NATIONAL REVIEW
MAY 09, 2025 |
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◼ The Catholic Church has come full circle, from a pope born under Caesar Augustus to one born under Mayor Daley.
◼ The 267th pope of the Catholic Church is a Chicago-born Augustinian, though he is, practically speaking, an adopted son of Peru where he has spent much of his life as a missionary priest and has had dual citizenship. Because of his closeness to Pope Francis, it is easy to speculate that in choosing the name of Leo, our new Holy Father may be pointing to his predecessor Pope Leo XIII, who elaborated the church's social teaching in encyclicals like Rerum Novarum. The last Pope Leo was also known for his promotion of Marian devotion and confronting modernist heresy. In a homily shortly before his election, the new pope said: "God's mercy calls us to protect every life, especially those society overlooks—the child yet to be born and the elderly nearing their journey's end—because each bears Christ's face." We are needful of exactly this kind of bold leadership against the culture of death. But we confess some apprehensions as well. Robert Francis Prevost promoted Francis's project of "synodality," which risks dividing the church into different camps. Prevost has also been dogged by questions about his handling of priestly abuse cases. We hope that as the media pursues these stories to their end, his innocence and good judgment are revealed for the whole world. The pontificate of Francis has been doctrinally, liturgically, and tonally disruptive. May Leo XIV brings peace within the church even as he calls for peace outside of it. With Leo XIV beginning his reign at the relatively spritely age of 69, it occasions a serious question: With a pontificate of potentially 20 years or more ahead of him, will Pope Leo XIV stiffly resist or gently accommodate the generational turnover and geographic shift that is turning the Catholic Church in a more traditional direction?
◼ Asceticism and Donald Trump go together like oil and water. When the president said that girls should have only two dolls, that they might be more expensive, and that children should have only five pencils, he was giving away the game on the effects of tariffs. If it's true that foreigners pay tariffs, as Trump says, then prices shouldn't go up for Americans and they should be able to afford just as many dolls and pencils as before. It isn't true, so Trump is right to suggest that things will become less affordable. Americans are already stressed by the cost of living. Why is he punishing them with a tax hike? Moreover, Trump as a pop culture figure is associated with garish displays of wealth. Since when is the guy who likes gold-plated everything, including on his $100 million private jet, a spokesman for making do with less? Promising that higher prices would be transitory went over poorly for the last president. As for the dolls, Republicans should remember that a lot of those working-class men who voted for Trump have daughters.
◼ Ever watched a James Bond movie? How about a Fritz Lang or Akira Kurosawa classic? Or maybe one of the newer hits from South Korea or India? You were threatening U.S. national security, according to the president. In a social-media post out of the blue, Trump said he wants 100 percent tariffs on foreign movies. It's not clear what that would mean, since movies are not goods subject to tariffs at all, and plenty of foreign-born actors and directors make American movies. (The cinematographer for Home Alone 2, partially filmed in one of Trump's hotels at the time and featuring Trump in a cameo, was born in Argentina.) It is clear that Trump just likes tariffs, doesn't care how they work, and should not have the power to unilaterally declare them whenever he wants.
◼ Also out of the blue, President Trump declared he will reopen Alcatraz. The notorious prison and, later, tourist destination would serve as the ultimate symbol of deterrence, law, order, and justice, the president said on social media. Some speculate that the idea might have come to Trump during a Sunday night airing of Escape from Alcatraz on PBS; regardless, he reiterated his plans during a press briefing later in the week and said that senior members of the White House are looking into the possibility. Alcatraz shut down six decades ago because it was too expensive to maintain and too remote to easily renovate. It's now a deteriorated structure, crumbling in some parts, that brings in $60 million annually in tourist revenue. Federal prisons in America aren't at max capacity, and Alcatraz would take years and hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate. As with many of Trump's plans that are announced in all-caps Truth Social posts, Alcatraz's revival seems unlikely.
