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    The top Democrats leading the fight against Trump’s agenda

    The first five months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been brutal for the Democratic party, which has been almost completely unable to stop his aggressive agenda. In March, CNN polling showed the favourability rating for the Democrats at just 29% – a record low in CNN polls dating back to 1992.

    The problem with the Democratic party “isn’t a lack of talent”, says Federico de Jesús, a Democratic strategist and spokesman for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign who I interviewed for this story. It is a “problem of vision and strategy”, he argues.

    “A lot of people, in theory, agree with the Democrats on a lot of issues. But they don’t necessarily feel comfortable with the direction the party is taking.” De Jesús told me that the Democrats allowed themselves to become identified by “woke issues” by many voters who abandoned them in November.

    However, the Democrats now have some reasons to celebrate. In early April, a Democratic-backed judge called Susan Crawford secured a seat in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. This kept liberal control of the state’s highest court intact. And a Reuters/Ipsos poll released a few weeks later showed that only 37% of US voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy.

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    As a Washington political correspondent for almost two decades, I have witnessed how the parties changed the guard after painful election cycles. This time, in the absence of clear leaders, the challenge is quite high for the Democrats.

    But who are the Democrats positioning themselves to lead the struggle against Trump’s policies? The acts of defiance are coming from two fronts: lawmakers in Congress and governors.

    Donald Trump and Joe Biden greet each other at Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
    Kenny Holston/EPA

    Senate minority leader Charles Schumer has predicted that the Democrats will win back control of the Senate after the 2026 midterm elections. “The electorate will desert the Republican candidates who embraced Trump in an overwhelming way”, he said on April 23.

    Others, like California senator Adam Schiff and Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, are using tactics like holding town halls in strong Republican districts to rally the opposition. Michigan congressman Shri Thanedar even filed articles of impeachment against Trump on April 28, but top Democrats shot down the effort as impractical.

    At the same time, House of Representatives minority leader Hakeem Jeffries is facing an intra-party effort to unseat many long-time lawmakers in solid Democratic districts. David Hogg, vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, is pledging US$20 million (£15 million) to end a culture of “seniority politics” which allows “asleep at the wheel” lawmakers to stay in office.

    But it is New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has been stealing the headlines. She is setting fundraising records, preparing for an effort to challenge Schumer in a New York senatorial primary in 2028. Surveys this early are rarely predictive, but an April head-to-head poll has Ocasio-Cortez leading Schumer by double digits.

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivers a speech on stage during a rally in Los Angeles, California, in April 2025.
    David Swanson/EPA

    Three Democrat governors are standing out at present: Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Minnesota’s Tim Walz and California’s Gavin Newsom.

    Shapiro is very popular with voters in his crucial swing state, and gets good marks even from Republicans on his bipartisan record. Walz was Kamala Harris’s running mate in November’s election, and his campaign performance was well received by his party. Walz is an obvious contender to run for the White House in 2028.

    But Newsom is probably the most notable of the three. While he’s been critical of his party, telling the Hill newspaper on April 21 that Democrats haven’t performed a thorough autopsy of what led to the loss in November, he is seen as someone who can address Republican voters well.

    A second tier of governors include Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, whose soft criticism of the Trump administration’s tariff regime saw Trump praise her for doing an “excellent job”. She is joined by Maryland’s Wes Moore, who is young and popular in his state, and JB Pritzker of Illinois.

    Pritzker called for “mass mobilisations and disruption” against Trump at a Democratic event in New Hampshire in late April. “These governors need to stand out”, said de Jesús, “either by fighting against Trump, or either [by] achieving something memorable.”

    Harris had largely kept a low profile since November’s election. But on April 30 she sharply criticised Trump’s first 100 days in office during a speech in San Francisco. She may decide to enter the race for California governor in the summer of 2025.

    Dark horse leader

    There could also be a dark horse leader waiting in the wings: Rahm Emanuel. As former Chicago mayor, Illinois congressman, Obama and Bill Clinton aide and US ambassador to Japan, he is considered a political heavyweight.

    Emanuel has hinted he may again run for public office, while criticising the party’s focus on gender issues and not on “kitchen table” issues as reasons for November’s defeat.

    Rahm Emanuel walks next to Joe Biden during a visit to Japan in 2023.
    Franck Robichon/EPA

    Progressives chafe at the idea of dialling down the talk about certain policies, such as gender and identity issues. But both Newsom and Emanuel are among those suggesting that the focus should instead shift to defending changes that most voters can relate to.

    At the moment, the party still lacks a clear leader and direction to recover from the 2024 defeat. Newsom, for instance, told the Hill that he doesn’t “know what the party is”. “I’m still struggling with that,” he added.

    According to de Jesús, “people don’t necessarily want someone to just hate Trump, but to identify the issues voters care about and co-opt that populist message.” More

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    Is Pope Leo XIV liberal or conservative? Why these labels don’t work for popes

    The 133 cardinal electors sequestered in the Sistine Chapel elected a new pope May 8. The choice was a surprise — Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost, who has carried out most of his ministry in Peru, before being elevated to Vatican roles by Pope Francis.

    As commentators and the media try to piece together backgrounders on Pope Leo XIV, one obvious question will be, “Is he a liberal or a conservative?” The same question was asked about Pope Francis, and about the cardinals entering this conclave.

    When applied to individual Catholics, the terms “liberal” and “conservative” can mean very different things. One could be conservative in regard to liturgy and church practice while being strongly committed to anti-racism and environmentalism.

    Or one might be considered a social conservative on issues such as marriage, sexuality and gender while holding clearly left-wing, social democratic views on the role of government.

    Newly elected Pope Leo XIV appears at the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, May 8, 2025.
    (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

    Even if Catholics are comfortable self-identifying as liberal or conservative Catholics, we should not treat these terms as if their meaning were obvious — especially since even as purely political terms the meaning of “liberal” or “conservative” is contested.

    Papacy as institution

    Things become all the more complicated when we are talking about the pope, the supreme head of the Catholic Church. The papacy as an institution is conservative by definition.

