2025-12-06 19:00:00
2025年10月29日，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在韩国庆州国立博物馆的仪式上，接受了韩国总统李在明赠送的古代新罗国王所戴王冠的复制品。特朗普曾多次在社交媒体上自称“国王”，并发布AI生成的自己戴王冠的照片。尽管这并非真正的王权，但两位政治学者认为，若想理解特朗普政府常常难以预测的外交政策，或许可以将其视为一种“新君主主义”（neo-royalism）。
“新君主主义”这一概念由斯蒂西·戈达德（Stacie Goddard）和亚伯拉罕·纽曼（Abraham Newman）提出，他们认为特朗普政府的行为方式更接近于中世纪欧洲的君主制，而非现代国家体系。这种模式的特点包括：将私人企业与外交政策结合，通过家族成员和旧有商业伙伴进行谈判，而非依赖传统官僚体系；同时，通过削弱较弱国家的主权来维护全球等级秩序。
特朗普并非第一个表现出这种行为模式的现代领导人，但鉴于美国在全球体系中的重要性，他有能力塑造国际秩序，并使这种政治模式成为常态。例如，俄罗斯代表在试图说服美国接受其对乌克兰的和平计划时，就试图绕过传统的美国国家安全体系，强调俄罗斯作为能源、稀土交易和太空探索等领域的“机会之地”。
此外，特朗普政府在外交政策中频繁将家族商业利益与国家事务交织，如在与越南的贸易谈判中批准特朗普高尔夫球场，或其子女在中东的房地产交易。在埃及一次聚焦加沙的峰会上，印尼总统曾要求与特朗普的儿子埃里克会面，而特朗普则提议将被清洗的加沙地区改造成海滩度假胜地，这正是新君主主义的体现。
特朗普对“威斯特伐利亚主权”（即所有国家主权平等）的概念也持轻视态度。他认为某些国家的主权高于其他国家，例如他提到购买格陵兰或让加拿大成为美国第51个州，这些并非传统意义上的领土扩张，而是强调对其他国家的支配地位。
特朗普的政策工具，如关税，也符合新君主主义的逻辑。通过“解放日”关税和“90天内达成90项协议”的承诺，美国要求其他国家以投资承诺换取更有利的贸易条件，而这些投资往往惠及特朗普的亲信。例如，美国商务部部长霍华德·卢特尼克的儿子们正在协助韩国在美国投资的数据中心项目。
各国还向特朗普赠送了象征性的礼物，如韩国的王冠、瑞士的金条和劳力士手表，以及卡塔尔的喷气式飞机。尽管这些礼物引发了道德争议，但特朗普似乎并不在意，甚至表示自己“愚蠢”才会拒绝如此昂贵的飞机。
两位学者指出，特朗普的“新君主主义”并非孤立现象。例如，意大利前总理西尔维奥·贝卢斯科尼曾依赖专属媒体和金融圈子巩固权力，而俄罗斯的权力集团也常被比作沙皇时代的宫廷。然而，特朗普的圈子之所以独特，是因为美国的经济和军事实力使其有能力重塑国际秩序，而这些改变一旦形成，将难以逆转。
例如，特朗普政府已部分收购英特尔，并从美国对华销售AI芯片中获利。他经常带着科技巨头如埃隆·马斯克和英伟达的黄仁勋出访，将美国的外交影响力与商业利益紧密结合。戈达德表示，这种做法起初可能不被重视，但随着时间推移，会逐渐成为国际关系的常态，并建立相应的基础设施，如沙特的数据中心和美国的F-35战机，这些都难以轻易撤回。
如果这种模式不被逆转，未来可能会面临国际秩序的动荡。纽曼认为，当特朗普卸任时，这不会是终点，而可能成为国际危机的时刻。因此，或许我们都需要重新学习一下马基雅维利的智慧。
It was not a particularly subtle gift, but as the recipient himself would probably admit, he’s never been a particularly subtle guy.
When President Donald Trump arrived in South Korea last month, President Lee Jae Myung presented him with a bejewelled golden crown, a replica of one worn by ancient Korean rulers. The gift came just a few days after millions across the US for the so-called No Kings rallies against Trump’s government. Trump has, in the past year, referred to himself as “the king” on social media and posted AI-generated images of himself wearing a crown.
This is all hyperbole, of course. Trump is not a king. But if you want to understand this administration’s often unpredictable foreign policy, it might be useful to think of him as one sometimes.
That’s what two political scientists argued in a recent article for the journal International Organization. Stacie Goddard and Abraham Newman coined the term “neo-royalism” to describe how the Trump administration behaves on the world stage.
This is not just another argument that Trump is an authoritarian — the article isn’t concerned with Trump’s domestic governance at all.
Rather, they argue that the traditional methods of studying international relations, which assume that sovereign nation-states are the primary actors on the world stage, are inadequate when it comes to talking about an administration that acts in often puzzling ways from a traditional international relations perspective, for instance by ratcheting up pressure on allies like Canada and Denmark while seeking deals with adversaries like China and Russia.
Instead, they argue, Trump’s reliance on a “clique composed of family members (primarily his children), fierce loyalists (Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem), and elite hyper-capitalists (often tech elites like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen).” The clique tends to mix private interest and national interests in an open and unashamed way that’s totally alien to modern state bureaucracies.
Other countries have taken advantage of this tendency: The Wall Street Journal recently reported that as it seeks to sell the White House on its preferred peace plan for Ukraine, Russian representatives have been looking to “bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity” involving energy, rare earth deals and even space exploration. It’s not the hardest sell for a president who, back in the 1980s, tried to sell Soviet leaders on a plan to end the Cold War while building a Trump tower across the street from the Kremlin.
“It’s misleading if you think of it just as corruption or just a degenerate category of neoliberalism,” Newman, a political scientist at Georgetown University, told Vox. “It’s an entirely different system of how actors distribute power amongst themselves.”
It is an approach that has more in common with royal houses before the Enlightenment than modern nation-states and one that has the power to reshape not just American politics but the world order.
Much ink has been spilled over Trump’s challenge to the so-called liberal international order — the systems of global institutions and norms that emerged after World War II — but Goddard and Newman suggest that, to fully understand Trump, we have to go back to an earlier war and an even more fundamental world order. This kind of analysis is having something of a moment. As Vox reported last year, other scholars have proposed “neomedievalism” to describe a world where great powers like the US, Russia, and China no longer seem to have the political power to match their military might.
Scholars often use the term “Westphalian” to describe the modern nation-state system, referring to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that ended the 30 Years’ War. Under Westphalian sovereignty, a state has exclusive political power within a set of defined borders. While states may differ in their overall military or economic power, they all have an equal right to sovereignty.
Before the 17th century in Europe, nation-state borders were less defined, with power often overlapping. The king of Spain could be the duke of Burgundy. The king of Prussia could be an absolute ruler in his own territory, but also subordinate to the Holy Roman Empire. Alliances were often cemented through marriage.
