2026-04-14 18:30:00
2026年5月，美国联邦第五巡回上诉法院推翻了一项近160年的联邦法律，该法律禁止在家酿造酒精饮料。这一裁决本身具有重大意义，因为该法律自重建时期以来一直有效，其合宪性应受到质疑。然而，此案可能被提交至最高法院，这可能引发对新政时期联邦监管权力的重新审视。新政时期的相关判例（如Wickard v. Filburn和Gonzales v. Raich）确立了国会可以监管全国范围内所有经济活动的广泛权力，包括家庭酿造酒精饮料，因为这些活动可能影响全国市场。因此，最高法院若认定该法律违宪，将面临难以忽视的法律依据。
尽管如此，司法部在本案的辩护中并未援引Wickard和Raich判例，而是提出一个较弱的论点：禁止家庭酿造是为了防止地方酿酒者削弱联邦对酒精的征税能力。司法部在2024年10月提交的简报中指出，该法律最初于1868年通过，旨在解决酒精税逃税问题。但这一论点在当前背景下可能难以成立，因为最高法院在Felsenheld v. United States案中已确认国会为执行税收法律而制定的附属规则具有广泛权力，但该判例已较为陈旧，且当前法院倾向于限制联邦监管权力。
第五巡回上诉法院在裁决中提到，如今家庭酿酒的经济环境和政府监管能力已与19世纪大不相同，这可能为最高法院提供一个狭窄的裁决理由，即该法律不再必要。然而，若最高法院重新审视Wickard和Raich判例，可能会对联邦监管权力产生深远影响，涉及最低工资、反歧视法等众多法律。目前，保守派大法官（如托马斯和戈萨奇）对新政时期的联邦权力扩张持批评态度，他们可能推动对这些判例的重新评估。但若最高法院决定推翻这些判例，其裁决范围可能难以控制，从而对联邦法律体系造成重大冲击。
On Friday, a federal appeals court struck down a nearly 160-year-old federal law prohibiting people from distilling liquor in their own home.
That’s a fairly momentous event in its own right — any claim that a law that’s been on the books since Reconstruction is unconstitutional should be greeted with a heaping spoonful of skepticism. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision in McNutt v. US Department of Justice is particularly significant because it is all but certain to be heard by the Supreme Court, and this case may tempt the Court’s Republican majority to impose restrictions on federal power that have not existed since the early stages of the New Deal.
Although the justices normally get to choose which cases they wish to hear, the Court almost always agrees to hear a case “when a lower court has invalidated a federal statute.”
McNutt potentially raises a question that the Supreme Court resolved in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, but that many right-leaning lawyers and legal scholars have wanted to reopen for many decades. These Roosevelt-era decisions permit Congress to regulate the American workplace, such as by banning child labor or establishing a minimum wage. They also allow many federal regulations of private businesses to exist, including nationwide bans on whites-only lunch counters and other forms of discrimination.
The Constitution gives Congress sweeping authority over the national economy. But, for a period of several decades beginning in the late 19th century, the Supreme Court strictly limited the federal government’s power to regulate commercial activity that occurs entirely within one state. In Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), for example, the Court struck down a federal law that sought to ban child labor, on the theory that most child workers’ jobs do not require them to cross state lines.
The Court abandoned this strict divide between national and local economic activity during the New Deal era — Hammer was overruled in 1941. But many prominent conservative legal thinkers, including Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have called for a return to the more limited approach to federal power that drove the Hammer decision.
McNutt tees up a potential Supreme Court showdown over Congress’s ability to regulate economic activity that occurs within a single state because the new case challenges a ban on alcohol distilling within the home. Most people’s houses do not cross state lines.
That said, there is a wrinkle in the McNutt case that may make it more difficult for justices who want to relitigate the New Deal to do so in this case. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the Justice Department, which is defending the ban in court, decided not to make its strongest legal argument on appeal — the argument that the ban on home distilling fits within Congress’s broad authority to regulate the national economy. So, if there are five justices who want to overrule some of the Roosevelt-era decisions establishing that Congress’s power over the economy is very broad, they will have to do so despite the fact that the DOJ seems to want to avoid this issue.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the best legal argument for the law at issue in McNutt is that Congress has the power to regulate local distilling under the New Deal decisions. So, if the Supreme Court wants to declare the law unconstitutional, it will be difficult for the justices to ignore that fact.
McNutt is a hugely important case because it involves Congress’s two most consequential powers: the power to regulate the national economy, and the power to tax. Post-New Deal decisions defining these powers are the reason why a wide range of federal laws, including the minimum wage, the federal law guaranteeing that every American can obtain health insurance, and most federal laws barring discrimination, are able to exist. So the stakes are simply enormous every single time the Supreme Court decides to play with these federal powers.
The Constitution contains a laundry list of powers that Congress is allowed to exercise, such as the power to raise armies and the power to establish post offices. A federal law is unconstitutional if it does not fit within one of the powers specifically given to Congress by the Constitution.
That said, many of these powers are extremely broad. Congress’s lawful authority includes the power to tax, the power to spend these tax dollars to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States,” and the power to “regulate Commerce…among the several States.” The Constitution also includes a somewhat vague provision permitting Congress to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” laws enacted pursuant to its other powers.
When the Constitution was drafted way back in 1787, its provision allowing Congress to regulate commerce “among the several States” was understood to draw a line between the entire nation’s economy and purely local commerce. In the pre-industrial United States, a farmer located in, say, Iowa, might grow his crops on Iowa land, then transport them to a nearby Iowa town where they were purchased exclusively by other Iowans. Because none of this farmer’s behavior impacted more than one state, it was generally understood to be beyond Congress’s power to regulate.
