Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has been pardoned by President Donald Trump. Zhao—known as “CZ”—was sentenced to four months in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to breaching US money laundering laws. Binance itself was fined $4.3bn after investigators found it had helped users bypass sanctions. That would be a … Read more
No. One of the more eye-catching claims doing the rounds this week comes from a Fortune article arguing that the U.S. government is “insolvent”. The evidence? The Treasury’s own financial statements for 2025 show roughly $6 trillion in assets against nearly $48 trillion in liabilities. Add in long-term “unfunded” obligations for Social Security and Medicare … Read more
Donald Trump’s second term is going no better than his first. He has failed to end the war in Ukraine, failed to produce a credible healthcare plan, and failed to rein in government spending. Inflation remains elevated, unemployment is rising, and growth is slowing. Strip out AI investment and deficit spending, and the underlying economy … Read more
Predictions This year has been dominated by a convergence of authoritarian and illiberal governments, antisystem parties — typically on the far right — and sympathetic private actors coordinating their messaging and lending each other material support. Many people who would historically have recoiled from far-right politics have instead been drawn in through a constant churn … Read more
America in 2025: When the Cosplay Became Real For years, America’s slide toward authoritarian politics could be dismissed as performance: ironic fascism, meme politics, men in red hats playing at being strongmen. Loud, ugly, but unserious. In 2025, that alibi no longer works. The Republican Party is no longer flirting with extremism — it is … Read more
A year after Donald Trump clawed his way back into the White House, America looks less like a republic and more like a family business — and not a very well-run one. The wealth and security of the United States no longer matter. What matters is the wealth and power of Donald Trump and the … Read more
America is in the middle of its third great era of political violence. The first came after the Civil War, when thousands of Black Americans were lynched and murdered. The second was the 1960s, marked by political assassinations and the murders of civil rights activists. Both of these eras had racial animosity at their heart. … Read more
The Scramble for Europe Last week, JD Vance delivered a speech outlining America’s vision for Europe. Typically, Vance holds little sway in the White House, ranking lower than the person responsible for changing Trump’s nappies. However, this speech marked a significant statement on American foreign policy. We have all grown up under the post-war world … Read more
With Donald Trump heading back to the White House all of my blogs on Trump and the last 8 years of US politics are available for Kindle:
Whatever happens at the ballot box Trump will declare victory in the early hours of Wednesday morning UK time, with huge numbers of votes still to be counted. It is hard to see how violent protests can be avoided. Americans need to brace themselves for what happens next. By any objective analysis the Trump campaign … Read more