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Articles by Will Bunch
Trump’s fixation on Nixon is also a warning | Will Bunch Newsletter
I guess this is the reason they call autumn “the fall.” Here in Greater Philadelphia, the mornings are crisper, the nights are longer, and the sportsfans are apoplectic, to the extent we can even roust ourselves from bed. It’s a bad week for the good guyswhen a 7-0 opening-night loss for the Flyers didn’t make the list of worst things that happened — not when the Phillies crashed and burned while the Eagles are failing to launch. Cavan Sullivan, our city turns its lonely eyes to you.
For a fed-up America, the elite impunity of the Cornell rape case is the last straw
It was the kind of smug dude-bro TV football commentary that would have gone mostly unnoticed if this had been an ordinary week in America. On Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football, the controversial-is-an-understatement quarterback Deshaun Watson was leading his Cleveland Browns to an upset victory. And the legendary 81-year-old sportscaster Al Michaels and his sidekick Kirk Herbstreit saw the NFL’s favorite storyline, a redemption arc.
What everyone is getting wrong about ‘woke’ | Will Bunch Newsletter
In 1964, I was a) only 5 years old and b) living in the New York suburbs, so while I’ve been hearing all my life about the notorious collapse of the Phillies that September, I didn’t get to experience that feeling of existential dread in real time. But I was almost there last week, as the 2026 Phillies nearly became the first team to blow a four-game playoff lead with five games to play. Almost.
We need to find the words for Trump’s madness before things blow up
Newspaper readers on Earth 2 woke up this week to a shocking headline in the Bizarro New York Times: “President’s Mental Health Crisis Spirals Downward Again in Stunning and Senseless Speech to UN.” The article began: “BIZARRO NEW YORK — In a rambling and at times incoherent 40-minute speech to the United Nations’ General Assembly that shocked delegates from around the alternative planet, President Donald Trump made up his own new name for artificial intelligence, lied about his regime’s...
Apologies to Caligula: Trump Is Out of His Goddamn Mind
— from the Philadelphia Inquirer I feel like I need to apologize for a column a couple of months ago when I compared the current president of the United States to Caligula, the possibly mad Roman emperor who is said to have nominated his trusted horse for high office. I need to apologize to Caligula. From pitching his triumphal D.C. arch as a storage shed for deadly snipers’ bullets to banning reporters from the White House in a narcissistic rage, Donald Trump is losing his grip on reality.
Apologies to Caligula: Trump Is Out of His Goddamn Mind
I feel like I need to apologize for a column a couple of months ago when I compared the current president of the United States to Caligula, the possibly mad Roman emperor who is said to have nominated his trusted horse for high office. I need to apologize to Caligula. From pitching his triumphal D.C. arch as a storage shed for deadly snipers’ bullets to banning reporters from the White House in a narcissistic rage, Donald Trump is losing his grip on reality. This is unsustainable.
War, AI, and the end of the world | Will Bunch Newsletter
I feel like I need to apologize for a column a couple of months ago when I compared the current president of the United States to Caligula, the possibly mad Roman emperor who is said to have nominated his trusted horse for high office. I need to apologize to Caligula. From pitching his triumphal D.C. arch as a storage shed for deadly snipers’ bullets to banning reporters from the White House in a narcissistic rage, Donald Trump is losing his grip on reality. This is unsustainable.
Eagles’ silence on their role in the Macklemore mess has become deafening
Ed Sheeran walked onto a big stage at Lincoln Financial Field Saturday night with nothing but his guitar to support him. Surrounded by tens of thousands of fans, a massive global pop star may have never felt so all alone.
Violence toward journalists is a symptom of a terminally ill U.S. democracy
Some days it’s hard to know what’s worse for America: the wars that Donald Trump is losing — most notably in Iran, as U.S. motorists pay painful reparations at the gas pump — or the ones that he’s winning, like his onslaught against a free press.
