The Republican Party is dead. Long live the party of Trump, which wears the GOP like a skin suit.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump took down libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), to whom he’d taken such a profound dislike that he backed a primary challenger in the form of MAGA stalwart Ed Gallrein. Massie was highly ranked for his voting record by conservative organizations, but so were other candidates Trump pushed out of office—and out of the party. In truth, it’s been years since the Republican Party was a conservative organization; these days it’s a cult of personality around the president.

Trump Turns on ‘Unreliable’ Members of His Own Party

“Tom Massie of Kentucky, the worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country, is an even bigger insult to our Nation than Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana,” President Trump snarked on May 17. That was the day Cassidy lost his state’s Republican Senate primary to Trump-backed challenger Rep. Julia Letlow and State Treasurer John Fleming, who now head to a runoff.

By that point, Trump-backed primary challengers had already turned out five Republican Indiana state senators who resisted the president’s drive to gerrymander congressional districts to gain advantage in this year’s midterm congressional elections.

“Good luck to those Great Indiana Senate Candidates who are running against people who couldn’t care less about our Country, or about keeping the Majority in Congress,” the president posted on Truth Social prior to release of the Indiana results. “There are eight Great Patriots running against long seated RINOS — Let’s see how those RINOS do tonight!”

Massie in turn lost this week to Gallrein, who was backed 54.8 percent to 45.2 percent by Republican primary voters responding to the president’s call. Massie had won 99.6 percent of the general election vote in his district in 2024, 65 percent in 2022, and 67 percent in 2020, according to BallotPedia. He was popular until dismissed by Trump, who won 64.5 percent of Kentucky votes in 2024.

When Personal Loyalty Overshadows Principles

Like Cassidy, Massie seemed like a good fit for a nominally conservative political party. Cassidy had a lifetime rating of 79.97 out of 100 from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He defeated Democrat Mary Landrieu for the seat in 2014 with 55.9 percent of the vote, then took 59.3 percent in his 2020 reelection effort, reports BallotPedia.

But Cassidy was a Republican before he was a Trump supporter. After voting to acquit Trump during the first impeachment effort against him in 2020, he voted (unsuccessfully) for conviction in 2021 following the January 6 riot by the then-outgoing president’s supporters.

“Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty,” Sen. Cassidy commented at the time.

That lack of personal loyalty gained the Louisiana senator the eternal hatred of the thin-skinned Trump.

Massie’s CPAC score is even more impressive, from the perspective of old-fashioned Republican politics, at a lifetime rating of 92.26. His strongest issue, according to CPAC, is taxes, budget, and spending, on which he holds a score of 100 percent.

But like fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who has also drawn Trump’s wrath, Massie has a libertarian streak. He generally supports limited government, restraint on the executive branch, and a non-interventionist foreign policy, even when that’s inconvenient for a president from his own party.

At one time, that would have earned respect from peers as a matter of adherence to principles over political convenience. It would have annoyed some within his party, but given that those principles are largely ones they allegedly share, his clashes with GOP leadership wouldn’t have been career-killers.

In fact, Massie held a seat on the powerful House Rules Committee until early 2025. He was booted off last year after crossing the increasingly Trump aligned GOP leadership.

Trump is hardly done with his efforts to purge Republican lawmakers who show anything other than complete loyalty to his leadership of the Republican Party. Next up is Sen. John Cornyn (R–Texas) who has an 86.63 CPAC lifetime score and has held office since 2002. But, complains Trump, “John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination.”

Instead, the president favors Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been ensnared in several scandals, including allegations of security fraud. He may win the nomination only to lose the seat. But, importantly, the president describes him as “someone who has always been extremely loyal to me and our AMAZING MAGA MOVEMENT.”

A Cult of Personality With a Peronist Future

Loyalty to the president keeps popping up because, as conservative commentator George Will pointed out in 2019, the GOP has “become a cult” centered around Donald Trump. Its beliefs are whatever the party leader says, even if that means rejecting free trade in favor of protectionism and dumping free markets for state ownership of industry. “Trump’s Republicans agree with the ‘opposition’ progressive Democrats that the government should be running the economy,” I wrote in January.