But all of that changed after the construction of the railroads. In the post-industrial United States, this same farmer’s crops would be shipped to Chicago via the railways, where it would mix with similar grain grown by farmers throughout the Midwest. Then it might be shipped to consumers in many other states, or even overseas.
For about four decades in the late 19th and early 20th century, the Supreme Court tried to maintain a rigid divide between economic activities that were local in character, and those that impacted the entire nation’s economy. Hammer, for example, claimed that the production of goods for sale in an interstate or international market was beyond the reach of Congress, because factory workers typically do not cross state lines while they are producing those goods.
But this distinction proved unworkable. Even if Congress couldn’t regulate factory work directly, for example, its power to regulate the transit of goods across more than one state should allow it to ban any goods that are produced by child workers from traveling across state lines. So the Court largely stopped trying to draw a distinction between commerce that impacts the national economy and commerce that does not during the Roosevelt administration.
In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court held that Congress’s power to regulate the production of goods includes the power to regulate all goods that are produced in the United States, even if some of those goods are never sold to anyone. Wickard rested on a modern understanding that all economic activity is connected, and that goods are often fungible. If a farmer grows wheat that only they and their family consume, the Court reasoned, that still increases the overall supply of wheat, which makes the overall price of wheat throughout the United States cheaper.
More recently, in Gonzales v. Raich (2005), the Court applied this logic to marijuana. Congress, Raich held, could ban all marijuana production throughout the United States, including marijuana growth by individual producers who consume their own supply, because otherwise local growers would undercut the federal government’s goal of eliminating the nationwide market for marijuana altogether.
Wickard, in other words, established that Congress’s power to regulate the national marketplace for wheat includes the power to regulate all wheat produced in the United States, and Raich reached a similar conclusion regarding marijuana. So it should follow that, in the McNutt case, Congress’s power to regulate distilled liquors includes the power to regulate all distilled liquors, including those that are produced inside the home.
Despite all of this legal history, the Justice Department cites neither Wickard nor Raich in its Fifth Circuit brief in the McNutt case. So, rather than analyzing whether the ban on home distilling is constitutional under those two cases, the Fifth Circuit’s opinion includes a short footnote indicating that the government “forfeited” any claim that Congress may ban home distilling under its broad power to regulate commerce.
Notably, the Justice Department filed its brief in October 2024, when President Joe Biden was in office. So the DOJ’s decision not to raise its strongest legal argument cannot be blamed on the fact that the Trump Justice Department is staffed with many lawyers who share Thomas and Gorsuch’s belief that huge swaths of federal laws regulating private businesses are unconstitutional.
Instead, the Justice Department made a less intuitive argument that Congress may ban home distilling to prevent local distillers from undermining Congress’s ability to tax alcohol.
In fairness, this argument is less silly than it sounds at first blush. As the DOJ argued in its brief, the ban on home distilling was originally enacted in 1868 “shortly after a congressional committee detailed rampant evasion of the spirits tax, including by home distillers.” The law was intended to force liquor producers to create their products openly, in distilleries that could be easily identified by the government and thus taxed.
Recall that the Constitution does not simply permit Congress to levy taxes; it also permits it to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” those tax laws. In Felsenheld v. United States (1902), the Supreme Court indicated that this power to make laws incidental to taxation is quite broad — writing that “in the rules and regulations for the manufacture and handling of goods which are subjected to an internal revenue tax, Congress may prescribe any rule or regulation which is not, in itself, unreasonable.”
Still, Felsenheld is a very old case. And it is far from clear that a majority of the current Court, which often appears eager to shrink the government’s power to regulate private businesses, would deem an outright ban on home distilling to be a “reasonable” way to ensure that federal liquor taxes are collected — even though this ban has been around for more than a century and a half.
The Fifth Circuit, for what it is worth, did include a single sentence in its opinion explaining how a law that’s been around for nearly 160 years could suddenly become unconstitutional. It claimed that “the economics and practicality of at-home distilling today are much different than they were in the nineteenth century, and so is the government’s ability to investigate such activity.” So maybe the fact that the government has more ability to track down home distillers in 2026 than it did in 1868 could allow the Supreme Court to write a narrow opinion striking this law down because the law is no longer needed to serve its original purpose.
But that argument only works if you ignore Wickard and Raich, which permit the government to regulate all alcohol production anywhere in the United States, including within the home.
Again, it’s overwhelmingly likely that the Supreme Court will hear McNutt. The Court almost always reviews federal appeals court decisions that declare a federal statute unconstitutional.
To the extent that the Biden Justice Department wanted to avoid a showdown over whether Wickard and Raich should remain good law by simply ignoring those cases in its Fifth Circuit brief, this strategy is unlikely to work for very long. If the Supreme Court strikes down the home distilling ban on the narrow grounds that it’s not necessary to ensure that liquor is taxed, the federal government could revive the ban at any time by claiming that it’s lawful under Wickard and Raich — and then the courts would have no choice but to consider that argument.
Once McNutt reaches the Supreme Court, moreover, it’s likely that many of the justices will be eager to reconsider Wickard and Raich. Both decisions are very unpopular in Republican legal circles. And two justices, Thomas and Gorsuch, are so hostile to the post-New Deal understanding of federal power that they’ve endorsed the same legal framework that the Court once used to strike down child labor laws.