Next-door states banned ICE-cop deals. Why not Pa.? | Will Bunch Newsletter
One of the many things we won’t forget about the Trump era is how much the family of POTUS 47 has enriched itself — not only the president but his children, including Donald Trump Jr., who is said to be now worth at least $500 million, and growing. So it was no surprise when his second marriage to Palm Beach’s Bettina Anderson in May was a lavish affair on two private islands in the Bahamas.
Trump calls on Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian diesel fuel, saying attacks causing a shortage
KYIV, Ukraine — U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure used to produce and distribute diesel, saying the attacks are causing a global shortage. He spoke after diesel prices in the U.S. hit a record on Friday, soaring past $6 a gallon on average.
Russian drone hits train near Ukraine-Poland border soon after visiting dignitaries passed through
KYIV, Ukraine — A Russian drone struck a train near the Ukraine- Poland border on Sunday shortly after senior visiting officials — including the former prime ministers of the U.K. and Sweden — passed through, Ukraine’s state rail operator said. According to Ukrzaliznytsia, a diplomatic train carrying Boris Johnson, Carl Bildt, and security advisers from several European Union states had purposely left the station at Yahodyn ahead of schedule.
We don’t talk enough about Trump’s $850M pay-to-play slush fund
There’s actually three things that are pretty certain in life: death, taxes, and the fact that the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly bars Donald Trump from seeking a third term as president. Even Trump, for all his occasional pep-rally bluster and online merch about running in 2028, has kind of, sort of, begrudgingly acknowledged this reality. “You know the law is very strong on that,” the president admitted to reporters during a gaggle just last month.
In Pa. coal country, local police join with ICE to bring arrests, fear
SCHUYLKILL HAVEN, Pa. — Brett Sell had a bad feeling about coming to work on July 28. The painting contractor was part of a small work crew rehabbing a two-store commercial property in Orwigsburg — a borough of just over 3,000 people in the heart of east-central Pennsylvania’s coal country — and workers had seen what looked like an unmarked law-enforcement vehicle circling the site the day before. “Yo, look up!” Sell said to his fellow painter, Orlando Rivera.
Islamophobia: A 9/11 legacy that refuses to die | Will Bunch Newsletter
For anyone who noticed I was gone, I’m back. It was a weird two weeks of flex time — half-vacation, including jaunts to a couple of Jersey Shore points (see below) and an OG family reunion in the Hudson Valley, and half-working on my biggest investigative-reporting project in several years. It’s coming very soon. Stay tuned. If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, anti-Islamic hate is getting worse Friday is the 25th anniversary of the Sept.
Why Trump’s attack on Stars and Stripes was a gut punch | Will Bunch Newsletter
You’ve probably noticed that many of your favorite TV news anchors are on vacation right now, because the conventional wisdom is that nothing ever happens in August. That conventional wisdom has been wrong since Aug. 24, 79 A.D., when Mount Vesuvius erupted. The calendar has failed to stop natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina (see item below) or human-made ones like Richard Nixon, who resigned on Aug. 9, 1974.
Fighting AI and Flock, today’s Luddites are the revolutionaries we need
It’s a good bet that a suburban Cincinnati man named Cody Morelock probably never heard of “Ned Ludd,” the mythical English weaver of the early 1800s who became the avatar of a movement to save society from the destructive force of a new technology.
Is Trump-touted Freedom Fuel from Venezuela? | Will Bunch Newsletter
What a difference three words can make. For weeks, the American body politic has watched the strange relationship between Donald Trump and his ever-present 35-year-old aide Natalie Harp in a state of puzzled silence. Then Georgia Democratic Sen.
We need to care about Trump’s CIA murdering fishermen on the high seas
One of the worst things about Donald Trump’s America in the 2020s — I know, I know, it’s hard to pick — is the return of all the horrible stuff that you foolishly thought our flawed nation was done with after the reckonings of the 1970s. The American quagmire in Iran makes Vietnam look practically wise in comparison.
We need the truth about Trump's alleged 'ballroom' | Will Bunch Newsletter
Do rich guys have to ruin everything? Apparently so. There came a time about 15 years ago that my soccer obsession got to the point where I felt I needed to pick an English Premier League team to root for, in addition to the U.S. national teams and the Union. Long story, but I went with Liverpool, in a city that many consider the Philadelphia of the U.K., and it’s been a good ride, including a couple of trophies.
