Michael Nelson

theguardian.com/commentisfree/… #RequiredReading (especially the @ECFR report)

The evaporation of critical thinking among the American people is truly shocking. How our nation substituted going to the library and reading books, valuing our Western traditions going back to Plato and Aristotle and replacing it all with mediocre conspiracy InfoWars, Joe Rogan podcasts, or Fox News evening Murdoch media so obviously intended to create a new generation of billionaires at their expense, I mean I get it, but I never thought the American people could be this gullible or susceptible

And so the fourth female member of Trump's Cabinet leaves office. (A video from almost a year sgo, which I hadn't seen.) @TulsiGabbard @DNIGabbard

Source: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Ukraine's casualty ratio improved to roughly one Ukrainian soldier for every five Russian troops — Finnish President Stubb said last month. Rubio confirmed May 13: Ukraine now has Europe's "most powerful armed forces." 2/

The IRS has agreed to not audit Trump's taxes. In 2024, we found the IRS concluded in a long-running audit that Trump effectively claimed the same massive write-off twice on a failed Chicago tower. That audit could have cost him more than $100 million. propublica.org/article/trump-…

As evidenced by the unbridled promotion and implementation of technology at the expense of human dignity, we are truly experiencing an eclipse of the sense of what it means to be human. It is imperative to recover an understanding of the true meaning and grandeur of humanity as intended by God. It is in this sense that the challenge we currently face is not technological, but anthropological, and it is my hope that the Encyclical Letter to be published within a few days will contribute to answering this challenge.

Just sent out this post. US losses across the board fighting Iran, but particularly involving aircraft, are revealing worrying signs that US military efficiency is in decline and not what it was. The loss rates are many times higher than Vietnam and Desert Storm. A fish rots from the head down.

“For Trump to respond to this defiance by now calling for another 30 days of cease-fire and talks is a tacit admission of defeat. If he does launch a performative attack in the next few days, the Iranians will understand it for what it is” theatlantic.com/international/…

This is an extraordinary document written by the research arm of China's spy agency (the powerful MSS, basically the CIA and the FBI all wrapped in one) that absolutely zero media has picked up on. As far as I can see, I'm the first person to write about it even though it was published (in Chinese) on May 13th on chinadiplomacy.org.cn, a website of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The document contains perhaps the most authoritative description of where China thinks its relationship with the U.S. stands, and where it’s headed. The title of the report is “The Great Global Transformation and the Path to U.S.–China Coexistence” and I provide a full translation of it in my article, the link of which is at the bottom of this post. To summarize briefly the most important - and, perhaps, surprising - aspect of the document: China's spy agency - the one institution whose entire job is to worry about the U.S. threat - has largely stopped worrying. That's really what transpires from the document. They use a strategic framework borrowed from Mao's "protracted war" theory and, according to this framework, America's offensive phase is finished and China weathered the storm intact. The question is no longer "how do we survive America?" but "how do we manage America?" - and they're proposing a six-step relationship recovery program. I'll let you read the full document as well as my analysis of it here: open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…

"On the present trajectory, Iran will emerge from the conflict many times stronger and more influential than it was before the war. It will exercise leverage with dozens of the richest nations in the world." From Robert Kagan, @TheAtlantic theatlantic.com/international/…

Trump’s approach to corruption is to do everything in the open. Make it so ridiculous and so inundating that people’s heads spin and then once they’re numb, keep going. The Epstein files are an atrocity. The allegations and the behavior documented in those files are disgusting. Yet, Trump masterfully buried the lead on all of it — through a war, through noise, through sheer volume of chaos. When you ask voters what they care about, the Epstein files are at the bottom of the list. They want jobs and gas prices they can afford. Trump’s corruption isn’t even on their radar screen. Do not underestimate him. He’s sitting at 34% approval and he still has 9/10 self-identified Republicans doing whatever he says. He says bark. They say woof. He says jump. How high, sir? That’s the architecture of power he’s built and it’s more durable than his critics want to admit.

The Department of Justice is now an active participant in multiple conspiracy theories, and doing profound damage to the government's credibility. From @qjurecic @TheAtlantic theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/…

Here's how the corruption works: Thursday: RJ Reynolds donates $5M to Trump Saturday: Trump invites RJR execs to Mar a Lago; execs ask to loosen regs on flavored vapes; Trump calls up RFK Jr. and tells him to change it Friday: FDA changes the policy #donation-big-tobacco-vaping" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">nytimes.com/live/2026/05/2…

No president has ever used the federal government to advance his own personal interests and those of his family and allies as expansively and openly as Trump has. nytimes.com/2026/05/20/us/…

Two officers who defended the Capitol on January 6th just sued to shut down Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The Constitution is clear: only Congress can authorize spending federal money. No law created this slush fund. Trump sued the IRS, then his own DOJ (run by Trump’s former criminal defense attorney) “settled” by agreeing to hand out nearly $2 billion to people he decides were mistreated. That isn’t a settlement. It’s the President writing himself a check from the Treasury and skipping Congress entirely. The officers have every right to sue. Officer Hodges was pinned in a tunnel and had his mask ripped off. Officer Dunn still gets death threats. The acting AG won’t rule out paying the rioters who attacked them. A fund that could reward their assailants puts them in greater danger right now. This is a shameless, self-dealing structure built on a sham lawsuit. Courts block illegal spending when plaintiffs show real harm, and the harm here is staring all of us in the face. It should be called the January 6th Slush Fund. pbs.org/newshour/amp/p…

This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it. Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago. IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued. The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk. The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit. Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.”  Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million. The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out. This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president. Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues? nytimes.com/2026/05/19/adm…

The Oxford philosopher @CarissaVeliz is one of the smartest and most thoughtful critics of where technology is taking us. I spoke with her for the most recent episode of my podcast and we went deep into: trade-offs around surveillance, the risks of algorithmic predictions, the history of prophecy, and more. You should watch the whole chat, but here are a few key points. 1/ youtube.com/watch?v=jL-5MR…

“We now have, to some extent, overproduction of drones,” Bodnar said. “For example, Magura drones, which is a sea drone, they practically demolished the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. But we don’t have a target now for them. So, it’s possible to sell them abroad, as well as with the FPV [first person view] drones. So, the production is now more than 4 million per year.” (That’s all kinds of drones, not just sea or FPV ones.) Last month, Ukraine announced that it was on pace to produce 7 million drones this year. Unexpected Words from Ukraine: We Have an Overproduction of Drones nationalreview.com/the-morning-jo…

Trump is a symptom, not the disease. If it wasn’t him it would be someone else with the same narcissistic, populist impulses — because the underlying conditions that created him haven’t changed. The median home in the US is $430,000. You need about $150,000 in income to cover the mortgage and have any discretionary money left. The median salary is $84,000. That’s a $50,000 gap. Fifty years ago 80% of Americans could afford the dream. Today it’s out of reach for at least half the country. When people feel the system is rigged against them and nobody in power is fixing it, they check out. When they check out long enough, someone like Trump comes along and becomes the avatar for all that anger. They adhere to him even when he’s doing the exact opposite of what he promised. The idea that when Trump loses power in 2028 things revert to normal — that’s not going to happen. The conditions that created him will still be there. Until we fix those, we’re just waiting for the next one.