Marcus Heinz
@rexmarcius.bsky.social
Former World Bank staff, dedicated to sunlight as the best disinfectant. Trying to pick out the best analysis and opinion pieces about U.S. and European institutions and politics and putting my own twist on them.
A bag of cash. An investigation quietly dropped. A government that does not blush - ever. In 1954, one question changed history and ended McCarthyism: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”. Today, the question still stands but no end to Trumpism is in sight. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
Tom Homan and the Case of the Missing Fifty Thousand
Lawmakers and ordinary citizens have to keep asking about the bag of cash, or accept an executive branch without any accountability.
www.newyorker.com
October 21, 2025 at 12:26 PM
A bag of cash. An investigation quietly dropped. A government that does not blush - ever. In 1954, one question changed history and ended McCarthyism: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”. Today, the question still stands but no end to Trumpism is in sight. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
Bureau of Labor Statistics head out of a job herself. But removing the messenger doesn’t change the message - it weakens transparency and makes economists cringe. Most importantly, the financial sector is betting on objective reality. If data becomes weaponized, quantitative finance is dead.
Donald Trump Shoots the Messenger
Classic authoritarian move: When reality doesn’t go your way, deny reality.
www.theatlantic.com
August 3, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Bureau of Labor Statistics head out of a job herself. But removing the messenger doesn’t change the message - it weakens transparency and makes economists cringe. Most importantly, the financial sector is betting on objective reality. If data becomes weaponized, quantitative finance is dead.
President Trump bypassed Congress, ignored the War Powers Act, and used the US military to strike Iran like it was his personal army.
No vote. No debate. No imminent threat proven.
This isn’t just unconstitutional - it’s rule-by-commander-in-chief. Congress has been neutered in real time. Good luck.
No vote. No debate. No imminent threat proven.
This isn’t just unconstitutional - it’s rule-by-commander-in-chief. Congress has been neutered in real time. Good luck.
American Democracy Might Not Survive a War With Iran
The United States is well down the road to dictatorship. Imagine what Trump would do with a state of war.
www.theatlantic.com
June 22, 2025 at 6:38 AM
President Trump bypassed Congress, ignored the War Powers Act, and used the US military to strike Iran like it was his personal army.
No vote. No debate. No imminent threat proven.
This isn’t just unconstitutional - it’s rule-by-commander-in-chief. Congress has been neutered in real time. Good luck.
No vote. No debate. No imminent threat proven.
This isn’t just unconstitutional - it’s rule-by-commander-in-chief. Congress has been neutered in real time. Good luck.
The U.S. Republic began by roasting popes - not Colbert-style, but as a holiday called „Pope’s Day.” Think Halloween, but with pontiff effigies in the fire. Now? An American-born Pope leads the Vatican, and the Catholic VP and SecState are welcomed in audience. Patience really is a Catholic virtue.
In Chicago, Will the Pope Bump Last?
A historically Catholic American city considers the election of Leo XIV, a home-town Pontiff.
www.newyorker.com
May 26, 2025 at 10:25 AM
The U.S. Republic began by roasting popes - not Colbert-style, but as a holiday called „Pope’s Day.” Think Halloween, but with pontiff effigies in the fire. Now? An American-born Pope leads the Vatican, and the Catholic VP and SecState are welcomed in audience. Patience really is a Catholic virtue.
E pluribus unum. This article reminded me that Trump quietly added a footnote to the First Amendment: freedom of speech - applications in English only. Like his hits on universities, the dollar’s dominance, or the rule of law, it’s one more ingenious way to drain American strength.
Does the United States Need an Official Language?
Donald Trump’s executive order succeeds where decades of right-wing efforts have failed.
www.newyorker.com
May 23, 2025 at 2:52 AM
E pluribus unum. This article reminded me that Trump quietly added a footnote to the First Amendment: freedom of speech - applications in English only. Like his hits on universities, the dollar’s dominance, or the rule of law, it’s one more ingenious way to drain American strength.
Blood and country. By targeting the precedent that guarantees birthright citizenship, Trump aims to build Fortress America - redrawing the boundaries of who counts as American. But without undocumented immigrants and their U.S.-born kids, the country would be older, poorer, and bloodless.
Who Gets to Be an American?