Should Democrats campaign for more English lit majors?
There is one war that Donald Trump is actually winning — unfortunately. Clearly it’s not the ongoing fiasco in the Strait of Hormuz. But Trump and his MAGA culture warriors keep gaining new territory here at home in their all-out assault on knowledge, with America’s college campuses as the prime battleground.
In the American prairie, a stealth plan to end the GOP Senate majority
South Dakota is a prairie state that voted more than 63% for Donald Trump in 2024, so it’s not the first place you’d look to find a wave of discontent over GOP rule. But deep under the state’s expansive corn and soybean fields grow the invasive roots of political rage. There’s the trade war that’s dried up demand for farmers’ crops while driving up the costs of essential items like fertilizer. Disdain for Trump has slashed the flow of Canadian tourists who once flocked to Mount Rushmore.
Why we're still fighting over COVID-19 | Will Bunch Newsletter
Today’s newsletter is all about things I thought I was done writing about: COVID-19, Kamala Harris, and the World Cup. Regarding the latter, FIFA strongman Gianni Infantino walked off the pitch after last month’s final like the hero in Steve Miller’s “Take the Money and Run”: He got the money — an ungodly $15 billion in revenue — thinking he got away. But instead, just like Icarus, Infantino flew too close to the sun.
The smell of death surrounds Donald Trump’s regime from Guatemala to Pittsburgh
Ooooh that smell Can’t you smell that smell Ooooh that smell The smell of death surrounds you — Lynyrd Skynyrd, “That Smell” The United States government might wash its hands of any responsibility for the more than 700,000 human beings who’ve been deported since Donald Trump returned to the White House some 18 months ago, but it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to determine who’s to blame for the blood stains that have been left behind.
This quaint Pa. borough is a ‘speed trap’ nabbing immigrants for ICE
MOUNT HOLLY SPRINGS, Pa. — Still hailed for its trout fishing, this bucolic central Pennsylvania borough in the shadow of South Mountain was a big draw for tourists at the turn of the 20th century who flocked here to cool off in its mineral-spring waters. In 2026, this tiny municipality about 25 miles southwest of Harrisburg is developing a much less welcoming reputation.
Trump wants smarter computers, dumber people | Will Bunch Newsletter
Occasionally I get to share good news in this space. Wu Shaoping — the Chinese dissident who fled to America but was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a central Pennsylvania traffic stop — was freed from ICE’s Moshannon Valley Processing Center Friday night, not long after my column dropped and a couple ofmembers of Congress pressed for his release. His asylum case is still pending. I’ve learned there’s actually a lot more to this story — stay tuned.
Corey Ruiz police killing reveals an America numb to violence
It all felt familiar, painfully so. Late Thursday afternoon, news began to spread on social media that a Black man had been gunned down by police officers in a street corner in Madison, Wisc. Over the next couple of hours, we learned that the shooting victim had died, and that a neighborhood bystander had captured much of the encounter, including the three fatal gunshots, on video.
Wu Shaoping escaped China’s repression, only to get busted by ICE in Pa.
Seven years ago, the walls were closing in on Wu Shaoping in his native China. Like a fireman who rushes into a burning building, attorney Wu had watched China’s repressive Communist Party arrest scores of human-rights lawyers under a crackdown that began in 2015 and responded by joining their dangerous cause, representing practitioners of Christianity or the Falun Gong sect.
Will U.S democracy die from embarrassment? | Will Bunch Newsletter
If the summer of 2026 came with an Official Cliché™, it would have to be “glass half empty, half full.” Things could be better. Things could be worse. It’s people — many of whom are quite wonderful — doing our best in a world run by institutions that are rotten to the core. You’ll find no greater example than the World Cup that wrapped up Sunday with a well-deserved trophy for Spain.
