Plus: In an amazing coincidence, Hunter Biden’s paintings no longer have any buyers.
• Democrats with canes have a long and troubled history in the U.S. Capitol.
• President Trump’s address to the joint session of Congress was boastful, sometimes justifiably so. He touted his restoration of order at the border. We didn’t need new legislation to secure it, he said; “all we really needed was a new president.” He was on weaker ground concerning the economy. He said he would balance the budget—but most of the specific plans he advocated would put that goal further out of reach. He also repeated false claims about millions of people over 100 years old collecting Social Security benefits. Those claims depend on a misinterpretation of a database in which the government does not have a date of death associated with certain Social Security numbers. Even more jarringly, Trump said that he was working every day to bring prices down even as he imposes the largest increase in tariffs in 80 years. He promises that the disruption will be minimal and the rewards great—which both economic theory and the experience of his own previous administration belie. But he has a lifeline in the form of the Democratic Party, whose members in Congress in attendance could not bring themselves to stand up for mothers who had lost their children to violence by illegal immigrants, for a child with cancer, or for the capture of the Abbey Gate terrorist. The speech confirmed that Trump has less to fear from his opposition than from his own hubris.
• The glorious tariff future will have to wait another month, according to the most recent reports on the Trump administration’s trade plans. In January, Trump announced new tariffs on Mexico and Canada and then delayed them for a month. At the start of March, he said they were happening. As far as anyone can tell, they are now going to be delayed another month. It turns out that car companies move a lot of stuff across borders, and so do many other businesses that employ a lot of people, and they were giving the administration an earful. It was, of course, entirely obvious that tariffs would harm American workers, but that is not what the administration says it believes. Maybe next month we’ll start to see the manifold benefits of raising taxes on Americans who want to buy stuff from other countries. Until then, the globalists prevail.
• For months, the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Pierre Poilievre, was cruising to become a majority government that would succeed the unpopular Liberal Party. Justin Trudeau’s ten years as prime minister would come to an end, and Poilievre would be able to clean up the damage with his free-market economic policies and emphasis on law and order. The Liberals deserved the whipping that was coming, with Canada’s economy in stagnation and immigration out of control while Trudeau indulged every far-left social trend and used emergency powers against protesters. But then Trump started to talk about putting tariffs on Canada and annexing it. Almost immediately, the Liberals recovered in the polls. In Canada, nationalism is defined in great part by anti-Americanism and finds its home on the political left. The Liberals already have a structural advantage in Canada’s election system and have been able to win more seats than the Conservatives in the past two federal elections despite winning fewer votes. For Poilievre to have to work against Trump on top of that could prove too heavy a lift.
• Allowing men to compete in women’s sports is “deeply unfair,” said—California Governor Gavin Newsom? Yes, that’s right: The prominent Democrat, who for years has situated himself at the leading edge of his party’s leftism and held up his governance of California as a progressive model, agrees with a basic truth that many in his party continue to deny. We learned as much on the debut episode of his podcast, in which he also admitted that Democrats are getting “crushed” on the issue, and that the Trump campaign’s attack on Newsom’s fellow Californian Kamala Harris for her radical position on trans issues hurt her in last year’s presidential election. There are limits to Newsom’s apparent conversion: He has signed pro-trans legislation as governor, including a ban on requiring public school staff to notify parents if their child identifies as transgender. He claims to be bound by a law signed by Jerry Brown, his predecessor, when it comes to women’s sports. There’s reason to doubt the sincerity of Newsom’s position, though it beats his espousing the opposite. But these steps to increase his national profile and to separate himself from a leftism that has become electorally poisonous outside of deep-blue jurisdictions should leave no doubt about his future aspirations. Newsom has already shown plenty of shamelessness in his time as governor. Does he have enough to pull off a political transformation this dramatic?
• The Supreme Court’s job isn’t just to settle legal questions but also to supervise the federal judiciary. It fell down on that job in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. Federal judge Amir Ali inserted himself above the president in running the U.S. Agency for International Development. One of Trump’s first executive orders suspended foreign aid for 90 days. While Congress funds USAID, many of its specific grants are made by agency choice, not by statute. If a president cancels them, his only legal duty is to pay for breaching contracts—and recipients, under federal statutes, must file suit in the Court of Federal Claims. Instead, Judge Ali ruled it “arbitrary and capricious” to issue a “blanket” funding pause without examining each contract one at a time, finding that the “reliance interests” of recipients (in getting paid) outweighs the executive’s interest in setting foreign policy. He then tried to compel the government to make a blanket payment of $2 billion without time to examine individual claims—the very sort of across-the-board response he declared irrational when the executive does it. He improperly framed these as temporary, unappealable orders. The Court (5–4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberals) vaguely chided Judge Ali to “clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill” with “due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.” We agree with Justice Samuel Alito and the dissenters that the Court had a duty to constrain Judge Ali rather than simply request that he be more responsible next time. Instead, his one-judge showdown with the executive branch continues.
