genius of America, by János Zoltan Csák, with Forward by Patrick Deneen and Afterward by George Friedman, translated from Hungarian by Thomas Snedden, Angelico Press, 110 pages. No one doubts what Hungary is: It is the country of the Magyars, as it has been since St. Stephen converted them to Christianity in the first years of the second millennium A.D. It has had royal, Imperial-Royal (under the Hapsburg Empire), aut ..read more

Anastasia Kaliabakos, TAC Editorial Fellow: Being a philosophy major in college allowed me the privilege of studying many different and interesting philosophers. Now, nearly a year has passed since my graduation, and I have found myself periodically returning to the work of just one of them: Søren Kierkegaard, the “father of existentialism.” Since my introduction to him in the fall of my senior year, I have been completely fascinated. Born on May 5, 1813, Kierkegaard spent most of his life ruminating on ethics, love, religion, and the self in works like The Present Age: On the Death of Rebelli ..read more

Culture Another Trial in New York The current proceedings in a Manhattan courthouse aren’t the first time the interests have tried to lay low a wealthy populist icon. Photo Credit: The Martha Stewart Show Once upon a time, one of the most famous people in the world went on trial in New York. This person ran a business and had achieved a state of ubiquity thanks to a gift of media savvy; hosted a television program, logged countless appearances on talk shows; this person’s name appeared on all manner of household products. This person was hugely popular among wide swaths of the America ..read more

Politics A Missed Off-Ramp for Failed U.S. Policy Toward Venezuela American sanctions keep backfiring, so why do we keep using them? Governments often act at cross-purposes with themselves—a delicate way of saying that governments often get in their own way. That is the case with the U.S. government’s reimposition of its economic sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry.  In the wake of the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s agreement with his political opposition to work toward free and fair elections, the Biden administration committed to suspend the sanctions on oil—the count ..read more

Foreign Affairs Giving South Korea’s Syngman Rhee a Second Look A new documentary on the nation’s maligned founding father has drawn praise from the conservative Yoon government. There’s a scene early in The Birth of Korea, Kim Deog-young’s new film defending the legacy of South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, that may go underappreciated. In it, the 85-year-old Rhee visits one of the injured victims of the April Revolution—the landmark 1960 uprising that ultimately toppled Rhee’s government—in the hospital. After exchanging some greetings, the camera zooms in on Rhee’s face as i ..read more

Politics Biden’s Middle East Posture Courts Insanity and Endangers U.S. Troops An Israeli–Iranian spat can easily become something much larger—and Americans will bear the brunt of it. The crisis in the Middle East remains one step from major escalation. In the aftermath of Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel, many pundits rushed to celebrate, claiming that Iran’s “maximum effort” had been easily swatted away. Those celebrations were understandable; according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 99 percent of Iran’s drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles were intercepted—primar ..read more

Foreign Affairs Japan’s Subordination to Washington Is a Disgrace The Japanese political establishment is bent on supporting the excesses of American imperialism. On April 11, 2024, Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio stood at the dais in the United States Congress and smiled. He had just delivered an oration which had been met with thunderous applause. More than a dozen standing ovations, the exuberant press in Japan crowed. Like Sally Fields at the Academy Awards, Kishida could finally say, on behalf of his fellow aspirational Washingtonians in Tokyo, “You like me. Right now, you lik ..read more

Foreign Affairs Georgia’s ‘Foreign Influence’ Law Is Reasonable State of the Union: The U.S. State Department has condemned it but making NGOs disclose foreign funding is a sensible precaution. The U.S. State Department recently condemned a bill that the parliament of Georgia is preparing to pass into law that would require non-governmental organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from foreign sources to disclose that fact. Spokesman Matthew Miller said, in a not so veiled threat, that the law would “impact Georgia’s EU and NATO aspirations.” Anything that takes ..read more

Politics Is the Mexican President’s Denunciation of the U.S. Human Rights Report Right? The time has come for Congress to end its mandate that the State Department publish a yearly human rights assessment on virtually every country on the planet. Credit: Octavio Hoyos Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is again blasting the gringos, and perhaps this time he has a fair point. AMLO has turned his rhetorical fire on the State Department’s human rights report that Secretary Blinken released on April 22. Typical of all such country reports, issued yearly, State Department heavi ..read more