Commentary Culture Investigations

When Ursula von der Leyen flew to Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland in July 2025 to end a trade fight, she came home with a 15 percent tariff on most European goods and a promise that Europe would not retaliate. The European Parliament’s trade chief called the deal lopsided. Germany’s chancellor welcomed it anyway. That is how a continent behaves when it believes the other side holds the stronger hand.
More than a year later, the belief has not changed. Europeans can complain about Donald Trump as loudly as they like, and many do, but their conduct tells the real story. They set defense budgets, trade positions and peace plans with one eye on what he and his administration might do next. Europe still treats them as the decisive force in its foreign policy. That matters now because the 5 percent pledge runs to 2035, and the habits Europe forms in the next few years will decide whether it gets there. The lesson is that Washington’s leverage works, and that Europe’s best response is to need it less.
None of this should comfort Trump’s admirers too much, because influence rooted in another country’s dependence is fragile.
The administration’s pressure has moved Europe where polite requests never did. For years, American presidents of both parties asked allies to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense. In 2024, more than two years after Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine, nine of NATO’s 32 members still fell short. Then Trump warned that the United States might not defend laggards, Secretary of State Marco Rubio floated a target near 5 percent, and in June 2025 the alliance pledged to reach it by 2035, including 3.5 percent for core defense. NATO says European allies and Canada raised spending by about 20 percent in 2025, and every member now clears the old 2 percent bar. Whatever Europeans think of Trump’s manner, they believed he meant it, and they acted accordingly.
Skeptics reply that Russia, not Trump, drove the change. Both forces were at work, but only one came with an ultimatum. Moscow’s war had run for years while nine allies lagged. It took a threat from Washington to turn alarm into budgets. The record is uneven: Spain balked at the new target, and Trump says the United States should be excused from it.
Europe can fund Ukraine’s defense but cannot decide how the war ends. Europeans have supplied roughly 180 billion euros in aid since 2022, by one tally from late 2025. Yet they have struggled to shape the terms the Trump administration negotiates, and they openly fear a settlement that leaves Russia unpunished. Their objections count for something; European leaders have resisted pressure on Kyiv to cede territory. But a voice is not a veto. The pattern extends to the Middle East. Trump credited Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia for brokering the Gaza ceasefire in October 2025. The European Union, the world’s largest provider of aid to Palestinians, had little leverage over the outcome. The EU’s economy is many times the size of Russia’s, yet Europe still leans on American intelligence and air defense to support Ukraine. The hard power that settles the outcome sits across the Atlantic, and Brussels knows it.
Europe’s leaders keep choosing accommodation, even when it costs them. They accepted a trade deal that analysts at Berenberg Bank called a victory for Trump. France’s Europe minister, Benjamin Haddad, called it unbalanced, and he was hardly alone. Still, Europe agreed not to retaliate and pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in American energy purchases. The calculation was cold but rational. The 30 percent tariff Trump had threatened would, a European commissioner said, have put some five million jobs at risk. They also judged that he follows through. The worst fears of his second term, a troop withdrawal, an exit from NATO, 100 percent tariffs, had not materialized by late 2025. The Pentagon is now reviewing its forces in Europe. Governments do not buy insurance against risks they consider remote.
None of this should comfort Trump’s admirers too much, because influence rooted in another country’s dependence is fragile. Europe seems to understand that. Norway now outspends the United States per person on defense, Germany plans to reach 3.5 percent of GDP by 2029, and NATO’s Mark Rutte said in Ankara this year that European allies and Canada already spend about 4 percent of GDP on defense and security. Europe is rebuilding the capacity to act alone, something Washington has asked of it for decades.
Von der Leyen went to Scotland because Europe had no better option. Leverage lasts only as long as the other side lacks alternatives. Europe is finally building some.
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In the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States, Hamas’s bloodthirsty assault on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023,  Iranian leaders’ repeated chants of “Death to America!,” and well over a thousand attacks on American Jews (mostly inspired by Islamism) since 2023, many Americans have expressed concern about the growing presence of militant  Muslim anti-Zionists or anti-Semites (the former being a form of the latter) in American public life. These include New York’s Mayor Mamdani, who broke with the tradition of New York mayors by staying away from the city’s annual Israel Independence Day, instead commemorated “Naqba Day” (the day when some Palestinian Muslims fled the newly established Jewish state — “Naqba” meaning the very existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East), and devoted the bulk of an address ostensibly marking the third anniversary of the October 7 attack with a denunciation of Israeii policies in response. Another is Abdul  El Sayed, elected last week as one of Michigan’s two U.S. senators. El-Sayed has sought ballot signatures and campaigned at Michigan mosques where sermons called for revenge against Zionists, identified America as the enemy, and offered prayers that asked to “take the worst revenge upon” the Jewish people.
Books by domestic authors such as Ali’s (already nominated for a National Book Award) and reviews like Ackerman’s signify what could at best be described as foolish “charity” guided by ignorance of obvious facts.
