It feels like a century ago that Donald Trump stood on the west front of the U.S. Capitol and was sworn in for a second time, promising to seize the Panama Canal, slap tariffs on the world, dispatch troops to the southern border, and let Elon Musk chop down the federal government. But while the past 11 months have often been exhausting and dispiriting, they’ve also been invigorating for us at the Washington Monthly as we generate new ideas to take on MAGA, never flinch from criticizing liberals and Democrats, and offer reporting and analysis that explains what’s really going on. 

We’re not calling these 11 pieces our best (although they are among them), nor are they among our most widely read (though many are), but they are representative of the continued breadth and inventiveness of this magazine in its 56^th year. 

Of course, it takes readers like you to keep our work going, so we hope, in an age of corporate and consolidating media, you’ll support our non-profit, independent voice. Meanwhile, if you’ve read these before, see how they held up, and if you haven’t, you’re in for a treat. We’re proud of them. 

The post 11 of Our Most Memorable Pieces from 2025  appeared first on Washington Monthly.

This past Tuesday, the Democrats had a spectacular night, with victories in statehouses, the California redistricting ballot, and races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey. In New York City, a charismatic democratic socialist emerged to become its first Muslim mayor. More than the margins of victory—impressive but not shocking in a presidential off-year election—there was the sense that common decency was finally coming to its feet. A sense of not only Democrats but Independents and Republicans pushing back against the MAGA wrecking crew. A sense of a newly expansive movement, one that could encompass the pragmatism of an Abigail Spanberger alongside the social vision of a Zohran Mamdani. A sense, watching the fresh faces and new ideas, of hope. 

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If you want to keep chasing that feeling, we have an idea of where to look. Throughout this dark 2025, the Washington Monthly has been adding its own measure of light. As the second Donald Trump administration dismantles pillars of democratic governance and vital American institutions, the Monthly has been offering plans on how to put it back together—and better. This November’s print issue, “How Democrats Can Play Offense,” explains how to capitalize on the failures of the MAGA movement in health care, Social Security, trade, online discourse, and more. In our view, offering hope and offering practical solutions are one and the same. 

As a small, shoestring nonprofit, we can’t do that work without your help. If you value our solutions-based perspective, please consider donating to the Washington Monthly today. Do it now. For $50, you also get an annual subscription to our print issue. 

Meanwhile, the political chaos continues—food stamps are being cut off, airports are clogged, insurance premiums are rising, and grocery prices are out of control. At the same time, the president is demolishing the White House to make room for a lavish ballroom and blowing up boats in Latin America. 

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The Washington Monthly is brimming with ideas to address the problems facing Trump’s America and to help rebuild it when MAGA passes from the scene. To help us, please consider making a donation today.  

The post Ideas for Beating MAGA and Building a Better Future appeared first on Washington Monthly.

To establish the set of colleges included in the rankings, we started with the 1,559 colleges in the 50 states and Washington, D.C., that are listed in the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and have a 2021 Carnegie basic classification of doctoral, master’s, and baccalaureate colleges, are not exclusively graduate colleges, participate in federal financial aid programs, were offering classes, and had not announced an impending closure for the 2025–26 academic year as of June 12, 2025. We then excluded 42 colleges with fewer than 100 undergraduate students in any year they were open between fall 2021 and fall 2023, six colleges with an average of 25 or fewer students in the federal graduation rate cohort in 2020 through 2022, and an additional 36 colleges with an average of 20 or fewer Pell recipients earning bachelor’s degrees during the same time period.

Next, we decided to exclude the five federal military academies (Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine, and Navy) because their unique missions make them difficult to evaluate using our methodology. Our rankings are based in part on the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants and the percentage of students enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), whereas the service academies provide all students with free tuition (and thus no Pell Grants or student loans) and commission graduates as officers in the armed services (and thus not the ROTC program). We dropped an additional 42 colleges for not having data on at least one of our key social mobility outcomes (percent Pell, graduation rate, or net price). We omitted seven religiously affiliated colleges that granted a majority of their degrees in philosophy or theology, as their missions are more narrowly focused than typical colleges. This resulted in a final sample of 1,421 colleges and includes public, private nonprofit, and for-profit colleges. 

The methodology behind our main rankings changed substantially this year. Instead of using three equally weighted metrics (social mobility, research, and service) for all colleges and universities, we created a separate research ranking for the 139 universities that averaged more than $100 million in research expenditures over the past three years. Our main rankings now have four equally weighted portions: access, affordability, outcomes, and community and national service. This means that top-ranked colleges needed to be excellent across the full breadth of our measures, rather than excelling in just one measure. In order to ensure that each measurement contributed equally to a college’s score within any given category, we standardized each data element so that each had a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one (unless noted). Missing earnings data (affecting less than 1 percent of all observations) were imputed and noted with “N/A” in the rankings tables. We adjusted data to account for statistical outliers by allowing no college’s performance in any single area to exceed five standard deviations from the mean of the data set. All measures (unless noted) use an average of the three most recent years of data in an effort to get a better picture of a college’s performance rather than statistical noise. 

The access, affordability, and outcomes components of the ranking also double as our Best Bang for the Buck rankings, with the exception that the main rankings are both overall and by Carnegie classification while the Best Bang for the Buck rankings are by region. 

The two access components are the number of Pell Grant recipients and Pell enrollment performance. To estimate Pell enrollment performance, we compared actual shares of Pell students to the predicted share after controlling for ACT/SAT scores and the share of families in a state with incomes below $35,000 and between $35,001 and $75,000 per year. The two affordability components are net price and median student loan debt of graduates. We measured a college’s affordability using data from IPEDS for the average net prices paid by first-time, full-time, in-state students with family incomes below $75,000 per year over the past three years. We focused on these income categories because of our interest in affordability for students from lower-to-middle-income families. Median student debt came from the College Scorecard and includes federal loans taken out by the student, excluding Parent PLUS and private loans. The College of the Ozarks meets financial need as a work college without issuing loans, so we assigned them zero debt. 

We used four outcome measures in this year’s ranking. The first was a graduation rate performance measure that compared the reported eight-year graduation rate for all students (from IPEDS) to a predicted graduation rate based on the percentage of Pell recipients, the percentage of students receiving student loans, the admit rate, the racial/ethnic and gender makeup of the student body, the number of students (overall and full-time), and whether a college is primarily residential. We estimated this predicted graduation rate measure in a regression model using average data from the past three years, imputing for missing data when necessary. Colleges with graduation rates that are higher than the “average” college with similar stats score better than colleges that match or, worse, undershoot the mark. A few colleges had predicted graduation rates over 100 percent, which we then trimmed back to 100 percent.

We used IPEDS data comparing graduation rates of Pell and non-Pell students to develop a Pell graduation gap measure. Colleges that had higher Pell than non-Pell graduation rates received a positive score on this measure. We measured post-college outcomes using actual versus predicted earnings of students nine years after college entry (using just two cohorts of data). This captures the outcomes of graduates as well as dropouts. Finally, we used National Science Foundation data on the share of undergraduate alumni who have gone on to receive a PhD in any subject, relative to the size of the college. This was in the research category in previous rankings, but it fits better under student outcomes in our updated rankings. 

We determined the service score by measuring each college’s performance across a range of measures. We compiled AmeriCorps and Peace Corps data into a combined metric. We used an indicator for whether a college currently provides at least some matching funds for undergraduate students who had received a Segal AmeriCorps Education Award for having completed national service (two points) and a standardized measure of the share of students receiving Segal awards. We divided the number of alumni currently serving in the Peace Corps by total enrollment, using alumni data following the program’s post-pandemic resumption. 

We judged military service by collecting data on the size of each college’s Air Force, Army, and Navy ROTC programs and dividing by the number of students. We used the percentage of federal work-study grant money spent on community service projects as a measure of how much colleges prioritize community service; this is based on data provided by the Corporation for National and Community Service. Each of these three measures was standardized using a three-year rolling average.

We added a measure for whether a college received the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, with listed colleges receiving two points. This classification rewards colleges that provide documentation of their institutional mission and broader public engagement. We used a measure of voting engagement using data from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) at Tufts University and the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. Colleges could earn up to four points for fulfilling each of four criteria. They could receive one point for making their NSLVE survey data publicly available through ALL IN in 2020. They could receive one point for creating an action plan through the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge in 2025 and an additional point for being a presidential signatory. A college earned one point for having a student voter registration rate above 85 percent in 2020. Finally, we created a measure of the percentage of all degrees awarded in health, education, and social work to reward colleges that produce leaders in socially valuable fields that are not always highly paid.

The research score for the 139 universities with at least $100 million in average expenditures is based on four measures: the total amount of an institution’s research spending (from IPEDS); the number of science and engineering PhDs awarded by the university (from the National Science Foundation); the number of faculty receiving prestigious awards, relative to the number of full-time faculty (from the Center for Measuring University Performance); and the number of faculty in the National Academies, relative to the number of full-time faculty (also from CMUP). 

We compared our rankings to the U.S. Department of Education’s list of colleges subject to the most severe level of heightened cash monitoring, which indicates that a college is facing significant financial problems or has other serious issues that need to be addressed. Three colleges (Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, the NewSchool of Architecture and Design in California, and Saint Augustine’s University in North Carolina) were on that list as of December 2024. We kept these colleges in our rankings, but denoted them with ^^ to draw this concern to readers’ attention. —Eds.

The post A Note on Methodology: Four-Year Colleges and Universities appeared first on Washington Monthly.

The Washington Monthly proudly announces the winners of the 2025 Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing—the only journalism prize dedicated to highlighting and encouraging exemplary reviews of serious, public affairs-focused books. Now in its sixth year, the award honors the memory of Kukula Kapoor Glastris, the magazine’s longtime and beloved books editor. 

In our smaller publications category, the winner is Christoph Irmscher in CounterPunch, an online journal, for his sensitive and timely review of Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, by Arlie Russell Hochschild (The New Press). 

In our larger publications category, the top prize goes to Ian Johnson in the New York Review of Books, for his illuminating review of I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo, by Perry Link and Wu Dazhi (Columbia University Press).  

The winners will each receive a $1,000 cash prize. 

A panel of five judges—veteran journalists, authors, and reviewers—selected this year’s winners from 70 outstanding submissions published across a range of print and digital outlets in 2024. Winners were honored for their clear and artful exposition, original and persuasive thesis, and ability to enlighten readers with new and valuable information. Judges gave priority to works of public affairs, politics, history, and biography. 

“Christoph Irmscher does a masterful job” exploring Arlie Hochschild’s account of the link between white rural Americans’ loss of pride and their support for Donald Trump, said judge Judy Pasternak. “The writing and structure are strong and crystalline. He highlights important facets of the author’s techniques and expands on her ideas. And he brings insights of his own to a subject that couldn’t be more timely or crucial to the continuation of our democracy.” Fellow judge Allen Guelzo agreed, noting the beautiful review was “incisive without being condescending to the subjects of the book. Irmscher seemed to be writing from felt pain, about felt pain. That kind of empathy is in short supply these days.” 

In the larger category, the judges praised Johnson’s “exemplary review illuminating a book that unveils the rarely mined life of the Chinese intellectual dissident Liu Xiaobo, charting his strained progress as an embattled dissident leader to his sad death in a remote gulag.” Moreover, judge Steve Braun noted, “Johnson tartly uses his review to criticize American media and fellow book reviewers for not only ignoring Xiaobo’s unheralded role as a dissident leader, , but for their ‘lack of attention paid to the Chinese equivalents’ of previous generations of state-crushed European artists and intellectuals.” 

