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foreign policy
Prince Andrew Arrested—Why Not King Trump?
If no one is above the law in the UK, not even royalty, presumably no one is above the law in the US, not even a president.
Feb 19, 2026
Police in the United Kingdom have arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew and Duke of York, on suspicion of misconduct in public office—after the disclosure of emails between Mountbatten-Windsor and the late disgraced banker Jeffrey Epstein. As I write this, Mountbatten-Windsor remains in custody.
We don’t know yet the specific charges. But we do know that the late Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim, accused Mountbatten-Windsor of raping her.
We also know that Mountbatten-Windsor was the UK’s trade envoy between 2001 and 2011, and appears to have forwarded to Epstein confidential government reports from visits to Vietnam, Singapore, and China, including investment opportunities in gold and uranium in Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer says, “No one is above the law.” The family of Virginia Giuffre says, “No one is above the law, not even royalty.” Britain’s chief prosecutor says, “No one is above the law.”
Instead of bureaucracies, America now has a royal entourage. Instead of institutions, we now have royal prerogative.
All of which raises awkward questions about the people implicated on this side of the pond, including the person in the Oval Office who loves to be treated like a king, and who appears in the Epstein files 1,433 times (that is, the files that have been released so far). Prince Andrew appears in them 1,821 times.
America likes to believe we gave up kings almost 250 years ago and adopted a system in which “no one is above the law.”
But President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has become a personal tool for him to channel money and status to himself and his closest associates. Since the 2024 election, the Trump family’s personal wealth has increased by at least $4 billion.
As with the British royalty of the 16th century, it’s all personal with Trump—all about expanding his power and enlarging his and his family’s wealth. Proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan oil? “That money will be controlled by me,” he says. The gift of a plane from Qatar? “Mine.” Investments by Middle-East kingdoms in his family’s crypto racket? “Perfectly fine.”
Like the British royalty of yore, King Trump has arbitrary power. He raises Switzerland’s tariff from 30-39% because its former president Karin Keller-Sutter “just rubbed me the wrong way.” He imposes a 50% tariff on Brazil because Brazil refused to halt its prosecution of Trump’s political ally, the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was found guilty of plotting a coup. Vietnam fast-tracks approval of a $1.5 billion Trump family golf course at the same time it seeks to reduce its tariff rate.
Trump claims that Greenland is “psychologically needed,” although the United States already has a military presence there and an open invitation to expand its bases. He muses about making Canada the “51st state.” These are throwbacks to the 16th-century age of empire.
***
Meanwhile, Trump has created a system of tribute and allegiance that would make Henry VIII jealous.
Apple’s Tim Cook delivers a gold-based plaque and a donation to Trump’s planned ballroom. Swiss billionaires bring a gold bar and a Rolex desk clock to the Oval Office. Jeff Bezos backs a vapid movie of Melania and hands her a check for $28 million.
Trump pardons Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire mogul who pled guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023, after which time Zhao’s Binance digital-coin trading platform becomes the engine of the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial.
King Trump was evidently involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s nefarious doings. We don’t know exactly how because there’s been no criminal investigation. But shouldn’t there be?
Elon Musk’s humongous quarter-billion-dollar contribution to Trump’s 2024 campaign earns Musk a dukedom—a “department of government efficiency”—and the keys to the kingdom in the form of sensitive US Treasury Department software systems used to manage federal payments.
But when the Duke of DOGE starts becoming more visible than King Trump, the king banishes him and revokes his dukedom. When the banished Musk begins openly criticizing Trump, the king threatens to cut off Musk’s head in the form of cutting him and his SpaceX off from valuable government contracts. This puts an end to Musk’s impertinence.
The new TikTok (on which Trump has more than 16 million followers) will continue operating in the United States—but now with the financial backing of Trump ally Larry Ellison’s Oracle;Trump’s allied Emirati investment firm MGX (which has already invested in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company); and Silver Lake, teamed up with the private equity firm founded by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Trump allows Nvidia to sell chips to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and extends military guarantees to Qatar—all of which have invested in the Trump family empire. (Emirati-backed investors plowed $2 billion into World Liberty Financial.)