This kind of politics might seem remote in today’s world of standing national armies and UN Security Council debates. “I think sometimes we have a little bit of historical amnesia,” said Goddard, a professor of political science at Wellesley College. “It’s not that long ago that these actors were dominant, and families like the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns were still coexisting right along sovereign states up until World War I.”
They never entirely went away. In today’s Persian Gulf, royal families that blur the lines between private business interests and national affairs are still the norm. (Saudi Arabia is a country named after the Saud family that rules it, after all.) So it’s not all that surprising that Trump broke precedent by making the first foreign trip of his term to the Gulf and seems to have such an affinity for the region’s absolutist rulers.
First, the extent to which it’s a family business. Important diplomatic agreements are often negotiated by family members like his son-in-law Jared Kushner or his daughter’s father-in-law Massad Boulos, or longtime business associates like Steve Witkoff with often ill-defined job descriptions.
The neoroyalist framing can shed a little light on the recent confusion over whether the 28-point Ukraine-Russia peace plan, negotiated by Witkoff and Kushner with a prominent Russian businessman but partly disavowed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was actually a US plan or not. It was not really a Trump administration document — but it was a Trump family one.
Trump has also mixed his family’s business interests and American foreign policy in an unprecedented way, whether it’s Vietnam circumventing its own laws to approve a Trump golf course during trade talks or Trump’s sons’ real estate deals in the Middle East. There was a telling hot mic moment at a Gaza-focused summit in Egypt in October when Indonesia’s president asked Trump for a meeting with his son, Eric. Trump’s suggestion for redeveloping an ethnically cleansed Gaza into a beachfront resort was the most extreme example of this tendency.
Trump also has little regard for the Westphalian notion that all countries have equal sovereignty. In his world, some countries are a little more sovereign than others. According to Newman and Goddard, his talk about purchasing Greenland or making Canada the 51st state is not actually about traditional territorial expansion, spheres of influence or a “Donroe Doctrine.” (There are few benefits to controlling Greenland that the US doesn’t currently enjoy, as well as some new costs.) Rather, Newman said, “it’s about dominance, about saying [to Canada and Denmark], you are not equal to us.”
Foreign leaders seem to be accommodating themselves to the new pecking order (or at least the more explicitly defined pecking order), most explicitly and hilariously when NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte referred to Trump as “daddy” at a meeting last June.
Trump’s preferred all-purpose foreign policy tool, tariffs, also make sense through a neo-royalist view: They are likely attractive to the administration because they reinforce these power dynamics. The “liberation day” tariffs and pledge to negotiate “90 deals in 90 days” created a dynamic where countries had to pony up the cash in the form of investment pledges in the US to negotiate more favorable trade terms. The ruling clique often stands to benefit from these pledges, as in the case of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons, who are helping to finance the data center projects in the US that South Korea is building as part of its investment pledge.
Then there are the literal gifts from countries seeking the “king’s” favor. The crown from South Korea, a gold bar and a Rolex from Switzerland, and, most famously, a jet from Qatar. While these lavish gifts have raised ethics concerns, Trump often appears not even to understand why they would be an issue, telling reporters that he would have to be “stupid” to turn down such an expensive plane.
The authors point to some recent precedents for Trump’s neoroyalism, such as how former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi “depended on an exclusive media and financial clique” to solidify political power, rather than traditional power. The factions of friends, business partners, and old security service colleagues that hold (and often compete for) power in Vladimir Putin’s Russia have drawn many comparisons to a czarist court.
But, Newman and Gannett stay, what makes the Trump clique distinctive is that because of the economic and military power of the country it governs, it has the power to shape the international order in its own image, and that the changes might be hard to roll back.
Consider how, under Trump, the US has taken a partial ownership stake in Intel and is taking a cut of NVIDIA’s sales of AI chips to China. Trump now regularly travels the world with a retinue of tech CEOs like Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang in tow, intermingling US geopolitical power and business interests in a way that will be hard to roll back.
“It starts as a series of practices, you know, people might not even take it very seriously,” said Goddard. “But over time, it becomes not only the norm, but you get infrastructures that are built up over this. You know, you can’t easily move the data centers from Saudi Arabia. You can’t get the F-35s back, right? The chips are already in the UAE, right? These types of things are much stickier.”
If this isn’t rolled back, where is it headed? Newman said to Vox that “in these types of orders, succession is always a point of incredible instability. Some people may think [when Trump leaves] then it will just be over, but our bet is that it will not be over. It will be a moment of international crisis.”
All of which suggests it may be time for all of us to brush up on our Machiavelli.
2025-12-06 03:50:00
2025年5月，奥尔加·乌尔比娜和她的儿子亚雷斯·韦伯斯特在美最高法院外举行抗议活动，反对特朗普总统试图终结出生公民权。此前，最高法院曾审理过与特朗普行政命令相关的案件。去年1月，由里根任命的法官约翰·科亨诺尔成为首位阻止特朗普攻击出生公民权的联邦法官，他直言不讳地表示：“我在法庭上工作了四十余年，我无法回忆起有哪一案件的问题像现在这样明确。”科亨诺尔是第一个得出这一结论的法官，但绝不是最后一个。在过去11个月里，许多法官都得出相同的结论：特朗普没有权力剥夺在美国出生的美国人的公民身份。
尽管最高法院在决定是否受理此案时有所拖延，但最终于周五宣布将听取特朗普诉芭芭拉案，该案询问宪法是否允许特朗普单方面剥夺在美国出生的美国人的国籍。如果大法官们能保持非党派立场，特朗普将以9比0的比分败诉。
特朗普在第二个任期的第一天发布了一项行政命令，声称要剥夺一些美国新生儿的国籍。该命令名为《保护美国公民身份的含义和价值》，声称要剥夺两类美国人的国籍：第一类是出生时母亲为无证移民，且父亲不是美国公民或合法永久居民的儿童；第二类是出生时父亲具有类似移民身份，而母亲当时合法但临时居留在美国的儿童。
在美国法律中，很少有比“在美国出生的婴儿是否是美国公民”这一问题更明确的了。美国内战后不久，美国通过了第十四修正案，其中第一句话规定：“所有在美国出生或归化的人，且受美国司法管辖者，均为美国公民及其居住州的公民。”“所有的人”包括那些母亲无证或父母移民身份不符合特朗普喜好的人。
第十四修正案有一个例外条款：只有“受美国司法管辖”的人在出生时才能享有出生公民权。所谓“受美国司法管辖”是指受美国法律约束。因此，如果最高法院认定特朗普所反对的美国人不受美国司法管辖，那么他们将无法被驱逐，因为这些人不受联邦移民法约束。
不过，这一例外条款并非完全空洞。正如最高法院在1898年的“美国诉温戈金·阿克案”中所解释的，这是一个狭窄但真实的例外，适用于特定群体。1868年通过第十四修正案时，被排除在公民权之外的主要群体是“直接效忠于各自部落的印第安人后裔”。当时，美国与原住民部落的关系常常紧张，甚至发生军事冲突，如小大角河战役发生在修正案通过后八年。因此，当时不给予这些人公民身份是合理的，尽管美国在100多年前已改变了对部落公民的政策。
1924年的《印第安人公民权法案》赋予了“所有在美国领土范围内出生的非公民印第安人”公民身份。此外，温戈金·阿克案还指出了一些其他不被视为受美国司法管辖的儿童群体，包括“外国君主或其外交官的子女、出生在外国政府船只上的儿童，以及在敌对占领期间出生的敌方儿童”。
其中，第一个豁免情况至今仍有现实意义。例如，去年8月，一家联邦上诉法院裁定，一名出生在纽约市的男子，其父亲当时是享有美国法律豁免权的尼加拉瓜外交官，因此他不具备美国公民身份。但宪法明确规定，所有在美国出生且不受其法律豁免的人都是美国公民。特朗普的律师们只能通过曲解宪法文本来绕过这一事实。例如，在请求最高法院审理出生公民权案件的请愿书中，特朗普的法律团队声称，第十四修正案仅适用于“完全受美国政治管辖”的儿童，即他们对国家有“直接和即时的效忠”并可享受其保护。然而，这些“完全”和“政治”等词并未出现在修正案的原文中。特朗普的论点实际上是在宪法中添加不存在的词语。如果大法官们具备任何诚信或对法治的忠诚，他们都将拒绝这一荒谬的论点。
Last January, when Reagan-appointed Judge John Coughenour became the first federal judge to block President Donald Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship, he did not mince words. “I’ve been on the bench for over four decades,” Coughenour said. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is.”