Amid these concerns, one Rozina Ali, a New York Times writer, has just published   Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America. Ali’s book, which received a glowing review in the Times Book Review from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman, focuses on the suffering endured since  9/11 by four representative Muslim-American families or individuals: a Michigan-born civil rights lawyer, working-class individuals in the New York City borough of Queens, a suburban Palestinian family, and the Republican mayor of the ritzy suburb of Basking Ridge, New Jersey. The Islamophobic “fury” these people have supposedly suffered includes the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of a 21-year-old Pakistani immigrant from Queens for conspiring to bomb Manhattan’s busy Herald Square. The plot was actually an FBI sting operation, and the immigrant claimed that he had regarded the plan as mere “talk” and had tried to back out of it.
More generally, following 9/11, American Muslims (in Ackerman’s summary) have suffered repeated violations of their rights by law enforcement authorities, even as they “came under repeated assault,” such as s Brooklyn merchant who had his store  windows shot out the day after the terrorist attacks, or the burning in Tennessee a decade later of construction equipment intended for the building of a mosque. (Ackerman, it should be noted, is himself the author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump.)
Let’s get real here. There are plenty of reasons why the term “Islamophobia” has come into common usage, while I have yet to see its concocted counterpart “Judaophobia” in use anywhere. The reason is simple: the word “phobia” signifies an irrational fear. The Islamist assaults on America (starting with the 1995 attempt to blow up  the World Trade Center, which failed while leaving three innocent civilians dead), the threats to America coming not only from Iran but from domestic terror groups  like the Council on American Israel Relations (identified as such by three state governments for its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood), the sometimes violent anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses starting the day after the October 7 attacks, and the many hundreds of attacks on Jews in this country and elsewhere, provide good reasons for Americans to feel “fear” of Islam. It isn’t a phobia, but a well-grounded concern.  (As for attacks on shop windows: one could hardly count the number of Jewish-owned businesses and other properties that have been attacked in this country since 2023 in the name of Allah.)
By contrast no sane person thinks that American Jews (whatever his opinion of them),  who are typically law-abiding, educated, and ensconced in stable families, constitute a threat meriting fear. This is partly because Judaism, unlike Islam, is not a proselytizing religion whose guiding text commands the subjugation, let alone destruction, of all who follow different faiths,
Of course the vast majority of American Muslims are not terrorists, and one hopes that few of them  wish  for America’s destruction  or even favor the killing of Jews. But it can hardly be a surprise when offices responsible for protecting a nation’s security engage in surveillance of those thought likely to belong to or support terrorist attacks. Undoubtedly, some innocent American Muslims will understandably feel outraged by being singled out in this way (according to Seasons of Fury the FBI began such surveillance of suspected Arab-American radical groups as early as the late 1950s). But this hardly supports Ali’s claim that Muslim Americans now live under a regime as “oppressive” as those they fled in Egypt and Syria. After all, America does not prevent them from returning to those countries should they  choose.
By apparent coincidence, on the same day the Times reviewed Ali’s book, it ran a review of the memoir No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention by a “Palestinian born and raised in a refugee camp in Syria,” Mahmoud Khalil.  In it Khalil, whom the U.S. is currently seeking to deport, describes life under the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad as follows: “No warrant, no lawyer, no phone call. You disappeared, and if you were lucky, someone might find out where they had taken you.”
Yet having managed to escape to America and enroll as a graduate student at Columbia University, Khalil became a leader in what he represents as “pro-Palestinian” (read: pro-Hamas) demonstrations following October 7 that set up “encampments” aimed at shutting the campus down pending administrative “concessions” to their demands. These included eliminating Columbia’s investments in Israel and cancellation of its dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University. Understandably, just as Columbia has punished numerous (domestic) student demonstrators for their illegal obstruction-cum-attempted blackmail, the Trump administration has sought to extradite Khalil; since he is not a citizen and has  sought to interfere with the rights of Columbia students to obtain an education — as well as with the right of the school’s administration to conduct its affairs without outside coercion. Yet  Khalil — still fighting extradition with the aid of a team of 25 lawyers —  insists he is pursuing not only his own right to remain here but that of all immigrants — illegal as well as legal — to “express” their political opinion (“expression” here including the sort of action he led at Columbia. The Constitution, of course, establishes no such right.) And having described the misery he suffered under Assad, including its lack of effectual law, one might have expected Khalil to display more gratitude and respect for the American system of law.
Books by domestic authors such as Ali’s (already nominated for a National Book Award) and reviews like Ackerman’s signify what could at best be described as foolish “charity” guided by ignorance of obvious facts. More likely, however, they reflect an extreme partisanship (as exhibited in the title of Ackerman’s book) or antisemitic bigotry. Let readers be reminded: the term naqba does not refer to any forcible expulsion of Muslims living in Palestine by the Jews. It refers rather to the mere presence of a Jewish state authorized by the U.N. and recognized by the United States, which five surrounding Arab nations promptly set out to destroy. This is the meaning of the chant widely heard from ostensibly “democratic” socialists and their sympathizers on American campuses, “From the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, Palestine  Shall All Be Free.” That means: free of Jews. Hitler called it Judenrein.