The embrace of whim-driven state control explains why the president and New York’s left-wing Mayor Zohran Mamdani could so easily find common ground when they met last November. Mamdani is a socialist by expressed choice, while Trump is one when it suits him. That doesn’t mean they’re on the same side of all issues, but they both like top-down decision making so long as they’re at the top.

That the GOP is now little more than an expression of Donald Trump’s will holds real risks for the party’s future. For one thing, the president is unpopular, with an average approval rating of 39.4 percent and 58.5 percent disapproval. Linking Republican candidates’ fates to his is like cutting loose an anchor and holding fast to it as it sinks into the depths (countered only by Democrats’ own authoritarian lunacy).

Then there’s Trump’s advanced age; he turns 80 next month. After he leaves the scene, a party that has reshaped itself as an extension of him will be hard-pressed to define itself in his absence. It’s in danger of becoming a U.S. version of Argentina’s Peronist party, forever asking itself “what would the former strongman do” while waiting to be pushed aside by an American Javier Milei with fresh ideas.

But fading into irrelevance is what a political movement risks when it becomes a cult built around one man. Its prospects rise and fall with those of single fallible and temporary figure.

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5/22/1807: Aaron Burr is indicted on charges of treason. Chief Justice John Marshall would preside over Burr’s trial.

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Amid a lot of patriotic rah-rah, predictable writing, and subpar acting, the Netflix movie War Machine manages to convey at least one interesting point about America’s bloated military budget.

Director Patrick Hughes’ film stars Alan Ritchson as an Army staff sergeant who watches his brother get killed in action in Afghanistan. The death inspires Ritchson’s character to honor a pact he made with his brother and become an Army Ranger himself.

To graduate from Ranger School, Ritchson and the other final candidates must complete a mission together in the wilderness—a mission that goes awry when a strange, robotlike machine appears from outer space and begins eviscerating the team with lasers.

Much of the ensuing action is quite improbable, but one realistic moment stands out. As the candidates speculate about the origin of their sci-fi opponent, one prospective Ranger suggests that the machine must be a military R&D project. That’s right: The Pentagon’s budget is so vast and obscure that a soldier believes it’s conceivable the extraterrestrial machine shooting lasers at them is American taxpayer–funded.

Honestly, who can blame him? It took the Pentagon 28 years to comply with a federal law requiring federal agencies to produce annual financial statements, and it still has yet to pass an audit. (The Defense Department will take its 11th swing at a complete audit in 2028.) But this hasn’t stopped the Pentagon from spending millions of dollars on things that don’t protect national security, including misinformation campaigns for Arab dictators and technology that has been used to track U.S. citizens.

Despite its corniness, War Machine is an entertaining watch that asks an important question: Should we be surprised if the military did create a laser-shooting robot?

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After becoming the target of police harassment, the Chinese artist and journalist Ai Weiwei left his homeland for good in 2015. In a new book, On Censorship, he writes about how censorship and surveillance go hand in hand. Like a dealer who can see all the cards, Ai argues, an all-seeing government has an “absolute advantage” over dissidents.

The nexus between surveillance and censorship has a psychological aspect as well. “A primary aim of censorship is to normalize itself, to present itself as natural and essential,” Ai warns. He cites an ancient Chinese saying that “the great affairs of the state are worship and military bases,” drawing a straight line from “worship” to modern-day taboos of political correctness.

Ai’s new book is not just about Chinese repression. It also warns about censorship around the world. In “ostensibly democratic societies,” he writes, censorship is “more covert, more deceptive, and more corrosive.”

The examples he cites defy the left-right political spectrum. Ai points to the crackdown on pro-Palestinian college students and the U.S. government’s attempts to create uncertainty around civilian casualties in Gaza. He also recalls the cancellation he faced after meeting with Alice Weidel, the head of an anti-Islam, anti-immigration party in Germany. The instinct to suppress speech is present almost everywhere.