    The pope is considered the successor of the Apostle Peter, and his job description is precisely to maintain the unity and catholicity (“wholeness”) of the Church’s life, not only in space but through time — that is, to ensure continuity.

    But because of this role to maintain the fullness of a tradition and the unity of the Church, the pope cannot be conservative (or liberal) in a political sense.

    Pope Francis legacy

    The pontificate of Francis should have served as a lesson against liberal/conservative labels. From the beginning of his pontificate, he advocated strenuously for migrants and refugees. He reached out personally to LGBTQ+ communities. He initiated a worldwide “synodal” process that included broad consultation and fostered discussion of topics previously considered out of bounds, such as ordination of women as deacons (though not priests). He placed women in high-ranking positions in the Roman curia previously reserved only for clerics.

    Chiclayo Bishop Edinson Farfan speaks about newly elected Pope Leo XIV during a press conference at the bishop’s office in Chiclayo, Peru, May 9, 2025.
    (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

    But Francis was also critical of “gender ideology,” affirmed Church teaching on abortion and maintained the Church’s reservation of ordination to men only. While he angered self-identified conservatives, he often disappointed self-identified liberals.

    Instead of trying to impose political categories, it makes more sense to try to uncover the internal dynamics and motivations of a pope’s teaching and ministry. For example, Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical letter, Laudato si’, was a landmark in Catholic teaching on ecology. Far from being a political manifesto, the letter presents a vision of the human being within creation, informed by the Bible, theological reflection and modern Catholic social teaching. Francis frequently references the social thought of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who himself affirmed that the Church “must defend not only earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone.”

    Read more:
    Laudato Si’: A look back on Pope Francis’s environmental legacy

    As the British theologian Anna Rowlands astutely notes, Catholic social teaching “functions as a social philosophy that never fully baptizes a liberal philosophy or sentiment. It remains locked in a complex dialogue … with liberal democracy.”

    The role of the pope, highlighted in Francis’s teaching on ecology, is to inspire a different kind of social and moral imagination, one not reducible to particular ideological positions.

    A children’s choir displays photos of newly elected Pope Leo XIV after performing to celebrate his election as pope outside the Santa Maria Cathedral, the episcopal see of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, where he served as bishop, May 9, 2025.
    (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

    Catholic teaching, conscience

    Another example that subverts the liberal/conservative dichotomy was the well-known response of Pope Francis to a journalist’s question about homosexuality in the priesthood: “Who am I to judge?” Francis did not overturn “conservative” teachings in sexual ethics.

    But he did speak as a member of the Jesuit religious order and as a pastor, who knows that the general law must be applied in specific cases that introduce complexities and require nuanced concrete responses.

    There was also a tacit appeal to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), that an individual is bound to follow their conscience.

    A pin from Dignity USA, a group of LGBTQ+ Catholics, outside the Sao Vicente de Paulo Parish Social Centre, after Pope Francis visited it, in Lisbon, Aug. 4, 2023.
    (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

    For his part, Benedict XVI (as then-Cardinal Ratzinger), in a 1991 address to American bishops in Dallas, alluded to “the classical principle of moral tradition that conscience is the highest norm which [the human person] is to follow even in opposition to authority.” According to this principle, while church teaching authority would inform conscience, “conscience … would retain the final word.”

    There is no doubt that LGBTQ+ Catholics were able to hear something different in Francis’s language than they had heard in Benedict’s. However, both Benedict and Francis could appeal to shared principles, which were theological rather than political, and not reducible to liberal versus conservative categories.

    Weight of political polarization

    In our current political context, political terms like “liberal” and “conservative” tend to carry the weight of American political polarization.

    In the American context at the moment, “conservative Catholic” in its most radical form blends theological traditionalism — devotion to the traditional Latin mass, emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy and opposition to Francis’s reformist papacy — with support for the Republican party and MAGA movement.

    As professor of moral philosophy Massimo Borghesi has argued, this radical conservative opposition to Francis has its genesis in the pro-capitalist Catholic neo-conservatism of the 1980s and 90s, and is a predominantly American phenomenon.

    In addition, as writer and editor James T. Keane noted in a 2021 article in the Jesuit magazine America, the political polarizations that have seeped into the American Catholic Church should not set the map for the rest of the world, least of all the papacy. It is important to remember this fact as the first North American pope begins his pontificate.

    Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, center, leaves after concelebrating Mass with the College of Cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican the day after his election, May 9, 2025.
    (Vatican Media via AP)

    Choice of name Leo

    Cardinal Robert Prevost, who has become Pope Leo XIV, has given indications of being critical of the Trump administration on issues of peace and migration, very much in line with Francis.

    His choice of the name Leo harkens back to Pope Leo XIII, the pope credited with initiating modern Catholic social teaching, and signals an emphasis on the Church’s advocacy for peace and justice. The new pope’s first Urbi et Orbi (“To the City and to the World”) address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica signalled continuity with Francis — peace, dialogue, encounter, bridge-building.

    And Pope Leo’s career as a missionary, bishop and Vatican cardinal outside of the U.S. means that his context is not confined to the polarizations of the U.S. Catholic Church and its bishops.

    Will the new Pope, Leo XIV, be liberal or conservative? Pope Francis did not fit neatly into these categories: I hope Pope Leo won’t either. More

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    Is Pope Leo XIV liberal or conservative? Why this label doesn’t work for popes

    The 133 cardinal electors sequestered in the Sistine Chapel elected a new pope May 8. The choice was a surprise — Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost, who has carried out most of his ministry in Peru, before being elevated to Vatican roles by Pope Francis.

    As commentators and the media try to piece together backgrounders on Pope Leo XIV, one obvious question will be, “Is he a liberal or a conservative?” The same question was asked about Pope Francis, and about the cardinals entering this conclave.

    When applied to individual Catholics, the terms “liberal” and “conservative” can mean very different things. One could be conservative in regard to liturgy and church practice while being strongly committed to anti-racism and environmentalism.

    Or one might be considered a social conservative on issues such as marriage, sexuality and gender while holding clearly left-wing, social democratic views on the role of government.