◼ Many years, it is fair to roll your eyes at the Kennedy family's selection of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. They have picked some indisputably noble winners, such as the peacemakers of Northern Ireland, the public servants of September 11, and former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, who survived an assassination attempt. But in recent years the Kennedy family tended to choose whichever prominent liberal caught their eye that year—Barack Obama in 2017, and Nancy Pelosi in 2019, for "putting the national interest above her party's interest to expand access to health care for all Americans and then, against a wave of political attacks, leading the effort to retake the majority and elect the most diverse Congress in our nation's history." (In 2009, the family chose to give the award to Senator Ted Kennedy. Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.) Too often, the "courage" is for taking a political stance that is unpopular in much of the country but adored by the Kennedy family. But you can't begrudge this year's selection of former Vice President Mike Pence. He stood on the House floor and performed his constitutional duty shortly after a violent mob shouted their intention to hang him, as an irate President Donald Trump insisted that he could remain in office if Pence had "the courage to do what needs to be done." Accepting the award, Pence said, "I hope in some small way my presence here tonight is a reminder that whatever differences we may have as Americans, the Constitution is the common ground on which we stand." |
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◼ At the opening of a presidential cabinet meeting, filmed for the world to see, a ritual has been established: Members pay fulsome tribute to President Trump, sometimes seeming to try to out-fulsome one another. Here is the attorney general, Pam Bondi: "Mr. President, your first hundred days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in [pause for dramatic effect] this [another] country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you." The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said, "Sir, it's been a momentous hundred days with you at the helm." Leave the Great Helmsman stuff to other countries. We are the American republic.
◼ The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the military may begin enforcing Trump's executive order banning transgender troops while a challenge to it continues in the courts. The three liberal justices dissented. A federal judge in Tacoma had issued a nationwide injunction blocking the policy in March. The ruling shows that Trump and his administration still have an ally in the Court's Republican-appointed majority—at least when Trump sticks to matters within the executive's constitutional powers. Some studies estimate that more than 10,000 transgender-identifying service members may be affected by the order, which is premised on the power of the commander in chief to judge what best promotes military readiness, unit cohesion, and good order and discipline. The Ninth Circuit, which had denied a request for a stay of the injunction, must still decide the validity of the executive order, but it does so with some indication that the Court stands ready to review its work.
◼ "Don't fly into Newark," one exasperated air traffic controller recently told NBC News. "Avoid Newark at all costs." These may seem like words to live by during the best of circumstances. But the airport, already suffering a bad reputation, saw routine two-hour delays for takeoffs in recent weeks because of repairs to one of its three runways. And worse: Recently, a United Airlines flight into Newark lost contact with the ground for an agonizing 30 seconds when an anachronistic copper wire flared out. The incident is evocative of a similar event last November, when a FedEx cargo plane lost communications and blew past Newark into the path of oncoming traffic headed to New York City's LaGuardia Airport. Our outdated, government-run air-traffic control system seems to be overwhelmed. Canada's privatized system is looking better and better. |
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◼ India and Pakistan came to blows, two weeks after a terrorist attack in which Islamists murdered 26 tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir. India hit several targets in Pakistan that it said were linked to the massacre. Pakistan claimed that it shot down five Indian jets involved in the operation, called "Sindoor," or widow, after the wife of an Indian intelligence officer killed in the Kashmir attack. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the Indian response an "act of war," and the world braced for the next round. On this, we are with President Trump: There should be no next round. India has responded to an abhorrent act of terror, and the risks of a nuclear tit-for-tat are too high.
◼ The price of increased battlefield efficacy is often increased risk. Amid its stepped-up campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the United States has lost at least nine downed MQ-9 Reaper drones along with two Super Hornet fighter jets lost to accidents. But the campaign has yielded results, with some analysts now indicating that the Houthis, knowing their rapidly dwindling stocks of Iran-supplied rockets and drones would inevitably be destroyed, were firing them off wildly. That's why it came as no surprise when Donald Trump revealed this week that the Houthis were suing for peace. It was far more surprising to hear that he had accepted their offer. "They have capitulated," Trump announced, and "we will take their word" that they will refrain from attacking U.S. and allied assets. We shouldn't, if only because the Houthis have engaged in piracy and terrorism off Yemen's coasts for a decade. The president's about-face may have to do with his desire to make peace with Iran. If so, this preemptive concession to Iran will beget neither peace nor a strong nuclear deal. Preemptive concessions to terrorist regimes rarely work out in our favor.