Coughenour was the first judge to reach this conclusion, but he was hardly the last. In the last 11 months, numerous judges have reached the only conclusion that the Constitution’s text permits: Donald Trump does not have the power to strip Americans who are born in this country of their citizenship.
The Supreme Court took its sweet time before deciding to take up this issue, but, on Friday, the Court finally announced that it would hear Trump v. Barbara, a case asking whether the Constitution permits Trump to unilaterally denationalize Americans born in the United States. If the justices are capable of behaving in a nonpartisan manner, Trump will lose this case 9-0.
On the first day of his second term, Trump issued an executive order purporting to strip citizenship from some newborn Americans. The order, entitled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” claimed to remove citizenship from two classes of Americans. The first is children born to undocumented mothers whose fathers are not citizens or lawful permanent residents of the United States. The second is children with fathers who have similar immigration status and whose mothers were lawfully but temporarily present in the US at the time of birth.
There are few questions in US law that are more settled than the question of whether babies born in the United States are citizens of this country. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the nation ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Its first line is, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
“All persons” means all persons. That includes people with undocumented mothers or whose parents otherwise have an immigration status that Donald Trump does not like.
The Fourteenth Amendment’s text contains one exception to this general rule: Only people “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States at the time of their birth may claim birthright citizenship. Someone is subject to US jurisdiction if they are bound by US law. So, if the Supreme Court were to conclude that Trump’s disfavored Americans are not subject to US jurisdiction, that would mean that he would be unable to deport them, because they are immune from federal immigration law.
Which isn’t to say that this “subject to the jurisdiction” exception is completely empty. As the Supreme Court explained more than a century ago in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), it is a narrow-but-real exception that applies to limited groups of people.
When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, the most significant group that was excluded from citizenship was “children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes.” At the time, US relations with indigenous tribal nations were often tense and even resulted in military conflict; the Battle of Little Bighorn took place eight years after the amendment was ratified.
So, it made sense not to give citizenship to people who may be hostile to the US in 1868, although the United States changed its policy on tribal citizens more than 100 years ago. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 bestowed citizenship on “all noncitizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States.”
Additionally, Wong Kim Ark identified a few other groups of children born in the United States who are not subject to its laws: “children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory.” The first of these exemptions is still occasionally relevant today. Last August, for example, a federal appeals court concluded that a man born in New York City, whose father was a Nicaraguan diplomat with diplomatic immunity from US law at the time, is not a citizen of the United States.
But, the Constitution’s text is clear that everyone born in the US who is not immune from its laws is a citizen. And Trump’s lawyers can only get around this fact by pretending that the Fourteenth Amendment says something else. In their petition asking the justices to hear the birthright citizenship cases, for example, Trump’s legal team claims that the Fourteenth Amendment only “extends to children who are ‘completely subject’ to the ‘political jurisdiction’ of the United States, meaning that they owe ‘direct and immediate allegiance’ to the Nation and may claim its protection.”
This might be a plausible argument if the words “completely” and “political” actually appeared in the Fourteenth Amendment’s text. But, they do not. Trump’s argument literally rests on an attempt to add nonexistent words to the Constitution.
If the justices have any integrity at all, or any loyalty to the rule of law, they will reject this frivolous argument.
