American Principles in the Age of MAGA Nihilism
Why the Trump administration fears authentic patriotism.
We haven’t heard too much from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr since his abortive attempt last year to get Jimmy Kimmel off the air. But Carr’s back in the news this morning amid a tangle with another late-night comedian: The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert. On his show last night, Colbert said CBS News had forbidden him from airing an interview with Texas Democrat and Senate candidate James Talerico, citing Carr’s threat last month to go after late-night programs for supposed violations of the FCC’s Equal Time rule.
“He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said of the interview, which was later posted online. “Let’s just call this what it is: Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV, okay?”
One quick programming note: Bill and Andrew will be going live on Substack and YouTube at 10 a.m. EST this morning, trying out something new: a video version of Morning Shots. (Morning Chaser, maybe?) The suits are talking about making this a recurring thing on Tuesdays—we’ll see if we scare them off that today. Happy Tuesday.
Why We Fight
by William Kristol
Last weekend, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state of the United States, spoke at the annual Munich Security Conference. He didn’t deign to discuss in his prepared remarks actual security challenges to the United States from, say, Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. Instead, he lectured world leaders about the Trump administration’s general view of the nature of politics, war, and patriotism. One of Rubio’s most striking statements was that “armies do not fight for abstractions.”
Rubio made this statement in the year in which we’ll celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That Declaration was also a declaration of war. The war for independence that the Continental Army fought was in defense of and on behalf of certain principles. You might even call them “abstractions.”
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Most Americans—and much of the world—at the time and since, have understood the American Revolution to have been more than just another dispute over power and privilege. Here’s Abraham Lincoln in a public letter he wrote in April 1859 to be read at a celebration in Boston of the birthday of Thomas Jefferson.
All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
Jefferson was able “to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth.” The administration in which Rubio serves pretends to celebrate that revolution, but hates the abstract truth which animated that revolution and which elevates it above merely another mundane struggle for power or profit. The Trump administration hates that fact because it is a reminder that there is more to life than power and profit. And it hates that truth precisely because it remains a stumbling block to tyranny and oppression.
Two years after his encomium to Jefferson, Lincoln became president. Our single people were about to be divided in two by a great civil war fought over the competing principles of equality and slavery. Minnesota—then the newest member of the Union, admitted in 1858—was the first state to promise President Lincoln a regiment of volunteer soldiers to fight for the United States. And at the climactic battle of the war, Gettysburg, it was the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment that famously suffered terrible casualties in a key action that helped secure the Union’s position on Cemetery Ridge on the battle’s second day, and laid the groundwork for victory.
Why did the Minnesotans volunteer? For what were they fighting? Their own security wasn’t endangered by Southern secession. They weren’t at risk of being conquered by a foreign people or culture. Quite the contrary. They were of similar heritage and spoke the same language and read the same Bible and worshiped the same God as the Virginians they fought, and whose flag they took in battle and have since declined to return.
The Minnesotans fought and died for what Rubio would denigrate as an abstract principle.
The current government of the United States sadly has no understanding of such an elevated patriotism—even though it was this kind of patriotism that also animated the fight in the next century later against fascism, and then against communism.
Fortunately, the American people are better than our current government. Civic spirit and enlightened patriotism are by no means dead in the United States. As the people of Minnesota have again reminded us.
A little over two months ago, on December 4, 2025, Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland of Security announced a surge of immigration enforcement into Minnesota. In early January, DHS announced an expansion of the effort into what it called the largest immigration enforcement operation ever. Now, after two months of disgraceful conduct by agents of our government, the Trump administration is withdrawing from its chosen field of battle.
This has surely been the single greatest setback yet for Trump’s mass-deportation and mass-intimidation agenda. The defeat wasn’t administered by a rival fighting force, but by the voluntary deeds, the civic courage, the enlightened patriotism of the people of Minnesota. The number of Minnesotans who have volunteered to help defend their neighbors’ rights over these past months has been stunning. Their determination, courage, and discipline have been remarkable.
Many observers have said so often in recent years that civic virtue is dead, that community bonds have been destroyed, that we can no longer expect sacrifice for and commitment to the common good. Those commentators have been proven wrong. The people of Minnesota and millions of ordinary Americans across the nation have rallied in opposition to what Jefferson feared, “the harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.”
All honor to Jefferson for his foresight. And all honor to those Americans who are stepping up to the fight.
How would you rate the health of civic patriotism in the United States today? Give us your appraisal and compare notes in the comments.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Trump Can’t Steal the Midterms… NICHOLAS GROSSMAN makes the case for being vigilant without panicking.
The Line That Should Terrify Europe… On Bulwark+ Takes, WILL SALETAN takes on Marco Rubio’s warning to Europe about Chinese “extortion”—and the uncomfortable reality that Donald Trump is using America’s economic and military leverage the same way.
Europe Is America’s Secret Weapon. And We’re Giving It Up… The principal agreement of the Munich Security Conference is that a key American relationship is severely damaged, argues MARK HERTLING.
Robert Duvall, R.I.P.… From ‘True Grit’ to ‘The Godfather’ to ‘Apocalypse Now,’ a mainstay of American cinema, remembers SONNY BUNCH.
Quick Hits
ONE LAST MINNEAPOLIS OUTRAGE: ICE might be winding down its extraordinary enforcement operation in Minneapolis, but the federal government’s stonewalling of state investigations into the death of Alex Pretti is continuing. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension announced yesterday that the FBI is refusing to give state investigators access to its evidence related to Pretti’s death. The BCA added that it remains unclear whether the FBI will hand over evidence related to the earlier killing of Renee Good.