    Newly elected Pope Leo XIV appears at the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, May 8, 2025.
    (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

    Even if Catholics are comfortable self-identifying as liberal or conservative Catholics, we should not treat these terms as if their meaning were obvious — especially since even as purely political terms the meaning of “liberal” or “conservative” is contested.

    Papacy as institution

    Things become all the more complicated when we are talking about the pope, the supreme head of the Catholic Church. The papacy as an institution is conservative by definition.

    The pope is considered the successor of the Apostle Peter, and his job description is precisely to maintain the unity and catholicity (“wholeness”) of the Church’s life, not only in space but through time — that is, to ensure continuity.

    But because of this role to maintain the fullness of a tradition and the unity of the Church, the pope cannot be conservative (or liberal) in a political sense.

    Pope Francis legacy

    The pontificate of Francis should have served as a lesson against liberal/conservative labels. From the beginning of his pontificate, he advocated strenuously for migrants and refugees. He reached out personally to LGBTQ+ communities. He initiated a worldwide “synodal” process that included broad consultation and fostered discussion of topics previously considered out of bounds, such as ordination of women as deacons (though not priests). He placed women in high-ranking positions in the Roman curia previously reserved only for clerics.

    Chiclayo Bishop Edinson Farfan speaks about newly elected Pope Leo XIV during a press conference at the bishop’s office in Chiclayo, Peru, May 9, 2025.
    (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

    But Francis was also critical of “gender ideology,” affirmed Church teaching on abortion and maintained the Church’s reservation of ordination to men only. While he angered self-identified conservatives, he often disappointed self-identified liberals.

    Instead of trying to impose political categories, it makes more sense to try to uncover the internal dynamics and motivations of a pope’s teaching and ministry. For example, Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical letter, Laudato si’, was a landmark in Catholic teaching on ecology. Far from being a political manifesto, the letter presents a vision of the human being within creation, informed by the Bible, theological reflection and modern Catholic social teaching. Francis frequently references the social thought of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who himself affirmed that the Church “must defend not only earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone.”

    Read more:
    Laudato Si’: A look back on Pope Francis’s environmental legacy

    As the British theologian Anna Rowlands astutely notes, Catholic social teaching “functions as a social philosophy that never fully baptizes a liberal philosophy or sentiment. It remains locked in a complex dialogue … with liberal democracy.”

    The role of the pope, highlighted in Francis’s teaching on ecology, is to inspire a different kind of social and moral imagination, one not reducible to particular ideological positions.

    A children’s choir displays photos of newly elected Pope Leo XIV after performing to celebrate his election as pope outside the Santa Maria Cathedral, the episcopal see of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, where he served as bishop, May 9, 2025.
    (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

    Catholic teaching, conscience

    Another example that subverts the liberal/conservative dichotomy was the well-known response of Pope Francis to a journalist’s question about homosexuality in the priesthood: “Who am I to judge?” Francis did not overturn “conservative” teachings in sexual ethics.

    But he did speak as a member of the Jesuit religious order and as a pastor, who knows that the general law must be applied in specific cases that introduce complexities and require nuanced concrete responses.

    There was also a tacit appeal to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), that an individual is bound to follow their conscience.

    A pin from Dignity USA, a group of LGBTQ+ Catholics, outside the Sao Vicente de Paulo Parish Social Centre, after Pope Francis visited it, in Lisbon, Aug. 4, 2023.
    (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

    For his part, Benedict XVI (as then-Cardinal Ratzinger), in a 1991 address to American bishops in Dallas, alluded to “the classical principle of moral tradition that conscience is the highest norm which [the human person] is to follow even in opposition to authority.” According to this principle, while church teaching authority would inform conscience, “conscience … would retain the final word.”

    There is no doubt that LGBTQ+ Catholics were able to hear something different in Francis’s language than they had heard in Benedict’s. However, both Benedict and Francis could appeal to shared principles, which were theological rather than political, and not reducible to liberal versus conservative categories.

    Weight of political polarization

    In our current political context, political terms like “liberal” and “conservative” tend to carry the weight of American political polarization.

    In the American context at the moment, “conservative Catholic” in its most radical form blends theological traditionalism — devotion to the traditional Latin mass, emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy and opposition to Francis’s reformist papacy — with support for the Republican party and MAGA movement.

    As professor of moral philosophy Massimo Borghesi has argued, this radical conservative opposition to Francis has its genesis in the pro-capitalist Catholic neo-conservatism of the 1980s and 90s, and is a predominantly American phenomenon.

    In addition, as writer and editor James T. Keane noted in a 2021 article in the Jesuit magazine America, the political polarizations that have seeped into the American Catholic Church should not set the map for the rest of the world, least of all the papacy. It is important to remember this fact as the first North American pope begins his pontificate.

    Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, center, leaves after concelebrating Mass with the College of Cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican the day after his election, May 9, 2025.
    (Vatican Media via AP)

    Choice of name Leo

    Cardinal Robert Prevost, who has become Pope Leo XIV, has given indications of being critical of the Trump administration on issues of peace and migration, very much in line with Francis.

    His choice of the name Leo harkens back to Pope Leo XIII, the pope credited with initiating modern Catholic social teaching, and signals an emphasis on the Church’s advocacy for peace and justice. The new pope’s first Urbi et Orbi (“To the City and to the World”) address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica signalled continuity with Francis — peace, dialogue, encounter, bridge-building.

    And Pope Leo’s career as a missionary, bishop and Vatican cardinal outside of the U.S. means that his context is not confined to the polarizations of the U.S. Catholic Church and its bishops.

    Will the new Pope, Leo XIV, be liberal or conservative? Pope Francis did not fit neatly into these categories: I hope Pope Leo won’t either. More

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    Trump speaking poorly of other presidents is uncommon, but not unheard of, in American presidential history

    Former presidents don’t criticize their successors in public.

    Or do they?

    Former Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have all criticized President Donald Trump in recent months.

    In April 2025, Obama, for example, spoke about the importance of preserving the international order, meaning the system of rules, norms and institutions that have been active since World War II. He said: “And this is an important moment, because in the last two months, we have seen a U.S. government actively try to destroy that order and discredit it. And the thinking, I gather, is that somehow, since we are the strongest, we’re going to be better off if we can just bully people into doing whatever we want.”