Since the earliest days of the Republic, American citizenship has been contested, subject to the anti-democratic impulses of racism, suspicion, and paranoia.
www.newyorker.com
May 21, 2025 at 5:09 AM
Blood and country. By targeting the precedent that guarantees birthright citizenship, Trump aims to build Fortress America - redrawing the boundaries of who counts as American. But without undocumented immigrants and their U.S.-born kids, the country would be older, poorer, and bloodless.
The U.S. Institute of Peace hasn’t won the war yet, but it just won its first battle in court - against a takeover plot worthy of a Marvel villain heist movie. DOGE came for the nonprofit’s bylaws but really just wanted the assets. Justice, it turns out, is a dish best served as fast food.
DOGE Loses Battle to Take Over USIP—and Its $500 Million Headquarters
A federal judge called DOGE’s actions at the United States Institute of Peace “unlawful.”
www.wired.com
May 20, 2025 at 8:29 PM
The U.S. Institute of Peace hasn’t won the war yet, but it just won its first battle in court - against a takeover plot worthy of a Marvel villain heist movie. DOGE came for the nonprofit’s bylaws but really just wanted the assets. Justice, it turns out, is a dish best served as fast food.
In the EU, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the ECHR guarantee access to a court as a structural baseline - even for migrants. In the U.S., habeas corpus may soon be suspended - turning a foundational constitutional principle into an optional privilege granted by the executive. #nexttravel2029
The Astonishing Threat to Suspend Habeas Corpus
The Trump Administration is stepping up its war on the rule of law. Is this bluster aimed at intimidating judges, or the start of something worse?
www.newyorker.com
May 14, 2025 at 7:56 AM
In the EU, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the ECHR guarantee access to a court as a structural baseline - even for migrants. In the U.S., habeas corpus may soon be suspended - turning a foundational constitutional principle into an optional privilege granted by the executive. #nexttravel2029
If Shakespeare were around today - maybe as UK Ambassador to DC - he wouldn’t need to rewrite King Lear by much. Just change the names. Power still rewards sycophancy, exiles truth, and corrodes the system from within. Looks stable - until the kingdom collapses, and the people pay the price.
How Trump Worship Took Hold in Washington
The President is at the center of a brazenly transactional ecosystem that rewards flattery and lockstep loyalty.
www.newyorker.com
April 24, 2025 at 5:11 AM
If Shakespeare were around today - maybe as UK Ambassador to DC - he wouldn’t need to rewrite King Lear by much. Just change the names. Power still rewards sycophancy, exiles truth, and corrodes the system from within. Looks stable - until the kingdom collapses, and the people pay the price.
The Fed was built to resist political hacks - and its independence really does matter. Don’t take my word for it: look at Turkey. When Erdogan overruled the central bank, inflation, instability, and cronyism followed. Autocrats make terrible central bankers.
Why You Should Fear a Trumpified Fed
Don’t give an abuser power that’s easy to abuse
open.substack.com
April 18, 2025 at 2:25 PM
The Fed was built to resist political hacks - and its independence really does matter. Don’t take my word for it: look at Turkey. When Erdogan overruled the central bank, inflation, instability, and cronyism followed. Autocrats make terrible central bankers.
Trump’s tariff policy feels like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice: pulling levers on a global system he doesn’t understand. But here is where the analogy breaks: there’s no master coming back to fix the mess. The broom just keeps going - and the U.S. will drown in higher prices and broken alliances.
Trump’s Tariff Goal Is to Eliminate Trade Deficits. Economists Have Doubts. (Gift Article)
Behind Trump’s new tariffs is a goal that is as ambitious as it is unrealistic: eliminating the bilateral trade deficit with every U.S. trading partner.
www.nytimes.com
April 9, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Trump’s tariff policy feels like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice: pulling levers on a global system he doesn’t understand. But here is where the analogy breaks: there’s no master coming back to fix the mess. The broom just keeps going - and the U.S. will drown in higher prices and broken alliances.
Blaming tariffs like it’s the whole story is like blaming the avalanche when you skied off-piste. The bigger issue? The U.S. never stayed on the secured piste of raising productivity. No serious retraining, no EU-style regional policy. So when „China shock“ hit, there was nothing to soften the blow.
The influential paper that explains Trump’s radical tariff policy
Tariffs aren’t helping globalization’s losers — they’re victimizing them again.
www.vox.com
April 8, 2025 at 5:21 AM
Blaming tariffs like it’s the whole story is like blaming the avalanche when you skied off-piste. The bigger issue? The U.S. never stayed on the secured piste of raising productivity. No serious retraining, no EU-style regional policy. So when „China shock“ hit, there was nothing to soften the blow.