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Once America’s biggest church and the biggest Protestant denomination for most of the 20th century, the United Methodist Church has plunged from 11 million members in 1968 to 3.8 million in 2025, with over 174,000 members lost in one year.
As recently as 2019, the Mainline Protestant denomination had 6 million members. After a 50-year debate over sexuality, specifically same sex unions, it finally decided to split. Between 2019 and 2023, the denomination offered a four-year window for congregations to leave with their property. Nearly 8,000 churches, almost all of them conservative, left, leaving the denomination with a remaining 20,000 churches and a 1.2 million membership loss in 2024.
American non-Catholic Christianity is now post-denominational.
The 2025 loss of 174,000 perhaps represents the new post-schism annual loss number going forward. If so, United Methodism would have 22 years before the last member turns out the lights. But the denomination almost certainly will not last that long. Denominational loyalties in America are collapsing, and very few non-elderly are very committed to United Methodism, or any other specific denomination.  American non-Catholic Christianity is now post-denominational. (RELATED: Major Left-Leaning Lutheran Seminary Announces Sale of Historic Campus)
Perhaps more significant than the latest membership loss statistic is the recent departure of United Methodism’s second largest congregation, Highland Park Church in Dallas, Texas. With 15,000 members and an annual income of over $48 million, Highland Park has long operated according to its own sights, while still financially supporting the denomination, paying $12 million since 2022.
Highland Park United Methodist Church has changed its name to Highland Park Methodist Church, declaring its independence by an over 90 percent vote by the congregation. Among those 90 percent were George W. and Laura Bush, who issued a public statement affirming their support for the move.
The church had not left during the official 2019-2023 schism and did not take an official position on the sexuality debate. It does not host same sex unions. Traditionally, its congregation has included conservative businesspeople and progressive academics who work across the street at Southern Methodist Seminary and its United Methodist Seminary, which is called Perkins School of Theology. But its main motivation seems to be that it no longer sees the utility of the denomination. (RELATED: Paganism Casts Its Spell Over Methodist Seminary)
The local United Methodist bishop is dissolving Highland Park Methodist Church and has set up a new continuing Highland Park United Methodist Church at a site several miles away. On its first Sunday, only about one hundred attended, fewer than one-quarter who had voted against the split. Meanwhile, nearly 8,000 people attended Highland Park Methodist that same Sunday.
Across the nation, courts typically rule in favor of denominations claiming control of local church properties. But Texas courts have generally ruled against denominations. Expect that Highland Park Methodist will prevail against the local United Methodist bishop, who, rather than negotiating, seems to operate as if it’s 1960 instead of 2026.
Denominational authorities, especially Mainline Protestants, long commanded deference and respect. But in the new post-denominational age, many, if not most, local church members wonder why they should care about a distant prelate instead of their congregation making its own decisions.
Interestingly, the newly elected U.S. Senator from Kansas pastors United Methodism’s largest congregation, Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. Adam Hamilton, originally from the conservative and Pentecostal Assemblies of God denomination, founded his church in 1990. It now has 25,000 members. He shifted to a more liberal stance on sexuality 20 years ago and led the effort to overturn United Methodism’s traditional stance on sexuality, which finally prevailed in 2024 after the schism. (RELATED: What’s the Matter With Kansas (the Senate Race, That Is)?)
Hamilton says he will, as U.S. Senator, remain as pastor at Church of the Resurrection. His example recalls Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, also of Kansas City, who for years served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and as a United Methodist pastor, until succeeded in the pulpit by his son.
Why does a megachurch need a denomination?
It will be interesting to watch if Church of the Resurrection, after Hamilton leaves the pulpit at some point, long survives without his unique talents. And if it does, will it not be tempted to follow the example of Highland Park Methodist Church and exit the denomination? Why does a megachurch need a denomination?
Small churches, with congregations of a few dozen mostly elderly people, typically do not have the wherewithal to exit their denominations. But larger and more vital congregations in denominations will be increasingly impatient with denominational commitments, whether to liberal Mainline or to more conservative evangelical denominations.
It’s often noted that nondenominational churches, if collectively a denomination, would be America’s largest. And growing Christianity in America is almost entirely nondenominational. Small niche denominations like the Presbyterian Church in America and the Anglican Church in North America are growing slightly. The 3-million-member Assemblies of God enjoyed steady growth for years until the pandemic, after which it lost several hundred thousand members. It is now growing again but has not yet returned to the pre-pandemic membership. The 12-million-member Southern Baptist Convention has lost nearly 4 million members over two decades and almost certainly will continue to shrink.
Progressive-led Mainline Protestant denominations began declining in membership in the mid-1960s and their remaining shelf life is limited. But their decline foreshadowed a larger shift against established institutions. Today’s American Christianity is not only increasingly post-denominational; it is also online and self-curated. American Protestants and Evangelicals are no longer definitively instructed by their local churches, much less denominations.
Perhaps this is neither good nor bad, just different. But the further individualization of American Christianity is having and will have further wide social implications that cannot yet be fully appreciated.
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Jonathan Capehart MS NOW The Weekend 11-7-26