    Biden also offered his own negative comments on April 15: “In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage,” he said in his first public remarks since leaving office.

    Some commentators have called these former presidents’ remarks “unprecedented.”

    Many Americans are accustomed to former presidents not speaking about – let alone criticizing – the current president.

    As a scholar of the presidency, I know that most presidents stay quiet about their successors, regardless of what the current president does or says. They do this to avoid undermining both their own reputations as well as the stability of the presidency itself.

    But I am also struck by the fact that this tradition is not as entrenched as former presidents might claim or as many Americans believe.

    President Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, shake hands as they meet on a debate stage in 1980.
    Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

    Presidents who bucked the norm

    President George Washington established the precedent that presidents retire after two terms and steer clear of public statement. John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president, established a different model.

    After Adams lost his bid for reelection in 1828 to Andrew Jackson, he served in the House of Representatives from 1831 through 1848. Congress is an unusual perch for a former president, but it’s a place where criticizing sitting presidents and their policies is part of the job. Adams had plenty of criticism there for his successors, including Jackson and James K. Polk.

    Nearly half a century later, President Teddy Roosevelt was disappointed that his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, failed to live up to Roosevelt’s vision of reform. Roosevelt went from criticizing Taft privately in political circles to campaigning against him publicly in 1912, aiming to win a nonconsecutive second term. Democrat Woodrow Wilson eventually won that election, beating out Taft and Roosevelt.

    Richard Nixon, who, in 1974, became the only president to resign from office, wrote a series of books in the 1980s and 1990s that sought to redeem his own sullied image by casting himself as a visionary statesman. Nixon’s books also included plenty of unsolicited advice – and implicit criticism – for Democratic and Republican presidents alike.

    Before becoming the beloved elder statesman of the former presidents club in 1980, Jimmy Carter earned the ire of his successors for his outspokenness. He said that President Ronald Reagan’s administration was an “aberration on the political scene” and said that one of Clinton’s political pardons was “disgraceful.”

    With the exception of Roosevelt, these former presidents who criticized their successors all felt they had something to prove. Anxious to redeem their legacies, they did not retire quietly.

    A healthy foray into retirement

    So why don’t we all know these stories, and instead believe that past presidents simply keep their mouths shut?

    Americans have long treated presidential retirement as a symbol of a healthy democracy. And that story of retirement emphasizes how former presidents often leave politics behind them.

    The trajectory of presidents finding peace and contentment in retirement, surrounded by friends and family, is an appealing way for presidential biographers to end a story. These stories have included narratives about Harry Truman taking a cross-country road trip only months after leaving the White House in 1953, and George W. Bush taking up painting.

    In reality, former presidents have led complex lives of happiness and loss, withdrawal and engagement. The energy and ambition that brought them to the White House often make retirement difficult. And, over the long history of the presidency, former presidents have become increasingly public figures.

    Former Presidents Bill Clinton, left, George W. Bush and Barack Obama are seen with Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush at the inauguration of Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington.
    Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    A shifting role

    Another important factor in the growing prominence of former presidents is how their roles have recently changed.

    Beginning in the 1990s, former presidents and first ladies tried to publicly show friendship and agreement with their counterparts.

    George H.W. Bush and Clinton, for example, teamed up to raise money for disaster relief after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in South and Southeast Asia. In 2017, Bush’s son George W. Bush, himself a former president by that time, called Clinton his “brother with a different mother.”

    Former first lady Michelle Obama and Barack Obama have publicly thanked George W. Bush and Laura Bush for helping their family adjust to life in the White House. Michelle Obama has also become known for her personal friendship with George W. Bush.

    And as medical advances enabled former presidents to live longer than ever, the relationships within a growing former presidents club became the subject of books, movies and television segments.

    All of these stories had the same message – that all presidents are committed to their country. Likewise, the amiable relationship between former and sitting presidents shows that if party leaders could overcome partisanship in the name of unity and friendship, so too could other Americans.

    In a remarkable moment, for example, three presidents from two different parties – Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama – came together for a video before Biden’s 2021 inauguration to call for unity in a moment of crisis.

    Following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, they used their connection as presidents to tell a national story. As Bush said, “Well, I think the fact that the three of us are standing here talking about a peaceful transfer of power speaks to the institutional integrity of our country.”

    “America’s a generous country, people of great hearts. All three of us were lucky to be the president of this country,” Bush continued.

    The Republican former president looked at the Democrats on either side of him and smiled.

    Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton speak together in 2021.

    A new kind of presidential relations

    While friendships between presidents became more common in the 1990s and 2000s, Clinton and especially Trump were doing something different by the 2016 election.

    In 2016, Clinton became an active partisan in support of his wife, Hillary Clinton, during her unsuccessful bid for president.

    Both Clintons remained public critics of Trump long after he assumed office in 2017.

    For his part, Trump as a politician and then president immediately dismissed the notion of friendship with his predecessors and former competitors. He was quick to condemn Hillary Clinton – and especially Obama – in the early years of his first presidency.

    No sooner did Trump lose the 2020 election than he was heaping public scorn on Biden with an energy that only increased after Trump entered the 2024 race.

    Trump’s criticism of Biden did not stop after his 2024 victory, with the White House issuing statements like a pledge “to turn back the economic plague unleashed by the Biden Administration.”

    Trump has escalated attacks on other presidents. But he was not the first to criticize his successors or predecessors. More

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    Culture wars, political polarization and deepening inequality: the roots of Trumpism

    More than 100 days into his return to the White House, the conclusion is stark: Donald Trump is no longer the same president he was during his first term. His familiar nationalist and populist rhetoric is now openly paired with an authoritarian turn – one without precedent in US history. He has adopted a neo-imperial view of the economy, treating the global order as a zero-sum contest of winners and losers. In this worldview, cooperation gives way to domination: what matters is power and the accumulation of wealth.