“These winners set a standard that all of us who work in the field of serious nonfiction book reviewing should challenge ourselves to meet,” said Paul Glastris, the Washington Monthly’s editor in chief and Kukula’s husband of 31 years.  

This year, the judges also selected four exceptional finalists in each Kukula Award category. 

Finalists for the 2025 Kukula Award in the small publications category were: 

• David Klion in The Nation, for his review of The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump (Penguin Random House/Portfolio) by Alexander Ward 

• Jordan Michael Smith in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, for his review of Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (Oneworld) by Avi Shlaim 

• Benno Weiner in the Los Angeles Review of Books, for his review of At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China (Viking) by Edward Wong 

• Emily Wilson in The Nation, for her review of Wrong Norma (New Directions) by Anne Carson 

Among larger publications, the judges chose these finalists: 

• Dan Kois in Slate, for his review of The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider (Penguin Random House/Crown) by Michiko Kakutani 

• Carlos Lozada in The New York Times, for his column reviewing Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Heritage Foundation) edited by Paul Dans and Steven Groves 

• Jeremy Lybarger in The New Republic, for his review of Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring (HarperCollins) by Brad Gooch 

• Laura Miller in Slate, for her review of One Way Back (St. Martin’s Press) by Christine Blasey Ford 

“Nonfiction book reviewing plays a key role in transmitting hard-won reporting, research, and ideas on major issues of the day to policymakers and citizens who can’t possibly read more than a fraction of the important books published each year,” said Glastris. “This year’s winning pieces illuminate many such issues, from the resonance of Donald Trump’s message in rural America to a reevaluation of Joe Biden’s foreign policy achievements; an examination of how disruptive politics, technology, and art are upending the world as we’ve known it; the courage of China’s unheralded political dissidents; the clash between Zionism and Arab nationalism, in painful personal memoir; and more. This year’s selections also included beautiful reviews about art and poetry. No matter the subject, the Kukula Award highlights the work of the talented individuals who practice this undervalued craft—work Kukula devoted herself to publishing,” he added.  

ABOUT OUR 2025 JUDGES 

Five judges selected this year’s finalists and winners, generously donating their time and invaluable guidance.  

• Sara Bhatia is an historian and an independent museum consultant. Her most recent project involved an historic furnishing plan for the National Park Service’s Ford’s Theatre site. A frequent book reviewer for the Washington Monthly, she also writes about museums, history, and culture, and is working on a history of tourism in Washington, D.C. 

• Stephen Braun is the co-author of Merchant of Death, a 2007 book profiling the world’s most notorious arms dealer, and a prize-winning former national correspondent and editor with the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press. His stories ranged from presidential political coverage to foreign and domestic terrorism to national and international investigative reporting. Before joining AP, Braun worked 25 years at the Los Angeles Times as a national correspondent based in Washington and Chicago and as an editor and reporter in Los Angeles. His investigative reporting after the September 11th attacks was included in a Times entry that won an Overseas Press Club award, and he was among a group of Times reporters whose coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots won a Pulitzer Prize for general reporting. His investigative work also led to an examination of the Taliban’s covert use of Russian-owned aircraft to import weapons and operatives. Merchant of Death, with journalist Douglas Farah, profiled the man who owned those planes – Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Braun has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School, and an invited speaker on many leading media outlets, universities, and think tanks.   

• Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, where he also directs the Madison Program’s Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship. He is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, and Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America. His book on the battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion was a New York Times best seller in 2013. From 2006 to 2012, he was a member of the National Council on the Humanities. Together with Patrick Allitt and Gary W. Gallagher, he team-taught The Teaching Company’s American History series, among other popular series. He has written Reconstruction: A Concise History and Robert E. Lee: A Life, which was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of Ten Best Books for 2021. His newest books are Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy and the American Experiment, which won the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize, and Voices from Gettysburg: Letters, Papers, and Memoirs from the Greatest Battle of the Civil War.  His website is www.allenguelzo.com. 

• Judy Pasternak is the author of Yellow Dirt, her acclaimed work about the slow-motion environmental catastrophe in the Navajo Nation set off by uranium mining that fueled the Manhattan Project and Cold War-era nuclear weapons. She was the founding editor of Gartner Business Quarterly and a member of the Los Angeles Times’s national investigations team. Her work has won awards for literary, environmental, and investigative journalism. She has been a juror for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, and the Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism. 

• Terence Samuel is a writer and veteran journalist who has written extensively about the changes in American life over the last 40 years. He is the author of the 2010 book The Upper House: A Journey Behind the Closed Doors of the United States Senate, and his work as a political columnist was anthologized in Best American Political Writing of 2009. Samuel is the former editor-in-chief at USA Today and served as Vice President & Executive Editor at NPR. From 2011 to 2017, he was a politics editor at The Washington Post, overseeing White House and congressional coverage. He began his career as a writing fellow at The Village Voice in New York and later was a reporter at The Roanoke Times & World News, a national correspondent at both The Philadelphia Inquirer and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and chief congressional correspondent at U.S. News & World Report. 

ABOUT KUKULA KAPOOR GLASTRIS 

The beloved and brilliant books editor of the Washington Monthly, Kukula (“Kuku” to her legions of friends and fans), made the book review section home to some of the magazine’s best thinking and writing. A keen editor and diplomatic manager of writers, she served as den mother and provisioner of delicious late-night home-cooked meals to a generation of young Washington Monthly journalists. “I’ve never met anyone whose combination of personal goodness, plus intellectual and professional abilities, exceeded Kukula’s,” wrote James Fallows in The Atlantic. 

To learn more about Kukula’s life, please read Kuku: A Love Story.  

The post The 2025 Kukula Award Winners  appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Trump’s recent summit with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, ended not in toughness but in capitulation. Despite pledging red lines beforehand, Trump rolled out the red carpet, and has now appeared to endorse Moscow’s demands for the surrender of Ukrainian territory. In this week’s episode of the Washington Monthly politics roundtable, special guest Tamar Jacoby, Director of the New Ukraine Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, shares reaction on the ground in Kyiv to Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine. She also suggests steps Trump should be taking instead to regain the advantage over Putin.

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This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Paul Glastris: On Friday, President Trump had a shameful face-plant of a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. He then invited Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House today, along with a team of European leaders—including the European commissioner, the head of NATO, and the presidents of France and Germany—who insisted on coming to back Zelensky and try to persuade Trump to take a tougher line than he certainly did in Anchorage.

That’s what we’re here to discuss. I want to start with you, Tamar. You are the guest of honor. In your story, you explained that in the run-up to the Anchorage summit things were relatively quiet, but in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine, that wasn’t the case last night. Tell us—are you safe, and what’s happening on the ground?

Tamar Jacoby: Yes, I’m safe. Kyiv is well protected by air defense. The scary air alerts do happen, but we haven’t had one in two weeks. Even when they come with great intensity, it’s every other or every third night. Life goes on in Kyiv—people are out in bars and restaurants. It’s a beautiful late summer.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, not so much. Last night was bad in some places, though not here. The week before the Alaska meeting was actually a good week, because Putin was trying to behave, and we all got a full night’s sleep for more than a week. It was noticeable—you realize how much stress people are under when suddenly there’s relief. Everyone was different, much more cheerful.

But you’re right: the most important thing is the shameful concessions Trump is making, pressuring Ukraine hard. It really is back to: give Putin whatever he wants.

Paul Glastris: So we went into this summit on Friday where the Europeans and Zelensky had discussions with Trump about what he would do. What were the red lines, and how were they reversed?

Tamar Jacoby: He agreed to some red lines, including that Ukraine would not have to give away territory Russia hasn’t conquered. Many Ukrainians are reluctantly coming around to the idea that they might have to forego the land Russia already holds. But we’re also talking about an area bigger than the West Bank that Russia has been trying—and failing—to conquer for 10 years.

We went into Alaska with Trump seeming to understand that it was important to get a ceasefire before detailed talks, and that security guarantees for Ukraine were critical. There were many things he seemed to get. But in Alaska, he didn’t seem to remember any of them. Instead, he rolled out the red carpet, stood there laughing with Putin, and even had an air salute overhead—for a man who’s been an international pariah, killing tens of thousands of people for four years.

Two big concessions stand out. First, Trump seems to have agreed with Putin that a ceasefire isn’t important—that Putin can go on killing until a full peace is reached, which only increases pressure on Ukraine. Second, and worse in my view, Trump now appears to be pressuring Ukraine to give up the remaining half of Donetsk—a region Russia has fought over for more than a decade without real success. That would mean giving it away for free, soil watered with the blood of countless Ukrainian fighters.

But the war isn’t really about territory. It’s about whether Ukraine can exist as an independent country, with the political system and alliances it chooses. Putin stood on stage in Anchorage, 15 feet from Trump, and repeated those demands. Trump nodded along. We’re talking about a return to Cold War-style divisions of Europe—except now Russia doesn’t even control that territory with troops, yet we may hand it to them.

Paul Glastris: Let me ask about one detail: a lot of reporters noted the meeting ended very early. There was supposed to be a longer press conference or even a second round of discussions. Instead, it wrapped up abruptly, and Trump’s aides looked ashen-faced—hardly pleased with what they’d heard. What have you heard about that? What do you make of it?

Tamar Jacoby: I don’t have inside knowledge, so I can only speculate. My guess is that Trump initially thought he’d suffered a blow. He went in wanting a ceasefire and came out without one. At first, I think he took that as a failure. But over the weekend, he seems to have decided he could spin it as a win if he simply gave in to Putin.

That’s the point: Trump talks tough but, when rebuffed, capitulates. And at root, he’s always admired Russia as a “great world power.” For forty years, he’s wanted to be Putin’s equal, to do business with Russia. That motive has never gone away.

The press conference was revealing. It was short—twelve minutes—and light on details. But the end was all about business deals, both men talking about opportunities to work together commercially.

Paul Glastris: Before we turn to today’s developments, I want to linger on the fallout here in Washington. Bill, you track this closely. As you watched coverage after Friday, what struck you?

Bill Scher: What struck me is how sterile the coverage has been. Commentators have treated it neutrally, but this is seismic. Trump is trying to turn back the clock to a pre–World War I world, when a handful of leaders drew maps at whim. We fought two world wars to get away from that.

Woodrow Wilson, whatever his flaws, fought for self-determination and the League of Nations. FDR and Truman carried that vision forward, and after World War II the idea took hold: borders couldn’t just be changed by force.

Now it’s the European leaders who want to uphold that order, while Trump is pulling the U.S. in the opposite direction. It’s shocking—he is 180 degrees away from the U.S. position of the last century.

Paul Glastris: I was texting with a national security friend and asked: if you put 100 GOP-aligned military leaders in a room and promised anonymity, how many would back Trump’s policies toward Russia? He said zero. And half would want Trump jailed.

This can’t be what many Republican officials actually believe in. Bill, Matt—have you seen any pushback from elected Republicans or senior party figures?

Matthew Cooper: Some. In recent weeks, when Trump briefly struck a tougher tone on Putin, Republicans showed a little more backbone. The Senate even passed a sanctions resolution with 85 votes. That suggests their innate hawkishness hasn’t vanished.

But it’s inconsistent. For example, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan has been vocal about Russian and Chinese patrols near Alaska, but overall Republicans seem reactive—they only show toughness when Trump does. They’re not going to push him. And the Europeans know that, which is why they’re pressing him directly today.