The leftists are not feeling satisfied and charitable in victory. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart have united in virtually accusing Stephen Miller, President Trump’s new chief of staff, of murder.Democrat Jeffries, the presumptive next Speaker of the House, made the most explosive charge. On X he wrote:“Stephen Miller is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands. His presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor.”Jeffries gave himself a tiny fig leaf by limiting the eradication call to Miller’s “presence in government.” But pairing “American blood on his hands” with “eradicated like a malignant tumor” is not ordinary political criticism. It reads more like someone putting out a hit— not a call for bureaucratic reshuffling.If a conservative had used this “eradicate the tumor” terminology and applied it to Jeffries or any other Democrat, the elitist media would erupt and see it as an appeal to violence.On Saturday’s edition of MS NOW’s The Weekend, Capehart echoed the charge. Discussing Miller’s promotion, Capehart was dire:Now that Stephen Miller will have the top job on Monday, it would seem to me that this administration is about to — it was crazy before, it’s going to be even crazier now. We’ve got this guy who’s behind the ICE raids, behind the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. I feel great about what happened on Tuesday. I don’t feel great about what’s going to come out of this administration in response.
Jonathan Capehart Accuses Stephen Miller of Being ‘Behind the Killings’ of Protesters in Minnesota pic.twitter.com/0Lv0oBxZ7k— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) November 7, 2026