The question is just how far this Court will go if it does reconsider those two decisions. Again, the New Deal-era insight that Congress may regulate the entire chain of commerce, from the production of goods to their eventual sale to a local consumer, forms the basis for countless federal laws. It is the reason why Congress may regulate the workplace, bar restaurants from refusing to sell to Black customers, or require businesses to construct wheelchair ramps or other accommodations which ensure they are accessible to everyone.
Wickard and similar cases all stand for the proposition that it is so hard for the courts to draw a principled line separating the national economy from local commerce that any attempt to do so will make a hash of the entire project, and require the courts to strike down federal laws for completely arbitrary reasons. If a majority of the justices decide to reconsider those cases, we can only hope that they find some way to limit the scope of their decision.
2026-04-14 18:00:00
在美国的车库和车道上，有一种技术正闲置着，它能够解决自身可能带来的问题。随着越来越多的电动汽车（EV）接入电网，它们的大容量电池会增加电网负荷。同时，人们下班回家给车充电的时间与其他人同时开启洗衣机、烤箱等电器的时间重叠，给电网带来压力。然而，通过一种巧妙的方法，电动汽车正被引导成为电网的助力。许多新型电动汽车具备在用电高峰时向电网回馈电能的能力，即“车网互动”（V2G）技术，从而形成城市范围内的备用电力网络。当夜间用电需求下降时，这些车辆会充电，确保车主第二天早上有足够的电量出行。
不过，一项新研究警告称，若要让V2G技术完全满足未来大量电动汽车的充电需求，电网还需进行基础设施升级，例如安装新的变压器和输电线路，以增强电网的稳定性并促进可再生能源的发展。密歇根大学能源系统工程师Ziyou Song表示：“必须尽快升级电力系统，V2G确实非常有帮助，但仅靠它无法完全解决未来电动汽车带来的充电需求问题。”
研究人员对旧金山湾区进行了建模，预测电动汽车和太阳能的普及速度，以及它们对电网的需求变化。他们还分析了电动汽车充电的时间和地点。尽管建模存在不确定性（例如电动汽车普及速度可能快慢不一，联邦购车税收抵免政策的取消可能影响需求，但伊朗战争引发的汽油价格上涨可能推动更多人转向电动车），但研究发现，最经济的解决方案是提前升级电网，而非逐步应对。这样，随着更多电动汽车接入，电网将能更轻松地满足其充电需求，同时利用V2G技术将这些车辆转化为电网可调用的电池资源，从而帮助稳定电网。
可再生能源的间歇性（如太阳能和风能的不稳定性）使得电网必须不断平衡发电量与用户需求。传统化石燃料发电可以通过增加燃烧量来应对需求上升，但可再生能源则需要储能设备。例如，上个月加州的电池储能系统曾满足了43%的电力需求，相当于胡佛水坝的六倍输出。V2G技术并非要取代大型电池储能设施，而是将它们拆分为分布于城市各处的小型储能单元。当傍晚时分太阳落山、用电需求上升时，电网可以同时调用电池储能设施和电动汽车来供电。此外，参与该计划的车主还能获得相应的补偿。
不过，V2G技术可能会缩短电动汽车电池的使用寿命，因为频繁的充放电会加速电池损耗。尽管如此，电力公司已经开始将旧电池（当其容量降至70%至80%时需更换）重新用于电网的固定储能设施。加州大学圣地亚哥分校可再生能源与高级数学实验室主任Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez表示：“这为电池的再利用提供了一种良好方式。例如，如果车主参与了试点项目并提供V2G服务，三年后我们可能会为其更换新电池。”
此外，V2G技术可以与另一种支持电网的策略——主动管理充电（active managed charging）结合使用。该策略通过算法调整电动汽车夜间充电时间，避免所有车辆在傍晚同时充电。例如，车主回家后插上充电线，但电流可能不会立即流动，而是在深夜大多数人休息时才开始。系统还能识别车主早上离家的时间和所需电量，从而在适当时间启动充电。然而，即使结合这两种技术，仍无法彻底解决未来电网的问题。Song强调：“我们必须尽快升级电力系统，因为V2G并不是万能的解决方案。”
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
There’s a technology sitting idle in garages and driveways across America that provides a solution to its own potential problem. As more and more electric vehicles tap into the grid, their giant batteries add to the system’s load. Timing is also a challenge: When people get home from work and plug their cars in, so too is everyone elsewhere switching on their own appliances, like washing machines and ovens and such.
But instead of being burdens to the electrical system, a clever trick is putting EVs on a trajectory to help save it. More models feature the ability to send their energy back to the grid in times of high demand — a trick known as vehicle-to-grid, or V2G — forming a vast network of backup power across a city. As demand wanes through the night, they charge up, ensuring an EV owner has enough juice to get to work in the morning.
However, a new study warns that for V2G to fully compensate for all those batteries plugging in, the technology needs an assist, in the form of infrastructural improvements like new transformers and transmission lines. That will create a more resilient system and encourage the growth of renewable energy. “You have to upgrade your power system as soon as possible,” said Ziyou Song, an energy systems engineer at the University of Michigan and co-author of a new paper describing the findings. “V2G is really helpful, for sure — 100 percent. But just to some extent, V2G itself cannot resolve the charging demand of so many electric vehicles in the future.”
For this study, the researchers modeled scenarios for the San Francisco Bay Area, projecting how quickly EVs and solar power will be adopted — that is, how much demand will be put on the grid as renewable energy increases. Drilling deeper, they also projected where and when EVs might charge. (As with any modeling, there are some uncertainties here: EV adoption might happen slower or faster than expected, for example. The loss of federal tax credits for buying the vehicles might be reducing demand, but on the other hand, the gasoline price shock from the Iran war might drive more folks to go electric.) They also considered what it would cost to upgrade the grid over the same period.