Does that mean the censors are winning? The tone of On Censorship seems pessimistic at points. But Ai’s own life story shows that it’s possible to get the better of the censor. If he has been able to chart a liberated path for himself—even at a great personal cost—then Americans facing far less risk can too.

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Police in Arlington, Texas, arrested a fellow officer who allegedly sexually assaulted a woman he met while responding to a call for help at her home. Investigators say Officer Derreck Dean returned to the woman’s house three times while on duty, even though there were no calls for service, and that he covered his body camera during all three visits. One of those visits allegedly involved inappropriate sexual contact. Dean now faces charges including sexual assault and oppression. The Arlington Police Department placed him on administrative leave during the investigation and said it is looking into whether there may have been other cases of misconduct.

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On Thursday, the Court DIG’d Hamm v. Smith, a messy death penalty case that has been going on for three decades. Several things are unusual about this ham-handed DIG. Indeed, it is possible that Justice Alito lost the majority opinion.

First, more than five months elapsed between oral argument in December and the DIG in May. This is an exceptionally long time for a DIG. Usually when a case presents vehicle problems, there are questions at oral argument about it. But I didn’t see any clear signs at OA that a DIG might be in the cards. Moreover, these sorts of long-term DIGs usually are unanimous, or close to it, in which case there are no separate writings. But here, there was a lengthy concurrence from Justice Sotomayor, a dissent by Justice Thomas, and a dissent by Justice Alito, joined by three others.  My guess is that there was a majority to reverse at conference, but that majority fell apart.

Second, Justice Alito’s dissent from the DIG was joined by Justice Thomas in whole, but Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Gorsuch did not join Part II. The Chief is almost never in dissent–especially in a case of this magnitude. It seems more likely to me that the Chief would have assigned this majority opinion to Justice Alito after the conference, and then when the majority fell apart, the Chief didn’t jump ship. Perhaps Alito had already made changes to his opinion to assuage the Chief.

Third, in the December sitting, there were eight argued cases. So far, opinions have been authored in four of them by Justices Thomas, Kagan, Gorsuch, Jackson. The DIG in Hamm is, as per custom, unsigned. But someone would have had a the majority after conference. There are three remaining cases. I am fairly confident that Chief Justice Roberts will write the majority opinion in Slaughter. The other two cases are NRSC v. FEC and FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund (involves the Investment Company Act). If Justice Alito authors either of these cases, my theory falls apart. But if Justice Kavanaugh, for example, writes the campaign finance case, and Justice Sotomayor gets the (boring) investment case, that keeps my theory viable.

Fourth, parts of Justice Alito’s dissent reads like a majority opinion. It is more than twenty pages long, and spend some time walking through the doctrine. There is also a really detailed study of statistics–a topic that usually does not come easily to lawyers. If this was just a dissent from a DIG, I don’t think this level of detail was need for what is basically a one-off case.

Fifth, there is some language in Justice Alito’s dissent that casts aspersion on the majority–in particular Justices Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Barrett who chose not to write. Alito charge:

The Court nonetheless dismisses this opportunity to provide much-needed guidance to lower courts, even though six Justices stake out a position on whether the decision below is correct. See ante, at 13 (SOTOMAYOR, J., joined by JACKSON, J., concurring).

In other words, if six members of the Court opine on the issue, that ought to be enough to settle the case on the merits. Certainly the other three Justices could have picked a camp. But they didn’t. They remained silent.

Justice Alito takes things a step further. In the introductory section, he suggests the majority lacks (trigger warning) courage by shying away from its duties:

I respectfully dissent from the Court’s decision to leave this important question unanswered. At the very least, we should reverse the lower courts’ erroneous analysis of Smith’s scores and remand for a fresh consideration of his Atkins claim using any sound method. Even if our decision went no further, we would provide clarity and coherence to one aspect of our Atkins doctrine. Instead, the Court shies away from its obligation to provide workable rules for capital cases. In doing so, the Court disserves its own death-penalty jurisprudence, States’ criminal-justice systems, lower courts, and victims of horrific murders.