Jonathan Capehart Accuses Stephen Miller of Being ‘Behind the Killings’ of Protesters in Minnesota pic.twitter.com/0Lv0oBxZ7k— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) November 7, 2026

If someone takes Jeffries and Capehart at their word—that Miller has “blood on his hands,” was “behind the killings,” and should be “eradicated like a malignant tumor”—then it’s Jeffries and Capehart who could be portrayed as appealing to violence. In this picture, Miller sounds like a Mafia don ordering murders.Note: Later, the show brought on Rep. Robert Garcia, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, who posted a warning to Miller to “lawyer up.” Garcia passed it off as just a call for “accountability.” Right.

Waldman et al., Bloomberg

The Trump administration has ordered Lebanese diplomat Ibrahim Charara to leave the United States over social media posts in which he praised Hezbollah’s 1983 suicide bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut as “heroic resistance” against “American military occupation.” The posts were first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Charara, who serves as Lebanon’s general consul to Detroit, is expected to leave the United States by Sunday after the State Department declared him persona non grata, a person familiar with the matter told the Free Beacon.
The stunning decision comes after the Free Beacon unearthed Charara’s posts from 2021 hailing the 1983 bombing, in which Hezbollah terrorists killed 241 U.S. Marines.
Since taking the post last year, Charara has cozied up to numerous local officials and community leaders in Dearborn, Mich., a majority-Muslim town outside Detroit with a significant Lebanese population. He appeared at the annual banquet of the Arab American Political Action Committee last week and sat next to then-Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D.), a keynote speaker at the event.

Charara attended an Arab American Civil Rights League gala last month, where he was photographed with Cenk Uygur, the left-wing YouTube host and El-Sayed ally who produced an antisemitic ad days before the election that blamed Israel for high grocery prices in America and boosted El-Sayed.

In June, El-Sayed and Charara attended the grand opening of a new mosque for the Islamic Institute of America, whose lead imam, Hassan al-Qazwini, has praised Hezbollah leaders and Iran.

Charara has attended a number of other events with Dearborn mayor Abdullah Hammoud (D.) and Osama Siblani, a Dearborn community leader who unapologetically refers to Hezbollah as “freedom fighters.”
Hezbollah is believed to be responsible for the Oct. 23, 1983, suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks outpost in Beirut. The attack killed 241 American service members, 58 French service members, and 5 civilians.
“On this day, the heroic resistance to the American military occupation of Beirut ended with a single strike that documents the defeat of neocolonialism on our land,” Charara wrote on Oct. 23, 2021.

Charara has espoused other anti-American views and hostility toward Israel. The banner image on his X account, which has not been used since November 2021, shows a burning Israeli flag.

Charara did not respond to requests for comment before the Free Beacon published the initial story on his posts. The Lebanese embassy in Washington, D.C., told the Free Beacon after the story ran that it was looking into Charara’s posts and indicated that any support for the 1983 suicide bombing was unacceptable.
According to the Jerusalem Post, an ally of Charara told Lebanese news outlets that Charara’s posts were from an old account that was hacked.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The post Trump Admin Boots Lebanese Diplomat Over Posts Praising Hezbollah’s 1983 Marine Barracks Suicide Bombing appeared first on .

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The gloating at Politico over the 2026 midterm election results is not only fully underway but has already extended to what they see will be a likely Democrat victory in the 2028 presidential election as you  can see in this Friday wishcast by Aaron Pellish, Lauren Fedor, and Lisa Kashinsky, “The midterms blew open the 2028 map. Republicans are panicking.” However, there is something rather odd about their story. No prospective Democrat candidates are even named. Could it be that if any of them are named it would quickly deflate their balloon filled with Hopium?Let us now join Politico in their somewhat premature celebrations of what they believe will likely happen in 2028 sans any mention of real life candidates:Brutal red-state losses are raising alarm among Republicans about the 2028 presidential battlefield.Democrats’ midterm blowout is upending the political calculus for future presidential campaigns, more than a dozen strategists on both sides told POLITICO. Republicans are stressing the ramifications of a major tranche of once-reliably Republican Electoral College votes being in jeopardy, while Democrats are weighing how much surprise wins on red turf should reshape their electoral strategy.Politico’s GloatFest continues until they hit a brief encounter with hard, cold election reality, which can happen when you talk to geniuses who worked on Kamala’s defeat:Democrats know that recreating their historically large estimated 14-point national popular vote blowout isn’t likely in the 2028 presidential election, and that Trump’s historic unpopularity was a major factor in the midterms.“It’s not fait accompli that any of those voters that came over will stay with us, in the same way that they didn’t stay with Donald Trump after this last cycle, or they didn’t stay with Joe Biden after 2020,” said Dan Kanninen, former battleground states director for former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign. But the electoral map suddenly looks a lot different to strategists than it did a few days ago.After this brief reflection, Politico returns to joyfully drooling over the 2028 presidential election. So why was NO Democrat presidential candidate mentioned (other than invoking Kamala Harris’ name as a job description position for Kanninen above)? Could it be that they know that if names of the leading candidates were conjured up it would kill the joy they are now feeling.Kamala Harris? The contender who managed to lose in all the 2024 battleground states?Gavin Newsom? Well, he was a leading candidate until he vowed to Jake Tapper and all the creek trout surrounding them that he would not be a 2028 presidential candidate if Kamala runs again. Does that mean he won’t run or will Newsom reinforce his reputation for mendaciousness by running again.Pete Buttigieg? Would most Americans vote for a breast feeder who turned out to be the worst Secretary of Transportation in history?AOC? She had a chance to show her foreign policy chops but ended up hilariously humiliating herself at the Munich Security Conference.So it is easy and fun for Politico to gloat over the Democrat prospects for victory in the 2028 presidential race until you actually put a real face in the mix which explains the complete absence of any candidates in their story.