The Great Uncomforting is here. As markets unravel, the comfort class confronts what the working class has long internalized: stress isn’t just emotional - it’s systemic. If this is resilience, it was illusory - just one election away from Trump’s inferno. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get
People with generational wealth control a society that they don’t understand.
www.theatlantic.com
April 7, 2025 at 8:25 AM
The Great Uncomforting is here. As markets unravel, the comfort class confronts what the working class has long internalized: stress isn’t just emotional - it’s systemic. If this is resilience, it was illusory - just one election away from Trump’s inferno. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Trump’s 2025 Nobel Prize sweep:
Literature: for his Theater of the Absurd (tariffing penguins)
Peace: for launching a global trade war and calling it „reciprocity”
Medicine: for gutting the NIH
Physics: for discovering an economic black hole
Chemistry: for perfecting the recipe for stagflation
Literature: for his Theater of the Absurd (tariffing penguins)
Peace: for launching a global trade war and calling it „reciprocity”
Medicine: for gutting the NIH
Physics: for discovering an economic black hole
Chemistry: for perfecting the recipe for stagflation
The Trump Tariffs Are How Everything Works Now
Elon Musk and DOGE have taken a blowtorch to federal agencies. But the tariffs are a helpful reminder that it's Donald Trump who's fiddling while it all burns.
www.wired.com
April 5, 2025 at 4:20 AM
Trump’s 2025 Nobel Prize sweep:
Literature: for his Theater of the Absurd (tariffing penguins)
Peace: for launching a global trade war and calling it „reciprocity”
Medicine: for gutting the NIH
Physics: for discovering an economic black hole
Chemistry: for perfecting the recipe for stagflation
Literature: for his Theater of the Absurd (tariffing penguins)
Peace: for launching a global trade war and calling it „reciprocity”
Medicine: for gutting the NIH
Physics: for discovering an economic black hole
Chemistry: for perfecting the recipe for stagflation
Friedman draws a parallel between Trump’s assault on U.S. institutions and China’s Cultural Revolution. The comparison isn’t perfect, but Mao’s logic was strikingly similar: delegitimize institutions, punish free thought, centralize power. Trump bet the farm, the GOP saluted, and I’m… a gold bug ?!?
Opinion | Trump Just Bet the Farm (Gift Article)
Donald Trump is upending a world that has brought peace and stability for 80 years. What is it he doesn’t understand?
www.nytimes.com
April 4, 2025 at 6:10 AM
Friedman draws a parallel between Trump’s assault on U.S. institutions and China’s Cultural Revolution. The comparison isn’t perfect, but Mao’s logic was strikingly similar: delegitimize institutions, punish free thought, centralize power. Trump bet the farm, the GOP saluted, and I’m… a gold bug ?!?
Trump just smuggled a de facto VAT into the U.S. - only it’s selective, chaotic, and funds nothing you could call a public good. Consumers still pay more, like in Europe or China, but instead of healthcare or childcare, Trump voters just get higher prices and global retaliation. Greatly Depressing.
The Truth About Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day”
The President’s one-man trade war was already hurting the economy. His expansive new tariffs will make things worse.
www.newyorker.com
April 3, 2025 at 5:08 AM
Trump just smuggled a de facto VAT into the U.S. - only it’s selective, chaotic, and funds nothing you could call a public good. Consumers still pay more, like in Europe or China, but instead of healthcare or childcare, Trump voters just get higher prices and global retaliation. Greatly Depressing.
Senator Booker’s marathon speech was pure symbolism - powerful, even moving. But it also underscored something darker: the Senate has become a stage, not a lever of power. So this wasn’t a protest, it was a late eulogy: the Senate buried itself when Trump walked into the Oval Office in January.
Why has Cory Booker been talking for more than 24 hours (and counting)?
The New Jersey senator is doing something many Democrats wish their party would do more of.
www.vox.com
April 2, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Senator Booker’s marathon speech was pure symbolism - powerful, even moving. But it also underscored something darker: the Senate has become a stage, not a lever of power. So this wasn’t a protest, it was a late eulogy: the Senate buried itself when Trump walked into the Oval Office in January.
The 22nd Amendment came after FDR’s four terms reminded Americans why the founders feared monarchs. It turned a gentleman’s agreement into law. So when DJT jokes about a third term, are voters being dared to admire the emperor’s new clothes? And will SCOTUS have the spine to point out he’s naked?
