The Lamps Are Going Out Around Us

We may want to believe that this is a glitch or a temporary fall. But we must be open to the likelihood that this is the end of the American-led world order.

Another three-percent pummeling for Dow futures this morning on the heels of China’s announcement of retaliatory tariffs against the United States—looks like we’re shaping up for another fun day on the stock market. Happy(?) Friday.

(Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)

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It All Falls Apart

by William Kristol

Yesterday afternoon, having dispatched his regular mid-day newsletter, my friend and colleague Jonathan Last was moved—compelled, I think—to write a second, emergency newsletter. His eloquent and powerful missive arrived in our inboxes around 6:30 p.m. If you haven’t yet read it, do so now.

The heart of Jonathan’s argument is that yesterday, April 3, 2025, was the day that, in his words, “The age of American empire, the great Pax Americana, ended.”

We cannot overstate what has just happened. It took just 71 days for Donald Trump to wreck the American economy, mortally wound NATO, and destroy the American-led world order.

It was almost 111 years earlier, on August 3, 1914, that the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, stood with a friend at dusk at a window of his room in the Foreign Office, looking out across St. James’s Park. Seeing the first lights being turned on along the Mall, Grey famously remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

The Liberal statesman was right. World War I, the Russian Revolution, the rise of fascism, the Great Depression, Stalin and Hitler, World War II and the Holocaust—these all followed in the space of three decades. The lamps were not to be lit again in Grey’s lifetime. A century of relative stability and peace, of progress and prosperity, was followed by thirty years of chaos and war, of darkness and misery.

Midway through this terrible period, the imprisoned Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci—a very different man from Grey, but as perceptive in his own way—is said to have remarked, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

And so it was.

And yet. That time of monsters was succeeded by another stretch—an 80-year-long stretch—in which the forces of civilization were once again mostly in control. The United States picked up the baton of liberalism and leadership from Britain.

Many of us have had the good fortune to live for most of our lifetimes in a world more like the one Grey looked back on in 1914 than the one Gramsci experienced in the 1930s.

But now a new time of monsters—of terrible mistakes, monstrous deeds, and disastrous consequences—could well be upon us.

It was difficult for those alive in 1914, having been formed in the relative peace and tranquility of the late 19th century, to even begin to imagine the horrors of the following 30 years. It is difficult for us to imagine today how dangerous a future we are inviting.

Jonathan closes his piece with this observation:

We have a deeply stupid government . . . But also, we have the government we deserve. The American age is over. And it ended because the American people were no longer worthy of it.

I very much want to believe that this terrible judgment is not true. I very much want to believe that the lights have only been temporarily put out. I very much want to believe that we will once again find our way before too much damage is done, before we descend into a time of monsters.

But I very much fear that the lamps are once again going out all around us.

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Fox News Goes Ostrich Mode

by Andrew Egger

At times like these, you take your laughs where you can get them. And I’ll admit it was pretty funny yesterday watching Fox News gradually decide, over the course of a day-long market crash, that Trump’s “Liberation Day” wasn’t worth bothering people about.

At 6:30 a.m. yesterday, the network’s digital front page led with tariffs: “Trump admin’s warning after America puts tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories,” and “Canada responds to Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs,” and “Trump touts return of the ‘American Dream.’”

By early afternoon, with markets still way in the red, the network was on the hunt for silver linings: “Dem rep offers rare praise for Trump, vows to help work on key part of tariff plan,” read the top headline, pointing to comments from Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) in support of a 10-percent baseline tariff. The next sounded bullish, too: “Trump’s tariffs already have countries crawling back to negotiate—and making threats.” A slug quietly acknowledging “Dow down over 1,200 points as Trump’s tariffs roil global markets” was buried 18 stories deep on the homepage, beneath such hot items as “Woke Neil Young fears President Trump will jail him at US border” and “5 recipes to try for Grilled Cheese Month.”

After the closing bell, tariff news had dropped out of the top spot altogether, which had been given over to a Texas crime story. “Dow plunges over 1,600 points as S&P and Nasdaq tumble” was a bullet point under the page’s second headline—sandwiched consolingly between the Rep. Golden story featured earlier and “Trump vows US, markets ‘going to boom.’” Later in the evening, the Dow news was back down to the twelfth story on the homepage, right beneath “Senator hails automaker’s production boost.”

The on-air product followed a similar trajectory as hosts focused uneasily on other stories—pay no attention to the markets crashing just over your shoulder!

