A little bookkeeping at the top: Tonight, our Sam Stein will be moderating an hour-long conversation between human rights activist Kerry Kennedy and Sen. Chris Murphy at an online event hosted by BigTentUSA, where they’ll talk about ICE’s abuses under Trump and how to reform America’s immigration system. Real Samheads and other interested parties can RSVP here. Happy Wednesday.
(Composite / Shutterstock)
by Andrew Egger
You may remember that not long ago Donald Trump and his crew were, they stressed, trying to save some money. In the first few months of his second term, a great mania for belt-tightening gripped the White House. Its premier initiative was DOGE, which rampaged through the federal government, slashing contracts and payroll with abandon. The dismantling of USAID, which Elon Musk bragged about feeding through a “wood chipper,” was their crown achievement. No more would the United States spend tens of billions of dollars a year on useless frivolities like food aid for refugee children in war zones! Americans demanded, Elon insisted, that we spend their hard-earned tax dollars only on stuff that really mattered.
I’ve been thinking about USAID and its $35 billion in annual aid spending a lot this week as Donald Trump has forged ahead with a new pet project: bailing out the nation of Argentina, whose economy has been faltering and whose president, Javier Milei, is facing the prospect of a major rebuke in his country’s midterm elections next week. On Monday, the U.S. Treasury agreed to purchase $20 billion in Argentine pesos in an “exchange-rate stabilization” operation. Other interventions are likely. When all is said and done, the White House hopes to provide $40 billion in rescue money for Argentina.
It’s been funny listening to Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent talk about this, as the rationales they offer diverge quite a bit. Bessent goes to some trouble to dress it up in the language of economics, casting it as a canny investment for America: “The success of Argentina’s reform agenda is of systemic importance, and a strong, stable Argentina which helps anchor a prosperous Western Hemisphere is in the strategic interest of the United States,” he tweeted this month. But Trump’s been explicit: He’s doing it to prop up his buddy Milei. “I’m with this man because his philosophy is correct,” Trump said of Milei last week. “And if he wins, we’re staying with him, and if he doesn’t win, we’re gone.”
Whatever the rationale, it’s not clear their strategy is helping much. The Argentine peso sank to record lows yesterday, with little indication that the midterms were going to turn in Milei’s favor (who could have guessed that voters may not like the idea of being run by an American-puppet government?) and traders seemingly unimpressed by Bessent’s pitch of the currency as a prudent investment. The United States is now the proud owner of $20 billion in increasingly worthless Argentinian currency. America First, baby!
Meanwhile, Trump is encountering some domestic problems of his own. It’d be one thing if he were just sending a slush fund of cash down Milei’s way. But Trump has suggested other interventions too—like the United States buying a bunch of Argentinian beef. He cast such a possibility as a win-win on Sunday: “If we do that, that will bring our beef prices down.”
U.S. ranchers saw it differently. Lawmakers from agricultural states have been venting their displeasure all week, telling Trump that under no circumstances should the federal government take deliberate action to undercut the market. “Ranchers are finally getting prices that are going to make up for some really bad years in the past with the drought, low prices and high costs,” Texas A&M livestock economist David Anderson told the AP this week. “And we start talking about government policy to bring down prices.”
Some of the criticism has come from unexpected places. The most strident GOP opponent of Argentina bailouts of any kind has been MAGA darling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who demanded to know “how it’s America First to bailout a foreign country” in an X post last week. She doubled down in an interview yesterday: “It is mind-boggling why we would do this with Argentina,” she told Semafor. “There’s a lot of people in MAGA that try to always stick with the talking points . . . but there’s a lot of people that can’t spin this one.”
Hey: When she’s right, she’s right.
Trump’s economic “policy” has no real philosophy—it just involves throwing money at people he wants to help and tariffs at people he decides to punish. There’s no other rhyme or reason to it, and now even MAGA is starting to notice.
by William Kristol
No Kings Day was a remarkable success. Effective political movements learn from their successes and build on them. What lessons can we learn from No Kings?
Let’s begin with the obvious: The core message of No Kings was—by its very name—negative. Some nice, sunny-side-up people shy away from this bracing fact. They say, “We can’t just say ‘no.’ We’ve got to be for something!” Ultimately, that’s true. But at first, and for a while, it’s fine to just say “no.”
After all, political movements often begin—I dare say, they usually begin—as a rebellion against an existing situation. They define themselves by what they oppose. This is especially so if they emerge in periods of widespread discontent, when people think things are on the wrong track. In such a time, a powerful political message will always be, in its main thrust, negative. You have to resolve to get off the wrong track before you can work out exactly what the right track is.
The day after the No Kings protests, the New York Times published a front-page piece with the headline, “It’s 2025, and Democrats Are Still Running Against Trump.” The article quoted worried “Democratic strategists” who “see a missed opportunity to forge a more positive message.”
If the Times had existed on July 5, 1776, one has to think it would have run an article finding “Revolutionary strategists” worried that, “It’s 1776, and the revolutionaries are still running against King George III.” The strategists would have been concerned that the Declaration, with its long list of complaints and accusations against King George, was a missed opportunity to forge a more positive message. And anyway, the paper would have asked, would all this talk of liberty and rights really move the famed swing voters of Pennsylvania?
One sometimes wonders about Democratic strategists: Have they never noticed that negative ads and messages work? They might consider the fact that this goes way back. Half of the Ten Commandments are negative.
But like the Ten Commandments, No Kings also had a positive message. And the heart of that message was patriotic. The term “No Kings,” after all, harked back to the origins of the republic, to the American Revolution, to the Declaration of Independence.
There were those who criticized the slogan for this reason, as sounding kind of old-fashioned. The modern analogies to Trump aren’t, after all, actual kings. Wouldn’t it speak more accurately to this current moment and this current threat, some argued, to talk of No Tyrants or No Authoritarians or No Autocrats?