The question is whether Trump is a “pillow”—malleable, shaped by the last person in the room—or whether he’s truly in Putin’s camp. Hard to say. Maybe today he’ll swing back toward Kyiv, maybe not.

For context, think back to 1986. Reagan and Gorbachev failed to reach a nuclear deal at Reykjavik, and hawks were relieved. Contrast that with last weekend: many were relieved there was no deal, believing Trump might have held his ground. That relief evaporated when he pivoted over the weekend.

Tamar Jacoby: I agree with Matt—we should see what happens today. But Bill captured the risk best: we could be sliding back to pre–World War I map-drawing, ignoring peoples’ rights.

My impression is that Trump doesn’t even understand that dimension. At the press conference, Putin laid out his vision, and Trump looked like he barely grasped it. Instead, he’s focused narrowly on land-for-security guarantees—whether Ukraine gives up Donetsk in exchange for promises.

That may be all he sees. After all, this is the man who once said, “If I want Greenland, I should have it.” He doesn’t see anything wrong with the very idea that horrifies us. And because he sets the terms of debate, today’s White House meeting will likely focus on the land swap and guarantees—while the bigger issue of Ukraine’s sovereignty, the “root causes” as Putin calls them, may not even be discussed. That’s frightening.

Paul Glastris: I’ve watched Trump’s statements over the last few months. He said he was “very upset with Vladimir Putin,” even used the word “bullshit,” and hinted at tougher sanctions and weapons for Ukraine. Some people thought maybe he’d really changed. Others said he was just lying.

Anchorage proved the cynics right. He told people what they wanted to hear, then sold Ukraine out.

Tamar, especially—you’ve written about what actually needs to be done. Tell us: what are the Europeans trying to get Trump to do, and what do you think really needs to happen?

Tamar Jacoby: We’ll see what the Europeans can do. The challenge is to reframe the conversation without provoking Trump. You can’t just tell him he’s wrong. You have to play to him. The question is whether they’ll be strong enough to hold their ground.

What should happen is clear. There’s an “easy peace” and a “hard peace.” The easy peace is giving Putin what he wants. That’s what Trump is proposing. It would end the war in weeks and win him the Nobel Peace Prize.

The hard peace is forcing Putin to negotiate in good faith by raising the costs of war. That means real military pressure, real economic pressure, and sustained U.S. and European commitment. So far, we’ve helped Ukraine but wavered on the endgame. Every time Trump flips, Putin concludes we’re unserious. He needs to know pressure will continue until he changes behavior.

Right now, he has no reason to believe that. A German think tank recently calculated what the war costs Western countries: less than 0.2 percent of GDP. That’s peanuts. Germany spends more on bus subsidies. It looks like a pet project, not an existential fight. For America, maybe it is—but for Europe, it absolutely is existential.

Matthew Cooper: It’s worth making explicit: even if Ukraine gave up Donetsk, the war wouldn’t end. Putin’s ambitions won’t stop there.

Tamar Jacoby: Exactly. Donetsk is the high ground, the fortified strategic area from which Russia could launch further attacks. If Putin gets it, he’ll be positioned to take more in a few years.

Right now, some in Washington are talking about trading Donetsk for “serious” U.S. security guarantees. But Russia has already signed guarantees with Ukraine and Europe—and thrown them away. And Trump hasn’t delivered a single bullet to Ukraine beyond what Biden already had in the pipeline. Why would anyone trust his word?

Paul Glastris: It feels like once the debate turns to “security guarantees,” we’ve already lost. We’re down to dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on a meaningless piece of paper—peace in our time.

Bill Scher: If I were Ukraine, I’d hold out until the Trump presidency ends. His word is worth nothing. Remember the Iran nuclear deal: Obama struck it, Iran complied, and Trump tore it up anyway. Why trust him now?

If Ukraine can hold out for three years, maybe the American people will throw Trump out and you’ll get a partner you can trust, at least for a while. That’s still risky—but better than cutting a deal with someone who can’t be trusted at all.

Tamar Jacoby: A lot of Ukrainian soldiers feel the same. They’re determined to keep fighting, even if it means revolting against Zelensky should he try to compromise. But they will need U.S. intelligence, and they will need Europe to keep buying American weaponry. If Trump cuts that off, it’ll be very hard to last three years.

Matthew Cooper: Don’t forget Trump’s grudges. The first impeachment was about Ukraine. He still resents that, and he holds grudges forever. That, more than anything, colors his policy.

Paul Glastris: But let me push on that. Is it possible Trump feels humiliated now—like he lost? He’s about to be surrounded by European leaders who will flatter him, tell him he’s the great peacemaker, the one who deserves the Nobel Prize. Could that change his behavior?

Matthew Cooper: Sure. His ego is fragile. The Europeans won’t tell him he lost; they’ll tell him he’s already winning. They’ll remind him Teddy Roosevelt won the Nobel for brokering peace. They’ll feed him praise, call him strong, call him decisive. With Trump, it’s child psychology.

Tamar Jacoby: They’ll even call him “daddy.”

Paul Glastris: [Laughs] And he’ll like it. Tamar, what’s the best realistic scenario coming out of today’s meeting?

Tamar Jacoby: That Trump realizes Putin is demanding far more than he’s taken so far, and that he starts listening to the Europeans instead of swinging back and forth.

The bare minimum would be returning to the status quo from a month ago: the U.S. sells weapons to Europe to give to Ukraine, continues intelligence support, and imposes real economic costs on Russia. That means cutting off oil revenues—40 percent of Russian exports, a third of its budget—and blocking the flow of Western technology that keeps missiles flying.

It’s not rocket science. It’s military force, economic isolation, and resolve. Without that, Putin won’t stop.

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The post Trump Just Gave Putin Everything He Wanted appeared first on Washington Monthly.

The Washington Monthly proudly announces the finalists of the 2025 Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing—the only journalism prize dedicated to highlighting and encouraging reviews of serious, public affairs-focused books. Now in its sixth year, the award honors the memory of Kukula Kapoor Glastris, the magazine’s longtime and beloved books editor. Two top prize winners will be announced on Wednesday, August 20.  

Selected from 70 outstanding submissions published across a range of print and digital media outlets in 2024, the finalists were honored for their clear and artful exposition; original and persuasive thesis; and ability to enlighten readers with new and valuable information. This year’s judges—veteran journalists, editors, and authors—gave priority to works of public affairs and policy, politics, history, and biography. 

Finalists were chosen in two categories based on size of the publication. In the larger category, finalists are: 

• Ian Johnson in the The New York Review of Books, for his review of I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo, by Perry Link and Wu Dazhi 

• Dan Kois in Slate, for his review of The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider, by Michiko Kakutani 

• Carlos Lozada in The New York Times, for his column reviewing Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, by Paul Dans and Steven Groves (editors) 

• Jeremy Lybarger in The New Republic, for his review of Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, by Brad Gooch 

• Laura Miller in Slate, for her review of One Way Back, by Christine Blasey Ford 

Among smaller publications, finalists are: 

• Christoph Irmscher in CounterPunch, for his review of Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, by Arlie Hochschild 

• David Klion in The Nation, for his review of The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump, by Alexander Ward 

• Jordan Michael Smith in Democracy Journal, for his review of Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, by Avi Shlaim 

• Benno Weiner in the Los Angeles Review of Books, for his review of At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China, by Edward Wong 

• Emily Wilson in The Nation, for her review of Wrong Norma, by Anne Carson 

ABOUT OUR JUDGES 

Five judges selected this year’s finalists and winners, generously donating their time and invaluable guidance. They are: 

• Sara Bhatia, an independent museum consultant who writes about museums, history, and culture, and frequently reviews books for the Washington Monthly. 

• Stephen Braun, the co-author of Merchant of Death, a 2007 book profiling the world’s most notorious arms dealer, and a prize-winning former national correspondent and editor with the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press. His stories ranged from presidential political coverage to foreign and domestic terrorism to national and international investigative reporting. Before joining AP, Braun worked 25 years at the Los Angeles Times as a national correspondent based in Washington and Chicago and as an editor and reporter in Los Angeles. His investigative reporting after the September 11th attacks was included in a Times entry that won an Overseas Press Club award, and he was among a group of Times reporters whose coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots won a Pulitzer Prize for general reporting. His investigative work also led to an examination of the Taliban’s covert use of Russian-owned aircraft to import weapons and operatives. Merchant of Death, with journalist Douglas Farah, profiled the man who owned those planes – Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was later sent to federal prison for his crimes, and sent back to Russia by the Biden administration last year in exchange for basketball star Brittney Griner. Braun has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School, and an invited speaker on many leading media outlets, universities, and think tanks.   

• Dr. Allen C. Guelzo, the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, where he also directs the Madison Program’s Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship. He is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, and Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America. His book on the battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion was a New York Times best seller in 2013. From 2006 to 2012, he was a member of the National Council on the Humanities. Together with Patrick Allitt and Gary W. Gallagher, he team-taught The Teaching Company’s American History series, and has completed other five series for The Teaching Company. He has written Reconstruction: A Concise History and Robert E. Lee: A Life, which was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of Ten Best Books for 2021. His newest books are Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy and the American Experiment, which won the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize,  and Voices from Gettysburg: Letters, Papers, and Memoirs from the Greatest Battle of the Civil War.  His website is www.allenguelzo.com. 

• Judy Pasternak, the author of  Yellow Dirt, a critically acclaimed nonfiction book about the slow-motion environmental catastrophe on the Navajo Nation set off by uranium mining to fuel the Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear bombs. She was also the founding editor of Gartner Business Quarterly and a member of the Los Angeles Times’ national investigations team. Her work has won multiple awards for literary, environmental and investigative journalism.  In addition, she has served as a juror for the Lukas Book Prize, the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, the Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism and the Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism. 

• Terence Samuel, a writer and veteran journalist who has written extensively about the changes in American life over the last 40 years. He is the author of the 2010 book The Upper House: A Journey Behind the Closed Doors of the United States Senate, and his work as a political columnist was anthologized in Best American Political Writing of 2009. Samuel is the former editor-in-chief at USA Today and served as Vice President & Executive Editor at NPR. From 2011 to 2017, he was a politics editor at The Washington Post, overseeing White House and congressional coverage. He began his career as a writing fellow at The Village Voice in New York and later was a reporter at The Roanoke Times & World News, a national correspondent at both The Philadelphia Inquirer and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and chief congressional correspondent at U.S. News & World Report. 

ABOUT KUKULA KAPOOR GLASTRIS 

The beloved and brilliant books editor of the Washington Monthly, Kukula (“Kuku” to her legions of friends and fans), made the book review section home to some of the magazine’s best thinking and writing. A keen editor and diplomatic manager of writers, she served as den mother and provisioner of delicious late-night home-cooked meals to a generation of young  Washington Monthly journalists. “I’ve never met anyone whose combination of personal goodness, plus intellectual and professional abilities, exceeded Kukula’s,” wrote James Fallows in The Atlantic.  

To learn more about Kukula’s life, please read Kuku: A Love Story.  

The post The Washington Monthly Announces Finalists for 2025 Kukula Award Book Review Prize    appeared first on Washington Monthly.

The Trump administration has become increasingly creative—and ruthless—in its use and abuse of existing policy tools to further its agenda. It has, for instance, weaponized the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights to reverse its historic mission. Instead of promoting diversity, it’s now working to end it. More recently, Trump has threatened to use legislation passed in 1980—the Bayh-Dole Act—to take over Harvard’s patents. While intended to give government the ability to compel the licensing of patents in fairly narrow circumstances—such as to protect health and safety—the law, in Trump’s hands, has become yet another cudgel to use against Harvard (and, potentially, other elite universities). 