Instead of national glory, Trump demands personal glory—to get the Nobel Peace Prize, to put his name on the Kennedy Center and Penn Station, and other major monuments and buildings.
If his commands are not met, he punishes. Because Norway didn’t give him a Nobel (it wasn’t Norway’s to give anyway), he “no longer feels obliged to think only of peace.” Because performers refuse to appear at the “Trump-Kennedy” Center, he shutters it.
Instead of bureaucracies, America now has a royal entourage. Instead of institutions, we now have royal prerogative. Instead of legitimacy based on the will of the people, there’s divine right (“I had God on my side,” “God was protecting me,” “God is on our side”).
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We will march against King Trump on the next “No Kings Day” on March 28—hopefully making it the biggest protest in American history.
But the arrest of the former Prince Andrew raises an issue that goes way beyond protesting and marching. King Trump was evidently involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s nefarious doings. We don’t know exactly how because there’s been no criminal investigation. But shouldn’t there be?
Pam Bondi obviously won’t investigate Trump because she’s part of King Trump’s court. But what about a group of state attorneys general?
Trump has also been enriching himself and his family through his public office, violating multiple laws about conflicts of interest.
If the UK can arrest the former Prince Andrew on evidence of such wrongdoing, why shouldn’t America arrest King Trump? If no one is above the law in the UK, not even royalty, presumably no one is above the law in the US, not even a president.
Pam Bondi obviously won’t investigate Trump because she’s part of King Trump’s court. But what about a group of state attorneys general?
Almost 250 years after we broke with George III, the question must now be faced: Are we a monarchy or a nation of laws?
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Is Rural America Finally Realizing Trump Is an Elite in Populist Clothing?
The administration’s domestic policies, coupled with aggressive foreign postures, are accelerating disillusionment among Trump’s core supporters.
Jan 29, 2026
As President Donald Trump’s second term unfolds, the contradictions at the heart of his “America First” agenda are increasingly apparent. What began as a populist revolt against elite globalism appears to have morphed into policies that alienate the very rural and small-town constituencies that backed him in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
These rust-belt and rural counties were drawn to his promises of economic revival, border security, and non-interventionism. Yet, emerging signs of fracture in this MAGA base suggest a potential backlash in the upcoming midterms.
The administration’s domestic policies, coupled with aggressive foreign postures, are accelerating disillusionment among Trump’s core supporters.
Domestically, Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement has backfired. Ramped-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were sold as fulfilling pledges of mass deportations targeting “criminals”. But these operations have swept up undocumented workers essential to rural economies. Small family farms and businesses in states including California, Idaho, and Pennsylvania are reliant on immigrant labor for harvesting crops, dairy operations, and meatpacking. They now face acute shortages.
Trump, meanwhile, is perceived as profiting personally. His properties and branding deals benefit from economic nationalism, even as family farms teeter on the verge of bankruptcy.
Agricultural employment dropped by 155,000 workers between March and July 2025, reversing prior growth trends. Farmers in Ventura County, California, for example, denounced raids that targeted routes frequented by agricultural workers. Fields lie unharvested signalling financial ruin for some operations. Family-run farms struggle to find replacements. Low wages and grueling conditions simply fail to attract American-born laborers.
This labor crisis exacerbates a broader sense of betrayal. Rural voters supported Trump for his anti-elite rhetoric, expecting protection for their livelihoods. Instead, the administration’s actions have hollowed out local workforces without viable alternatives.
The H-2A visa program, meant to provide temporary foreign workers, has been streamlined—but remains insufficient amid ongoing raids, which deter even legal migrants. These disruptions ripple through small-town economies, where agriculture underpins community stability. Democrats, sensing opportunity, are investing in rural outreach, emphasizing economic populism to woo disillusioned voters who feel abandoned by Trump’s enforcement zeal.
Compounding these woes are the ongoing tariff disruptions. Trump touts his tariffs as tools to “make America great,” but in fact they have driven up costs for the same rural groups. Between January and September 2025, tariffs on imports from China, Canada, Mexico, and others have surged, collecting US$125 billion. However, the figure may be even higher according to experts.
