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If the mainstream media is to be believed, DOGE represents an existential threat to the American republic. Ask the average American, on the other hand, and you’ll discover high levels of enthusiasm for DOGE and its projected US$500 billion in federal savings. Results from a Harvard Caps/Harris poll released this week reveal levels of support for the initiative […]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s confirmation as the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the US is the ultimate repudiation of the Covid policy response. The scheme of lockdown-until-vaccination was the biggest effort of government and industry on a global scale on historical record. It was all designed to transfer wealth to winning industries (pharma, […]
In Australia, there are many “bad laws” that seek to criminalise, rather than promote, free speech. For example, at the state level, we have the states’ Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Acts, which criminalise any advocacy of conversion practices, including any encouragement of teenagers to reverse their gender alteration treatments. Another example is the adoption, […]
On the day of his inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order called “Protecting the American People against Invasion”. It was not language designed to ingratiate himself with the American people’s Catholic bishops. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, described the executive order as “deeply troubling” and predicted that […]
In his inaugural address, Donald Trump declared that one of his administration’s priorities would be to regain control of the Panama Canal. This claim reopens a century-old debate over who built it, who lost it, and who truly owns this 80-kilometer engineering marvel that stitches together the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. With over 140 maritime routes, 1,700 […]
Trump’s plan for Gaza is starting to make sense to me. It’s gonna work like this. USA Inc compensates each family in Gaza US$400,000 for their property (what Israel gave to the settlers it deported in 2005.). There are about 450,000 families, so the buyout will only be about $180 billion. The US buys Greenland. […]
My hometown during the 2017 fires in which my childhood home was burned and many friends and neighbors lost their homes and animals, and nine lost their lives. After years of fire and smoke in rural Northern California—evacuations, death and destruction, broken communities, lost homes—watching Los Angeles burn feels surreal but inevitable. This could have […]
History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power — and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.” […]
We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi | Princeton UP, 2024, 432 pages Political and social developments during 2024 have led some to speculate that the “Woke” era is over. Donald Trump’s victory over a Democratic candidate who owed her position to race and gender alone – […]
Elon Musk By Walter Isaacson | Simon & Schuster UK, 2023, 688 pages Walter Isaacson could not have chosen a more fascinating subject than Elon Musk for the latest of his biographies, which include well known portraits of Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger and Benjamin Franklin. And Musk is not out of […]
Private school choice advocates expect that 2025 will be the year that they finally bring the last big red state, Texas, into the fold. The likely victory would, in turn, pose the next big challenge for the controversial movement: Can it win in enemy territory — that is, blue states — too? Inspired by free-market […]
Merry Christmas to all of our subscribers and readers! This is the last article that Mercator will publish until the beginning of January, in the New Year. Normally the editor refrains from reflections upon the meaning of Christmas, as eloquent voices already abound; the market for deep and meaningful sentiments at this time of year is a […]
International trade is one of the key areas of concern for those nervously awaiting the commencement of the second Trump presidency. Trade occupies a position of special significance in the strange mind of the 45th and 47th president. On many issues, he has flip-flopped, usually due to a clear disinterest in questions of public policy […]
Donald Trump’s stunning victory has not yet resulted in a renewed and thorough examination of political trends in America. Some have commented on the growing support which Trump’s Republicans are receiving from minority voters. The results were truly remarkable. Trump apparently carried 46 percent of Hispanic votes along with 39 percent of Asian votes, and serious inroads […]
“It’s just like living in Nazi Germany!” – or so many excitable commentators like myself are often wont to say about life in the contemporary West whenever we see the latest egregious assault on free speech or outrageous overblown “hate crime” incident. Except, of course, it isn’t quite like Nazi Germany at all, is it? Such statements, […]