In this week’s politics roundtable, editors Paul Glastris, Bill Scher and Anne Kim talk about Trump’s creeping authoritarianism, as well as the false promise of revenues from Trump’s tariffs. They also discuss how Democrats should respond to the escalating arms race over redistricting. 

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This transcript has been edited for length and clarity:

Anne Kim:

Let’s talk first about Trump’s tariffs, which have finally gone into effect. On average, we’re talking about 15 percent baseline tariffs on most goods coming to United States now, plus higher tariffs against certain countries that Trump is targeting for a variety of reasons. That includes a 50 percent potential tariff on Brazil for its prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was accused of staging a coup after losing an election, and a threatened 50 percent tariff against India for buying Russian oil. Bill, you wrote a recent column for the Washington Monthly that disputes the president’s conclusion here. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Bill Scher:

Trump talks as if the federal government collects more revenue in tariffs that we’re a wealthy country. That’s not how most people really look at wealth. It doesn’t mean that you and I get more money if the federal government collects more money in revenue.

And it does seem like we are collecting more revenue from tariffs than before. If the July 2025 tariff number of $29.6 billion reflects what we will be paying going forward, the annual cost will be $355.2 billion. So that’s a lot more money into the federal government coffers. 

But remember, we’re paying that. 

Businesses have been trying to absorb the cost but now they’re saying they can’t keep doing this. 

Anne Kim:

It does seem like every day there’s a new story about how small businesses in particular are getting hit by this. And it seems that even large companies like Walmart and Amazon are beginning to announcethat they’re going to be doing price increases. And let’s not forget that these are incredibly regressive taxes. 

Bill Scher:

Well, not only are the tariffs regressive, if you’re middle class or working class, you pay a larger share of your wealth in goods than someone who’s a mega-millionaire. And this has been known about tariffs going back to the 19th century. This is why we got rid of these tariffs because people understood it was a very regressive system. 

Trump also just passed a tax cut—the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—but the tax breaks in that law are also skewed to the wealthy. In fact, there are analyses that say if you’re in the bottom 40%, you’re actually going to pay more or lose more of your income. So it’s regressiveness on top of regressiveness. And I think it’s a huge opportunity for Democrats going into 2026 and 2028 to say, “We’ve got a great way to relieve you on taxes—we’re to make those tariffs go ‘poof.’” Instant tax cut for the working class. And if we need that revenue so badly to alleviate our debt burdens, well, we can replace that with tax increases on the wealthy who got a sweet deal from the Trump administration.

Anne Kim:

Republicans are starting to propose tariff “rebates” as a way of, well, acknowledging that tariffs are going to take a bite out of people’s budgets. It hearkens back to maybe 10 years ago when we were all talking about carbon taxes and consumption taxes, and proposing rebates as way to make these taxes less regressive.

Paul Glastris:

Yeah, it’s sort of how you put the lipstick on the pig of an unpopular policy.

Well, the other thing that’s going on here is that the public is beginning to see price increases. The BIG newsletter has a piece out today about the freak out that’s happening on TikTok as people perceive that back-to-school prices this year are way higher. 

And on top of that, the big retailers are using this moment to bring in what’s called “dynamic pricing.” First of all, you look at these TikToks and people are saying, “Look, they’ve scratched out the old price or they’ve whited out the old price,” and the new price is now 30 percent higher on everything from swim trunks to home decor to groceries. But what they’re also doing is taking off the prices. Now you go into Walmart and other retailers and use your phone to scan a code to get the price, and that price can change by the hour or by the day. 

People hate it because they can’t plan their budgets if they don’t know going into the store what the price is going to be. And the larger context here is that it’s true that a lot of companies have held off increasing prices until now. But what’s also happening is that companies are using this as an excuse to bring in this dynamic pricing to be able to essentially extract more profit. They can know by your phone what your income is and charge you more for diapers and then the next person, right? Or they can see that there is a diaper shortage coming in two weeks and jack up prices. This is a pricing power that big retailers have wanted to use, and they’re going to use it now whether they need to be passing on prices from tariffs or not.

Anne Kim:

It’s like airline pricing coming to your school notebooks and backpacks!

So let’s turn to redistricting. Texas has been trying to redraw its map in order to gain five Republican seats. Democratic lawmakers have fled the state in order to break the quorum and prevent this plan from succeeding. Abbott has issued civil arrest warrants. Meanwhile, blue state governors in California and New York, for instance, are talking about hatching their own redistricting plans and there are even some strategists who think that Democrats should go further. 

For example, I was kind of struck by this op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend arguing that Democrats should “go nuclear” by  retaliating against Texas based companies. For instance, they say, “blue states could band together to divest pension fund investments from and bar state contracts with Texas companies.”

What do you guys think about that particular escalation of tactics? 

Bill Scher:

Well, I think Democrats doing the right thing so far. Texas Democrats have no obligation to be handmaidens for what Republicans are trying to do. But having said that, I suspect the Republican gerrymander is going to backfire on them. It’s very heavily reliant on gains in Latino majority districts, which has not been a reliable group for Republicans, and those gains could easily recede in a in a wave election

That’s why this op-ed that you shared struck me as very excessive, because they’re talking about things like having other states punish Texas economically. But there’s not a lot of explanation about they could actually execute that and escape being slapped down by courts. So it would probably involve a lot of years of litigation and for what? 

Texas is trying to squeeze out five more seats. They may not even successfully do it on Election Day. The average pickup for the opposition party is 25 seats, and Democrats need three to win back the House. And if other states fight fire with fire with their own gerrymandering, I’m totally fine with that because I generally feel that gerrymandering ends up being largely a wash at the end of the day. So I don’t see the need to try to push the envelope to economic warfare, which could really backfire politically and may not even be necessary.

Anne Kim:

It seems reflective of some broader frustration among rank-and-file Democrats that the party “just isn’t doing enough.” The Democrats are always playing by the rules, playing nice, etc. etc. 

Bill Scher:

Those who are prone to complain that Democrats aren’t fighting hard enough come up with wilder and wilder ideas to prove that they mean business, and it’s always a balancing act between fighting hard and fighting smart. But economic warfare is going to really rub a lot of people the wrong way. 

Paul Glastris:

To be fair to the authors, what they’re saying is you threaten this in the same way that during the Cold War, each side threatened the other with destruction of their cities, not because you want to destroy their cities, but because you want to strike enough terror that neither side uses the weapon. 

What they’re arguing is that blue states have far bigger economic footprints than red states, so if they band together and threaten economic warfare, that might be enough for Republicans to sort of think twice about turning their side “up to 11.”

But look, Democrats have used pension funds for many years to advance political interests. In some sense, this isn’t that new. 

But what I would say is the Trump administration is being aggressively creative with policy in a way I don’t think very many people foresaw. We see every day some new use of federal power that may or may not be constitutional, but there’s no one there to tell them not to do it. And Democrats have to be thinking, if not now – because their power is limited to states and backbench press releases in Congress – what are the policies that they’re going to pursue that are creative and aggressive now that the administration has set a precedent and the Supreme Court has allowed a lot of this expansion of power.

It’s a setup for when Democrats come back to use those levers themselves, and I do think there’s a ripe opportunity here, if not in the moment,  to plan for the future about what the Democratic agenda will be.

Anne Kim:

Speaking of economic warfare and creative uses of policy, let’s turn to Trump’s escalation in the fight against higher ed. So there have been a couple developments here. The first is that the administration is now demanding that colleges hand over all admissions data, including on race, grades, and standardized test scores. Columbia and Brown have actually agreed to do this as part of their “settlements” with the government. 

Paul, you’ve been the arbiter of the College Guide for 20 years now for the Washington Monthly. What do think the long-term implications of this particular move are going to be for college accessibility all the things that the College Guide has stood for the last two decades?

Paul Glastris:

Well, the way I look at it is that the Trump administration is following everyone else in putting all its focus on elite universities, which educate 5 percent of students. A lot of this battle that the administration is waging against these hated elite institutions is trickling down to damage the universities and even the community colleges that educate 90 percent of college students. And most of these universities don’t have big DEI budgets. They didn’t have big protests during Gaza. They’re not rife with “woke” classrooms. They’re mostly people going to marketing classes taught by adjunct professors who have normal politics.

But there is a kind of a conspiracy in in the media and in politics to make everything about Columbia. So part of me is upset that this battle is going to again screw the average college student. 

Anne Kim:

One small consolation is that the New York Times reported that there’s literally no one actually available to collect all the race and admissions data anyway because of the 100 people who worked for the National Center on Education Statistics, only four of them are left. So it may end up being kind of a toothless thing, but it does set a bad precedent.

The second thing I wanted to ask about was the government’s threat to seize control of Harvard’s patents under the compulsory licensing regime outlined under the Bayh-Dole Act. And this is actually something that the Monthly has supported in the past in different contexts. So Paul, I would love for you to clarify the intent of the statute and how that’s an abuse in this particular context.

Paul Glastris:

Well, I’m not a patent lawyer. I’m not even a lawyer. But we have at the Monthly done considerable reporting by people who know the subject. And yes, the federal government has the ability to utilize this clear statutory power to force the use of patents in ways that advantage the American people. And we were arguing that they should do so to lower drug prices by taking the patents away from drug companies that misuse them and providing other means of producing these drugs in order to lower prices.

The Trump administration is not going after the drug companies, it’s going after the universities using the same statutory language. So it could well be legal with a pliant Supreme Court –  maybe it becomes constitutional – but it’s for a very different cause. 

But it does go to the point that there seems to be more aggressive use of policymaking on the Republican side than the Democratic side. When we started writing about this issue, arguing for march-in rights to bring down drug prices, it was when the Obama administration spent years debating it internally and not doing it. Then Biden comes in and they spent several years actually advancing the ball but left office without doing it. Donald Trump’s been in office six months and they’re already doing it. So that gives you a pretty good measure of the willingness of one party to push the envelope versus the other.

Anne Kim:

So to wrap things up, Donald Trump is making announcements as we speak about the pending militarization of DC. So what are you guys expecting from that? What are you expecting the response to be and what else are you watching for this week?

Bill Scher:

It’s another case of Donald Trump inventing an issue out of nothing. Crime is down in DC. There was a high profile incident involving someone he knew personally, and so he’s made that into a giant issue to give a justification for federal intrusion.

 And to Paul’s point, this is how the Trump administration operates. They’re on full tilt all the time to aggressively deploy and weaponize the power of federal government when it suits their political games. Otherwise, they’re hyper-libertarian. They’re denying disaster relief even not just in blue areas, but in red areas. They’re decimating the federal workforce. They’ve decimated the Medicaid program, which is going to affect a lot of people again, not just in blue areas, but in red areas. They want to take down the Department of Education.

 You can credit them for their diabolical creativity, but I think Democrats can be very well positioned to say these folks want to use the federal government to serve their own ends. And they don’t want to use it at all to help you.

Paul Glastris:

I agree that what may in the end bring down the Republican Party and Donald Trump is this aggressive policy overreach. But I wouldn’t take away from that the lesson that Democrats shouldn’t be aggressive because it’s going to take real aggressive policymaking to deliver to voters what they clearly want, which is affordability, lower prices, better incomes. 