2025-12-06 03:30:00
2025年6月16日，在加拿大阿尔伯塔举行的G7峰会期间，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普与法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙、加拿大总理马克·加诺、英国首相基尔·斯塔默以及德国总理弗里德里希·默茨一同合影。| Suzanne Plunkett/AFP via Getty Images
美国不再以居高临下的姿态向其他国家政府讲授如何治理国家，也不再试图按照自己的模式塑造其他国家的社会，但对西方欧洲国家似乎是个例外。特朗普政府在周四晚间低调发布了其期待已久的国家安全战略（NSS）。NSS是一份定期发布的文件，阐述总统政府的外交政策优先事项。2025年版NSS的发布在华盛顿引发了一些困惑和关注。据称该文件早在夏季就已完成，但因多位官员要求修改，其发布被推迟了几个月。最近，财政部长斯科特·贝森特据说试图淡化有关中国的措辞，以免影响正在进行的贸易谈判。
这份NSS主要由《93号航班选举》一书的作者迈克尔·安顿撰写，他于2024年9月在第一版草案完成后辞去了特朗普总统政策规划主任的职务。该文件是一份典型的“特朗普主义”文件，对外国政策精英出卖美国利益、推崇全球主义原则进行了大量批评。不出所料，这与拜登政府2022年发布的战略大相径庭。但与特朗普首次任期2017年发布的战略相比，也有显著不同，后者主要聚焦于中国对美国外交政策构成的威胁。
在新战略中，西方美洲地区被置于优先位置，重点是防止大规模移民和打击“毒品恐怖分子”。该战略引入了“特朗普修正案”对门罗主义的重新诠释，即“阻止非美洲国家竞争者在我们的美洲地区部署军事力量或其他威胁性能力，或控制战略关键资产。”（这是否意味着要反对中国在该地区建设的港口和其他基础设施？目前，这似乎不如移民和毒品问题优先。）
关于中国部分，虽然一些鹰派人士担心美国会彻底放弃对中国的强硬立场，但该文件仍保留了美国长期以来对台湾主权问题的模糊态度，并强调了台湾的战略重要性。文件最引人注目的部分是关于欧洲的，其中指出欧洲面临“文明消失”的风险：
欧洲面临的主要问题包括欧盟及其他跨国机构对政治自由和主权的侵蚀、移民政策正在改变整个大陆并引发冲突、对言论自由的审查以及对政治反对派的压制、出生率暴跌、以及国家身份和自信心的丧失。如果当前趋势持续，欧洲将在20年后变得“不可识别”。文件还实际上支持欧洲的极右翼政党：“美国鼓励其在欧洲的政治盟友推动这种精神复兴，而欧洲爱国政党的日益崛起确实令人充满希望。”
此外，文件还呼吁“在欧洲各国培养对当前发展轨迹的抵抗”。该战略呼应了副总统JD·万斯在5月慕尼黑安全会议上提出的主题，引发了欧洲各国的强烈反应。
关于欧洲的移民政策、欧盟成员国对国家主权的影响，或大陆的仇恨言论法律，确实存在讨论空间。但将西方欧洲视为全球民主最受威胁的地区，这种说法显得奇怪。这与文件中其他部分强调主权和尊重政治差异的立场形成鲜明对比。
在中东地区，该战略批评美国“错误地试图迫使这些国家，尤其是海湾君主国，放弃其传统和历史政府形式”。在非洲，美国长期以来的策略被描述为过于专注于“传播自由主义理念”。文件中几乎没有提到中国对政治反对派的压制和对少数民族的镇压。
此外，该战略并未谴责俄罗斯对乌克兰战争的发动或持续，而是将责任归咎于“那些对战争中不稳定少数政府抱有不切实际期望的欧洲官员，这些政府往往践踏民主的基本原则来压制反对派”。
该战略还批评欧洲国家，特别是德国，继续依赖俄罗斯天然气进口，尽管它并未提及一个事实：特朗普政府在欧洲的意识形态盟友，尤其是匈牙利的维克托·欧尔班，正在积极推动欧洲摆脱对俄罗斯能源的依赖。
德国外长约翰·瓦德普法尔回应称，他的国家不需要“来自外部的建议”来指导其内部政治。这份战略究竟有多少会被付诸实践？正如洪都拉斯最近的例子所示，特朗普在国际舞台上的行动往往更多受到个人关系的影响，而非意识形态。但就“美国优先”的外交政策理念而言，该文件是对这一理念的清晰阐述。它并非孤立主义或“克制”的世界观，而是呼吁美国在国际事务中采取更加积极主动的角色。值得注意的是，在这种世界观中，俄罗斯的复仇主义者和中国的共产党人往往被视为对美国利益的威胁不如欧洲的自由主义者严重。
America is out of the business of giving patronizing lectures to other governments about how to run their countries and trying to mold other societies in its own image… except for the countries of Western Europe.
With little fanfare, the Trump administration released its long-awaited National Security Strategy Thursday night. The NSS is a periodically released document that lays out a presidential administration’s foreign policy priorities. The release of the 2025 document has been the subject of some confusion and curiosity in Washington. It was reportedly completed over the summer, but its release has been held up for months, with various officials pushing for amendments. In recent days, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had reportedly been pushing to water down language on China so as not to jeopardize ongoing trade talks.
This NSS was primarily written by “The Flight 93 Election” author Michael Anton, who stepped down as President Donald Trump’s director of policy planning in September after the first draft was completed. It is a very MAGA document, heavy on criticism of foreign policy elites for selling out America for globalist principles. Not surprisingly, this is a very different strategy from the one the Biden administration released in 2022. But it also differs significantly from the one the first Trump administration released in 2017, which was heavily focused on the foreign policy threat posed by China.
In the new strategy, the Western Hemisphere takes precedence, with a heavy focus on preventing mass migration and combating “narco-terrorists.” The strategy introduces a “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine: to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.” (Does this mean pushing back against Chinese-built ports and other infrastructure in the region? So far, this has been less of a priority than migration and drugs.)
The section on China is not quite the total sell-out that some China hawks feared, with some notably hawkish language on Taiwan’s strategic importance; the language keeps in place America’s longstanding ambiguous stance on Taiwanese sovereignty.
The most noteworthy section of the document concerns Europe, where the administration sees the risk of “civilizational erasure”:
The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.
Europe, the document continues, will be “unrecognizable in 20 years” if present trends continue. And the document contains what is effectively an endorsement of European far-right parties: “America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.” It also calls for “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”
The strategy picks up on the themes laid out by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference in May, which caused a full-fledged freakout in European capitals. There’s room for debate about Europe’s migration policies, the impact of EU membership on national sovereignty, or about the hate speech laws on the continent. But it’s strange to suggest — as the document implicitly does — that Western Europe is the region of the world where democracy is most under threat.
This section is in notable contrast to the emphasis on sovereignty and respect for political difference elsewhere in the document. In the Middle East, for instance, the administration condemns “America’s misguided experiment with hectoring these nations—especially the Gulf monarchies—into abandoning their traditions and historic forms of government.” In Africa, they suggest, US strategy has been guided for far too long by the desire for “spreading liberal ideology.” There’s nary a mention of China’s stifling of political opposition and crackdowns on ethnic minorities.
The strategy does not include any condemnation of Russia for either launching or perpetuating the war in Ukraine, instead putting blame on “European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition.”
The strategy calls out European countries — naming Germany specifically — for continuing to rely on Russian gas imports, though it does not mention the inconvenient fact that the Trump administration’s ideological allies in Europe, particularly Hungary’s Viktor Orban, are the ones pushing hardest against efforts to wean Europe off Russian energy. Responding to the document, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said his country does not need “outside advice” on its internal politics.
How much of this strategy will actually be put into practice? As shown by the recent case of Honduras, Trump’s actions on the world stage are often guided by personal connections as much as ideology. But to the extent there is an “America First” foreign policy ideology, the document is a pretty tidy encapsulation of it. Far from an isolationist or “restrained” worldview, it calls for a very assertive American role on the world stage. And notably, it’s a worldview in which Russian revanchists and Chinese communists often seem to be treated as less of a threat to America’s interests than European liberals.