All told, the modeling found that the cheapest option is to proactively upgrade the grid in anticipation of these changes, instead of doing so in phases over time in reaction to them. Then, as more EVs plug in, the vehicles will be able to draw enough power without the system straining. And with V2G, they’ll form a fleet of batteries that grid operators can tap to meet demand. In other words: EVs can help stabilize the grid, so long as they’re equipped with the technology to provide power in addition to taking it. “V2G plus the proactive power system upgrade will address the entire issue,” Song said.
This, in turn, can help smooth the “intermittency” challenge of renewables. Any grid must constantly balance the amount of electricity it’s generating with what its customers need at any given moment. With fossil fuels, utilities can just burn more gas or coal as demand rises. But renewable energy works differently, because the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing. That’s why utilities are investing in batteries that store that power for later use: at one point late last month, they met 43 percent of demand in California, or six times the output of Hoover Dam.
The promise of V2G isn’t that it will replace battery farms, but instead to essentially break them up into smaller ones spread across town. If the sun goes down at 5 pm when everyone is getting home and demand is rising, a utility can call on its battery facilities, but also on EVs, to send electricity into the system. (Anyone participating in the program would be paid for that juice.) Alternatively, those vehicles can electrify individual homes, divorcing those abodes from the grid, further reducing overall demand. All of this is good for EV owners, too, as they’re not drawing electricity when it’s most expensive. It wouldn’t just be passenger vehicles, either: Pilot projects are turning electric school buses — and their jumbo batteries — into reliable assets for the grid.
In these early days of V2G, utilities are still working out how to incentivize EV owners to participate, and how much to compensate them for sending power to the grid. The idea is to reach a sort of critical mass, where there’s enough people involved that it won’t matter if some folks choose to opt out. “When you’re operating 3,000, 30,000, 300,000, then any individual customers having different behavior won’t matter,” said Chris Rauscher, vice president and head of grid services at the battery storage and solar company Sunrun, which has been running V2G pilot projects.
The idea is to turn a vehicle from a depreciating asset into a source of income for the owner. One wrinkle, though, is that V2G could reduce the lifetime of a battery, due to the extra cycles of charging and discharging. Still, utilities are already repurposing old EV batteries — which need to be replaced when they drop to 70 to 80 percent of their original capacity — as stationary assets on the grid. “That’s a good way to keep getting value out of them,” said Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez, director of the Renewable Energy and Advanced Mathematics Laboratory at the University of California San Diego, who studies the grid but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “The program could even swap the battery for the EV owner. So, say, if you sign up for this pilot where you provide V2G services, after three years, we replace your battery with a new one.”
This tech can be paired with another powerful technique for supporting the grid, known as active managed charging. This opt-in program uses algorithms to stagger when EVs charge at night, instead of them all drawing power at 5 pm. When participants get home, they plug in, but the electrons might not flow until midnight, when most folks are asleep and not using much energy. The system also recognizes when an EV owner leaves for work in the morning, and how much battery they need, so charging switches on with enough time to spare.
Still, even combined, active managed charging and V2G alone can’t fix the grid of tomorrow. “We have to upgrade our power system as soon as possible,” Song said, “because V2G is not a silver bullet.”
2026-04-14 05:55:00
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: After the US and Iran failed to reach a longer-term peace agreement over the weekend, President Donald Trump is trying something new: blockading the Strait of Hormuz.
How does that work? Iran already closed the Strait, a crucial passage for oil and natural gas, to most foreign traffic shortly after the US-Iran war began. Now, Trump’s blockade will also stymie traffic to Iranian ports and limit Iran’s ability to sell its own oil, further disrupting the global market.
CENTCOM, the US military command covering the Middle East, has said that the blockade does not extend to ships “transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports” — but given the Strait’s ongoing closure, it’s unlikely much other traffic will resume unless Iran wants it to.
What is Trump trying to accomplish? Trump still wants the Strait of Hormuz fully reopened, which last week’s ceasefire — despite his demands — did not achieve. Now, he appears to be betting that imposing his own closure targeting Iranian shipments will force Iran to give ground.
In a Truth Social post over the weekend, he wrote that “At some point, we will reach an ‘ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT’ basis” for the Strait.
What’s the context? As we mentioned above, US and Iranian delegations met in Pakistan over the weekend to try to negotiate a peace deal addressing the ongoing conflict, the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. That didn’t work out, so it’s back to the drawing board.
Now what? The blockade aside, the US-Iran ceasefire is still in place until next week, and we may get another round of talks before it expires. Whether that will bear fruit is another question: Vice President JD Vance described the US proposal over the weekend as “our final and best offer.”
The blockade is also likely to drive prices higher worldwide — and increase economic pressure on both countries to reach an agreement.
Hi readers, have I mentioned that bike racing is maybe the most beautiful sport in the world? I’m sure I have. Specifically, I am thinking about this weekend’s edition of Paris-Roubaix, a race also known as the Hell of the North, and its winner, Wout van Aert, who triumphed on Sunday after years of injuries, mishaps, and being almost but not quite there.
Patrick Redford, Defector’s steadfast cycling correspondent, does a better job than I can of capturing what van Aert’s victory means, and you can read his story here with a gift link (and watch van Aert’s triumphant sprint here).
Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
2026-04-14 04:35:05
This past week has been a disaster for Vice President JD Vance. He embarked on two foreign adventures — campaigning for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and leading peace negotiations with Iran — that ended in total failure. Orbán lost by an enormous margin; Iran quit the talks, and President Donald Trump announced a new blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.