But after the midterm disaster, why should anyone expect Trumpism to suddenly become popular?

PBS host Christiane Amanpour welcomed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver to Friday’s episode of Amanpour and Company to not only promote her new book but also to engage in the type of election analysis that says that Tuesday was not just a good night for Democrats; it was a victory for democracy itself.Amanpour began, “I have to start by asking you, because your books have been, you know, not just massive hits but also, you know, political about the American condition in various different forms, cultural certainly. What is your reaction to the incredible tsunami by the Democrats this week in the midterm elections?”Kingsolver replied by claiming, “It’s a really happy morning to wake up in the United States of America.” PBS with the type of election analysis that says democracy itself won on Tuesday. Christiane Amanpour asks Pulitzer Prize winning author Barbara Kingsolver, “What is your reaction to the incredible tsunami by the Democrats this week in the midterm elections?”Kingsolver says… pic.twitter.com/63Y6NPE1LH— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) November 7, 2026 For Kingsolver, the fact that Democrats won in Texas is not just a big deal for the blue team but a win for all lowercase-D democrats as well, “And I’m going to say that for several reasons. One is that we saw that money cannot buy elections. Texas is a really good example, where I think Elon Musk spent $500 million to try to buy that election, and that election was won by integrity. That’s Texas.”Kingsolver is trying to claim that if voters had agreed with Elon Musk that would’ve been undemocratic, which is not how democracy actually works. Voters are allowed to agree with Musk like they did in 2024 and still believe the U.S. has a functioning democracy. The fact that two years later they disagreed with him does not mean democracy has been fixed because Musk’s preferred candidate winning in the previous election cycle does not mean it was broken in the first place.As it was, Kingsolver added, “The same has happened in a lot of rural parts of this country, which gives me a lot of hope. I’m a rural person. I represent, in my writing, rural America. And I think that we’ve gotten a bad rap. I think that we’ve shown our true colors today.”If people were to take Kingsolver’s argument to its logical conclusion that democracy wins when Elon Musk or any other GOP big donor loses, then they would have to conclude that no future Republican win can ever be viewed as good for democracy. Who’s the undemocratic one now?Here is a transcript for the November 6 show:PBS Amanpour and Company11/6/2026CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I have to start by asking you, because your books have been, you know, not just massive hits but also, you know, political about the American condition in various different forms, cultural certainly. What is your reaction to the incredible tsunami by the Democrats this week in the midterm elections?BARBARA KINGSOLVER: It’s a really happy morning to wake up in the United States of America. And I’m going to say that for several reasons. One is that we saw that money cannot buy elections. Texas is a really good example, where I think Elon Musk spent $500 million to try to buy that election, and that election was won by integrity. That’s Texas. The same has happened in a lot of rural parts of this country, which gives me a lot of hope. I’m a rural person. I represent, in my writing, rural America. And I think that we’ve gotten a bad rap. I think that we’ve shown our true colors today.