All of that is going to take much stronger use of federal power than the Biden administration even used. So Democrats have to think very hard about how to do that, and how to deliver on the promises that they make when they next have a shot at voters.

Anne Kim :

Well, thanks very much, gentlemen. See you next week. 

The post Trump’s Increasingly Creative Authoritarianism appeared first on Washington Monthly.

On this episode of the Washington Monthly politics roundtable, editors Matt Cooper, Paul Glastris, and Bill Scher discuss the ongoing redistricting chaos in Texas, the implications of recent economic turmoil, and the shifting dynamics of GOP support for Israel amidst the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 

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This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Matt Cooper:

Good morning. Well, we have a lot to cover. Let’s start with the crazy redistricting scene in Texas. Since the last day or so, Democratic lawmakers have fled Austin to avoid having a quorum so that Republicans can go ahead with their very unusual mid-decade redistricting, a response to President Trump insisting that they come up with more Republican seats. Democrats obviously oppose this somewhat radical move because redistricting is usually a once in a decade process right after the decennial census, but Republicans are trying to carve out more seats to prevent losing the House next year. Bill, you wrote about this last week. 

Bill Scher

Well, there was an analysis done by the Texas Tribune with Washington Monthly alum Gabby Birenbaum having the byline for that piece. And they’re trying to squeeze out five more Republican districts that would be majority Hispanic. Now, we know there’s been a big rightward shift amongst Hispanic Latinos in the 2024 election and really over the course of this Trump era. But when you’re redistricting, typically you’re trying, you’re not basing it on just the most recent election.

You’re not basing it on what swing voters did in recent elections. You’re trying to move in your known hardcore partisans  to ensure to get that flip. And we also know from the Texas Tribune, a different article, that a lot of Texas Republicans were getting pressured by Donald Trump to do this. And their response was that this seems kind of dicey. We’ve already kind of pushed this map to the limit and we could spread our voters out too thin, and get caught in a backlash in a bad year, which 2026 looks to be, but of course they did it anyway. 

And so we have other evidence in polling nationally that Hispanics are shifting back left. The Texas governor is underwater, which he hasn’t been for about three years. I mean, this is all kind of expected. Again, you have pendulum swings and Donald Trump is a very active president to be charitable. That’s the kind of situation that tends to cause backlash.

Matt Cooper:

Circumstances change. You got ICE roundups. Trump’s had popularity problems generally. Paul, let me ask you, I’m putting you on the spot a little bit, but Democrats are trying to run out the clock because they’re in a special session because of the flooding on the Guadalupe River that caused so many tragic deaths earlier this summer.

Democrats are hoping to run out the clock. The governor said he’s going to try to replace them. I don’t know what the laws are in Texas, if that’s even feasible. The impeached attorney general Ken Paxton has vowed to try to arrest the Democrats, but his authority doesn’t extend out of state and the Democratic leaders in Chicago this morning holding a press conference. I’m putting you on the spot here, but do you think the Democrats can prevail in stopping this thing?

Paul Glastris:

Well this is not the first time the Democrats of Texas has gone out of state to deny the Republicans a quorum. It’s worked before to delay votes. I’m not aware of any time that it’s worked to stop them altogether, because eventually miss your spouse, right? You can’t just live in a crappy hotel room in Cook County forever

Whether they can stop this vote, I have my doubts. Whether Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton can arrest these folks, I also have my doubts. But I think that the problem is, as Bill wisely pointed out in his story on Friday, that the Texas Republicans’ hearts are not in this. They know that it might not work.

They’re doing it because they’re bowing to Donald Trump, not because they’re all fired up. 

And in addition to the walkout of the Democrats, you have three Democratic state governors saying if Texas redistricts to add Republicans, we’re going to redistrict to take away Republicans. That’s Illinois, New York, and California. And that is not easy in any of those states to do, but it is possible. So there’s a mutually assured destruction going on here. And that’s what I suspect might in the end kind of lead to a peace agreement.

Matthew Cooper: 

Bill, let me ask you, because as Paul mentioned, these Democratic governors are saying, look, we may have to fight fire with fire. And over the weekend, Eric Holder, the former attorney general who has led a big campaign for more nonpartisan redistricting methods said, well, normally that’s what I favor, but this is an emergency. 

Do you think, especially in California where they’ve already gone to a commission system, do you think Democrats, assuming Texas goes ahead, they are going to be able to respond to this in kind?

Bill Scher:

I don’t know if they’ll be able to match Republicans one to one across the board, because there’s not much opportunity, there are legal obstacles. 

As you guys know, I’m a fairly bipartisan person, I’ve talked about bipartisanship in positive tones in the past. Not that bipartisanship is always awesome. But legislatively speaking, it’s often, it’s often necessary. And when you can do it, those, those policies tend to stick. But I’ve never been a bipartisan when comes to redistricting. I’m all for gerrymandering warfare. I think in the end of the day, it all ends up being a wash. 

They don’t really hold the fort when the waves come. So it’s not like you never can win an election ever again. When someone tries to gerrymander, we’ve been doing this for literally centuries. So it doesn’t bother me when everybody does it. It doesn’t make sense to unilaterally disarm.  So if Democrats try to fight fire with fire and if they can’t get Republicans totally even-steven in this cycle, perhaps they can mitigate. But you’re talking inches, you’re talking a handful of seats. And sometimes it comes down to that. So I understand why you would go to the wall with it. But in the average midterm, the president’s party loses 25 seats and Democrats only need three to take back the House. I mean, Democrats have to really blow it to not take back the House this time. And I don’t think the redistricting wars are going to be what saves Republicans.

Matthew Cooper:

Let’s move on a little bit. Now, we had this situation last week where there was a smattering of different economic news. But if you look closely, almost all of it was bad. We have an excellent piece in the Washington Monthly this morning by Robert Shapiro, who was the Under Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration, which explains why we had the disparity last week between a robust GDP number and a very, very weak jobs report. 

But in response to these weak reports, Trump acted with great maturity and wisdom and fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a part of the Labor Department, in a move that hasn’t been done since the Hoover administration and is widely deplored by economists on both sides of the aisle for breaking the thermometer because he didn’t like the temperature.

Do you see any fallout from this politically or are we just coming to accept that this is Trump?

Bill Scher:

Politically, I imagine this is too deep in the weeds for the average voter to pay attention to—that’s not the kind of thing really grabs you. I deeply worry about what it means economically if the entire business and financial community can’t trust the numbers that the federal government puts out.

How do we make any kind of planning and budgeting and investing decisions in that case? 

Paul Glastris:

It’s like firing your radiologist, right? Because he’s not giving you a reading of your cancer that you like. It’s crazy.

Bill Scher:

It’s totally crazy, which is why I think even pretty conservative Republicans didn’t take that step before because they would think two, three steps ahead. Donald Trump is not a two, three steps ahead kind of guy. He does what he wants to do in the moment and how this damages the credibility of the federal government or the Republican party is just not a concern of his.

I think politically this is probably low on the list of things dragging him down But in terms of things that are going to make the economy even more unstable which will have a political impact, this strike me as pretty big.

Paul Glastris:

I agree with Bill. I don’t think that the firing of the head of the BLS is a huge political deal. And by the way, I don’t think it’s going to even have that much effect because, as Bill said, these numbers are put together by teams of civil servants and the head of BLS does not have the ability to change the numbers. 

And if that somebody new comes in and tries to do it, there’s going to be scores, hundreds of people blowing the whistle on it. 

The big concern is the economy, right? We have a much weaker economy than we thought on Thursday. Or let me put it a little differently. There was great scratching of heads by a lot of people about how the economy seemed to be doing so well. And what we now know is the economy’s not doing that well. It’s actually losing steam. 

Matthew Cooper:

Speaking of political change, let me turn to the situation in the Middle East and the fallout from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We’re seeing a real collapse, according to the polls, in Democratic support for Israel generally and on this Gaza mess in particular with something like 7 % of Democrats approving of Israeli policy in Gaza.

This week three prominent podcasters—the Pod Save America fellows who were all Obama administration veterans all said we’ve got to cut off aid to Israel, and that would include defensive weapons like Iron Dome. On the Republican side, I don’t know if she’s a leading indicator or not, but the very outspoken representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia, a fierce Trump voice is saying that this is genocide.

Let me ask you about the domestic US politics of this. Is this a permanent shift? Or is it something that could evaporate if the situation in Gaza returns to something resembling normal? 

Bill Scher:

I wouldn’t call it permanent because the Israeli government can change. 

I’m no expert on Israeli political dynamics but if the next election would actually bring in a more moderate government, support for Israel in America could fall more or less along party lines. Of course, you point out, there’s faction of Republicans who are isolationists.

So it definitely makes things very scrambled politically. And I think most importantly has set back any hope of having a two-state solution, who knows how long. But that to me is where the North Star should still be. But it’s very hard to see how you get from point A to point B when you have an Israeli government that has literally zero interest in it. And you also have an Hamas leadership that has no interest in it.

Paul Glastris:

Well it’s not just  Democrats who are upset with the starvation in Gaza. It’s Donald Trump—he just seems very, very rattled by this.  And it’s curious because, know, a few weeks ago, he was sitting down with Benjamin Netanyahu agreeing with a policy of ethnically cleansing the Gazans. Well, starving the Gazans is how you ethnically cleanse them. So very, very confused policy coming out of the White House. So I really don’t know where domestically this all goes. Certainly there is more support for Netanyahu and the current Israeli policy among Republicans than Democrats, but things could change as Bill said in Israel very quickly too.

Matthew Cooper:

I should note news over the weekend that all the former, except for a few, but pretty much all the living former heads of Mossad and Shinbet, the Israeli intelligence services, wrote a letter to Netanyahu saying that this is a crazy policy, that he walked into Hamas’s trap, essentially, that Hamas wanted a humanitarian crisis. They’ve never had much regard for their own civilian population by putting their tunnels and missiles under mosques and hospitals and schools. And that he had walked into this and that this policy aimed at having every last Hamas militant  wiped out has created a diplomatic and military catastrophe for Israel. 

There are lot of pro-Israeli voices that are very uncomfortable with where Netanyahu has led this. And of course, there is a belief in Israel that Netanyahu, who faces legal peril there, is very eager to stay in office to avoid that legal peril. 

Well, gentlemen, thank you. Appreciate it. We will see you next week. Quiet August or not, bring your blue polo shirt and your beard and we’ll see you next time. Thanks.

The post Republicans Under Pressure: Redistricting, Economy, Israel appeared first on Washington Monthly.

After years of slavish fawning over Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump has apparently made an abrupt about-face in his views on the Russian President. In the last week, he has threatened huge tariffs on Russia’s trading partners if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire; he’s also restarted the flow of arms to Ukraine via third-party transactions with European allies. But will his resolve on Ukraine hold? 

Contributing writer Tamar Jacoby, Director of the New Ukraine Project for the Progressive Policy Institute, joined Editor in Chief Paul Glastris, Politics Editor Bill Scher, Exective Editor for Digital Matt Cooper and moderator Anne Kim for this week’s episode of the Washington Monthly Politics Roundtable.  They also discuss Jeffrey Epstein drama and the Rescissions battle in Congress.

Below is a three part transcript of their conversation, edited for clarity.

Trump’s Dramatic Shift on Ukraine

Anne Kim:
Good morning, everyone—and welcome, Tamar!