2025-12-06 00:30:00
2025年12月4日，一名示威者在美国佐治亚州亚特兰大市疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）总部外举着标语。美国一个有影响力的疫苗顾问小组预计将推翻长期建议，即新生儿应在出生24小时内接种乙肝疫苗，这一改变被认为几乎肯定会危及儿童健康。| Megan Varner/Bloomberg via Getty Images
美国联邦政府将结束其对所有新生儿出生时接种乙肝疫苗的普遍推荐，这是美国历史上对儿童疫苗接种计划最重大的一次调整，由美国卫生与公众服务部长罗伯特·F·肯尼迪小儿子推动。根据周五发布的新的美国免疫实践咨询委员会（ACIP）建议指南，特朗普政府将把这一决定交由“个人自主选择”。如果CDC采纳这些建议，大多数父母将自行决定是否在医生指导下为婴儿接种乙肝疫苗（母亲乙肝病毒呈阳性或未知的孕妇仍会被建议在婴儿出生时接种）。
CDC此前已撤回新冠疫苗的推荐，让个人自行决定，今年秋季也对一种较少使用的麻疹联合疫苗采取了类似做法。但乙肝疫苗的情况不同，自1982年以来一直被普遍推荐，近年来美国超过70%的新生儿在出生后三天内接种了该疫苗。乙肝疫苗也是公共卫生领域的重大胜利。在20世纪80年代之前，每年约有30万例乙肝新发病例，而2023年估计仅有1.4万例。
在本周的会议上，由肯尼迪小儿子于6月彻底重组的疫苗委员会挑战了长期以来的共识，即所有新生儿应在出生几天内接种第一剂乙肝疫苗。发言人称，出生时接种的疫苗可能无法提供长期保护，且其安全性尚未得到充分研究。他们还声称，除非母亲乙肝病毒呈阳性，否则新生儿感染乙肝的风险较低。
然而，这些观点很快遭到委员会成员和外部专家的质疑。一位专家表示：“这让人想起魔术师的手法，他们只挑选支持自己观点的数据。”梅森纳博士则追问是否有任何健康状况正常的婴儿在出生时接种乙肝疫苗后仍感染乙肝的案例。CDC工作人员表示，他们并不知道有这样的案例。
同样，关于安全风险的报告主要依赖于“缺乏证据”的论点，而非实际数据。当梅森纳博士询问是否有任何关于出生时接种乙肝疫苗导致危害的确凿证据时，发言者马克·布莱克希尔（一位反疫苗活动人士，曾声称疫苗与自闭症有关，并目前在CDC任职）回答称：“安全证据非常有限，我不愿对安全或危害做出猜测。”
尽管如此，委员会仍继续推进改变建议。这种政策转变体现了反公共卫生的倾向。在本周的会议上，一些希望修改乙肝疫苗建议的委员会成员承认，他们缺乏足够的数据支持自己的决定，但认为由于许多美国人不再信任公共卫生专家，他们必须采取行动。这种做法相当于逐步拆解几十年来的科学共识。
布莱克希尔表示：“我多年来一直批评CDC，所以能在这个机构内部工作是一种荣誉和特权。”许多肯尼迪挑选的疫苗委员会成员都持有与他相似的边缘观点，这些观点更符合他长期以来主张的疫苗导致自闭症等健康问题的错误理论。
“他们个人受到自身观点的驱使，这些观点他们多年来一直公开表达，”陈博士说道。“现在他们有了一个讲台来传播自己的观点。”
如今，他们有机会真正改变政府政策。即使没有紧急理由，他们也不会浪费这个机会。尽管特朗普政府声称相信“黄金标准科学”，但其疫苗专家显然愿意为了符合其议程而忽视科学证据。
在本周的会议上，多次有委员会成员和联邦卫生官员——包括一些支持改变的人——承认，对于出生时接种乙肝疫苗的两个月时间线，或委员会批准的新建议（即父母可在接种后续剂量前进行抗体检测以检查孩子的免疫力）缺乏基于数据的正当理由。这种做法很可能会进一步削弱公众对疫苗的信任。
许多共和党人原本就对政府的健康指导持怀疑态度，而如今民主党人也开始失去信心。如果疫苗接种率大幅下降，更多人可能会因此患病。一位在免疫实践咨询委员会会议上发表意见的医生警告称，这种改变可能导致即使一个孩子也感染乙肝。这就是他们所承担的风险。
The federal government is ending its recommendation that every infant receive a hepatitis B vaccination at birth, the most substantive change to the childhood immunization schedule yet under US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Instead, the Trump administration is leaving the question to “individual decision-making,” according to new guidelines recommended by the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Friday. If the new guidelines are adopted by the CDC, as expected, most parents will be left to decide on their own in consultation with their doctor. (Mothers who test positive for hepatitis B or whose hep B status is unknown will still be advised to give their baby the shot at birth.)
The new recommendations will suggest, however, that if your child does not receive the birth dose, you should wait until they are at least two months old before giving it to them. At least two members of the committee — Dr. Joseph Hibbeln and Dr. Cody Meissener — argued that there was no scientific basis for the two-month recommendation and that no data had been presented to justify it.
“It’s unconscionable,” Hibblen said Friday shortly before the final vote. Nevertheless, the change was approved as part of a 8-3 vote.
The changes are in keeping with Kennedy’s track record so far on vaccines, seeking to cast doubt on their value and remove official recommendations for them, leaving decisions instead to individual patients. The CDC already walked back the Covid-19 vaccine recommendations to leave it up to individuals and did the same earlier this fall for a rarely used combination measles vaccine.
But the hepatitis B vaccine is a different case.
It has been universally recommended since 1982, and more than 70 percent of newborns have received it within their first three days of life in the US in recent years. It’s also a clear public health win. Before the 1980s, there were about 300,000 new cases of hepatitis B every year. In 2023, there were an estimated 14,000 new cases.
So, why would they do this?
During this week’s meeting, the new vaccine committee — whose membership had been completely overhauled by Kennedy Jr. in June to better reflect his own vaccine skepticism — challenged the long-held consensus that every newborn should receive their first dose within days of being born. Presenters argued that the birth dose might not confer long-term protection to patients and that the safety risks of the vaccine hadn’t been appropriately studied. They also asserted that, unless a mother is positive for hepatitis B, the risk to a newborn is low.
But, those arguments were quickly challenged, both by some of the committee members and outside experts watching the meeting. “It calls to mind a magician with a sleight of hand,” Chen told me. “They were picking data, whatever it is that supports their argument.” Meissner pressed the presenters on whether there was any confirmed case of somebody who was otherwise healthy and received the recommended hep B birth dose but later developed an infection. CDC staff later said they were not aware of any such case.
Likewise, the presentation on safety risk was largely limited to appealing to an absence of evidence, arguing that the available data was simply too limited. When Meissner pressed on whether there is any real evidence of harm from the birth dose, the presenter, Mark Blaxill, an anti-vaccine activist who has alleged a connection to autism and is now employed at the CDC, replied, “The safety evidence is very limited. I wouldn’t want to speculate on safety or harm.”
Nevertheless, the committee pressed ahead with changing the guidance.