But while the administration claims these taxes punish foreign adversaries, the burden falls squarely on American importers and consumers. Small businesses, which account for around 30% of imports, faced an average of US$151,000 in extra costs from April to September 2025, translating to $25,000 monthly hikes. Farmers, already squeezed by low grain prices, pay more for necessities, such as fertilizers (hit by 44% effective tariffs on Indian imports) and machinery parts.
Midwest producers of soybeans, corn, and pork—key US exports—suffer doubly from retaliatory tariffs abroad, which reduce demand and depress revenues. In Tennessee and Pennsylvania, builders report 2.5% rises in material costs, while food prices climb due to duties on beef, tomatoes, and coffee.
Trump, meanwhile, is perceived as profiting personally. His properties and branding deals benefit from economic nationalism, even as family farms teeter on the verge of bankruptcy. This disparity fuels resentment. Polls show Trump’s approval slipping in swing counties, with economic anxiety eroding the loyalty that once overlooked his character flaws.
Foreign Policy Compounds Domestic Fractures
These domestic fractures are mirrored in foreign policy, where Trump’s interventionism starkly contradicts his campaign pledge of “America First” restraint. Having promised no new wars, he has instead pursued aggressive postures that many Republicans view as unnecessary. The most emblematic is his renewed bid to acquire Greenland, apparently by negotiation or force, which has swiftly followed the US raid on Venezuela in the first week of January, accompanied by threats against other Latin American countries including Cuba and Colombia.
The US president has justified demands for control over the Arctic island—citing threats from Russia and China—as a strategic necessity. But NATO allies such as Denmark—of which Greenland is a constituent part—have rebuked it as an potentially alliance-shattering move. Congressional Republicans, including Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), have broken ranks, warning that force would obliterate NATO and tarnish US influence.
Such dissent highlights broader paradoxes. Trump’s populist realism prioritizes tough rhetoric for domestic consumption but yields aggressive, even reckless actions abroad. His administration is effectively dismantling post-1945 institutions while embracing 19th-century spheres-of-influence and outright colonialist thinking, including invoking an updated version of the 1823 Monroe doctrine.
The fractures signal that Trump’s “America First” policies may ultimately leave its rural and rust belt champions behind.
Rural voters, weary of endless wars, supported his non-interventionist promises. Now they see echoes of past entanglements in Trump’s suggestion that the US could intervene in Iran. This cognitive dissonance is accelerating disillusionment with his presidency.
These self-inflicted but inherent contradictions are hastening a pivotal reckoning for Trumpism. In many counties that have thrice backed him—and especially in swing counties—economic hardship and policy betrayals erode the cultural ties binding rural America to the Republican party. Democrats, through programs such as the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, are betting on this “betrayal” narrative, spotlighting farmers’ plights to flip seats in November 2026.
Polls show Latinos and independents souring on Trump, with the US president’s base turnout potentially waning as the midterm elections approach in November. If Republicans suffer larger-than-expected losses in those elections, it could mark the decline of Trumpism’s grip by exposing its elite-serving underbelly beneath populist veneer.
Yet, without a compelling alternative vision, Democrats risk squandering this opening. For now, the fractures signal that Trump’s “America First” policies may ultimately leave its rural and rust belt champions behind. Whether Trumpism proves resilient or begins a long decline may well be decided not in Washington and Mar-a-Lago, but in the county seats and small towns that once formed its unbreakable base.
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Trump's Administration of Comic Book Villains Is Making War on the World Order
The 47th US president wants to get rid of the United Nations, reverse the decolonization process, and return the world to a time when only power determines the course of events.
Jan 26, 2026
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, wanted to change his agency’s dietary recommendations, he did something very simple. He took the food pyramid and turned it upside down. After years of promoting healthy grains, pulses, and vegetables, the agency was now favoring meat and dairy.
It seemed like a joke. It wasn’t.