Let’s start with you. Trump seems to have made a complete 180 in his posture toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. Just last week, he threatened to impose major tariffs on Russia’s trading partners unless Putin agreed to a ceasefire. He’s also restarted the flow of weapons to Ukraine through third-party deals with European allies. You recently wrote a great piece for the Monthly asking whether this about-face is permanent. How are Ukrainians feeling about all of this?

Tamar Jacoby:
Trump is single-minded—he came in thinking he’d be the one to make peace in Ukraine. And it’s finally dawned on him, six months in, that Putin is the obstacle to that. So he’s angry. And when Trump gets angry, he lashes out. He doesn’t count to ten, he doesn’t pause to assess—he acts out of irritation.

I don’t think his underlying admiration for Putin or Russia has changed. He still sees Russia as a great power that should be on friendly terms with America. He’s long been irritated with Ukraine. And I don’t think he fully understands how wily and aggressive Putin is. But right now, he’s frustrated—and so he’s threatening to punish Putin. Emphasis on “threatening”—nothing’s happened yet.

The key for Ukraine is that Trump’s allowing weapons to flow. Not through traditional foreign aid—he’s not giving them to Ukraine directly. Instead, the U.S. is selling arms to European allies, who are then passing them along. But for Ukrainians, that’s a distinction without a difference. They’re glad to have the weapons, and in some ways it’s more dependable coming from the Europeans. They feel a little more self-reliant—less at the mercy of Trump’s whims.

Anne Kim:
You mentioned earlier that Kyiv is more dangerous now than it’s been. Can you say more about that?

Tamar Jacoby:
It’s gotten much worse. Just a year ago, a typical night might mean 20 drones overhead. Now it’s 700. That’s a 35-fold increase. The point is to terrorize—and it is terrifying.

A year ago, an air alert might not mean anything for your neighborhood. You might hear a boom, then it was over. Now it feels like a war zone. In my first three years in Kyiv, I went to the basement shelter maybe four or five times. Now I go every time there’s an alert. And I’m not alone—people who used to shrug it off are now taking shelter, and talking about it the next morning. “How was it in your neighborhood?” “How’s your kid handling it?” It’s become part of daily life.

And yet, life goes on. Young professionals in my building are still getting married, buying apartments, having babies. Ukrainians haven’t given up. There’s always a sense that something—some new technology, some battlefield shift—is just around the corner. That resilience is still there.

Paul Glastris:
You’ve written that Ukrainians see the trickle of weapons from Trump as underwhelming. The initial shipments were just a handful of Patriot missiles—enough to last maybe an hour or two on a bad night?

Tamar Jacoby:
That’s right. And there’s no new U.S. money behind any of it. What’s changed is that Europeans are stepping up and paying. Patriots are these massive, truck-mounted missile systems. The missiles themselves—called interceptors—are like million-dollar bullets. A dozen of them doesn’t go very far. What Ukraine really needs are the full systems: the launchers, radars, all of it.

Germany’s giving two systems, Norway one. That will help. And then there’s new tech in development—Eric Schmidt, of Google fame, has a new system being built in Poland that might help shoot down drones. Patriots are great for ballistic missiles, but using them on cheap drones is a bad trade. Ukraine needs the next generation of drone defense.

Paul Glastris:
What about offensive weapons? Are we seeing Trump allow longer-range systems that could reach into Russia?

Tamar Jacoby:
In classic Trump fashion, he’s trying to have it both ways. He reportedly asked Zelensky whether these missiles could reach Moscow or St. Petersburg—but the next day the White House said he wasn’t authorizing anything, just asking. So for now, there’s no official permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons for deep strikes.

Ukraine is already doing some deep strikes with its own drones, but those only go so far. It’s hard to imagine either side achieving total military victory. More likely is a long slog that combines battlefield gains, economic pressure, and Western staying power until Putin decides it’s not worth it anymore. Will he ever? Hard to say. He’s talked about fighting the Swedes for 20 years back in the 1700s. This could go on a long time.

Paul Glastris:
In a previous show, we speculated that the best-case scenario might be Trump just losing interest and letting U.S. weapons flow passively. Is that still your view?

Tamar Jacoby:
There was real fear that Trump would impose a bad peace deal—something totally unfair to Ukraine. If he wants to neglect the peace process now, fine. That might help in the short term. But Ukraine still can’t win without U.S. intelligence and weapons. Benign neglect isn’t a strategy.

Matthew Cooper:
You embedded with the Ukrainian infantry recently. What did you learn?

Tamar Jacoby:
It was eye-opening. Infantry is the oldest profession—men fighting men, almost hand-to-hand. But now they’re stuck between two technological forces: drones from the enemy, and drones from their own side. It’s transforming warfare.

Trenches that used to be just a few hundred yards apart are now separated by 15 miles of “no man’s land,” because drones can see and strike anything that moves. You don’t even want to leave the trench to pee—drones will see you. Getting into the trenches is dangerous, and once you’re in, you stay. Soldiers used to rotate every day or two. Now they stay 30 days straight because the walk in and out is too dangerous.

So yes, there’s better tech on their side, but also much greater vulnerability. We’re in a transitional moment—between old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground warfare and a future where robots dominate the battlefield.

Anne Kim:
So where does Trump go from here? Will he stay frustrated with Putin, or flip again?

Tamar Jacoby:
If I could predict Trump, I’d be rich. But no, I don’t think he’s given up on the fantasy of two great men from two great countries making deals. But as a European diplomat once told me after Trump was elected: “Don’t worry. Putin will f*** it up.” And I’ve thought about that a lot. Whenever there’s movement toward peace, Putin resists. So if Trump really wants peace, Putin will frustrate him.

Paul Glastris:
Wasn’t this workaround—having Europe buy and transfer the weapons—Ukraine’s idea?

Tamar Jacoby:
Absolutely. Ukrainians understand Trump can’t be relied on. Europe has more skin in the game. If Putin wins in Ukraine, Europe is next—maybe not with tanks, but in some form. So it’s in their interest to keep the war contained to Ukraine. That’s what’s driving their support. Nobody in Kyiv is sentimental about U.S. aid turning into sales. Everyone understands. It was Zelensky’s idea.

Paul Glastris:
And we’re finally seeing Europe rearming?

Tamar Jacoby:
Yes, slowly. Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, Europe has been talking a good game. Now they’re putting real money into it. Whether they’ll be ready in time—big question. And Putin’s trying to divide them from each other and from the U.S. No one knows how that will play out.

But for now, it’s grim in Kyiv. Nobody expected peace this week. The war continues. The question is whether Ukrainians—and the West—have the stamina to keep up with the pace of technological change and military pressure.

Paul Glastris:
Is the war degrading Russia’s capacity?

Tamar Jacoby:
Unfortunately, not really. Putin has put the whole economy on a war footing. They’re making more drones, more missiles—it’s overheating their economy, but it’s not collapsing. Russia has operated like this before. It’s not new. Peter the Great sustained his economy through war, until eventually it drained everything else.

People I trust say that if the West really clamped down—cut oil revenues, blocked key components getting in through Turkey or Kazakhstan—it could make a difference. But that hasn’t happened yet.

Anne Kim:
Thank you, Tamar. Please stay safe. We hope to have you back again soon.

Tamar Jacoby:
Unless a missile gets in the way, I’ll be back. Thanks for having me.

Trump, Epstein, and the Rescissions Fight

Anne Kim:
Okay, let’s turn now to the controversy over Jeffrey Epstein, which is turning out to be almost as bizarre as the conspiracy theories themselves. There’s been longstanding MAGA obsession with Epstein’s client list. Now you’ve got Trump allies like Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, and FBI Director Cash Patel—who came to power promising to expose the files—all saying, essentially, “nothing to see here.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal just ran a piece about a cryptic and racy birthday note from Trump to Epstein. So—maybe there is something to see here. What do you all make of it? Is this a real threat to Trump’s presidency?

Matthew Cooper:
I’d say not yet. Trump and Epstein had a falling out long ago, so I don’t think we’ll see documentation of Epstein “pimping” for Trump. Maybe something will come out, but who knows. Jonathan Alter has a good piece up this morning based on Michael Wolff’s hours of interviews with Epstein.

Alan Dershowitz made a point in the Journal: why would a criminal make a client list? And if such a list existed, it would’ve been destroyed long ago. That said, Trump is getting hoisted on his own petard. He built his power fanning conspiracy theories—and now he’s caught in one.

Still, I doubt it’ll dent his popularity or his ability to move legislation through a Republican Congress.

Anne Kim:
Bill, Paul—your take?

Bill Scher:
It may not block legislation, but it’s creating fissures at the MAGA grassroots and among conservative influencers. And that generates media churn.

Trump’s brand is rooted in conspiracy—being the guy who stands outside the establishment and claims to reveal the “real truth.” That’s a strong bond with his base. But now, when a conspiracy turns on him, he’s trying to wave it away. He posted something like, “We could give them grand jury stuff, but it’ll never be enough.”

It’s the same playbook as the birther saga—when he demanded Obama’s long-form birth certificate and even that wasn’t enough. He knows these theories can’t be resolved. Even if there’s no client list, there could be deposition transcripts naming people who were never charged. Under normal rules, you wouldn’t release that.

Trump’s impulse will be to redact or withhold—but that just fuels more suspicion. It’s a no-win cycle.

Paul Glastris:
Totally agree. What stands out is how weirdly Trump has behaved. He’s thrown out every trick in the book to distract from this. That suggests either:

1. the whole thing was a cynical power play—he and allies like Bondi rode the conspiracy to power, and now they’re exposed; or
2. there is something incriminating—maybe not a client list, but something he doesn’t want released.

The New York Times today reports that Trump’s solution is to redirect the outrage toward the press—attacking the Journal, attacking Rupert Murdoch. And MAGA hates Murdoch more than most liberals realize. They see Fox as part of the “fake news” machine when it criticizes Trump.

But I’m not sure the Times is right that this tactic will work. It might redirect the base’s anger—or it might not. Either way, this isn’t good for Trump.

Anne Kim:
Reuters had a poll last week: 69% of Americans think the government is hiding something about Epstein. And only 35% of Republicans approved of how Trump is handling the case. That was before the Wall Street Journal piece and his latest attacks on the media.

Paul Glastris:
And let’s be clear—it’s basically illegal to release grand jury depositions. So even if there is some juicy material, it’s probably going to be redacted or blocked by the courts. The MAGA base that wants full transparency is going to be disappointed.

As Josh Marshall pointed out, the real issue isn’t what’s in the depositions—it’s the physical evidence seized from Epstein’s homes during his second arrest. That’s what people want to see, and no one in Trump’s camp is even mentioning it.

Anne Kim:
So what should Democrats do? Ro Khanna teamed up with Tom Massie to demand release of the files. But now Trump is calling the whole thing a Democratic hoax. Should Democrats lean into this or back off?

Bill Scher:
I’m inclined to support what Ro Khanna’s doing—forcing a vote is fair game. But I’d be cautious about turning this into a full-on fire-with-fire campaign.

Democrats should be the party of governance, not conspiracy. Feeding deep cynicism about institutions might win a news cycle but it’s corrosive long-term. It empowers demagogues. Better to call out Trump’s hypocrisy: he fans conspiracies when convenient, then denies them when they threaten him.

That message—“You’re being exploited”—is more powerful than just stoking outrage.

Matthew Cooper:
There’s also a lesson from George W. Bush in 2000. After the Lewinsky scandal, even though Clinton had rebounded in popularity, Bush leaned into the “ick factor.” He talked about restoring honor and turning the page. I think there’s room for Democrats to do that now: tap into the public’s revulsion without turning into conspiracists themselves.