But the old-fashioned character of No Kings is part of what made it work politically. The right understands the appeal of invoking history. Think of the Tea Party. Or, for that matter, of “Make America Great Again.” Progressives, on the other hand, don’t much like backward-looking themes. That’s part of what it means to be a progressive.
They’re not entirely wrong to be uncomfortable with such nostalgic appeals. But that’s also one reason progressives often fail politically. Americans are proud of their country and its history. Perhaps they’re at times too proud, or too uncritical. But the term “No Kings” helped give resistance to Trump a (partly) “conservative” cast.
But a movement that appeals back to “No Kings” needn’t be mindlessly conservative. Edmund Burke is thought of today as a founder of modern conservatism. But he was also a Whig reformer. And he was a strong supporter of the American Revolution.
And distaste for a vulgar patriotism needn’t mean shying away from patriotism altogether. It can instead lead to a more elevated patriotism. It was Burke who wrote, “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” The conservative side of No Kings can emphasize love of country. The progressive side can emphasize making our country more lovely.
And so the big-tent patriotism of No Kings can rally the admirers of both Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, of both Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, of both Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. It can be an intellectually broad and politically effective form of patriotism.
But as No Kings suggests, to say “yes” to patriotism one has to first say “no” to Trumpism.
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Trump’s Mar-a-White House… The president is desecrating a symbol of liberal democracy and replacing it with a tacky, bloated eyesore, writes East Wing alumna MONA CHAREN.
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The Right’s New Grand Unified Theory: Blame Women for Everything… Helen Andrews’s latest screed is short on rational facts, long on mushy feelings of misogyny, writes CATHY YOUNG.
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Trump Admits Americans Didn’t Vote for His Military Crackdowns… Yet he and his party keep pretending they have a mandate, argues WILL SALETAN.
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Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere Review… The art of the self-condemned—as SONNY BUNCH explains, this is not the stuff of your standard musician biopic.
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A Rising Democratic Star Enters the Grunt-Work Phase… Texas’s James Talarico: “My party is scarred from the last election and scared of its own shadow,” he tells LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
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Want a Pardon? Sweet-Talk Trump… Criminal politicians praise the president in hopes he’ll hand them ‘get out of jail free’ cards. And it’s working, observes JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.
INGRASSIA OUT: Was it the Politico report of his obscenely racist texting habits that did it, or was it NOTUS’s follow-up report of his mom marching to Capitol Hill to berate his critics? Hard to say. But one thing’s for sure: Charming MAGA lad Paul Ingrassia has withdrawn his nomination to lead Trump’s Office of Special Counsel after Republican senators said they would not vote for him this week.
In an X post, Ingrassia seemed to leave the door open a crack: “I will be withdrawing myself from Thursday’s [Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee] hearing to lead the Office of Special Counsel,” he wrote, “because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time.” It seemed notable that he was withdrawing from the hearing, not the process, and that he suggested he didn’t have the votes at this time. But the White House quietly closed the door behind him, telling reporters he was no longer Trump’s nominee for the role.
This saves the White House some headache. It would seemingly have been insane for Trump to go to war for a nominee whose conduct had been so obviously disqualifying and indefensible—but as we wrote yesterday, publicly renouncing Ingrassia would have been an admission that there are in fact certain kinds of online speech too vile to be swept under the rug, an admission they have fought hard not to make in the past. This way, Trump, JD Vance, and the whole crew get to go about their lives as though there never was such a person as Paul Ingrassia. Much cleaner and easier.
Although, well, not completely. They may not be trying to jam Ingrassia through a reluctant Senate anymore, but they also seem content to keep him in his current role as White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. Only the best!
THE WORST ONE YET? Pop quiz: What recent report of a potential trampling of government ethics prompted the following memorable quote from Pace University ethics professor Bennett Gershman? “The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”
Answer: a New York Times story yesterday on how Donald Trump is demanding a $230 million payout from the Justice Department for all its mean treatment of him over the years. It’s a payout whose fate will ultimately be determined by Trump’s own former personal lawyers, who are now serving in top roles at the Justice Department. Here’s the Times:
The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violations of his rights, including the F.B.I. and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. . . .
The second claim accused Merrick B. Garland, then the attorney general, Christopher A. Wray, then the F.B.I. director, and Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Mr. Trump at the time, of “harassment” intended to sway the electoral outcome.
The Times notes that the Justice Department declined to answer whether Trump’s former lead criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, who now serves as the second-highest official at DOJ, would recuse himself from the matter. Trump for his part, doesn’t seem to feel any shame at the prospect that he’d take $230 million in taxpayer funds. He defended it on Tuesday.
Here’s Gershman again: “These are the people who serve him deciding whether he wins or loses. It’s bizarre and almost too outlandish to believe.” Preach, brother.
WHAT’S WITH THIS GUY?: The Washington Times, the conservative paper in the nation’s capital, ran a piece yesterday that caught our attention, citing unnamed generals and senior officers’ assessment that Pentagon trust in Pete Hegseth has “evaporated”:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has lost the trust and respect of some top military commanders, with his public “grandstanding” widely seen as unprofessional and the personnel moves made by the former cable TV host leading to an unprecedented and dangerous exodus of talent from the Pentagon, said current senior military officers and current and former Defense Department officials.
Numerous high-ranking officers painted Mr. Hegseth’s Sept. 30 speech to hundreds of generals and admirals gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia as a turning point in how his leadership style, attitude and overall competency are viewed in the upper echelons of the U.S. armed forces.
“It was a massive waste of time. … If he ever had us, he lost us,” one current Army general told The Washington Times.
Read the whole thing.
