Populism
Costa Rica moves right | Power Line
From the Wall Street Journal, Costa Rica elects a conservative as Latin America shifts to the right. I’ve been documenting this phenomenon for a while now: worldwide, politics appear to be moving to the right, especially in…
Yes, the middle class is shrinking—because it’s moving up
"The middle class is shrinking" might be the assertion of the decade. Progressives and populists alike use it to justify nearly all government interventions, from tariffs to minimum-wage hikes to massive spending to…
Trump’s war on interest rates
With a pair of moves over the weekend, President Donald Trump signaled his intention to bully various institutions into providing lower interest rates for American consumers and the federal government. First, Trump called for…
In 2026, Republicans will have to decide what comes after Trump
The Republican Party that I joined in the 1980s (and later left) espoused a straightforward set of principles. It believed in free markets, limited government, peace through strength in dealing with international aggressors,…
The politics of permanent outrage
This week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Lauren Hall, a political science professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the author of The Radical Moderate's Guide to Life, a Substack newsletter that…
When Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas 1776, it wasn’t in the name of Christian nationalism
I grew up a few miles from where George Washington and his Continental Army crossed the Delaware River to launch a surprise attack on Hessian mercenary soldiers stationed in Trenton, N.J. Down on his luck, Washington launched…
The world moves to the right
From the BBC, Chile elects far-right José Antonio Kast as next president. Every sentence of the BBC report is better than the last, Chile has elected the far-right wing José Antonio Kast to be its next president, after an…
The bipartisan war on prices is coming for your credit card
In a scene that perfectly captures the strangeness of American politics today, President Donald Trump, a billionaire and self-styled champion of American business (at least the ones he likes) was all smiles during an Oval…
Populists Left and Right Say America Is Failing. The Facts Don’t.
Spend five minutes listening to the American left's most theatrical tribunes—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.)—and you'll probably hear tales of…
Democrats offer a false choice between socialism and technocracy
The unity that once held the Democratic Party together has given way to ideological meandering, oscillating between "woke" moralistic left-wing populism and technocratic managerialism. These two impulses now define…
TRENDING