These events are not just humiliating for Vance, but reflect a deeper failure of his vision for the world — one that he hoped to advance as vice president, but appears to be crumbling just as he tries to take the MAGA mantle.
When it came to US foreign policy, Vance has had two overarching goals: to turn the United States into a patron of Europe’s far-right parties, and to move away from the kind of military adventurism that had long defined the Republican Party.
In both areas, he is failing spectacularly. European far-right parties across the continent are increasingly distancing themselves from Washington; Trump’s foreign policy has been militaristic since pretty much day one, and has only escalated over time.
And these failures are related. Trump’s foreign policy aggression, on issues ranging from Greenland to Iran, has alienated Europeans en masse. Rather than see him as a kindred spirit, populists increasingly see his nationalist ambitions as in conflict with their own.
“The Trump administration is currently toxic for most far-right parties in Europe,” said Cas Mudde, an expert on the European right at the University of Georgia.
The stakes here are big — not just for Vance’s personally, but the future of the broader right.
Vance, like other would-be successors to Trump, has tried to stake out a distinctive vision for the MAGA movement and its future after the president. His ambitions for a stronger global right are part of that package. But as vice president, Vance has been forced by necessity to defend Trump’s record even when it betrays his own purported core principles. The weekend’s twin disasters showed just how politically and practically untenable this marriage is turning out to be.
It’s a tough spot for him to be in, but ultimately a problem of Vance’s own making. He thought Trumpism could be a vehicle for his own ideology — when in fact it was always defined by to Trump’s own impulses. Vance, and his ideological fellow travelers, will have to live with the consequences of his error.
Like many on the right, Vance saw Trump as an ideological opportunity.
Vance is the highest-profile avatar of the right-wing tendency termed “postliberalism:” a distinctive group of mostly Catholic intellectuals united by a particular critique of the pre-Trump political order. Postliberals believe that the greatest problems of modernity are, at heart, the fault of liberalism.
The liberal preoccupation with individual rights, markets, and social “progress” has, in their view, produced a world stripped of meaning — one in which people feel depressed and impoverished because they lack the spiritual sustenance to feel otherwise. In their view, liberalism should be replaced by a vaguely defined postliberal alternative: one in which the state, guided by religious logic, is much more involved in shaping the moral character of its citizens. Carrying out this project would require not just winning elections, but a kind of “regime change” in America that would force liberal intellectuals and activists from their positions shaping public discourse and morals.
There is a reason that postliberals like Vance openly admired Viktor Orbán’s regime: They saw his state as a model for what the United States should become.
If this all sounds a bit like an authoritarian scheme for asserting a kind of socially conservative control over a diverse and fractious country — well, it kind of is. There is a reason that postliberals like Vance openly admired Viktor Orbán’s regime: They saw his state as a model for what the United States should become. And they regarded Trump as the best vehicle for their ambitions to smash the liberal institutions in the US and Europe that they both despised.
Vance, a self-described postliberal, was supposed to drive that vehicle. He focused much of his energy on building a distinctively postliberal foreign policy: one that turned the United States away from the distraction of massive Middle Eastern wars, and toward the allegedly urgent task of spiritual renewal inside the European continent — which is to say, bolstering the far-right parties that share postliberalism’s ideological preoccupations.
This was evident as early as February 2025, when Vance traveled to the Munich Security Conference to deliver a speech upbraiding Europe’s leaders for their alleged persecution of far-right factions. It was most clearly expressed in the 2025 National Security Strategy, written in large part by a Vance aide, that simultaneously calls for a pullback from the Middle East and a policy of soft regime change in Europe.
“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence,” the strategy declares. “Our broad policy for Europe should prioritize…cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”
Vance’s efforts this past week, both in Hungary and Iran, reflected this overall vision. Their failures were not accidental, but reflective of the most fundamental problem with his strategy: the “vice” in his title.
Donald Trump is, like the postliberals, a right-wing authoritarian. Unlike the postliberals, however, he has zero attachment to any kind of abstract principles. He has a set of gut instincts that point in a particular ideological direction, but can manifest in unpredictable and downright bizarre ways.
In the second term, this has produced a Europe policy that seems laser-targeted to weaken America’s standing on the continent, and a Middle East policy that has grown more and more belligerent over time.
Leading the European far-right would require, at a bare minimum, remaining on good terms with said far-right parties. This seemed like it would be an easy task, but Trump managed to blow it up. His tariffs, and especially his threats to annex Greenland, have made him toxically unpopular on the European continent — forcing far-right parties to distance themselves from their longtime ally in the name of nationalism.
“Our subjugation would be a historic mistake,” Jordan Bardella, a leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, said in a January 2026 response to Trump’s attempts on Greenland.
On the Middle East and military adventurism, it seems Vance just misread Trump from the jump.
While the vice president claims his boss was a dove, it has been clear for his entire career that Trump has deeply hawkish foreign policy instincts. He called for seizing Iranian oil deposits in the 1970s, supported the invasion of Iraq before he was against it, escalated several US wars during his first term, and then bombed Iran’s nuclear program and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in his second.
Now, these problems are compounding. Few on the European continent support Trump’s Iran war, and NATO allies have refused to provide any formal assistance. That has led Trump to lash out at European countries, which has incited yet another nationalist backlash — forcing a new round of denunciations from the far-right politicians who used to make up his continental fan club. The pushback has included Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, French National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, and the Alternative for Germany party that Vance had personally defended in Munich.
“The MAGA’s should really stop campaigning internationally because everyone and everything they support loses the elections,” Theo Francken, the conservative defense minister of Belgium, posted on X.
