And, Overnight, Trump Goes From ‘Dangerous Isolationalist’ To ‘Dangerous Imperialist’

“Every single American president from FDR on has believed that America has to exercise global leadership. The only exception is Donald Trump.” – Max Boot, PBS, Jan. 1, 2024.

 “Trump is squandering America’s moral capital — and inviting a global backlash against his avaricious overreach,” Max Boot, Washington Post, Jan. 12, 2026

BY: Issues and Insights Editorial Board

Sometimes, we wish the never-Trumpers of the world could settle on the reason they think Donald Trump is an existential threat to the nation. Up until a few weeks ago, the threat he posed, we were told, was that he was an isolationist. As pathological Trump-hater Max Boot repeatedly said, the world needs U.S. leadership, and Trump’s isolationalism was threatening peace and stability around the globe.

Boot was hardly the only one.

Leftists Misunderstand MAGA Vision for America

By Ben Shaprio

This week, Axios ran a fascinating piece about the supposed “redefinition” of Americanism under President Donald Trump. Titled “Inside Trump’s American identity project,” Axios posited that “President Trump is wielding government power to enforce a more rigid, exclusionary definition of what it means to be American.”

What would this new definition entail? “In MAGA’s telling, America is the heir to ancient European civilizations, built on a Judeo-Christian foundation of white identity, meritocracy, traditional gender roles and the nuclear family,” says Axios. “These tenets are cast as universal truths—and mantras such as ‘America is an idea’ or ‘diversity is our strength’ are dismissed as liberal fictions.”

AI and Privacy: A Guide to California's Recently Passed Legislation

By: Afshan Bhatia, Anokhy Desai, Kewa Jiang, and Hina Moheyuddin

In the corridors of the California legislature, legislators are reshaping the boundaries of privacy and artificial intelligence. This article reviews 11 key bills that confront a wide spectrum of contemporary challenges from workplace surveillance to automated decision systems that arbitrate human opportunity. It is critical for businesses, developers, consumers, and privacy professionals alike to understand these bills because they signal how California is setting nationwide standards for transparency, accountability, and ethical technology use.

The California legislative session concluded on September 12, 2025, the first year of a two-year legislative process. The bills that passed both the Senate and the Assembly will now be considered by Governor Gavin Newsom, who has until October 12, 2025 to either sign, veto, or take no action on the bills. The legislature will reconvene on January 5, 2026.

None Dare Call it a Republic

Issues & Insights Editorial Board

How many times have we heard over the last decade that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy? That we were going to lose our democracy if he isn’t restrained (and maybe even eliminated)? That our democracy is in peril because Trump and his supporters are fascists, Nazis, and worse, if anything can be?

The Democrats and their media allies hammer the term far beyond the point of absurdity. What is their obsession with “democracy,” a word that appears neither in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution?

How Trump Exposed the UN’s Hidden Agenda

By Victor Davis Hanson

. . . . All four of those circumstances were almost impossible to occur in one session. So, what am I getting at? This is very serious. It means that the United Nations has employees, or perhaps administrators, who deliberately tried to sabotage an American president while on American soil.

So, Donald Trump, as he was experiencing the breakdown in the teleprompter, and had just gone through the escalator shock, decided to lengthen his speech from 15 minutes to about 55, and he had some blockbuster things to say . . . .

Here’s How the Trump Administration Aims to Make Use of the Government Shutdown

By Tyler Neil

Now that Democrats have shut down the government by voting against a clean continuing resolution that would have kept funding at Biden-era levels, President Donald Trump needs to fulfill his threat to fire more bureaucrats.

While Republicans offered to keep funding the government at Biden levels until Congress can pass annual funding legislation, Democrats have unreasonably demanded that Congress continue generous COVID-19-era Obamacare subsidies and reverse the Medicaid reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed earlier this year. Since funding legislation requires 60 votes to pass the Senate, Republicans needed at least seven Democrats or independents to help pass the resolution, and they only got three.

Last week, the White House Office of Management and Budget released a memo, telling federal agencies that if the government were to shut down, they should consider engaging in Reductions in Force to begin the process of laying off employees in projects that are not funded during the shutdown or that are inconsistent with Trump’s priorities.

Democrats who marched alongside federal government unions in protesting Trump’s efforts to cut the size and scope of the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency should have considered this when voting against funding the government.