This shift in policy represents the victory of anti-public health vibes. Over and over again in this week’s meetings, the committee members who wanted to make a change to hep B vaccine guidance acknowledged the limited evidence to justify their decision but argued that, because so many Americans no longer trust public health experts, they had to do something. That something amounts to a piece-by-piece dismantling of decades of scientific consensus.
“I’ve also been a critic of the CDC for many years,” Blaxill said, “so it’s been an honor and a privilege to work on the inside.”
Many of Kennedy’s vaccine committee members were specifically selected because they shared fringe views on vaccines that aligned more with Kennedy’s, who has long pushed the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism, as well as other health problems.
“They are personally motivated by their own internal views, which they voiced for many years,” Chen said. “They now have a soapbox on which they can preach.”
And now, they are in a position to actually change government policy.
They aren’t going to waste that opportunity — even if there is not an urgent reason to make these changes. While the Trump administration claims to believe in “gold-standard science,” its vaccine experts are clearly willing to skirt the science if it fits their agenda. More than once during this week’s meetings, committee members and federal health officials — even some of those who were supportive of the changes — acknowledged a lack of data-based justification for the two-month timeline for the first shot or a new recommendation approved by the committee that parents may administer antibody tests to check their child’s immunity before administering later doses.
That is an approach that is likely to further erode trust in vaccines. Many Republicans were already dubious about the government’s health guidance, and now Democrats are losing faith, too. If vaccination rates drop far enough, more people may get sick. One doctor who spoke during the public comment period at the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting urged panel members to consider the possibility that even a single child could get infected hepatitis B because of this change.
That is the risk they are taking.
2025-12-06 00:25:00
示威者在最高法院外抗议选区划分不公。 | Olivier Douliery/Getty Images 在周四晚间，最高法院恢复了得克萨斯州的一项选区划分不公行为，预计此举将使共和党在国会众议院获得五个额外席位。此前，一家下级联邦法院曾裁定该选区划分不公。在政治争议较大的案件中，大法官们似乎完全按照党派立场进行投票，只有三位民主党大法官投了反对票。最高法院在“阿博特诉联合拉丁裔公民联盟案”（Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC）中的裁决被视为对共和党的胜利，同时也可能对今后所有挑战选区划分不公的联邦诉讼产生毁灭性影响。尽管LULAC案的裁决书简短，但它对选区划分不公诉讼的原告施加了沉重的负担，使得未来几乎没有人能够成功挑战此类选区划分。
要理解LULAC案，了解两种不同类型的选区划分不公之间的区别是有帮助的。通常，州立法机构会根据执政党来设计选区，这类选区划分被称为“党派性”选区划分。有时，州政府也会通过选区划分改变某些立法选区的人种构成，通常是为了给白人选民带来优势，这类选区划分被称为“种族性”选区划分。实际上，党派性和种族性选区划分之间的界限往往很模糊。例如，黑人美国人通常倾向于支持民主党。因此，旨在最大化共和党权力的选区划分往往也会减少黑人代表的数量。
在LULAC案之前，法院在判断某项选区划分是出于党派还是种族原因时，会做出重要区分。在2019年的“Rucho诉Common Cause案”中，最高法院的共和党多数裁定联邦法院不能受理针对党派性选区划分的诉讼。因此，如果法院认定某个选区划分完全出于党派原因，该划分将被维持。此外，最高法院还采取了多项措施削弱针对种族性选区划分的原告，预计在本任期后期会进一步废除《投票权法案》中对这类选区划分的保护。然而，在LULAC案之前，仍有一种情况允许原告成功挑战种族性选区划分。根据最高法院在2024年的“Alexander诉南卡罗来纳州NAACP案”中的裁决，如果立法机构在选区划分中将种族作为主要考虑因素，那么该选区划分将受到最严格的宪法审查。这很重要，因为在LULAC案中，得克萨斯州在实施该选区划分之前，唐纳德·特朗普总统的司法部曾发信要求得克萨斯州重新划分选区以改变其种族构成。司法部声称，任何包含少数族裔占多数选区的地图都是非法的，并威胁要起诉得克萨斯州，除非其消除这些选区。下级法院在推翻该选区划分时指出，有大量证据表明得克萨斯州是为了遵守司法部的要求而重新划分选区的。LULAC案的最高法院裁决并未明确反驳这一结论，但认为下级法院未能对挑战种族性选区划分的原告采取强有力的“立法善意”推定。根据LULAC案多数意见，下级法院未能正确解释模糊的直接和间接证据，从而对立法机构不利。
这一结论有两点值得注意。首先，最高法院的共和党多数曾在“阿博特诉佩雷斯案”（2018）及其他一些案件中裁定，州立法机构在划分选区时享有“种族无罪”的推定。其次，LULAC案中确实存在大量证据支持原告的主张，即得克萨斯州是出于种族原因划分选区，同时也存在证据支持得克萨斯州的主张，即其划分选区是出于党派原因。然而，LULAC案的裁决似乎表明，当双方都有证据时，法院应倾向于支持州政府，维持被挑战的选区划分。因此，除非能够提出一个同样具有党派倾向但种族影响较小的替代选区划分方案，否则种族性选区划分几乎无法被挑战。如果得克萨斯州要最大化共和党的选票优势，就必须分裂黑人和拉丁裔社区，LULAC案的裁决意味着得克萨斯州几乎可以随意这样做。
此外，最高法院在LULAC案裁决中还批评下级法院“在选举前夕修改选举规则”。虽然不清楚大法官们是否考虑了下级法院裁决的时间点，但这一说法显然在事实层面是错误的。下级法院是在2025年11月18日裁定得克萨斯州的选区划分不公，距离2026年的中期选举还有将近一年时间。无论如何，LULAC案的裁决可以被描述为对州政府选区划分不公诉讼提供全面豁免的又一步。在“Rucho”、“Perez”和“Alexander”等案件中，最高法院已经让挑战任何类型的选区划分变得极为困难，而LULAC案则为原告增加了新的负担。这些负担的累积效应可能对几乎所有反对种族或党派性选区划分的诉讼当事人造成压倒性的影响。最高法院的共和党多数似乎正在完全摆脱对选区划分不公的责任，并向各州发出明确信号：它们可以随意行事。
The Supreme Court reinstated a Texas gerrymander that is expected to give Republicans five additional seats in the US House on Thursday evening, after a lower federal court struck that gerrymander down. As is often the case in politically contentious cases, the justices appear to have voted entirely along party lines, with only the Court’s three Democrats dissenting.
The Court’s decision in Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is a victory for the Republican Party. And it is likely to have brutal implications for all future federal lawsuits challenging gerrymandered maps. Though the Court’s order in LULAC is brief, it imposes such heavy burdens on gerrymandering plaintiffs that few, if any, such plaintiffs will be able to succeed in future cases.
Indeed, LULAC is so hostile to anti-gerrymandering suits that many civil rights lawyers and plaintiffs may simply decide not to bother challenging illegal maps, because their chances of prevailing in court will be so hopeless.