Were Vance currently serving as the junior senator from Ohio, he might be able to mount a principled critique of the president’s record. He could accuse Trump of undermining the “nationalist international” bridging the Euro-American right, or pull a Tucker Carlson and accuse Trump of betraying his base on Iran.
But Vance is vice president, and has taken on responsibilities directly related to these areas. He led the charge on outreach to the far-right, and served as a lead negotiator with Iran. In both areas, he was set up for failure — and, going forward, will have a very tough time distancing himself from Trump in these areas (recall Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in 2024).
In effect, the most promising avatar of postliberal politics in America has been saddled with a record that betrays some of his movement’s core principles. And it’s not clear how he’ll ever escape the baggage.
2026-04-14 03:00:00
2025年1月21日，特朗普总统、第一夫人梅拉尼亚、副总统JD·万斯及其夫人乌莎一同出席华盛顿国家大教堂的全国祈祷仪式。然而，特朗普随后在Truth Social上发表了一篇长文，直接批评教皇利奥十四世，指责其“在犯罪问题上软弱”且“对外国政策有害”，并称其批评美以联合对伊朗的战争是“迎合激进左翼”、损害天主教会利益，甚至鼓励伊朗发展核武器。特朗普还向媒体表示自己并不喜欢这位教皇。
此次攻击是特朗普对教皇最直接的批评，引发天主教徒群体的强烈反弹，包括一些此前支持他的共和党人。随后，特朗普又发布了一张AI生成的图片，将自己描绘为耶稣基督治愈病人的形象，身后有象征美国、军队和尖刺的天使浮雕。这一行为被广泛视为亵渎，进一步激化了宗教保守派的不满。
特朗普的这一系列举动加剧了美国天主教徒与宗教右翼之间的裂痕。此前，美国天主教徒已因特朗普政府对伊朗的军事行动与梵蒂冈产生分歧，而教皇与特朗普政府的紧张关系也因2025年初美以联合对伊朗的军事行动而加深。尽管特朗普声称自己“误以为是作为医生”而发布图片，但此举仍被批评为对宗教信仰的严重冒犯。
值得注意的是，特朗普的宗教争议并非首次，但此次事件的规模和影响远超以往。据3月的福克斯新闻民调，美国天主教徒对伊朗战争的反对率达10个百分点，对特朗普处理方式的不满更是高达20个百分点。此外，宗教右翼人士如保守派作家罗德·德雷赫尔和埃里克·埃里克森等也公开批评特朗普的行为，认为其亵渎言论正在动摇支持者对他的信任。
这一事件不仅暴露了特朗普与宗教保守派之间的深层矛盾，也对副总统JD·万斯（一名天主教徒）的政治形象构成挑战。万斯需在维护特朗普、协调MAGA派系关系与应对天主教批评之间寻找平衡。与此同时，宗教右翼内部也开始反思特朗普的政策，尤其是其对伊朗的强硬立场与宗教信仰的冲突。
尽管特朗普此前因个人行为与宗教价值观不符而长期受到批评，但此次事件似乎标志着其宗教支持基础正在瓦解。分析人士指出，特朗普的攻击性言论可能进一步削弱其在宗教保守派中的影响力，甚至影响共和党的未来走向。
To celebrate the second Sunday of Easter, President Donald Trump appears to have decided that blasphemy might be the best option.
Late Sunday evening, Trump posted a wordy attack of Pope Leo XIV on Truth Social, saying the first American-born leader of the Roman Catholic Church was “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” Leo, by criticizing the joint US-Israeli war on Iran, is apparently “catering to the Radical Left,” “hurting the Catholic Church,” and encouraging Iran to develop nuclear weapons. “I am not a fan of Pope Leo,” Trump later told reporters.
It’s his most aggressive and direct attack yet on the Vicar of Christ, who has been uncharacteristically vocal this year in his criticism of militaristic foreign policy, including making a direct appeal to the president to end the conflict in Iran and promote peace and respect for human life. The pope indicated he would not back down, telling reporters he had “no fear” of the White House. And he threw in a little barb as well, calling the Truth Social posts “ironic”: “The name of the site itself. Say no more.”
Picking a fight with the spiritual leader for more than 50 million Americans was a risky move, if not unprecedented for Trump, and he faced immediate pushback from some otherwise right-leaning Catholics.
But somehow, things only got worse from there: Trump followed up with an AI-generated image depicting him as Jesus Christ healing the sick, as he’s flanked by symbols of America and both military and spiked figures floating like angels behind him.
It was that second sacrilege that expanded the blowback into a full-on political crisis: This time not only from Catholics, but from evangelicals and other denominations — including many who are typically aligned with Trump.
“I don’t know if the President thought he was being funny or if he is under the influence of some substance or what possible explanation he could have for this OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy,” the evangelical writer Megan Basham posted. “But he needs to take this down immediately and ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God.”
“God shall not be mocked,” Riley Gaines, the former competitive swimmer and prominent conservative activist, posted.
“This is gross blasphemy. Faith is not a prop,” the young Christian conservative Brilyn Hollyhand said in a video condemning Trump’s post.
“It’s more than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit,” said former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a vocal Christian critic of Israel and Trump’s second term.
“Trump is my President; Jesus is my Lord,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost posted. “I am not confused about which is which, and hope this image is removed.”
By Monday afternoon, Trump had deleted the post, a rare climbdown, while claiming he didn’t understand what he had shared. “I thought it was me as a doctor,” he said, according to Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove.