“While this lack of cooperation is concerning and unprecedented, the BCA is committed to thorough, independent and transparent investigations of these incidents, even if hampered by a lack of access to key information and evidence,” BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said in a statement. “We will continue to pursue all legal avenues to gain access to relevant information and evidence.”
We don’t know how many times we’ve had to say it by now: It’s astonishing how effectively this administration’s towering heap of controversies, scandals, and misdeeds actually makes it impossible to pursue accountability for any individual one. The fact that Trump’s federal law and immigration enforcement have deliberately and consistently worked to shut down investigations into the killing of a U.S. citizen by one of their own is an outrage that cries out for justice. And it’ll be lucky to make the front page.
YES, PUTIN MURDERED NAVALNY: In extremely unsurprising news, a joint statement by the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands at the Munich Security Conference confirmed that the death of Russian political prisoner Alexei Navalny two years ago yesterday was a state-engineered murder. Tissue samples smuggled out after Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony showed traces of epibatidine, a very rare, lethal (and synthesizable) toxin from an Ecuadorian dart frog. The chances of such a poisoning without Vladimir Putin’s say-so? Roughly equal to those of an Ecuadorian frog hopping around the Arctic prison. Putin had plenty of motive to eliminate Navalny, whose charisma and anti-corruption populism made him a uniquely effective opposition leader. Excluding a live Navalny from prisoner swaps was becoming unfeasible, while releasing him, for Putin, was unthinkable.
While Russia scoffs and Secretary of State Marco Rubio hedges, the real question is what to do with this finding—besides reporting a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Will it kneecap Russia’s credibility (ha!) in the Ukraine peace talks? Will it bury Donald Trump’s plans for a YUGE business deal with Putin? Russian émigré journalist Viktor Shenderovich thinks “it will be harder for President Trump next time to say what a nice guy Putin is.” Yeah, watch him.
—Cathy Young
REV. JESSE JACKSON, 1941–2026: A mainstay of American politics and the civil rights movement, Rev. Jesse Jackson died yesterday at the age of 84 after a decade-long battle with Parkinson’s disease. A lieutenant of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Jackson became an influential and independent voice in the Democratic party, twice rising to prominence as a presidential candidate. His work on civil rights earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton.
I knew Jesse Jackson only a bit. Though we were of course on opposite sides politically, we had cordial and pleasant conversations when we encountered each other. My last conversation with him was when I ran into him in a hotel lobby a couple of years ago. We had a cup of coffee and talked, though the Parkinson’s made it difficult for him. But I think he enjoyed our reminiscing about days gone by.
I’ll add one thought: In retrospect, I now think I underestimated Jesse Jackson’s importance for many Americans. They saw in his leadership, and in his presidential candidacies, someone who spoke for them powerfully and eloquently at a time when not many did. They admired and respected him for this, and they were not wrong to do so.
—William Kristol
THE TOTTERING VACCINE INDUSTRY: On Sunday, Jonathan Cohn reported on the bizarre, infuriating story of the government’s spiking of a new flu-vaccine application from Moderna, one of the companies whose mRNA vaccine technology helped pull the world out of the COVID pandemic. As a technology platform, mRNA has theoretical applications far beyond coronaviruses. Moderna’s second bite of the apple, a flu vaccine, has been in development and early testing for years, in close consultation with the federal government. But when Moderna sent its promising early data to the Food and Drug Administration to seek regulatory approval, the FDA slammed the brakes, arguing in a letter this month that the company had not tested the vaccine rigorously enough.
“The available evidence,” Cohn wrote, “suggests this is a case of the FDA disqualifying a vaccine on questionable grounds, while changing its standards for review late in the process because it was trying to find a way to reject the vaccine.”
Kennedy’s ongoing hostility to vaccines isn’t just keeping new products off the market. It’s having a chilling effect across the whole vaccines industry, as the New York Times reported yesterday:
In Massachusetts, Moderna is pulling back on vaccine studies. In Texas, a small company canceled plans to build a factory that would have created new jobs manufacturing a technology used in vaccines. In San Diego, another manufacturing company laid off workers. . . .
The Trump administration said it was not discouraging innovation.
But investors have grown hesitant to bet on a field that has fallen out of favor in Washington. Major manufacturers are reporting declining sales of their shots. Smaller companies are taking the brunt of the impact, with some stocks whipsawing in response to the changes.
Cheap Shots
My husband was dying of stage 4 melanoma 5 years ago. He entered a phase 1 drug trial of an mRNA personalized vaccine through Massachusetts General Hospital. He was completely cured. The tumors that riddles his spine and liver stabilized, then shank, and then vanished completely. This is the hope that this horrible administration is stealing from us all. Google Brad Kremer and mRNA---his story was covered.
Bill: "Fortunately, the American people are better than our current government. Civic spirit and enlightened patriotism are by no means dead in the United States. As the people of Minnesota have again reminded us."
**Some** of us are better than our current government. But it's necessary to remind ourselves that there's another group of citizens who love the cruelty, the racism, and the brutality our current government is dishing out.
As for Little Marco, if he disdains "abstractions" so much, then why did his family leave Cuba for the land of the free and the home of the brave? He's just a sniveling, thirsty little fuck, adopting any position no matter how indefensible so he can become POTUS one day. Newsflash, jackhole: you'll never be POTUS.