    Having withstood two impeachment procedures, numerous lawsuits and at least one assassination attempt, Trump now governs with what can appear to be unchecked authority. To his followers, he has become a hero, a martyr – almost a messianic figure. He no longer sees democracy as a framework to be honoured, but as a tool to legitimize his hold on power. His decisive electoral victory now serves as a mandate to cast aside institutional limits.

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    Three key features define his style of governance: a radical centralization of executive power grounded in the theory of the “unitary executive”; the politicization of the Department of Justice, used as a weapon against rivals; and the manipulation of federal authority to target cultural, media and educational institutions. His playbook is chaos: unsettle opponents, dominate the media narrative and blur the boundaries of democratic norms. Impulsive and reactionary, Trump often governs in response to Fox News segments or trending posts on Truth Social. Instability has become a strategic tool.

    But Trump is not a historical anomaly. While his 2016 victory may have seemed unlikely, his re-election reflects a deeper, long-term transformation rooted in the post-Cold War era.

    From an external to an internal enemy

    The collapse of the USSR – a structuring external enemy – redirected political confrontation toward the designation of an internal enemy. The culture war has become the dominant ideological battleground, driven by two closely linked forces. On one side, a religious radicalization led by nationalist Christian movements – such as the New Apostolic Reformation – seeks to roll back social progress and promote the vision of an outright theocracy. On the other, growing racial anxiety is fueled by fears of white demographic decline and resistance to civil rights gains.

    The commentator Pat Buchanan saw it coming as early as the 1990s. Speaking at the 1992 Republican National Convention, he warned: “There is a cultural war going on for the soul of America… as critical as the Cold War itself.” Too radical for his time, Buchanan championed a white, Christian, conservative US hostile to cosmopolitan elites. Though marginalized then, his ideas laid the groundwork for what would become Trumpism.

    Newt Gingrich, who served as Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, played a pivotal role in reshaping both the Republican party and US politics. A Republican group he chaired famously distributed a pamphlet to Republican candidates titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”, advising them to use uplifting language to describe themselves, and inflammatory terms like “corrupt”, “immoral” and “traitor” to describe their opponents. This aggressive rhetoric redefined political rivals as enemies to be defeated – helping pave the way for a right-wing politics in which winning trumps democratic norms.

    At the same time, the rise of a new conservative media ecosystem intensified polarization. The launch of Fox News in 1996, the growth of right-wing talk radio shows like Rush Limbaugh’s and the later explosion of social media gave the US right powerful tools to shape and radicalize public opinion. Today, algorithm-driven information bubbles trap citizens in alternate realities, where misinformation and outrage drown out reasoned debate. This has deepened polarization and fractured society as a whole.

    Channeling anger

    This ideological and media realignment has unfolded alongside a broader crisis: the unraveling of the post-Cold War neoliberal consensus. Promises of shared prosperity have been replaced by deindustrialization, deepening inequality and widespread resentment. Successive traumas – from 9/11 and the 2008 financial crash to the Covid-19 pandemic – and foreign wars without real victories have eroded public trust in the establishment.

    Trump channels this anger. He offers a vision of a restored and idealized America, a rollback of recent social gains, and a reassertion of national identity grounded in religion and race. His populism is not a coherent ideology but an emotional response – born of perceived injustice, humiliation and loss.

    Trump is more than a symptom of America’s democratic crisis: he is its most vivid manifestation. He embodies the legacy of the 1990s – a foundational decade of identity grievance, culture wars and media deregulation. Viewed as a political outsider, he has never been judged as a traditional politician, but rather embraced, by some, as the archetypal “self-made man” – a successful businessman and reality TV celebrity.

    His rhetoric – transgressive, provocative and often cruel – gives voice to what had been repressed. The humiliation of opponents becomes part of the performance. For his supporters, it’s exhilarating. It breaks taboos, flouts political correctness and feeds the fantasy of reclaiming a lost America.

    And he’s no longer alone. With the vocal support of economic and tech elites like Elon Musk – now a central figure in the radicalized right on X – Trumpism has entered a new phase. Together, they’ve outlined a new kind of authoritarian, cultural and digital power, where influence matters more than institutions.

    The US re-elected not just a man, but a style, an era and a worldview built on dominance, disruption and disdain for rules. Still, history is unwritten: intoxicated by hubris and undermined by incompetence, Trumpism may yet crash into the wall of reality – with consequences far beyond America’s borders. More

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    DOGE’s AI surveillance risks silencing whistleblowers and weakening democracy

    The United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is reportedly using artificial intelligence to surveil federal agency communications for anti-Donald Trump and anti-Elon Musk sentiment.

    AI tools now automate firings and assess U.S. federal employees’ sentiment and alignment with the administration’s “mission.” Musk, who has been appointed a “special government employee” by the U.S. president and leads DOGE, has framed these moves as an attempt to cut waste and increase efficiency.

    At least one agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has reportedly warned staff to watch what they say, type or do online.

    The move has been largely overshadowed by tariff debates and constitutional concerns. But research on AI and governance suggests surveillance may erode the transparency that defines public institutions.

    Now, with Musk signalling he may scale back his involvement with DOGE, questions remain about how the system will operate in his absence — and whether anyone will be tasked with dismantling it.

    Disruption replaces due process

    Musk has presented DOGE as a lean, tech-driven solution to government bloat — a message he has repeated in interviews and on social media. Artificial intelligence, he argues, can cut red tape, trim costs and optimize operations.

    However, within federal agencies, AI has been used less to support public servants than to evaluate them — and in some cases, to eliminate them.

    Since DOGE assumed control over key functions within the Office of Personnel Management in January, hundreds of federal employees have been dismissed without formal explanation. DOGE also restricted access to cloud systems and sidelined career officials.

    DOGE was established by Trump through an executive order on Jan. 20, 2025 and tasked with cutting federal spending.
    (Shutterstock)

    Concerns over data security soon followed. In March, a federal judge barred DOGE from accessing Treasury systems, citing a “chaotic and haphazard” approach that posed a “realistic danger” of exposing sensitive financial information.

    Internally, DOGE operates through tools more familiar to startups than government agencies. Staff use disappearing messages via the Signal messenger app and draft documents in Google Docs rather than approved federal platforms.