Kennedy called his upside-down pyramid, with meat at the top and whole grains at the bottom, “Eat Real Food.” A better name would be “Support Cattle Farmers and Have a Heart Attack.”
The Trump administration’s topsy-turvy approach applies to every aspect of American policy.
The Trump administration shouldn’t be surprised when the world that it is trying to turn upside down unites against it.
The United States needs undocumented immigrants to maintain the economy by filling jobs in agriculture, the construction industry, and the service sector. So, the Trump administration is deporting them.
The United States is the only major industrialized country without universal healthcare. So, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for people to access medical insurance.
The United States, before 2024, was the largest oil and gas producing nation on the planet, but needed government support to make the transition to clean energy. So, the Trump administration eliminated those clean energy subsidies and invested even more into expanding the fossil fuel sector.
In other words, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to harm people and the planet. They are like comic book villains, and they don’t even realize it
The upside-down nature of Trump’s approach to policy can perhaps best be seen in the foreign policy realm.
Donald Trump has talked over and over again about the importance of peace. He has lobbied for the Nobel Peace Prize. When asked about his New Year’s wish this year, he said, “Peace on Earth.”
But all he has done recently is promote war. His administration bombed Nigeria on Christmas Day. The United States invaded Venezuela right after the New Year in order to kidnap the president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.
The administration is now preparing to attack Iran. Trump has insisted that the United States must seize Greenland, by force if necessary. And the US president expects that the government in Cuba will fall as well, and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will one day be that country’s leader.
The Trump administration has emphasized the critical importance of US sovereignty. It doesn’t want any other country or any international institutions interfering with US policies.
However, the Trump administration doesn’t care about the sovereignty of any other country. Trump believes he can intervene anywhere. Even close allies are not off limits. He has suggested absorbing Canada. And he seems willing to fight a fellow NATO member, Denmark, in order to control Greenland.
Respect for sovereignty is a bedrock principle of the United Nations. All states rely on this principle to safeguard their borders and protect against the interventions of other countries. Trump’s challenges to sovereignty in Venezuela and elsewhere threaten to unravel the world order.
This contempt for international treaties and institutions led the administration early on to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate as well as the UN Human Rights Council. This year, he has ordered the withdrawal from 66 international organizations, half of them connected to the United Nations. These include the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body responsible for the yearly Conference of Parties (COP), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
From 2005 to 2024, carbon emissions in the United States dropped 20%, a rare bit of good news from a country with the second-highest rate of emissions in the world. Last year, under Trump, US emissions made a dramatic U-turn, rising by 2.4%.
Trump has nothing but contempt for international law. He has done more than just denounce legal bodies like the International Criminal Court. He has actively sought to destroy the ICC with sanctions. And he has threatened even more sanctions if the ICC doesn’t rewrite its founding document to ensure that Trump and his cronies are never prosecuted for the war crimes that they have most definitely committed.
The violations of sovereignty, the withdrawal from international institutions, and the contempt for international law: These all form a different kind of war. The Trump administration has launched an offensive against the very edifice of the world order. He wants to get rid of the United Nations, reverse the decolonization process, and return the world to a time when only power determines the course of events.
This is the world of Stephen Miller, Trump’s hard-right adviser. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller recently told CNN. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
This is, of course, nonsense. Power, as even authoritarian leaders learn, has its limits. Autocrats can’t change their societies by force alone. They are overthrown by peaceful protests. They are tried in court and sent to jail.
History is littered with the wreckage of empires that attempted to rule by force alone. That is the iron law since the beginning of time.
And it is just a matter of time before the Trump administration discovers that it too faces limits. The European Union is banding together to fend off any attempt on Greenland. The US courts are laying down limits on what the Trump administration can and cannot do, with even the conservative Supreme Court ruling recently that the administration cannot send the National Guard to Chicago against the wishes of the mayor and the governor.
And popular protests continue throughout the United States, most recently to protest the killing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of a young mother in Minneapolis.
The Trump administration shouldn’t be surprised when the world that it is trying to turn upside down unites against it. An upside-down pyramid is not stable. Eventually, it will collapse.
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