Others, however, lurched straight into spin mode. Laura Ingraham suggested shadowy multinational firms might be crashing the market on purpose to hurt the president: “They’re busy trying to scare you into turning on Trump.” To be able to say that with a straight face, right into the camera; you’ve got to hand it to her—that’s the work of a true pro.

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AROUND THE BULWARK

• When American Soldiers Were in Trouble, Our Allies Showed Up… GEN. MARK HERTLING gives us an insider’s look at the allied effort to find four soldiers lost in a training exercise.

• On Trade and Tariffs, Trump’s Stubborn Ignorance Shines Bright… The president can’t be taught, writes MONA CHAREN. And we’re suffering for it.

• Where Does Kilmar Abrego Garcia Get His Due Process? The Trump administration’s admitted “error” could have been avoided if they’d followed the rules, observes LINDA CHAVEZ.

• The Day America Lost Everything… Join JVL and ANDREW EGGER as they break down Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s historic declaration—the end of the American-led global order.

• Blast from the Past… Our friend and former colleague A.B. STODDARD joins Conversations with Bill Kristol to talk about the five months after election day: “People need to not underestimate the fact that things could be much, much worse in three months or a year.”

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Quick Hits

LOOMER-ED: Ever wish to live in a world in which one of the internet’s foremost conspiracist theorists gets an unnatural amount of sway over the personnel at our leading national security agency? Congrats, buddy—you’ve arrived!

Reports emerged overnight that Gen. Timothy Haugh, the head of both the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, has been fired by the Trump administration. The sacking was greeted with alarm by the top Democrats at the House and Senate intel committees, who wondered why a nonpartisan straight shooter with a proven record would be let go so randomly. We soon got an answer. Laura Loomer, who had met with President Donald Trump earlier this week to discuss National Security Council staff that she deemed disloyal and worth firing, praised Haugh’s sacking and appeared to take credit for it:

As a Biden appointee, General Haugh had no place serving in the Trump admin given the fact that he was HAND PICKED by General Milley, who was accused of committing treason by President Trump. Why would we want an NSA Director who was referred to Biden after being hand selected by Milley, who told China he would side with them over Trump!?!?

The vetters should have been more critical given the fact that the Pentagon revoked the security detail and clearance for retired general Mark Milley, who called President Trump a FASCIST.

Why would we want Milley’s hand picked choice for NSA DIRECTOR?

We do not! And he was referred for firing.

It all raises the question: How long till Loomer gets a high-ranking, non-Senate confirmable post of her own? Maybe we’re not there yet. But who would dare argue at this point it’s too stupid to happen?

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SOME DECENT NEWS, AT LEAST: Amid so much self-inflicted damage being applied to our economy, we did get some good news on that front this morning. The economy added 228,000 jobs in the month of March while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2 percent. The 228,000 was well above expectations (one note: revisions showed the economy added 48,000 fewer jobs in the prior two months than initially reported). While all this seemed to transpire as Trump and DOGE were slashing the government payrolls, the number of government jobs actually increased thanks to state and local hiring. The real impact of DOGE could be felt later on.

As for the macro picture, Victoria Guida, over at Politico, had an interesting theory for the numbers: “Increase in employment in transportation and warehousing—suggests the economy got a hiring boost from companies rushing to ship and stockpile ahead of tariffs,” she writes. Maybe so. Either way, we should soon see how much this economic momentum can be sustained amid those tariffs.

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THREE YEARS ON: It has been three years since the discovery of the atrocities in Bucha, the Kyiv suburb liberated after 33 days under Russian occupation. Harrowing images, harrowing tales: dead bodies in the streets, some with hands tied behind their backs; survivor accounts of rapes and beatings; eyewitness accounts of cold-blooded murders. As a regional police chief put it: “Evil had dwelled on this land for a month.”

The memorial installation in Bucha bears the names of 501 dead. There are others missing, some kidnapped. One local woman, Tatiana Popovich, learned that her son Vladislav, who disappeared after being wounded when Russian soldiers opened fire on his car, was in a Russian prison; he is still there.

Despite continuing Russian denials, we know what happened in Bucha. We know that Bucha is the face of occupation, a compelling argument against allowing millions of Ukrainians to remain under Russian rule.

Here is the article I wrote three years ago about the first reports on Bucha—and Kremlin apologists’ attempts at just-asking-questions spin. And another article on the somber first anniversary. Three years have gone by. We must still remember. —Cathy Young

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