The GOP: America’s Oldest Fish Tank (Now Featuring Trump) by Lawson Akhigbe

Donald Trump did not invent American racism. That would be giving him far too much credit, and he would immediately trademark it, slap gold letters on it, and announce a licensing deal with Fox News. Trump is not the source. He is the fish. The GOP is the pool. And what a pool it is. …

Suspending a Senator, Suspending Democracy: The Natasha Akpoti Problem by Lawson Akhigbe

The Nigerian Senate has many powers. It can debate. It can grandstand. It can investigate. It can even, on occasion, legislate. What it cannot do—at least not without running into the Constitution at full speed—is suspend an entire constituency for six months and call it “discipline”. Yet that is precisely the controversy thrown back into …

Trump, Epstein, and the Women: Power Without Consequence by David Remmick

David Remnick’s essay “Trump, Epstein, and the Women” is not really about sex, or even scandal. It is about power—how it is exercised, how it is protected, and how women are treated as collateral damage in a system designed to insulate powerful men from consequence. Jeffrey Epstein did not operate in a vacuum. Nor was …

Britain, Trump, Epstein and the Mandelson Miscalculation by Lawson Akhigbe

In the sober textbooks of international relations, diplomacy is presented as a rational enterprise conducted by trained professionals in pinstripes, armed with briefing notes, institutional memory, and a pathological fear of saying anything interesting. In practice, however, there are two kinds of ambassadors: career and non-career. Career ambassadors are civil servants. They rise through the …