    Grok, a generative AI chatbot launched by Musk in 2023, has been integrated across departments, though its tasks remain unclear.

    How Doge’s AI targets workers

    Earlier this year, thousands of federal employees received an email from the Office of Personnel Management asking them to provide five bullet points listing what they accomplished that week. “Failure to respond,” Musk warned on X, “will be taken as a resignation.”

    The message triggered uncertainty across departments. Without clear legal guidance, many workers were left guessing whether silence would mean termination. The Department of Justice and several intelligence agencies warned staff not to respond.

    Read more:
    Musk’s ruthless approach to efficiency is not translating well to the U.S. government

    Others, like the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Transportation, instructed staff to comply with DOGE’s requests. HHS later warned responses could “be read by malign foreign actors.” The EPA distributed template responses to help staff navigate the demand.

    The following week, the Office of Personnel Management clarified participation was voluntary. By then, responses had already been processed.

    DOGE reportedly planned to feed the responses into a large language model to determine whether an employee was mission-critical. Musk later denied this, describing the exercise as a test “to see if the employee had a pulse.”

    DOGE’S algorithms judge allegiance

    According to reports, DOGE’s AI tools have now been deployed across agencies to monitor political sentiment of workers. There is no indication that these systems otherwise assess employee competence or efficacy.

    Trump administration officials reportedly said some government employees have been informed that DOGE is examining staff for signs of perceived disloyalty to both the Trump administration and Musk himself.

    When AI is used in this way — without transparency or clear performance frameworks — it optimizes for compliance rather than capability.

    U.S. President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk talk to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House in March 2025 in Washington, D.C.
    (Pool via AP)

    AI designed to detect dissent offers little support for the work of public service. Rather than recognizing expertise or ethical judgment, these tools reduce complex decision-making to surface-level signs of loyalty.

    Effective collaboration between humans and AI depends on clear boundaries. AI might complement the public service by identifying patterns in data, for example. Humans though must retain authority over context and judgment. When AI polices allegiance, those boundaries collapse, sidelining human skill and integrity.

    AI surveillance rewrites workplace behaviour

    The inherent limitations of large language models amplify these risks. These models cannot reliably read nuance, navigate ethical grey areas or understand intent. Assigning surveillance or employee evaluations to these systems invites errors.

    Worse, such blunt tools force civil servants into self-censorship to avoid misinterpretation. Public service shifts from informed expertise to performative alignment.

    For employees, the consequences extend beyond flawed assessments. AI surveillance deployed through tools like Grok and Signal creates uncertainty about how performance is measured and by whom.

    As surveillance systems degrade psychological safety, employees disengage and become discouraged. Far from enhancing productivity, covert monitoring erodes trust in both management and mission.

    This atmosphere weakens accountability. Whistle-blowing often reflects loyalty to institutional values rather than defiance. By reframing personal beliefs and integrity as disloyalty, DOGE will silence mechanisms that safeguard transparency.

    AI surveillance becomes institutional

    Musk recently announced his involvement at DOGE “will drop significantly”, likely beginning in May. The move is attributed in part to pressure from Republicans urging Trump to distance himself from Musk, as well as pressure from Tesla investors.

    Despite his expected departure, around 100 DOGE employees — and the AI frameworks they manage — will remain embedded across federal departments. Musk’s departure may shift headlines, but it will leave structural risks embedded within federal operations.

    Once governments adopt new surveillance tools, they rarely dismantle them, regardless of whether their architect stays to oversee them. With no clear formal oversight beyond presidential discretion, the surveillance system is likely to outlast Musk’s tenure.

    Employees monitored for political conformity are less likely to raise concerns, report misconduct or challenge flawed directives.

    As human resource protocols are bypassed and oversight is diminished, the balance could shift from policy grounded in principle to regulations grounded in algorithms. Governance risks giving way to control, which could weaken the political neutrality of the civil service. More

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    The Christian Right is taking over America, according to Talia Lavin – but what is the best response?

    Talia Lavin’s Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America is an angry response to the rise of American Christianity’s far-right fringe, which she depicts as a theocratic menace to secular government and liberal freedoms.

    As Lavin shows in abundant detail, the US Christian Right adheres to a worldview based around supernatural struggle between good and evil, where “demons make war every day with the better angels of the human spirit”. This is the same mentality as motivated the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, with its hysterical tales of ritual child abuse in service of the Devil. It continues to influence America’s “politics, punditry, and policy”.

    Review: Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America – Talia Lavin (Hachette)

    Lavin exposes the Christian Right’s political ambitions and social harms, amassing examples to illustrate the point. She cites case after case of apocalyptic fervour, domestic terrorism, patriarchal tyranny, systematic child abuse, anti-science kookiness, and connections with white supremacism.

    Her central claim is that significant elements within American evangelicalism want to use state power to impose their version of a Christian social order grounded in ideas of faith, obedience and bodily purity. The Christian Right rejects any spirit of mutual tolerance between religious and secular worldviews, pursuing instead absolute political and cultural dominance.

    This absolutism drives efforts to suppress ways of life viewed as rootless and degenerate, dismantle the separation of church and state, and reframe the United States as an inherently Christian nation requiring an explicitly Christian government.

    Opposition options

    The US is a religious outlier among Western liberal democracies. Australia and many other democratic nations are increasingly, though not entirely, post-Christian societies. Still, the US is militarily and culturally hegemonic. Events there never the leave the rest of us untouched. As its culture wars play out, we should all feel nervous about the outcomes. As Lavin warns, the Christian Right is on the march. So what is the best response?

    Lavin calls for an impassioned “cacophony” of resistance to the Christian Right. “In response,” she exhorts, “we must take up a countermarch, thrill to its cacophonic strains, and rise to spurn a faith that has overrun its banks and spilled out into wild and untrammelled hate.”

    This prompts a question: is such rhetoric, which has something of its own cacophonous and even fanatical sound, really the best response to America’s would-be theocrats?

    Perspectives might vary. There is room for books stuffed with invective against powerful oppressors and with calls to mobilise against them. Responding to the oppressive religiosity of another time, Voltaire urged his readers to “écrasez l’infâme! – crush the infamy!

