Former Nation editor Don Guttenplan is now bringing municipal politics to the magazine

with a weekly column tracking the progress of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. I spoke to Don

about how Mamdani is balancing pragmatism and principles as he deals with policing,

Donald Trump and a tough budget.

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The US/Israel War against Iran is shaping out to be a much bigger mess than expected

even by critics. As it turns into a regional conflict that has embroiled more than a dozen

nations, are there any possible ways Donald Trump can be forced to pull back. I spoke

with international affairs scholar Emma Ashford of the Stimson Center about the war

and paths to peace.

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Writing in Foreign Policy, Matt Duss argues that Donald Trump’s rush to war is both

stupid and illegal. It is also wildly unpopular with the public. But he also observes that

congress has been reluctant to challenge Trump’s policy, although some progressives

have now forced the issue to a vote. Matt is a frequent guest of the show and foreign

policy expert. I talked to him about the dangers of a new war and also the larger

systematic problems of the imperial presidency.

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Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Kovensky has written an essay on the Trump

administration’s use of anti-terrorism law to target political groups it doesn’t like.

In that piece, Kovensky notes,

"Across the country, federal prosecutors are upgrading what would have been routine

prosecutions into terrorism cases when they involve people President Trump has cast as his

political enemies.

It represents a dramatic departure from how the Justice Department has historically used the

federal material support for terrorism statute. For decades, counterterrorism prosecutors have

largely reserved the statute — 2339A — for the kinds of audacious plots that wreak real, lasting

damage or whose ambition forms the stuff of movie screenplays."

I spoke to Kovensky about his essay and the history and politics of this dangerous legal

innovation.

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Donald Trump is sending over what he calls “a massive Armada” to Iran with the

promises to do a reprise of his quick attack on Venezuela that ended with the

kidnapping of president Nicolás Maduro. Trump claims that “like with

Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission.” But will a

war with Iran really be so simple? To look at the prospects for war and the

larger politics driving the conflict, I spoke with Amir Handjani of The Quincy

Institute.

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made headlines at Davos with a much-noticed speech

where he candidly acknowledged that the US led alliance system created in World War II was

coming to an end. Carney called for middle powers such as Canada and its European allies to

give up the illusion that a US led world is still viable and instead try to create new institutions to

preserve their values and their sovereignty. I talked to Canadian journalist Stephen Maher, who

has written a biography of Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau, about the far-reaching

implications of this speech.

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Iran is facing upheavals at home and abroad. For more than two decades, the Islamic republic

has faced waves of protests from citizens demanding a more democratic society. Over the past

two weeks, these protests have erupted with a new ferocity and are being met with violent

repression. Meanwhile, the Israeli government is pushing the United States to renew bombing

Iran, a military objective now being given the guise of a humanitarian mission. To discuss the

turmoil in Iran and place it in the larger context of regional instability and competing visions of

the future of the Middle East, I spoke with Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at The Quincy

Institute who studies the region.

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Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, died on December 16 at

age 95. His legacy is a complex one, since in recent decades neoconservatism has been

supplanted in many ways by American First conservatism. But many aspects of Podhoretz’s

influence still play a shaping role on right. I take up Podhoretz’s career with David Klion (who

wrote an obituary for the pundit for The Nation) and the historian Ronnie Grinberg, who had

discussed Podhoretz in her book Write Like a Man.

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The Trump administration has released a new National Security Strategy that is a marked shift

not only from earlier administrations but also Trump’s first term in office. While the new policy

statement eschews the goal of global hegemony, it promotes culture war in Europe by

promising support of anti-immigration political parties, economic rivalry in Asia with China, and

a renewal of US military hegemony in the Western hemisphere. To survey this document and

Trump’s often contradictory foreign policy, I spoke to frequent guest of the show Stephen

Wertheim, who is American Statecraft senior fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International

Peace.

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Only a few years ago, European elites were patting themselves on the back for fending off the

tide of right-wing anti-system parties (often styled as populists). But recent polls in France,

Germany and the United Kingdom show that that the far right is once again gaining traction,

thanks in no small part centrist governments that have demoralized the population and

legitimized xenophobia. David Broder, author of Mussolini's Grandchildren and European editor

of Jacobin, wrote a wide-ranging essay on this for The New York Times. I spoke to David about

both the dismal decisions of mainstream parties and also possible alternatives.

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