On Election Night Tuesday, the PBS News Hour continued its cozy Democrat-coddling tradition of hosting Rep. Nancy Pelosi, just as it has since 2016, as proudly noted by co-anchor Amna Nawaz. Now known as Speaker Emerita and headed toward political retirement, Pelosi has been a guest on the News Hour six straight election nights, beginning in 2016, including both mid-term and presidential election years.Co-anchor Nawaz engaged in something closer to a friendly chat than any kind of journalistic enterprise in PBS’s latest Pelosi-Palooza, mouthing three versions of “you’re right” in response to bland statements from Pelosi during the latest interview.Amna Nawaz: This election cycle has been compared to the midterms of 2006, when Democrats won back control of Congress and, in an historic first, elected Nancy Pelosi to be the first female speaker of the House. That was 20 years ago. Today, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is in the final months of her political career. And like she’s done every Election Night since 2016, Speaker Pelosi joins us now. Madam Speaker, welcome back. Thank you for continuing this tradition with us. I want to begin, of course, with your predictions. How big a majority do you think Democrats can win in the House tonight? And will you win control of the Senate?Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): Well, thank you, Amna, for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you once again on election night. One thing I will say, following up on your previous guests, be not afraid to voters. Just go out and vote. Hakeem Jeffries has worked very hard to do three things, one, to win the election, two, to protect the election, and, three, to show the people what will happen once we do. So, your vote is protected, go vote….Nawaz: Always good to underscore that. You’re absolutely right. What will you think will happen tonight now?PBS’s cozy liberal tradition continues: “Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is in the final months of her political career. And like she’s done every Election Night since 2016, Speaker Pelosi joins us now. Madam Speaker, welcome back. Thank you for continuing this tradition with us.” https://t.co/vOEWh11NBI— Clay Waters 🇮🇱 (@claywaters44) November 6, 2026When Pelosi noted how many more Democratic women were in Congress since she arrived, Nawaz repeated her fulsome praise, before asking Pelosi if Haley Stevens endorsement of Rep. Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race would hurt Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.Nawaz: We have certainly seen some big changes on that front. You’re absolutely right.Asked what it will be like when she’s watching election results as a retired politician:Pelosi: I will also be teaching at Berkeley, and that’s not about politics. That’s about policy and training young leaders for the future.Nawaz: It is not. You’re right. And we do hope that you can come back and join us again some time very soon. We will have to leave it there for now. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, always a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you.At least Pelosi had the self-control not to say a version of “Onward to Victory” as in her previous three interviews, as if PBS and the Democrats shared the goal of Democratic victories (which in fact they do).From the November 5, 2024 News Hour:Nawaz: Meanwhile, back here in the studio, we are now joined by a leader in modern politics who hardly needs an introduction. That’s Speaker Emerita and California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. Madam Speaker, welcome back. Great to have you with us.Pelosi: Wonderful to be with you. It’s a tradition now. I think this is my fifth time on election night.Geoff Bennett: That’s right. Amna Nawaz: We love having you back every time. Thanks for being a part of this. I know we want to talk about the White House, but I got to start with the House, that you know so well.….Nawaz: You did also mention January 6. And we have talked a lot about the possibility of political violence, about what to expect. Experts we talk to say it’s really the time between Election Day and when the votes are certified or when the race is called, if that takes a few days, that they are most worried about. You have seen former President Trump has come out targeting you specifically as well. He had awful things to say about you at a rally even last night. Are you specifically worried about your own safety? And how do you look at the landscape of whether there could be some kind of violence if it takes time between Election Day and a call being made?Bennett concluded by saying, “Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, thank you so much for joining us and furthering this tradition of having you join us tonight.”Then-PBS News Hour anchor Judy Woodruff interviewed Pelosi on the four earlier Election Night occasions, and her questioning, while sympathetic to Pelosi, was hardball in comparison.From the November 8, 2022 News Hour:Woodruff: President Biden, his approval ratings, I know you know very well, are in the low 40s, on average, some — in some places even lower. Has he been a drag for Democrats this year?Woodruff also took mildly questioning stances in her Pelosi interviews in 2020, 2018, and 2016. Yet no matter the actual interview content, how is it appropriate for a public journalistic outlet to preen over a partisan political figure like Pelosi? PBS defines the liberal elitist media.