    Such battle cries can fit the moment. Inevitably, however, they call to the already-converted. They have limited persuasive scope.

    Pragmatically, it might be crucial to ensure the election of the Democratic Party to political office wherever possible. This would require the party to distance itself from illiberal and unpopular practices, such as identity ideology and cancel culture, which disaffect large portions of the electorate, undermine broad coalition-building, and ultimately weaken the party’s electoral prospects.

    A more unifying approach on the American centre-left would prioritise traditional liberal freedoms, alongside a focus on the material welfare of everyday people: jobs, healthcare and economic security. Nothing in the text of Wild Faith suggests that Lavin understands such strategic issues or is able to imagine a more relatable brand of American liberalism.

    Nor does she attempt to refute the doctrines of Christianity head-on. In that sense, Wild Faith is not a work of atheistic philosophy or a New Atheist tract. It doesn’t try to nudge along the decline of Christian religious adherence in the US in recent decades (which has possibly levelled off in the last few years).

    Nor does Lavin spend much time disputing Christianity’s specific tenets: its doctrine of spiritual salvation through Christ and its stark portrayals of death, judgement, heaven and hell. These core Christian doctrines suggest that we are all in danger of eternal hellfire, but have a chance of eternal bliss. The word “eternal” here conveys the stakes for every soul. In the past, a sense of such huge consequences prompted inquisitors to burn books and heretics.

    Lavin expects her readers to treat all such doctrines as absurd. She never explores Christianity’s deeper logic or opposes the religion itself. Instead, she frames members of the Christian Right as something of a rogue outgrowth.

    Another obvious response to the Christian Right would be renewed defence of secularism: the once-revolutionary idea that religious authority and state power should be kept apart. Here, there is a rich tradition of thought to draw upon, much of it originating from Christian thinkers in the early centuries of European modernity during a time of religious wars. Indeed, the US as a political construct was shaped, in part, by theories of church and state separation.

    On such accounts, the legitimate role of secular rulers is to protect life, liberty and property – and more generally our interests in things of this empirical world – rather than concern themselves with matters of spiritual salvation or enforce any religious moral system for its own sake. Indeed, this idea has inspired many American evangelicals. But in-principle defence of secular government is not within Lavin’s approach.

    American Christians in the evangelical Protestant tradition belong to a broad spectrum of churches with varied beliefs and practices. Lavin focuses on a radical fringe, giving an impression that it is typical of the whole.

    She details much horrendous conduct, including brutal forms of corporal punishment inspired by manuals such as Michael and Debi Pearl’s To Train Up a Child. She reveals survivors’ memories of “biblical discipline” to dramatic effect. Her samples are drawn from self-selecting ex-evangelicals, whose experiences may not be the norm, though even a small percentage of evangelical Protestants with vicious ideas about child-rearing could disfigure the lives of many helpless children.

    ‘Many individuals encounter genuine acts of kindness through their churches and find a sense of meaning and belonging.’
    Paul Shuang/Shutterstock

    Wild Faith could, however, bewilder more typical megachurch families in America’s suburbs, who are loving towards their children and do not recognise themselves in Lavin’s descriptions of torment and abuse. More broadly, the one-sidedness of Lavin’s narrative risks leaving us with a caricature of evangelicals. Even within strict evangelical communities, there is doubtless more at play than she recognises. Many individuals encounter genuine acts of kindness through their churches and find a sense of meaning and belonging.

    All these people are exhibited in Wild Faith not as merely wrong, nor as merely dogmatic and hence beyond the reach of rational persuasion (which, indeed, some of them might be). They are shown as alien and monstrous. We needn’t adopt an attitude of what atheist Daniel Dennett called “belief in belief” – that is, rejecting religion for ourselves while commending its virtues to others – to sense that Lavin misses part of the human story.

    Clash of dogmatisms

    Stylistically, Wild Faith is repetitive and frequently marred by rhetorical excesses. Too often, it seems more like an apoplectic rant than a serious exposé. It’s one thing to denounce child abuse, theocracy, and other such evils. But Lavin goes much further.

    For a start, she pervasively ridicules her opponents’ physical looks. Her worst flourishes along these lines – labelling former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon a “human yeast infection” or Kristi Noem (who has since been made Trump’s secretary of homeland security) as “South Dakota’s hard-right haircut of a governor” – veer into juvenile mockery. Again, this may appeal to the already-converted, but for anyone else a shorter, tighter, fairer book might have been more persuasive.

    Lavin does not seem to recognise any of her own political commitments as being matters of genuine controversy, which gives the impression of an author who is something of an ideologue herself. It suggests that we are witnessing a clash of dogmatisms. There are numerous examples of this, but for the sake of brevity I will confine myself to issues related to abortion.

    Lavin does not contemplate that some of her opponents might sincerely view abortion as murder. Yet abortion involves killing an entity that is biologically human. It does not follow automatically that embryos and fetuses are good candidates for our moral consideration – but if not, why not? This at least suggests a need for serious philosophical engagement with abortion’s critics and opponents.

    Understandably enough, Lavin mourns the downfall of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that interpreted the US Constitution as granting extensive abortion rights. Roe v. Wade was followed by a line of cases that largely preserved its authority. It was eventually overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), leaving individual state legislatures to decide what criminal restrictions, if any, they might wish to impose.

    Disastrous as this was for many women and girls in America’s red states, it is also a reminder that rights built on shaky constitutional foundations might not last forever. Roe v. Wade was always vulnerable to potential challenges, because abortion rights have no direct textual support in the US Constitution, but were established by building inferences on inferences. Indeed, Roe v. Wade encountered criticism even in the 1970s, and even from many supporters of abortion rights.

    Lavin does not acknowledge any of this. Finally, she faults Democrats for failing to codify Roe v. Wade in statutory form when they were in office, but she glosses over the formidable (perhaps insurmountable) constitutional and procedural obstacles to any such move.

