Never forget

Do you recall the last time you heard we’re facing an “unprecedented” moment? Just this week: Bruce Ackerman, a legal scholar at Yale University, described the Trump administration’s current conflict with Harvard over campus protests as part of an “unprecedented assault … on the system of checks and balances, which is the fundamental system for preventing a dictatorship.” A group of American business owners sued Trump for an “unprecedented power grab” in his imposition of tariffs. And the American Civil Liberty Union’s Cecelia Wang described the Trump administration’s alarming initiative against lawyers—to hold “accountable” firms that “engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States”—as a “chilling and unprecedented attack on the foundations of liberty and democracy.” It’s hard to argue with any of it, honestly. But it may also be worth remembering how much currency there still is for the very opposite idea about Trump: that what he represents is entirely precedented—in nineteenth-century Confederate racism or twentieth-century European authoritarianism, even fascism. These days, complex ideas become memes pretty fast. Stay quick out there.

—John Jamesen Gould

This week:

• What does the explosion of new U.S. tariffs mean for global trade?
• Why has South Korea been going through so much political chaos?
• What can democracies do about dictators continuously messing with them?
• + The obscure rules of financial markets. The mystery of clouds. & The U.S. president’s aspirations for peace and the habits of war.

With Mark W. Geiger, Edward Graham, Stephan Haggard, Josh Rudolph, Monica Duffy Toft x Sidita Kushi, and Martin Wolf.

Music from Park Jiha, Salif Keita, and Lullahush. + What’s so special about Mali?

First: A new peace plan for Ukraine. U.S. Judges vs. the White House over deportations. Tech giants on trial in D.C. The trade-war era, cont. No end in sight for Sudan. & A new hope for elephants in Asia …

Developments

The world in brief, April 12-18

A new peace plan for Ukraine

On Thursday in Paris, the United States presented recommendations for a peace deal in Ukraine. The plan includes a ceasefire along the current front lines, which would give Russia control over the Ukrainian territory it’s seized in the war, lift some sanctions on Russia, and rule out Ukraine joining NATO—while also providing security guarantees to Ukraine. After the meetings in France, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on.” U.S. President Donald Trump says that if the two sides can’t agree on a deal, “we’re going to just take a pass.”