It’s hardly news that Trump’s personal behavior doesn’t exactly line up with Ten Commandments, but critics have pointed out this hypocrisy for well over a decade with little apparent impact on his conservative religious support.
The big question then is why is this time different?
Trump’s latest religious post set off a firestorm, but the kindling has been catching over the last few months.
Christians in the United States have been divided by the joint US-Israeli war on Iran: Some anti-Israel MAGA Catholics were already turning on Trump, much to his fury; conservative evangelicals and Christian Zionist nondenominational believers have already been chafing against American Catholics on the right; and policy criticisms of Trump’s foreign policy and immigration agenda from the Vatican and American bishops were putting right-leaning American Catholics in an untenable position.
Now, it looks like Trump is seriously testing just how much it would take for religious conservatives to break with his movement. And he’s taking every shot he can.
Start with Pope Leo. Right before Trump’s latest post, Catholics were already dealing with a shocking series of reports about a meeting between Pentagon officials and the Vatican’s top diplomat to the US back in January, in which one Trump aide issued what was reportedly interpreted by some church officials as a threat over the pope’s criticism of military operations. Though the tone and content of this meeting is contested by both the Pentagon and the Vatican, the effect of these reports was the same: the growing sense that the pope and the president are at odds.
Perhaps for that reason, the response to Trump personally attacking Leo was especially strong compared to prior incidents, like when he posted an image of himself as pope after Pope Francis died. The latest episode raised the specter of the president focusing his frustrations over the war on the church writ large, a problem that could worsen if the conflict continues to spiral and his approval ratings worsen.
The Bishop Robert Barron, a member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission who is popular with traditionalist Catholics and the religious right, called his statements “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful,” and urged “that serious Catholics within the Trump administration — Secretary Rubio, Vice President Vance, Ambassador Brian Burch, and others — might meet with Vatican officials so that a real dialogue can take place.”
Other prominent American Catholics also weighed in: The head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said he was “disheartened” that Trump would attack Leo, and reminded him that the pope is not a politician, but “the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.”
Already there are signs of a clear cleavage opening up between most American Catholics and Trump, particularly over the Iran war. Trump’s net approval is now negative with them, after exit polls reported that he won this religious part of the electorate by nearly 20 points during the 2024 election. The most recent temperature checks of American Catholics on Iran are also negative: they disapprove of the Iran war by 10 points, and disapprove of Trump’s handling of it by a margin of 20 points, per a March Fox News poll.
“Trump has already lost some support from the Catholic right, which leans isolationist, over his decision to go to war with Iran.”
Peter Laffin, Washington Examiner senior editor
“Trump has already lost some support from the Catholic right, which leans isolationist, over his decision to go to war with Iran,” Washington Examiner senior editor Peter Laffin, a Catholic writer, told me. “If I were a Republican candidate heading into 2026, I’d be more concerned with how his attacks on Pope Leo are playing among the Hispanic Catholics who swung heavily to the GOP in 2024.”
And this whole episode again brings the future of the Republican Party into the spotlight. It creates a new obstacle for Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, who keeps getting torn between defending the president, managing relations between MAGA factions, and fielding Catholic criticism, all as he defines his political career along the lines of his Catholic conversion (which is the theme of his forthcoming book).
“This will be consequential for JD Vance,” the Trump critic Candace Owens, an emblematic figure of a growing new antiwar, and sometimes antisemitic, Catholic wing of conservative media, posted Sunday.
“Can we now all admit that this is a cult of personality, the leading worshiper of which is its leader?” Rod Dreher, a conservative Eastern Orthodox Christian writer known for his close ties to Vance, posted. He was also critical of Trump’s posts about Pope Leo.
But in addition to how this plays out with Catholics, it’s with the greater religious conservative community, of evangelical and nondenominational Christians, where Trump has now exposed himself unnecessarily.
They’ve largely stuck with him as the war carries on, motivated in part by the prevalent Christian Zionist beliefs that underlie their faith and support for the modern Israeli state. Now, Trump’s aggressive sacrilege — casting himself as Jesus on social media — on top of already threatening Iran with annihilation right after Easter, the most sacred time of the Christian calendar, is causing a kind of self-reflection, doubt, and criticism of the president that we have not seen before.
“The media is paying attention to [podcasters] breaking with Trump over Iran,” evangelical radio host Erick Erickson posted. “What they really should be paying attention to are the Christian Trump supporters who have stood with him through Iran, who are waking up to his blasphemy.”