To understand LULAC, it’s helpful to also understand a distinction between two different types of gerrymanders. Often, state legislatures draw maps that favor whichever party controls that legislature. These maps are known as “partisan” gerrymanders. Other times, states may draw their maps to change the racial makeup of various legislative districts, often to give an advantage to white voters. These maps are known as “racial” gerrymanders.
As a practical matter, the line between racial and partisan gerrymanders is often thin. Black Americans, for example, tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. So a map that seeks to maximize Republican power will often closely resemble a map that seeks to minimize Black representation.
Prior to LULAC, however, it mattered a great deal whether courts determined that a particular map was drawn for partisan or racial reasons. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Supreme Court’s Republican majority held that federal courts may not hear challenges to partisan gerrymanders. So, if a court determined that a disputed map was drawn entirely for partisan reasons, the map would be upheld.
The Court has also taken several steps to undercut plaintiffs challenging racial gerrymanders, and it is expected to eliminate the Voting Rights Act’s safeguards against these gerrymanders later in its current term. But, prior to LULAC, there was still one set of circumstances when a plaintiff challenging a racial gerrymander could prevail. As the Court held in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP (2024), “if a legislature gives race a predominant role in redistricting decisions, the resulting map is subjected” to the most skeptical level of constitutional scrutiny.
This matters because, before Texas enacted the gerrymander at the heart of the LULAC case, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department sent a letter to Texas that essentially ordered it to redraw its maps to change their racial makeup. The DOJ claimed, falsely, that it is illegal for a state to draw any map that includes a district where white people are in the minority, and two other racial groups combine to make up the majority. And it threatened to sue Texas unless the state eliminated districts that fit this description.
As the lower court that struck down the maps explained in its opinion, there is considerable evidence that Texas decided to draw its new gerrymandered maps in order to comply with this letter.
The Supreme Court’s order in LULAC doesn’t explicitly contest this conclusion. But it faults the lower court for not applying a very strong presumption against plaintiffs challenging a racial gerrymander. “The District Court failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature,” according to the LULAC majority.
Two things can be said about this conclusion. The first is that the Court’s Republican majority has said, in Abbott v. Perez (2018) and some later decisions, that state legislatures enjoy a presumption of racial innocence when they draw legislative districts. The second is that, in LULAC, there was in fact considerable evidence supporting both the plaintiffs’ claim that Texas drew its lines for racial reasons, and Texas’s claim that it drew them for partisan reasons.
But LULAC seems to conclude that, when there is evidence on either side, courts must construe that evidence in favor of the state and uphold the challenged map. It may still be possible for civil rights plaintiffs to challenge racial gerrymanders when the evidence of racial bias is simply overwhelming, but cases like that are exceedingly rare.
LULAC’s strong presumption against anti-gerrymandering plaintiffs, moreover, will likely make it nearly impossible to challenge maps that target Black voters. Because nearly any map that seeks to diminish Black representation will closely resemble a map drawn for partisan purposes, there will almost always be some evidence that an anti-Black racial gerrymander was drawn solely to achieve partisan ends.
The LULAC majority also faults the plaintiffs in this case for not producing “a viable alternative map that met the State’s avowedly partisan goals.” This line imposes a rigid rule that anyone challenging an alleged racial gerrymander must produce a map that is just as partisan as the one drawn by the state, but that does not divide voters based on race.
The Court did previously say, in Alexander, that a plaintiff’s failure to submit such a map “may be dispositive in many, if not most, cases where the plaintiff lacks direct evidence or some extraordinarily powerful circumstantial evidence” that a state drew its lines for racial reasons. But the lower court in LULAC found considerable direct evidence that Texas drew its lines to comply with the DOJ’s demand for a racial gerrymander. LULAC, by contrast, says that any plaintiff’s failure to produce an alternative map is a “near-dispositive” reason for them to lose their case.
The upshot of this new, “near-dispositive” requirement is that racial gerrymanders will only be vulnerable when it is possible to draw an equally partisan map with fewer racial implications. If the only way for Texas to maximize Republican voting power is to crack up Black and Latino communities, LULAC establishes that Texas may nearly always do so.
Additionally, there’s also a troubling line in the Court’s LULAC order faulting the lower court for “alter[ing] the election rules on the eve of an election.” It is unclear whether the justices considered the timing of the lower court’s order when it weighed the merits of the LULAC case, but the line is still troubling because it is obviously factually false. The lower court did not hand down its decision on the “eve of an election.” It declared the Texas gerrymander unconstitutional on November 18, 2025 — almost a full year before the 2026 midterm elections.
In any event, it is fair to describe the LULAC decision as merely an incremental step towards full lawsuit immunity for states that draw gerrymandered maps. The Court, in cases like Rucho, Perez, and Alexander, already made it very difficult to challenge a gerrymander of any kind. LULAC merely adds new burdens to already beleaguered plaintiffs.
But the cumulative effect of these burdens is likely to prove overwhelming for nearly all litigants who oppose racial or partisan gerrymanders. The Court’s Republican majority appears to be washing its hands of responsibility for gerrymandering altogether. And it is loudly signaling to states that they can do whatever they want.