The other Graham Platner crisis for Dems | Will Bunch Newsletter
A journalistic mentor of mine back in the 1980s told me that Harry Truman, pressed for a comment on the passing of a political enemy, finally said, “It’s a damn shame when anybody dies.” Of course, like most perfect quotes, HST probably never actually said this, yet I find occasion to think of these words often. On Saturday night, South Carolina GOP Sen.
American Caligula: Trump’s assassination paranoia threatens us all
America’s current plight was nailed recently in an analysis by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Jeffrey Frankel, who dedicated an entire paragraph to the notorious despot who was bankrupting the world’s greatest superpower, “building luxurious villas and hosting huge parties.” Frankel described how this strongman “blamed his troubles on his predecessor … He reveled in gold coins. He insisted that people worship him as god. He grafted busts of his head onto statues of gods.
ICE killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. They want you to be apathetic. Don’t be.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo woke up at 5 a.m. Tuesday and started his day like almost every other one for the last 35 years since he came to Houston from Mexico and built his own American Dream brick by brick — sending his three sons to top universities on the foundation he’d constructed through years of backbreaking labor.
Climate denial is what history will remember about July 4, 2026 | Will Bunch Newsletter
Over the last decade, I’ve grown used to waking up before dawn and writing about a soul-crushing defeat from the night before. Usually it’s on a Wednesday, but somehow Donald Trump is always involved. Monday’s 4-1 demolition of the U.S. men’s national soccer team by Belgium pretty much confirmed that I won’t live to see Americans win the World Cup in my lifetime, so it’s time for acceptance. But these last three weeks have been a blast, and the party isn’t over.
The America-turns-250 column Donald Trump doesn’t want me to write
It was right after birthright citizen Folarin Balogun tapped in another game-winning goal for U.S. men’s soccer in the World Cup Wednesday night that I had a moment of clarity of where things are in America as our nation turns 250. I’d gone to Union Yards, the outdoorsy beer hall adjacent to Chester’s soccer palace Subaru Park, not only to catch the game but also a vibe that I’d wanted to turn into this column.
Another Jan. 6 coup? Trump is screaming it out loud. | Will Bunch Newsletter
What amazes me about the fact that America turns 250 on Saturday is that I’ve been alive now for 27% of U.S. history. When I was 17 and watched the Bicentennial parade of tall ships down the Hudson River from my dad’s conveniently located Manhattan skyscraper office on July 4, 1976, I thought I was celebrating ancient history. I was wrong. In a big, diverse world, the United States remains a young adult among nations. Like most young adults, we have a lot of issues.
America at 250: 50-year sentences for progressive protesters. Freedom for millionaires.
A few months back, the Donald-Trump-fried chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, urged broadcasters to air patriotic programming for America’s 250th birthday — including regular on-air recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. I couldn’t find any reports about TV or radio stations that have actually done this. Maybe they’ve figured out that the bit at the end — that stuff about “liberty and justice for all” — has been rendered into utter baloney by Carr’s strongman boss.
In a dark 2026, a Summer of Love breaks out | Will Bunch Newsletter
Some newsletters have a theme, and this week’s focus is a rare one: good news. Let’s start with the subject of a recent column: Izzy Aly, the 40-year-old Egyptian national from Orlando who’d been in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for nearly six months, amid allegations of neglect around his worsening health. Today, I can happily report that Aly is a free man: released from detention and back home in central Florida.
The ‘Minneapolis 15’ ICE-protester indictments are meant to shut you up
In the tumultuous five-plus months since masked federal immigration agents descended on her hometown, the Rev. Jen Crow of the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis has already been arrested at an airport sit-in, organized a vigil after the murder of her neighbor Alex Pretti, and held trainings at her church for volunteer observers.
JD Vance can never become president | Will Bunch Newsletter
One of my many New Year’s resolutions back in January was never to write what I call “Captain Obvious columns” about the Donald Trump scandal du jour that’s all over your social media feed. So you’ll have to imagine the column I didn’t write about Trump’s tacky UFC cage match that desecrated the White House, and the role of bread and circuses (or just circuses...where’s the bread?) in the inevitable decline and fall of decrepit empires. If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.