2026-04-13 22:20:00
美国民主党众议员埃里克·斯瓦尔韦尔（Eric Swalwell）于2026年1月10日在加州洛杉矶发表演讲。随后，因一系列关于性不当行为的指控，他在周日暂停了竞选加州州长的活动。这些指控引发了全国民主党的强烈反应，他们试图将其排除出竞选并控制舆论影响。此前，斯瓦尔韦尔是争夺取代州长加文·纽森（Gavin Newsom）职位的激烈初选中的一位热门候选人，该职位具有巨大的政治和政策影响力，也可能是其在美国政坛崛起的契机。如今，他几乎完全孤立，一些民主党人甚至呼吁将其驱逐出国会。
斯瓦尔韦尔现年45岁，是一位典型的民主党政治人物，因在有线电视和社交媒体上批评特朗普而受到“抵抗运动”圈子的欢迎。他曾在2020年总统竞选中短暂参选。
据《旧金山纪事报》报道，一名匿名前幕僚指控斯瓦尔韦尔在她21岁入职后，通过Snapchat发送露骨照片试图与她发展婚外情，并在她醉酒无法同意的情况下实施了两次性侵行为。同日，CNN也报道了该幕僚的证词，以及另外三位女性描述的斯瓦尔韦尔未经邀请的性骚扰行为，包括带其中一位去酒店房间。
斯瓦尔韦尔称这些指控是“完全虚假的”，否认任何非自愿行为，并暗示这些指控是在他作为州长竞选热门人选之际的政治攻击。他同时承认自己犯有“判断失误”，但表示这些是“与我妻子之间的私事”。在宣布退出竞选时，他重申自己犯了“错误”，但表示将“反击这些严重且虚假的指控”。
民主党对他的支持迅速减少。在指控曝光后，他的好友、亚利桑那州参议员鲁本·加莱戈（Ruben Gallego）撤回了对其的支持，许多其他支持者也纷纷退出。众议院少数党领袖杰克·杰弗里斯（Hakeem Jeffries）和前众议院议长南希·佩洛西（Nancy Pelosi）呼吁他退出竞选，支持他的主要劳工团体也撤回了支持。
目前，斯瓦尔韦尔原本是加州州长竞选的领跑者，但如今该职位的竞争格局已发生变化。下一热门候选人是民主党富豪托马斯·斯特耶（Tom Steyer），他曾是2020年总统竞选者之一，其自筹资金的竞选活动目前略高于竞争对手，如前众议员凯蒂·波特（Katie Porter）、前卫生部长克里夫·贝卡拉（Xavier Becerra）、圣何塞市长马特·马汉（Matt Mahan）和前洛杉矶市长安东尼奥·维拉莱戈萨（Antonio Villaraigosa）等。加州州长选举于6月2日举行，采用“丛林初选”（jungle primary）形式，所有党派候选人同台竞争，得票前两名进入最终选举。此前民主党担心两名共和党候选人可能占据这两个席位，导致民主党在大选中被排除在外。但斯瓦尔韦尔的退出可能有助于民主党整合选票，而特朗普对前福克斯新闻主持人史蒂夫·欣顿（Steve Hilton）的背书也可能帮助共和党实现类似目标。至于卡玛拉·哈里斯（Kamala Harris）是否能在此时介入，答案是否定的，时机已过。
关于斯瓦尔韦尔在国会的职位，共和党正威胁投票将其驱逐。这可能引发民主党对其他共和党议员（如得克萨斯州的托尼·冈萨雷斯和佛罗里达州的科里·米尔斯）以及面临腐败指控的民主党议员希拉·切尔菲卢斯-麦卡蒙（Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick）的驱逐投票。不过，驱逐需要三分之二多数票，因此可能性较低。然而，据Axios报道，至少部分民主党人和共和党人表示愿意跨党派投票，以驱逐多名议员，这可能带来比预期更多的共识。
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) suspended his campaign for California governor on Sunday after a series of disturbing accusations of sexual misconduct. The scandal had drawn a fierce response from Democrats nationwide as they tried to force him out and keep the fallout contained.
Just days ago, Swalwell was one of the frontrunners in a crowded primary field to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom — a job with immense political and policy clout, and a potentially star-making role in American politics. Instead, Swalwell now finds himself almost completely isolated, with some Democrats even calling for his expulsion from Congress.
The 45-year-old is a politically generic Democrat whose takedowns of Trump on cable news and social media made him popular in Resistance circles. You might also remember his extremely short-lived presidential run in the 2020 cycle.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Friday that an unnamed former staffer alleged that the married Swalwell pursued her for an affair after she was hired at age 21, including by sending lewd photos via Snapchat. Their relationship became physical, but she said he went on to sexually assault her on two occasions in which she was too drunk to consent. CNN ran its own story the same day, which included the staffer’s account, along with three additional women who described unsolicited sexual advances by the Congress member, including one who said he took her to his hotel room while she was intoxicated.
He has called the accusations “flat false,” denied any nonconsensual behavior, and said that the allegations “come on the eve of an election where I’ve been the frontrunner candidate for governor,” implying that they’re politically motivated. However, he also acknowledged unspecified “mistakes in judgment” that he says “are between me and my wife.” In announcing his departure from the race, he repeated that he had made “mistakes,” but said that he planned to “fight the serious, false allegations that have been made.”
By stampeding away from his candidacy. Soon after the allegations were reported, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a close friend who had chaired Swalwell’s presidential campaign and may have similar ambitions of his own, withdrew his endorsement along with many other supporters. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on him to drop out. Major labor groups backing his candidacy also withdrew their support.
Swalwell was the nominal frontrunner in a race where no candidate has caught fire. The next-in-line candidate in a weak Democratic field is Tom Steyer, a Democratic megadonor and fellow 2020 presidential also-ran whose self-funded campaign has so far narrowly outpolled rivals like former Rep. Katie Porter, former Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, among others.
California’s June 2 race is a “jungle primary” where candidates from all parties run at once and the top two advance. There had been some concern among Democrats that two Republican candidates might take both slots, leaving Democrats locked out of the general election, but Swalwell’s implosion could help Democrats consolidate their vote, while Trump’s recent endorsement of former Fox News host Steve Hilton likely will do the same on the Republican side.
And before you ask: Yes, it’s too late for Kamala Harris to swoop in.
Republicans are threatening to call a vote on his expulsion from the House. This could lead Democrats to call for expulsion votes of their own against Reps. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) and Cory Mills (R-FL) over their respective scandals, which could in turn also lead to an expulsion vote for Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), who faces corruption charges. The votes likely won’t succeed, as expulsion requires a two-thirds majority. But Axios reports that at least some Democrats and Republicans have indicated they would cross party lines and vote to expel multiple members, so there could be more bipartisan consensus than you might expect.