Paul Glastris:
Agreed. This is damaging to Trump because even his base isn’t fully buying his denials. Having someone like Khanna team up with Massie is smart. But Democrats shouldn’t overplay their hand. Let Trump destroy himself. The more this becomes a partisan talking point, the easier it is for him to reframe it as an attack from the left.

Anne Kim:
Let’s move to another major story: the rescissions package. Congress just passed a $9.4 billion rollback of previously approved funds—including foreign aid and money for NPR and PBS. The White House says more rescissions are coming. Are we watching Congress give up the power of the purse?

Bill Scher:
I’m writing about this for tomorrow. To set the stage: Congress passes annual spending bills, called discretionary spending. These usually get bundled into omnibus or minibus bills when deadlines approach and deals are struck.

This year, Congress passed three such packages for FY2025. Trump signed the last one in March. But now, through a legal workaround, they’ve passed a partisan rescissions bill that rolls back some of that funding.

It’s legal under the Impoundment Control Act—but it undercuts the original bipartisan deal. And Trump’s budget director has made clear: more rescissions are coming. He even said the appropriations process should be less bipartisan.

Anne Kim:
So what can Democrats do?

Bill Scher:
They could walk away. Republicans want to govern solo—let them.

Now, the tricky part is: you can’t do discretionary spending through reconciliation, so if Democrats withdraw, how does the government stay open?

Two options:

1. Republicans change the rules to pass everything on a party-line vote.
2. Republicans backtrack and agree to protect future bills from rescissions.

I doubt either happens. But Democrats don’t need to fill in the gaps anymore. Republicans asked for one-party rule—let them figure it out.

Matthew Cooper:
And this exposes the hypocrisy of Republicans who used to champion “regular order.” For years they’ve bemoaned omnibus bills and backroom deals. But now they’re undercutting the very norms they said they wanted to restore.

Democrats can claim the high ground: If Trump wants to eliminate the Education Department, fine—but follow the law. Don’t do it by memo from the OMB.

Paul Glastris:
Exactly. The rescissions may technically be legal, but it’s Congress voluntarily weakening itself. Better than Trump doing it unilaterally? Maybe. But we’re inching toward a system where Congress abdicates control over spending—its most fundamental constitutional power.

Bill Scher:
To be fair, the rescissions process is codified in the Empowerment Act. The president proposes cuts, and Congress votes. This time, they did it on a party-line basis—legal, but dishonorable, because it breaks the bipartisan agreement that got the original appropriations passed.

Other moves—mass firings, gutting USAID, shuttering the Education Department—are unilateral and legally murkier. But in spirit, it’s the same. The Constitution is supposed to ensure checks and balances. If Republicans no longer want shared power, they should own it—and be held accountable in 2026.

What We’re Watching

Anne Kim:
So in the last few minutes we have, I want to ask what each of you is watching for this week.

Matthew Cooper:
Trump has weighed in on the Washington Commanders—he’s threatening to block the deal to build a new stadium in D.C. unless the team changes its name back to the Redskins. He’s also made similar threats to the Cleveland Guardians, formerly the Indians.

This could be a fleeting culture war flare-up—or it could be something he sticks with. He does have some leverage: the new stadium is planned for federally owned land leased to the District on a 99-year lease. Trump could try to use that as a pressure point. So this distraction could actually become a real policy fight.

Paul Glastris:
Another one to watch—maybe not this week, but in the coming weeks—is redistricting. Trump wants Texas to redraw its congressional maps to make it harder for Democrats to take back the House in 2026. Gavin Newsom in California says if Texas does that, he’ll push to eliminate GOP-leaning districts in California.

Other Democratic governors and legislatures are saying the same. So we’re seeing the beginning of a giant game of political chicken over redistricting power. Who has the nerve—and the authority—to follow through? It’s going to be worth tracking.

Bill Scher:
Looking a little ahead: the Senate is supposed to wrap up its summer session at the end of July. But Trump is demanding they extend it to confirm more of his nominees, including judicial appointments. So this becomes another test of loyalty. Do Republicans really want their summer vacation—or do they want to prove they’re with Trump?

Anne Kim:
And among those nominees is Emil Bove. He’s facing major opposition—a letter opposing his confirmation has been signed by more than 900 former Justice Department employees and lawyers. So the question becomes: does he even have the votes? And if not, will Schumer or the majority leader think it’s worth sticking around to try?

Matthew Cooper:
And just to note, The Monthly was the first to flag Bove as a potential Supreme Court nominee if a vacancy opens during Trump’s second term. Trump is no longer aligned with Leonard Leo or the Federalist Society. He’s looking for loyalists now—not Kavanaughs. Bové fits that bill perfectly.

Anne Kim:
I’m looking forward to speaking with economist Rob Shapiro later this week for the podcast. He has a new piece up with his forecast for the U.S. economy, and we’ll dig into it together.

Thanks to everyone for tuning in to the Politics Roundtable. I’m Anne Kim, joined today by Washington Monthly editor-in-chief Paul Glastris, politics editor Bill Scher, and executive editor for digital Matt Cooper. Have a great week, and see you next time.

The post Trump Turns on Putin, Ducks Epstein, and Congress Rolls Over appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Michael Grunwald, author of the new book, We Are Eating the Earth, speaks with Anne Kim and Bill Scher about the devastating environmental impacts of agriculture. Grunwald challenges conventional wisdom about the benefits of biofuels and explains why organic farming is bad for the planet. He also offers tips for what ordinary people can do to adopt a more earth-friendly diet and reduce food waste.

You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube

Below is a transcript of their conversation, lightly edited for clarity:

Anne Kim: Hey, Michael, welcome to the show and congratulations on your book. It’s great to have you. 

Michael Grunwald: Thanks so much for having me. I’m such a Washington Monthly fan. This is very cool. 

Anne Kim: Thank you. Well, the first question we have is about the title of your book. You’ve titled it We Are Eating the Earth. What exactly do you mean by that? 

Michael Grunwald: The short answer is agriculture is eating the earth. Two of every five acres of habitable land on this planet are now cropped or grazed. Just by contrast, you hear so much about urban sprawl. Well, one of every hundred acres are cities or suburbs. So really this natural planet has become an agricultural planet. We’re losing a soccer field worth of tropical forest to agriculture every six seconds. 

So really, you know, that’s a disaster for deforestation, for biodiversity loss, for pollution and water shortages, but it’s also a disaster for the climate because those trees and wetlands and prairies that we’re destroying used to store a lot of carbon and they also used to absorb the carbon that we’ve already pumped into the atmosphere. So I always say that trying to decarbonize the planet while you’re continuing to vaporize trees, it’s like trying to clean your house while you’re smashing the vacuum cleaner to bits in the living room. You’re making a mess and you’re also crippling your ability to clean up the mess. And so that’s really what the book is about. 

Anne Kim: And most of us aren’t farmers, we’re eaters. Can you drill down a little bit about the specific practices that are having the devastating impacts you’re talking about?  

Michael Grunwald: I think for a lot of us, we kind of take a cross-country flight and we see all those squares and circles out the window and kind of say like, wow, there’s a lot of agriculture out there. But it’s flyover country to us, right? We don’t live it that much. part of the, so yes, there are certainly, there are diesel tractors and crop dusters that create a lot of carbon dioxide. You’ve probably heard about the cows burping and farting and that creates methane and fertilizer creates nitrous oxide. But really the biggest problem with farming is just the fact that it uses so much land. We’re talking about 12 billion acres of the planet and it’s on track to use another 12 Californias worth of land by 2050 if we don’t change some stuff. 

So essentially, you know, we need to make more food with less land. That means that more efficient farming, which we actually do have in the United States, can be less, less devastating to the environment than the kind of inefficient farming where you just, you know, cut down many acres of of Amazon and put a few cows on it. 

Bill Scher: So when you talk about cows, that puts you on a glide path to the beef debate, right? And I don’t come into this with any kind of set position, just like the average American, want to eat my beef. Is there any, the book argues that beef production is just an enormous land suck. Is there any way to sustainably produce beef? If you’re getting beef from a local family farmer, is that better than from a big agribusiness company? Or is it just so completely inefficient that there’s no justification for it? 

Michael Grunwald: Well, beef is bad. So, you know, if the best thing you can do for your personal climate footprint is to eat less beef, that is true. But just like Willie Sutton, you know, he said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money is. It is true that if you if you care about emissions, you got to care about better beef, because that’s where the emissions are. Now, unfortunately. 

Better beef is generally not the kind of local grass-fed, know, organic, twee beef that you can get at the farmers market. You know, that’s usually worse for the planet and the climate because it uses more land and it also because it takes the cows longer to get to slaughter weight, they’re alive longer to burp and fart methane. Really, but I went to Brazil and I saw incredibly efficient beef ranches where they had improved pastures where that had gone from maybe one cow on every five acres to one cow per acre. And that meant they were using one fifth as much of the Amazon. So yeah, mean, even though that beef was then going to a feedlot that a lot of people might not like, and even though they were fertilizing their pastures in a way that Michael Pollan might not approve. 

Anne Kim: So yeah, I read that chapter about Fazenda Tropical. That was just really interesting. Why don’t ranchers in Montana, you know, adopt those same kind of techniques? Like, what is it about American beef, the American beef industry that makes it difficult to adopt those kinds of models? 

Michael Grunwald:  Well, American beef is pretty good. The main character of my book definitely bangs his spoon on his high chair about how beef is terrible. He’s often then asked, “Well, then what should American beef producers produce?” And he’s like, “Beef.”  American beef is five times more efficient than the beef produced in Africa, it’s using one fifth as much of the forest. And that’s really important. Beef right now generally worldwide is about 10 times worse than chicken and pork in terms of emissions, in terms of land use, if it was only like three or four times worse, that would make a huge difference. So, I’ve cut out beef in my own diet, beef and lamb. 

Going vegan is the best thing you can do for the climate and for the planet for your diet, but I’m weak and I’m a hypocrite. But it turns out that just cutting out beef and lamb is about as good as going vegetarian because vegetarians tend to eat more dairy and again cows are bad.  It’s less bad when they’re making dairy because they make milk like several times a day while they only make beef like once in their lifetime. So that’s why beef is so extraordinarily bad. But again, everybody kind of finds the level of hypocrisy that they’re comfortable with. I do think there are a lot of things you can do to reduce your impact, but just a little less beef, even if you replace it with chicken or pork, that’s probably the best thing you can do. 

Anne Kim: Now what about Beyond Burgers and Impossible Burgers – fake meat? You had a chapter on that and there’s kind of this cautionary tale on just how hard it is to replace beef. 

Michael Grunwald: Yeah, well, that’s definitely one theme of the book is that I look at really dozens of kind of promising, I think, exciting solutions. But the fact is none of them really have a lot of traction yet. And all of them are going to be really hard because, right, we’ve been we’ve been eating meat for, know, our ancestors started two million years ago. We actually evolved to  enjoy the taste of meat. When we started eating meat, we started getting bigger brains and smaller stomachs. And it’s definitely a part of who we are.  

The long story short is that back in 2019, after Beyond went public and was suddenly worth a third as much as Tyson, people thought it was going to take over the world. It was like extraordinary excitement. I actually started reporting this book at the Good Food Institute conference in 2019. That’s the kind of coming together of all the different fake meat companies, whether it’s plant-based or cell-based or fungi-based, everybody’s there. And they were talking about whether they were gonna replace the meat industry in 15 or 20 years. My joke was that I thought I was gonna accidentally raise a Series A round in the drinks line.  