JD Vance can never become president | Will Bunch Newsletter
6 hours ago Donald Trump threw himself a great big birthday party over the weekend, targeted to appeal to the famous white working-class voters who have formed the core of his base since the moment he came down that golden escalator. He transformed the White House lawn into a makeshift Colosseum and held a …
Elon Musk egged on a race riot, then became a trillionaire. What are we even doing?
The images coming out of Belfast — the city in Northern Ireland made famous by decades of ethnic violence that came to be known simply as, “the Troubles” — were horrific enough. The sight of cars and homes ablaze and hordes of masked, young men roaming the city streets brought back painful memories for old-timers.
The U.S. welcomed this child of the Vietnam War. Why did he die in ICE custody?
Tuan Van Bui’s bad luck arguably started the day he was born in 1970 in the city then known as Saigon — the child of a Vietnamese woman and one of the thousands of U.S. soldiers who fought in Southeast Asia for nearly two decades.
The U.S. welcomed this child of the Vietnam War. Why did he die in ICE custody?
Tuan Van Bui’s bad luck arguably started the day he was born in 1970 in the city then known as Saigon — the child of a Vietnamese woman and one of the thousands of U.S. soldiers who fought in Southeast Asia for nearly two decades.
Before the World Cup, a beautiful game for U.S. Ivorians | Will Bunch Newsletter
This should be a moment for sports fans to be insanely happy. The finals are underway in both the NHL and NBA, and the match-ups and the games so far have never been more compelling. Soccer’s World Cup — always the greatest show on Earth — starts Thursday (see below). Yet something seems off. If you wanted to attend Monday night’s Knicks-Spurs Game 3 at Madison Square Garden, it would have cost about $4,500 — not courtside, but in the last row.
You hate data centers. They think you could be a terrorist or Chinese dupe.
A year or so ago, many Americans had never heard of a data center. Today, these massive warehouse-type structures with an insatiable thirst for electricity and water are fast becoming the new “third rail” of U.S. politics. Sarah Longwell, the focus-group guru and TV pundit who writes for the Never Trumper site The Bulwark, said what she’s hearing from everyday voters is stunning.
From Nazi-hugging Greg Bovino to the Supreme Court, the hood is coming off MAGA
It was only a few months ago that then-U.S. Border Patrol honcho Greg Bovino, the trench-coat-wearing commandant of immigration agents spreading terror through American cities like Minneapolis and Chicago, was shocked, shocked that anyone would dare compare his masked goons to Nazi Germany’s notorious Gestapo.
Is 'thrillionaire' Trump addicted to stock trading? | Will Bunch Newsletter
I literally had to sort through more than a half-dozen column ideas this week, including: What is the deal with Donald Trump’s health? His “annual” physical (now twice a year) at Walter Reed Medical Center last week included news that the president has a visible scar on his right ear from the 2024 Butler shooting (he doesn’t) and that those massive bruises are caused by shaking hands (they aren’t, if you believe reputable doctors). So what else aren’t they telling us?
Mikie Sherrill’s state police riot in Newark is a national disgrace
When Donald Trump was first elected president in 2016 and the United States began its decade-long spiral into authoritarian madness, there arose a popular meme: Whatever you think you would have done to stop the rise of European fascism in the 1930s, or to end American racial injustice in the 1960s, is what you are doing right now.
They're fighting to stop Izzy Aly from dying in a Pennsylvania gulag
Meetings of Clearfield County’s commissioners are said to be typically as placid as the thick oak forests and cold mountain streams of this isolated slice of Pennsylvania North Country, some 25 miles west of State College. Not so on Tuesday night. Protesters from the county and from as far away as Pittsburgh carried signs like “ICE = American Gestapo,” and there was an uproar when a prominent community activist was not allowed to speak because she lives just across the county line.
Is Google a bigger threat to democracy than Trump? | Will Bunch Newsletter
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said many memorable things, but none so profound as this: “I have decided to stick with love,” he said. “Hate is too great a burden to bear.” I wonder what MLK would have thought about the final broadcast of Late Night with Stephen Colbert on CBS.
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