    Activists mark the first anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, June 23, 2023, Washington DC.
    Nathan Howard/AAP

    The verdict

    Lavin raises a legitimate alarm: a theocratic faction in the US wields disproportionate influence to the point of threatening liberal democracy itself. To bolster that point, she could have cited a wave of recent Supreme Court cases that demonstrate a weakening of constitutional barriers to state-endorsed religion.

    Some of these cases might be individually defensible, given their particular facts, but as they accumulate they erode the separation of church and state. By now, little remains of freedom from religion in the US – perhaps no more than protection against the most explicit forms of coercion, such as state-mandated participation in particular religious observances. This leaves unchecked subtler encroachments by religion on secular life.

    That situation has been a long time coming and other authors have traversed similar ground to Lavin’s book. One might, for example, compare Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism or Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies.

    Goldberg, to her credit, explicitly defends the liberal freedoms of the fundamentalists she exposes and critiques, recognising their rights even as she challenges their theocratic aims. Thus, she states that we can take “a much more vocal stand in defense of evangelical rights when they are unfairly curtailed” – a nuance absent in Lavin’s effort to fire-up supporters and vanquish enemies. Jacoby’s book, meanwhile, situates religious excesses and theocratic temptations within a broader decline of reason in American society.

    Both works, though less current than Wild Faith, model a fairness that strengthens their arguments. Lavin’s book benefits from its timeliness, addressing a contemporary landscape of heightened evangelical influence, but it sacrifices objectivity and scholarly depth. It will resonate with Americans who are already frightened by the Christian Right, while alienating many conservatives, or even moderates, who might have been open to concerns about theocracy. More

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    After stunning comeback, centre-left Liberals likely to win majority of seats at Canadian election

    In Canada, the governing centre-left Liberals had trailed the Conservatives by more than 20 points in January, but now lead by five points and are likely to win a majority of seats at next Monday’s election. Meanwhile, United States President Donald Trump’s ratings in US national polls have dropped to a -5 net approval.

    The Canadian election will be held next Monday, with the large majority of polls closing at 11:30am AEST Tuesday. The 343 MPs are elected by first past the post, with 172 seats needed for a majority.

    The Liberals had looked doomed to a massive loss for a long time. In early January, the CBC Poll Tracker had given the Conservatives 44% of the vote, the Liberals 20%, the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) 19%, the separatist left-wing Quebec Bloc (BQ) 9%, the Greens 4% and the far-right People’s 2%. With these vote shares, the Conservatives would have won a landslide with well over 200 seats.

    At the September 2021 election, the Liberals won 160 of the then 338 seats on 32.6% of votes, the Conservatives 119 seats on 33.7%, the BQ 32 seats on 7.6%, the NDP 25 seats on 17.8%, the Greens two seats on 2.3% and the People’s zero seats on 4.9%. he Liberals were short of the 170 seats needed for a majority.

    The Liberal vote was more efficiently distributed than the Conservative vote owing to the Conservatives winning safe rural seats by huge margins. The BQ benefited from vote concentration, with all its national vote coming in Quebec, where it won 32.1%.

    On January 6, Justin Trudeau, who had been Liberal leader and PM since winning the October 2015 election, announced he would resign these positions once a new Liberal leader was elected. Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, was overwhelmingly elected Liberal leader on March 9 and replaced Trudeau as PM on March 14.

    With the Liberals short of a parliamentary majority, parliament was prorogued for the Liberal leadership election and was due to resume on March 24. Carney is not yet an MP (he will contest Nepean at the election). Possibly owing to these factors, Carney called the election on March 23.

    In Tuesday’s update to the CBC Poll Tracker, the Liberals had 43.1% of the vote, the Conservatives 38.4%, the NDP 8.3%, the BQ 5.8% (25.4% in Quebec), the Greens 2.2% and the People’s 1.4%. The Liberals have surged from 24 points behind in early January to their current 4.7-point lead.

    Seat point estimates were 191 Liberals (over the 172 needed for a majority), 123 Conservatives, 23 BQ, five NDP and one Green. The tracker gives the Liberals an 80% chance to win a majority of seats and a 15% chance to win the most seats but not a majority.

    The Liberal lead over the Conservatives peaked on April 8, when they led by 7.1 points. There has been slight movement back to the Conservatives since, with the French and English leaders’ debates last Wednesday and Thursday possibly assisting the Conservatives.

    But the Liberals still lead by nearly five points in the polls five days before the election. With the Liberals’ vote more efficiently distributed, they are the clear favourites to win an election they looked certain to lose by a landslide margin in January.

    The Liberals are estimated to win 191 seats in Canadian parliament.
    Sean Kilpatrick/AAP

    Carney’s replacement of Trudeau has benefited the Liberals, but I believe the most important reason for the Liberals’ poll surge is Trump. Trump’s tariffs against Canada and his talk of making Canada the 51st US state have greatly alienated Canadians and made it more difficult for the more pro-Trump Conservatives.

    In an early April YouGov Canadian poll, by 64–25, respondents said the US was unfriendly or an enemy rather than friendly or an ally (50–33 in February). By 84–11, they did not want Canada to become part of the US. If Canadians had been able to vote in the 2024 US presidential election, Kamala Harris would have defeated Donald Trump by 57–18 in this poll.

    Trump’s US ratings have fallen well below net zero

    In Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Trump currently has a net approval of -5.4, with 50.8% disapproving and 45.4% approving. At the start of his term, Trump’s net approval was +12, but went negative in mid-March. His ratings fell to their current level soon after Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2.

    Silver has presidential approval poll data for previous presidents since Harry Truman (president from 1945–53). Trump’s current net approval is worse than for any other president at this point in their tenure except for Trump’s first term (2017–2021).

    Silver also has a net favourability aggregate for Elon Musk that currently gives Musk a net favourable rating of -13.6 (53.0% unfavourable, 39.3% favourable). Musk’s ratings began to drop from about net zero before Trump’s second term commenced on January 20.

    G. Elliott Morris used to manage the US poll aggregate site FiveThirtyEight before it was axed. He wrote last Friday that Trump’s net approval on the economy (at -5.8) is worse than at any point in his first term. During his first term, Trump’s net approval on the economy was mostly positive, helping to support his overall ratings. More