I finished my reporting at the same conference in 2023 and it was doom and gloom. Beyond has gone from $250 a share to $2 a share. Everybody’s like, oh, it was a fad. It’s never going to work. And my feeling is like, well, it was better than the old hockey puck veggie burgers that vegans used to eat, but it’s not yet as good as meat. And until it gets as tasty and as cheap as meat, it’s going to really struggle in the marketplace because most people aren’t writing books about food and climate. So they’re not going to give up beef for the sake of the planet. That said, think humans are not so good at making sacrifices for the planet and not so good at being nice to each other. But we’re really good at innovation and inventing stuff. And I think fake meat can still get better and cheaper and healthier. So I expect people will keep trying. 

Anne Kim: It probably doesn’t help to call it fake meat. It probably needs some sort of other label on it. 

Michael Grunwald: Yes, yes, the industry likes me, except when I use the phrase “fake meat,” and then they all yell at me and I’m not supposed to call it “cell based meat” either. It’s “cultivated meat,” right? Sometimes people call it “lab grown meat.” That’s like very bad. Do not call it that. Stephen Colbert once called it “shmeat.” I don’t think I don’t think that went over big. 

And some of this is going to be some of this definitely is going to be about selling it. You don’t want what happened with GMOs to happen with with meat substitutes where even before it came out people were like, that’s gross. It’s frankenfood. But the Tesla example shows that if you make a good product at a competitive price, some people will buy it. 

And look, I had an Impossible sausage at Starbucks this morning and it’s really good. Plant-based nuggets now in blind taste tests, they pretty much outcompete chicken-based nuggets. I mean, who the hell even knows what’s in a chicken nugget anyway, right? And they’re mostly just vehicles for sauce. So it shows that it can be done.  

Bill Scher:Now you get into GMOs in the book. I mean, a lot of the book is diving into these incredibly controversial subjects that even can divide people within progressive circles. And I’m not, I’m not planting my flag anywhere here. I’m just asking questions. But, know, GMOs definitely took a big hit from the left but they’re still in the food supply and they’re not talked about as much. There’s kind of quietly in there. And I just want to get your general take. Is this considered generally a good or bad thing? Is it helping the climate? Is it hurting us in other ways? What’s your overall view? 

Michael Grunwald: I mean, GMOs are fine, right? They’re not unhealthy. They just aren’t. They’re like the most studied substance on earth, and there’s no evidence of any health problems from eating that stuff. Now, I do talk about in the book how some of the yield benefits of GMOs have been exaggerated by their fans. So far, while some GMOs, particularly the ones that have the kind of natural insecticide,  so that you don’t have to apply as much insecticide. Those have been really helpful for the environment, as well as yields, particularly in places like India, where they don’t have as many pesticides. But in general, think they have not always lived up to the hype. But I’m very excited about the idea of gene editing, which is much more precise and should be even less dangerous, not that GMOs are dangerous at all.  

Anne Kim: I feel like your book is going to be a revelation for a lot of people who care the most about the climate, because these are also the people who read Michael Pollan and are part of the “slow food” movement, organic and all of that. Some of the practices that you write about that people who care about the climate embrace are also actually the most damaging for the planet, right? 

Michael Grunwald: Yeah, I mean, like Michael Pollan is a beautiful writer. And that’s kind of a problem. I think a lot of people believe some wrong things because because he’s explained them so beautifully.  I did an event in Berkeley where I debated a kind of professor of agroecology who is kind of pushing for kind of a global transition to no chemical, organic, low yield farming that in my opinion would be a real disaster for the planet and the climate. It was funny, Alice Waters, the famous chef from Chez Panisse, she was sitting in the third row, just glaring at me the whole time. It was like a room full of 200 Michael Pollan readers and they were out to hate me. But it was actually the response was mostly really great. The Paul Newman’s daughter who now runs Newman’s Own Organic came up and said like  exactly what you said, that that was revelatory.  

I think a lot of people, they see industrial agriculture and they are understandably upset. It treats people badly. It treats animals badly. It makes a huge mess. It’s like all the fertilizers are creating that dead zone the size of Connecticut and the Gulf of Mexico. They use too many antibiotics, which is a public health disaster. Their politics really suck. Right? They’re always lobbying against regulation just for the environment, for the climate. So people hate them. And there’s this sense that, the kind of Michael Pollan rustic bucolic farms with red barns where the animals had names instead of numbers and the soil was treated with love and the farmers looked like American Gothic —  that that kind of good, natural, kinder and gentler farming was good for the environment.  

But the fact is that the real environmental tragedy was the transformation of the prairie or the forest or the wetlands into those nice Michael Pollan farms. That’s when you lost the carbon. That’s when you lost the biodiversity. And there was an additional cost to the intensification. But really, it’s those low yield farms just creating agriculture in the first place where you make the big mess. And the thing about low yield agriculture is if you’re making less food per acre. 

You need more acres to produce food. And that is the simple idea behind “we are eating the earth.” We’re going to need 50 percent more calories by 2050. And we can’t keep tearing down land. You can’t keep using more land.  

You see what happened in Sri Lanka where they banned agrochemicals, they banned fertilizers, they banned pesticides, they went all organic. And within a few months, their farm yields crashed. They were no longer self-sufficient with rice. They started having food shortages and food riots. The government fell and they changed their mind because it was a bad idea.  

I do think the kind of like there’s the left wing and now on the right wing with Bobby Kennedy and and Joe Rogan. There’s this notion that farming and food should be natural, but nobody really knows exactly what that is. And I think farming should be productive so it doesn’t have to cover as much of the earth. 

Anne Kim: I want to ask about one more sacred cow or rather in this case, sacred corn. And that is biofuels. You have just an amazing takedown of the biofuels industry and this mythology that has risen around biofuels as the key to solving climate change while allowing us to keep our gas cars and that kind of thing. I remember when ethanol was a thing back in the day. So can you tell us a little bit about biofuels and why biofuels are actually super bad.  

Michael Grunwald: Well, it’s still the thing. It’s 10 percent of your gasoline. And yeah, I mean, right. Biofuels sound good. It’s like plant based fuels, farm grown fuels. But, you know, in general, you kind of plants are good when they’re plants and not so good when you’re burning the plants.  

And essentially, biofuels, first of all, they were seen as climate salvation because at the time in the early 2000s, there really were no other alternatives to fossil fuels. Solar and wind just weren’t a thing. There were no electric cars. So people were coming out and saying like, this is going to replace fossil fuels. And it’s great because when you you burn the corn in your engine and it comes out the tailpipe and that goes into the sky, but then you grow the corn in your field and that soaks up the carbon. So it’s great. It’s just a win-win. And then the hero of my story, Tim Searchinger, who was at the time just a wetlands lawyer, was like, but wait a minute, those fields are already growing corn. And if you grow fuel instead of food, then you’re gonna have to grow more food somewhere else. And it’s probably not gonna be a parking lot. It’s gonna be a forest or a wetland.  

The punch line is that the climate analyses of biofuels and really everything else were ignoring land. And when you took into account the land use, the indirect land use change that these biofuels were going to induce, that really biofuels were twice as bad as gasoline for the climate.  

Anne Kim: Well, okay, so corn is not the miracle plant we thought it was gonna be, but you do write about a miracle plant. That seems pretty cool. It’s a plant I had never heard of – pongamia. What the heck is pongamia, and why is it so good, and why aren’t we all eating pongamia burgers or butters? 

Michael Grunwald: It’s kind of another cautionary tale about how hard it is to make this stuff work. Because Pongamia really is a miracle tree. It’s a super tree. It grows, you know, in horrible land without irrigation, without fertilizer, without pesticides. It’s got sort of natural pesticides. And it’s essentially it’s like vertical soy. 

It grows something that’s very similar to a soybean. It’s got the protein meal and it’s also got the oil. But it’s a tree, so it grows a lot more of it. And it also stores carbon because it’s a tree and you can see it above the ground. You can see all that carbon. So it really is awesome. I tell the story of this company called Terviva, which first their problem was like, this stuff is amazing. 

But it’s been really hard and it’s hard to get farmers to plant it. It’s hard to, you know, get food companies to use it. He’s now like 15 years into the experiment. It’s only on 1500 acres, and there’s one protein bar that used it. He’s got some deals to sell Pongamia oil for biofuels, which is certainly better than corn ethanol, but it’s not what he had hoped. So again, it’s another example of how these problems are really big and really hard to solve, even with the miracle tree. 

Bill Scher: Can you pinpoint what the obstacle is? Is it just a marketing problem or is there some other thing that’s more systemic? 

Michael Grunwald:  It is really hard competing with the Cargills and Archer Daniels Midlands of the world, who just have these massive volumes and tiny margins. 

It’s really hard to make food and agriculture work and farmers are very set in their ways. It’s very hard to get them to do something different, especially to grow a tree that takes four years before the first crop comes out. And then, you know, and then other people are going to wait and see if this stuff actually works and if there’s a market for it. So the, you know, change just seems to come very slowly in this entire space.  

Anne Kim: So Michael, final question for you. A lot of things that you write about are systemic, things that us as ordinary eaters can’t do very much about. But there are things you write about that ordinary people can do, and one of them is the shift in diet. You’ve talked about that. But what else can people do? Maybe if you can talk a little bit about food waste, maybe as something that we do have control over on an individual level that could make a difference. 

Michael Grunwald: There are a million things that people can do to reduce the impact of their diets. But I try not to weigh people down with so many. And it’s really eat less beef and waste less food. We talked a little bit about how beef is so much worse than other forms of meat. When you waste food, you waste all the farmland and the fertilizer and the water that went into growing that food. And globally, we waste about a quarter of our food. We use a landmass the size of China to grow garbage. The average American family wastes about $1,500 a year on food that never makes it to their stomachs.  

Even during this time of food inflation, Americans are not wasting less food, which is kind of crazy when you think about it, right? We’re super mad about how much we’re spending on food and yet we’re still throwing out probably in households in America about a third of it. So yeah, mean, there are things individuals can do in terms of planning your meals better, smaller portions, that kind of thing.  

But again, I don’t want to put too much hope in like people doing the right thing because behavioral change is really hard. And then in a lot of the developing world, it’s not so much food waste, you know, in the home or near the fork. It’s more near the farm with primitive harvesting equipment and, you know, bad storage and bad roads that make it hard to get food to market and no cold storage and structural change is hard too.  

Anne Kim: Yeah. Well, Michael, thank you for joining us and please tell everyone where we can find your book. 

Michael Grunwald: Well, it’s hopefully in bookstores and get it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble or your local independent. And I do want to give a shout out to the Monthly because they tell you when you write a book that you need to have a tribe. 

And of course, I’ve pissed off all the tribes in various ways, the vegans, you know, the foodies, the hippies, you know, the Aggies, you know, the Michael Pollan readers, the, you know, everybody’s mad at me. But in a way, like like my tribe is the Washington Monthly, like people who care about people who care about sort of dorky policies that are really important that, you know, haven’t been sexy to everybody else. But, you know, everybody lives on the planet and everybody eats. 

And so for people who care about like, you know, how to solve problems, which is like basically the whole monthly thing, you know, that’s that’s my tribe. 

Anne Kim: Well, thank you very much, Michael.

The post Feeding the World But Killing the Planet w/ Michael Grunwald appeared first on Washington Monthly.