Why Trump Says He’s ‘Not Joking’ About a Third Term
The prospect of smashing imagined limits on his power gives him an obvious thrill.
www.theatlantic.com
April 1, 2025 at 3:03 AM
The 22nd Amendment came after FDR’s four terms reminded Americans why the founders feared monarchs. It turned a gentleman’s agreement into law. So when DJT jokes about a third term, are voters being dared to admire the emperor’s new clothes? And will SCOTUS have the spine to point out he’s naked?
Who knew the U.S. tried to win over Canada in 1774 with talk of liberty, trial by jury, and habeas corpus - then followed up with an (embarrassingly unsuccessful) invasion? Non merci. 250 years later, it’s Canada that kept the script - building a country with healthcare, civility and gun control.
www.washingtonpost.com
March 31, 2025 at 9:13 AM
Who knew the U.S. tried to win over Canada in 1774 with talk of liberty, trial by jury, and habeas corpus - then followed up with an (embarrassingly unsuccessful) invasion? Non merci. 250 years later, it’s Canada that kept the script - building a country with healthcare, civility and gun control.
So DOGE has encountered a poltergeist computer language called COBOL in the SSA systems it wants removed. The goal isn’t the issue: modernizing SSA is long overdue. The problem is speed. Migrating Social Security in months is like racing through a neighborhood at 150 km/h when the speed limit is 30!
DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Code Base in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse
Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.
www.wired.com
March 30, 2025 at 6:45 AM
So DOGE has encountered a poltergeist computer language called COBOL in the SSA systems it wants removed. The goal isn’t the issue: modernizing SSA is long overdue. The problem is speed. Migrating Social Security in months is like racing through a neighborhood at 150 km/h when the speed limit is 30!
The gutting of development aid isn’t just budget politics - it’s the unravelling of a post-WWII vision: peace through shared prosperity, trade, and global norms. Lower ODA may save Western governments cents now, but it risks costing dollars - or euros - later by courting the wars of the future.
Aid’s grim counter-revolution will prove self-defeating
Arguments for slashing overseas development assistance in favour of defence fail on their own terms
on.ft.com
March 29, 2025 at 5:52 AM
The gutting of development aid isn’t just budget politics - it’s the unravelling of a post-WWII vision: peace through shared prosperity, trade, and global norms. Lower ODA may save Western governments cents now, but it risks costing dollars - or euros - later by courting the wars of the future.
The Declaration of Independence called it tyranny: „transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences.” Today, Venezuelans are deported to prison camps for tattoos and foreign students for political speech. America once revolted against this kind of injustice. Now it enforces it.
A clarifying moment for democracy
The shocking arrest near Boston shows how Trump’s immigration policy has become an assault on freedom.
www.vox.com
March 28, 2025 at 8:32 AM
The Declaration of Independence called it tyranny: „transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences.” Today, Venezuelans are deported to prison camps for tattoos and foreign students for political speech. America once revolted against this kind of injustice. Now it enforces it.
The Pax Americana worked for all of us, data from correlatesofwar.org shows: Interstate wars have declined significantly since 1945. „Now everybody has to figure out how to deal with Washington (…) getting high on something and wandering around with a loaded weapon and a crazy look in its eye.“
Opinion | What happens after Trump blows up the world order
The demise of U.S. hegemony marks a new era for global politics.
www.washingtonpost.com
March 27, 2025 at 6:02 AM
The Pax Americana worked for all of us, data from correlatesofwar.org shows: Interstate wars have declined significantly since 1945. „Now everybody has to figure out how to deal with Washington (…) getting high on something and wandering around with a loaded weapon and a crazy look in its eye.“
Once, under Reagan, the EPA banned Agent Orange - a deadly, defoliating, toxic chemical from the Vietnam War. Now it’s helpless as Agent Orange 2.0 defoliates the agency itself, poisoning the political ecosystem in the process.
The E.P.A. vs. the Environment
With the help of the agency, the Trump Administration is doing everything it can to make emissions grow again.
www.newyorker.com
March 26, 2025 at 4:09 AM
Once, under Reagan, the EPA banned Agent Orange - a deadly, defoliating, toxic chemical from the Vietnam War. Now it’s helpless as Agent Orange 2.0 defoliates the agency itself, poisoning the political ecosystem in the process.
Not a duty of care in the world…I am just speechless.
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
www.theatlantic.com
March 25, 2025 at 5:42 AM
Not a duty of care in the world…I am just speechless.