Alito repeats this charge in the concluding section:

By instead remaining silent, the Court exacerbates the confusion that plagues our jurisprudence in this area. If this Court continues to shy away from opportunities to provide workable doctrine, we should not be surprised if petitions asking us to overrule Atkins, Hall, and Moore arrive at our doorsteps soon.

Alito often makes this charge of “shying away” from difficult issues. This attack has to be directed at Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett in particular. You might think that the Chief Justice joined this barb, but I don’t think he did. Roberts only joined Parts I, III, and IV. The “shies away” line appears in the prefatory material before Part I and the concluding material after the three asterisks. We cannot ascribe these claims to the Chief. Still, Roberts did not need to signal his vote here at all, given the DIG, but chose to.

Sixth, it isn’t clear what happened here. What spooked out Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett? Perhaps Justice Kagan (who was awfully quiet) found some reason to avoid deciding the case? Maybe they realized this dispute was so unusual–given the multiple IQ tests–and was unlikely to repeat, that they just let it go without setting another precedent? Maybe they just didn’t want to decide this case this term? Of the three Trump appointees, Justice Barrett has been the most willing to find for capital defendants. In 2021, Barrett joined the liberals in blocking the execution in Dunn v. Smith. Both Barrett and Kavanaugh ruled for Richard Glossip (who is actually now on bail).

After all of these years of litigation, two trips to the Supreme Court, extended briefing, and oral argument, a DIG is so unsatisfying. Justice Alito stated this point well:

The crux of JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR’s stance appears to be that the Court erred by granting certiorari on the question as formulated by the United States. Ante, at 7. But this petition-stage gripe is no reason to dismiss the case a year later. The parties and amici—not to mention Members of this Court—devoted substantial resources to this case and thoroughly addressed the question presented, and that question is dispositive to the judgment below.

Here, the Court really needed to tinker with the machinery of death, but instead, the DIG hands an undeserved victory to the abolitionists.

This year, Greg v. Georgia celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. What a mistake the entire line of cases has become. Let me commend Craig Lerner’s excellent essay in Civitas and urge the Court to get out of the micromanagement of the death penalty, a doctrine that has no bearing in the original meaning of the Constitution. The Court has already extricated the judiciary from other terrible Burger Court precedents: Roe, Lemon, Abood, Bakke, Gingles, United States v. Nixon, TWA v. Hardison, Chevron, Apodaca, Nevada v. Hall, Williamson County, Davis v. Bandemer, and more. Add the “evolving standards of decency” test to that ash heap.  And while they’re at it, the Court should overrule Nixon v. GSA, get rid of the bad parts of Buckley v. Valeo, and eliminate the awful Penn Central test, as Richard Epstein reminds us. There is so much work to be done.

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During my recent trip to Italy, I did a talk on “The Legal Battle Against Trump’s Tariffs” at the Bruno Leoni Institute in Milan. BLI is a leading Italian libertarian/classical liberal think tank. I covered the legal issues in the case, currently ongoing litigation over Trump’s new Section 122 tariffs, and also some broader implications for emergency powers, the rule of law, executive power, and other issues – including some points specifically relevant to European.

The video of the event is available below. The first 3-4 minutes (in which Italian political scientist Alberto Mingardi, Director General of the Bruno Leoni Institute, introduces me), are in Italian. But my talk and the Q&A session are in English.

For a compendium of links to my writings about the tariff case and related issues, see here.

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Robby Soave and Christian Britschgi discuss Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s primary defeat in Kentucky and how his refusal to be a Trump yes-man cost him his seat in Congress. Then, they break down why Jeff Bezos is going viral after floating a proposal to eliminate income taxes for the bottom 50 percent of earners. Finally, they dissect Christian’s reporting trip to California for his feature article, “Samurai vs. Squatters: On the Street With the Hired Swords Reclaiming California Property Owners’ Stolen Homes.”

0:00—Tough loss for Massie

18:25—Bezos made some claims about taxes.

28:40—”Teen takeovers” in Navy Yard, Washington, D.C.