2025-12-05 21:30:00
一只年轻的雄性貉蜷缩在一个小型铁丝笼中，位于波兰的一家毛皮农场。| Andrew Skowron/We Animals
全球第二大毛皮生产国波兰正告别毛皮产业。周二，波兰通过了一项法律，计划在未来八年逐步淘汰毛皮农场，这对全球毛皮行业是一个重大打击。2023年，波兰中部欧洲国家的毛皮农民为了制作大衣和装饰品，屠宰了约三百万只狐狸、水貂、貉和天竺鼠，占国际毛皮贸易中动物总数的约七分之一。这些野生动物被关在狭小的铁丝底笼中数月，直到被用二氧化碳气体或肛门电击的方式杀害。它们的毛皮随后被运往世界各地的服装制造商和时尚品牌。
最近的一项民意调查显示，超过三分之二的波兰人支持禁止毛皮农场。波兰总统卡罗尔·纳乌罗基在X平台上发布的视频中表示：“这是一个波兰人期盼多年的决定，反映了我们的同情心、文明的成熟以及对所有生命的尊重。”
自上世纪80年代以来，全球动物权益活动人士一直在反对毛皮养殖。过去几十年进展缓慢，但自2010年代中期以来加速，毛皮养殖动物数量从2014年的1.4亿只下降到2024年的2050万只。这一进展得益于各国的禁令、对大型时尚品牌和零售商的抗议，以及中国和俄罗斯等主要毛皮进口国的经济挑战。波兰的新法律应有助于加快这一趋势。
波兰的禁令是动物权益活动人士坚持不懈的结果，这是他们第七次尝试通过此类法律。同时，这也是联盟建设的典范。尽管波兰的活动人士多年来一直在抗议毛皮农场，但2012年，倡导组织“开放笼子”（Otwarte Klatki）发布了一份涵盖50多家毛皮农场的调查报告，包括一些由波兰毛皮行业巨头拥有的农场。调查显示，动物被密集关在肮脏的小笼中，遭受严重伤害，死动物在笼中腐烂（伴随着大量苍蝇幼虫），动物在笼中来回踱步并不断啃咬笼壁（显示出压力和沮丧）。
此后，“开放笼子”和波兰动物权益组织Viva! Poland继续展开更多调查，并组织抗议活动，推动零售商放弃使用毛皮，同时获得名人和政界人士的支持。
这一故事最初发表于《未来完美》（Future Perfect）通讯。点击此处订阅，探索世界面临的复杂问题以及最有效的解决方法。每周两次发送。
活动人士还在毛皮农场所在的农村地区找到了盟友。欧洲动物保护组织Anima International的主席基斯蒂·亨德森告诉我：“大型毛皮农场是一个巨大的麻烦，气味难以忍受，生活质量下降，房产价值也下跌。”据亨德森称，自2010年代初以来，农村地区的活动人士已组织了约180次抗议活动，平均每月一次。随着全球毛皮产业在过去十年的衰退，波兰的毛皮产业也逐渐萎缩，这削弱了继续维持毛皮农场的经济论点。
该法律将为农场工人和所有者提供补偿，对提前关闭农场的经营者给予更高的支付。
国际毛皮联合会的项目主管Jyrki Sura在一封电子邮件中表示：“虽然这个消息令人失望，但毛皮养殖在欧洲一些国家仍然很盛行，我们的世界领先的毛皮产品仍被顶级时尚品牌使用。”
波兰禁止毛皮农场的举措虽然本身意义重大，但其影响可能波及整个欧洲大陆。2023年，动物福利活动人士在欧盟成员国收集了150万份支持欧盟全面禁止毛皮养殖的签名。这迫使欧盟委员会——欧盟的执行机构——正式考虑并回应这一提议。目前，欧盟仍在权衡是否实施禁令，而波兰、芬兰和希腊的一些政界人士曾对此表示反对。但随着波兰率先在本国实施禁令，这种反对声音可能会减弱。
“如果欧洲最大的毛皮生产国都能禁止这种残酷的行业，那么欧盟就没有理由不这么做，”Anima International的亨德森告诉我。“是时候让布鲁塞尔结束这种零散的政策，制定全面的立法，反映欧洲公民的明确意愿。”
尽管近年来大多数工业化动物剥削形式都在增长，但波兰的禁令和其他反对毛皮养殖的近期进展表明，进步是可能的。就在本周，纽约时装周宣布将不允许在T台上展示毛皮制品，该活动组织的CEO表示，他希望借此“激励美国设计师更深入地思考时尚产业对动物的影响”。
现在显然，未来将是无毛皮的。只是问题在于，这个未来何时到来。
The world’s second-largest fur producer is saying goodbye to fur. On Tuesday, Poland passed a law to phase out fur farms over the next eight years — a major blow to the global fur industry.
In 2023, fur farmers in the Central European nation killed some three million foxes, minks, raccoon dogs, and chinchillas for coats and trim, accounting for about one out of every seven animals in the international fur trade.
The wild animals are confined in small wire-bottom cages for months — in facilities that resemble the kind of factory farms where animals are raised for meat — until they’re killed via carbon dioxide gassing or anal electrocution. Their pelts are then shipped around the world to clothing manufacturers and fashion houses.
A recent poll found that over two-thirds of Poles support a fur farm ban. “This is a decision that Poles have awaited for many years,” Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki said in a video posted on X. “A decision that reflects our compassion, our civilizational maturity, and our respect for all living creatures.”
Since the 1980s, animal activists around the world have campaigned against fur farming. Progress was slow going for decades but accelerated in the mid-2010s, with the number of animals farmed for fur falling from 140 million in 2014 to 20.5 million in 2024.
That progress came about through a combination of country-level bans; protests against major fashion houses and retailers; and economic challenges in China and Russia, the biggest fur buyers. Poland’s new law should only speed up that momentum.
Poland’s fur farm ban is a case study in persistence, given it was activists’ seventh attempt to pass such a law. It’s also a case study in coalition building.
While activists in the country have protested against fur farms for decades, their campaign picked up speed in 2012 when the advocacy group Otwarte Klatki — Polish for “Open Cages” — released a sprawling investigation into more than 50 fur farms, including some owned by titans of the country’s fur industry. The investigation revealed animals packed tightly into small, filthy cages; animals suffering from severe injuries; dead animals rotting in cages with living ones (and lots and lots of maggots); and animals pacing in their cages and repeatedly biting the sides of their enclosures (signs of stress and frustration).
More investigations by Otwarte Klatki — and the animal rights group Viva! Poland — followed, along with protests, campaigns pressuring retailers to ditch fur, and support from celebrities and politicians.
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Activists also found allies in the countryside where the fur farms are located. Bigger fur farms are “a great nuisance,” Kirsty Henderson, president of the European animal protection group Anima International, told me over email. “The smell is unbearable, the quality of life decreases, and property values drop.” According to Henderson, rural activists have held 180 protests — around one per month on average — since the early 2010s.
And as the global fur industry collapsed over the last decade, so did Poland’s, which weakened the economic argument to keep fur farms open. The law will provide severance for farmworkers and owners, with higher payments to operators who shut down sooner.
“It’s obviously disappointing news but fur farming is very strong still in a number of European countries and our world leading fur is used by top fashion brands,” Jyrki Sura, a program director at the International Fur Federation, told me in an email.
Poland’s fur farm ban alone is a big deal, but its impact could ripple across the entire continent.
In 2023, animal welfare activists gathered 1.5 million signatures from European Union citizens in support of an EU-wide fur-farming ban. That required the European Commission — the EU’s executive branch — to formally consider and respond to the proposal. It’s still weighing a ban, which has faced opposition from some politicians in Poland, Finland, and Greece. But that opposition should weaken now that Poland has proactively banned fur farming within its own borders.
“If the continent’s biggest producer can ban this cruel practice, there is no reason the European Union cannot do the same,” Henderson of Anima International told me. “It’s time for Brussels to end the patchwork approach and introduce comprehensive legislation that reflects the clear will of European citizens.”
While most industrialized forms of animal exploitation have only grown in recent decades, Poland’s ban and other recent developments in the campaign against fur farming shows progress is possible. Just this week, New York Fashion Week announced it will not allow fur on runways, with the CEO of the organization that plans the annual event stating that he “hopes to inspire American designers to think more deeply about the fashion industry’s impact on animals.”
The future, it’s now clear, is fur-free. It’s just a matter of how soon that future arrives.