◼ Friedrich Merz has finally, awkwardly become Germany's chancellor. His center-right CDU/CSU "won" February's election, but with only 28 percent of the vote. The doubling of support (to 21 percent) for the AfD, a party containing significant elements that actually merit the description "far right," and the failure of the free market(ish) FDP to make it back into the Bundestag meant that Merz has had to enter into a shotgun coalition with the center-left SPD. Even that took an unprecedented and unexpected second ballot, an ominous sign of discontent within his new coalition. Merz's one consolation—no need to include the Greens—has been diluted by a budget deal that embedded Germany's destructive net-zero commitment into the constitution and committed to yet more wasteful climate-related spending. Meanwhile the AfD is still gaining support, even as the government moves closer to banning it for extremism. A better, infinitely more democratic approach would be a far tougher line on immigration, but Merz may not have the votes for that. Oh yes, the economy's a mess. Viel Glück, Herr Merz.
◼ The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence agencies have been stepping up their efforts with respect to, yes, Greenland. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, issued a "collection emphasis message," a classified order that directs the intelligence community to find out all it can on Greenland's independence movement and anyone on the island or in Denmark who might support or oppose Trump's desire to train our manifest destiny on the Northwest Atlantic. An American purchase of Greenland, with the support of both the Greenlanders and the Danes, would be salutary but is unlikely. So far, however, Trump's public diplomacy and his administration's clandestine activities have done nothing except raise the hackles of people who are, after all, our friends and allies.
◼ Often censored or outright shut down by governments left and right, La Prensa, Nicaragua's oldest newspaper, has persisted as a voice for liberal democracy in a country that has known precious little of it in the century of the publication's storied existence. It was targeted by the Somoza regime and even its democratically elected predecessor in the 1930s. The Sandinista regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo blocked La Prensa's supply of ink and newsprint after it began reporting on human-rights abuses in 2018. In 2021, police raided its offices and confiscated property. Employees were later arrested. It was Nicaragua's last remaining print newspaper when reporters and editors went into exile and reconstituted La Prensa as an exclusively online publication. It remains unstinting in its exposure of the current regime's escalating campaign to live down to its reputation for despotism. Citing La Prensa's resilience in the face of "severe repression," UNESCO awarded it this year's Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. The Nicaraguan government withdrew from UNESCO in protest. The "blow to the dictatorship," as La Prensa's general manager describes his colleagues' recent work, is well deserved.
◼ Quitter. Aged only 94, Warren Buffett, ever the showman, surprised the thousands attending Berkshire Hathaway's annual general meeting in Omaha—the legendary "Woodstock for capitalists"—by announcing he will be stepping down as CEO. He will continue as chairman and said he "could conceivably be useful in a few cases." Charlie Munger (a heterodox Republican to Buffet's heterodox Democrat), the other half of the investment partnership that made Berkshire Hathaway into the colossus it became, died in 2023, just before his 100th birthday, still serving as the company's vice chairman. Buffett will be replaced as CEO by Greg Abel, with Berkshire since 2000 and his designated successor since 2021. Abel has giant shoes to fill. Since Buffett took control of Berkshire, then a declining textile company, in 1965, its shares have appreciated by over 5.5 million percent (yes, you read that correctly) as he and Munger grew the company into a conglomerate and investment vehicle. Buffett was initially a classic numbers-driven "value" investor, but, influenced by Munger, he went on to add more qualitative factors when assessing an investment. That and Midwestern skepticism have served his shareholders very well. Trump's tariffs? Not a fan. |
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19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701
New York, NY, 10036 |
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