• Citing the importance of shareholder return, BP, a large oil and gas company, is scaling back its diversification into renewables. It is another sign that Wall Street, C-suites, and large private sector investors are rejecting ESG (i.e., the use of environmental, social, and governance criteria in the assessment of companies) and its derivative, DEI, as well as the related doctrine of “stakeholder capitalism.” All of these, by adding typically progressive objectives to a company’s responsibilities, aim to dilute the idea that a company’s foremost duty is to its shareholders. There has been growing resistance to ESG and its kin, owing to their negative effect on investment returns and to their being used to advance an ideological agenda. The ensuing controversy, reinforced by lawsuits from officials in red states, has led to some retreat from ideologically driven corporate and investment objectives, but it is too soon to declare victory. The addition of a “social” dimension to the operation of American capitalism is frequently more camouflaged now, but the idea still flourishes in business schools, the media, and regulations and among state-funded investors and NGOs. Rent-seeking “consultants” often encourage many businesses to follow suit. Defenders of shareholder primacy still have much to do.
• In what must be one of the most unfortunate coincidences in the modern history of art, renowned painter Hunter Biden appears to have lost his gift for producing critically acclaimed and commercially successful pieces at the exact same moment as his father ceased to be the president of the United States. Per Politico, Hunter is now struggling under the weight of “significant debts” caused in part by his inability to sell his paintings for the same lofty prices that they commanded just a year ago. Between 2020 and 2023, he sold 27 paintings. Between the beginning of 2024 and today, he has sold just one. The sad development ought to remind all of us that talent is fleeting, and that what the gods can bestow, the gods can take away on a cruel whim. Time was when all the movers and shakers felt that their collections remained incomplete without the addition of an original Hunter Biden work. Now, he sits alone, despondent, and uninspired, his brush a deadweight in his hand, his paints dulled by creative block, his blank canvas a stinging reminder of the harsh financial limits of a single four-year term.
• “Heroes are soldiers on the front lines or the fire brigades,” said James Harrison, a retired railway administrator in New South Wales, Australia. “I’m just an ordinary Joe. I roll up my sleeve, get the needle, and then I go home.” Every two weeks for 63 years, Harrison donated blood. His contained anti-D, a rare antibody that can prevent serious and even fatal disease in unborn children whose blood type differs from that of their mothers. The precious immunoglobulins in the more than 100 gallons that over the decades flowed from his “golden arm,” as it came to be called, were used in anti-D injections administered to mothers carrying at-risk babies. Those babies included his grandson, who grew up to become a blood donor himself. Harrison was inspired to begin donating in his teens after receiving many transfusions during lung surgery when he was 14. His antibodies are estimated to have helped 2.4 million babies and to have probably saved the lives of some of them. Put his picture next to the dictionary entry for Good Samaritan. Dead at 88. R.I.P.
Our Interests in Ukraine
Talleyrand had great powers of self-control—never more than on the occasion when an angry Napoleon screamed at him for half an hour that he was a traitor, a cripple, a cuckold, and “a pile of s**t in a silk stocking.” To which Talleyrand said only, as he limped away, “It is a pity that a great man should be so ill bred.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky could have channeled a little Talleyrand in his by now infamous Oval Office interview with President Trump and Vice President Vance. The deal for American dibs on Ukraine’s rare earth minerals was ready to be signed, and the best he was going to get at that moment. Zelensky should have pocketed the half win, listened with patient indifference, thanked all, and retired to fight another day. No doubt he wanted to show his people back home that he could not be bullied. But he showed himself, to casual American viewers, to be touchy and quarrelsome. And he ended up giving a semi-apology four days later anyway, calling the Oval Office cage fight “regrettable” and saying that “it is time to make things right.”
Ukraine needs the wisdom of the serpent because it is fighting a two-front war, against the invaders and occupiers of so much of its country, and their ring girls in Washington. Trump and his inner circle, whatever their other considerations, are temperamentally pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine. Before their meeting, Trump called Zelensky a dictator (then pretended he hadn’t) and said that Ukraine had started the war. Vance asked Zelensky if he had never thanked the United States for its help—he has, profusely and frequently—and later abused unnamed “random” countries that hadn’t “fought a war in 30 or 40 years.” (Britain and France were among those who sent troops, and lost troops, in Afghanistan.) Trump cut off sharing military intelligence with Ukraine until Zelensky makes nice, thereby limiting the range of the HIMARS launchers the U.S. has given them.
By their friends ye shall know them. Lech Walesa, and 38 other veterans of a midsize country’s struggles against Russia, signed a letter to Trump condemning his treatment of Ukraine and Zelensky: “The atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service.” Meanwhile a Kremlin spokesman smiled on the new direction in American policy, saying that it “largely coincides with our vision.”
The Kremlin is trying to make the worst (that is, for them the best) of the situation. And as Vance said in a moment of calm, what happens on the ground is more important than “public statements.” But public statements, like straws, show which way the current flows.
Supporters of the president’s position say that Ukraine cannot win—and they are very likely correct if they mean that it cannot altogether roll back Putin’s incursions since 2022, let alone since 2014. With U.S. and European help, however, it might be able to secure defensible borders and keep Russia from reaping rewards that will encourage further aggression. This outcome would preserve our European alliances, which is more important than—although a prerequisite to—rebalancing them.
Trump does not articulate these interests and may not recognize them. Trump feels a kind of kinship with Putin, as if he were a Russian-accented Roy Cohn, a tough guy who knows his own mind. Trump can smack him when necessary (as when he waxed Wagner Group fighters in Syria during his first term) and be pals with him the rest of the time.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who sat as if nursing an attack of reflux through the Oval Office meeting but came out swinging for Trump after it ended, must be asking himself why he gave up a Senate seat for this.
A capricious and ignorant president, surrounded by enablers; Europeans talking a good game, and wondering if they can play it alone. The outlook for Ukraine is poor.