37:06—The anti-data center people are giving Robby an aneurysm.

50:37—”Samurai vs. Squatters”

1:00:38—The Boys‘ new season is bad.

1:11:00—Euphoria is the hot people show.

1:17:18—Robby loves complicated board games.

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Last October, Minnesota state Sen. Matt Klein (D–Mendota Heights) wagered $50 on the prediction market Kalshi that he would win his congressional primary this August. After Kalshi flagged the bet, Klein was fined $539.85 and received a five-year suspension from the platform in April. 

While he tried to frame his experience as similar to that of “many other Minnesotans,” there should have been no ambiguity to Klein that his actions ran afoul of Kalshi’s rules and federal regulations against insider trading. Rediscovering his morals, Klein then co-authored a bill in the Minnesota Legislature to ban prediction markets in the state, making it a felony for anyone to create, control, operate, support, or advertise with a prediction market.

On Monday, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed the bill into law, making Minnesota the first state to issue an outright ban on the platforms. The law draws the state into an ongoing feud between the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which is the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, and states that have chosen to prohibit their use.

While Minnesota is not the first state to restrict access to prediction markets (Nevada, for instance, has a court-imposed restraining order against prediction markets), it is the first to ban these platforms and criminalize participation in the industry altogether. 

The state’s ban covers prediction markets tied to sporting events, casino games, the actions of an individual or group, elections, disasters, both human and natural, and death. It originally included “weather events or conditions,” but that provision was removed after lawmakers realized it would criminalize farmers for hedging against unexpected price drops.

In response to Minnesota’s ban, the CFTC has filed for a preliminary injunction with the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. 

As Reason has covered, after Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin pursued legal action against prediction markets, the CFTC countersued, arguing that the Commodity Exchange Act gives it “exclusive jurisdiction” to regulate financial markets, including prediction markets, which are more akin to stock exchanges than traditional gambling platforms like FanDuel or DraftKings.

The CFTC has also filed amicus briefs in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in support of prediction markets. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig says the law “turns lawful operators and participants in prediction markets into felons overnight.” He’s right. 

Under the law’s prohibition on promoting transactions, a Minnesota resident who “advertises or markets” the use of prediction markets, even to non-Minnesota residents, could be charged with a felony. The law would also turn proprietors of legitimate businesses, such as age- and ID-verification sites, into felons for contracting with prediction markets. 

According to the state’s Sentencing Guidelines Commission, anyone found guilty of violating the ban on prediction markets could receive probation, up to a year in jail, or “other non-jail sanctions.” 

Tellingly, the law fails to identify a victim. Prediction markets do nothing more than facilitate transactions between willing consumers. Yet, Minnesota’s law would place violators on the same criminal tier as anyone guilty of assault in the second degree or simple robbery.

The bill’s definition of prediction market is also broad enough that it could potentially include participation in systems like the Iowa Electronic Markets model, an online futures market that pays out contracts on events banned under the law, such as political outcomes.

Elisabeth Diana, head of communications at Kalshi, tells Reason Minnesota’s law is “unconstitutional.” Instead of regulated platforms like Kalshi, Polymarket, and Robinhood, she says the state’s law would force consumers to use “unregulated offshore markets where there are no consumer protections.”

While the company isn’t planning any legal action against Minnesota, Diana says the CFTC is “rightfully” suing the state to bring it into compliance with federal law. A spokesperson for Polymarket also called into question Minnesota’s standing to issue a ban, saying the state’s action “runs counter to the federal government’s established framework for regulating prediction markets as evidenced by the lawsuit from the CFTC.”

State. Sen. John Marty (D–Roseville), the bill’s author, might have given away the game when he cited dramatic cuts “into the revenue of Minnesota’s regulated gambling” as reasons for banning platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.

Sens. Marty and Klein did not respond to Reason’s request for comment.

Minnesota adults can understand the risk of financial loss associated with prediction markets; the ban seems nothing more than a paternalistic approach to governing, turning law-abiding residents into criminals for engaging in legal conduct.

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