Imagine the Rogers Centre filled to capacity, then filled again by half, to conjure a mental image of the some 70,000 people last week who scrambled, mostly swimming and climbing, from Morocco into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in North Africa. It was the largest single crossing at the Spain-Morocco border on record, bearing the hallmarks of a co-ordinated movement rather than a spontaneous spasm: migrants were reportedly ushered across by Moroccan agents embedded in the crowds . Morocco contests Spain’s sovereignty over the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, even though Iberian dominion predates Moroccan independence by centuries.

If the desired result of this incursion was to humiliate Madrid, as seems likely, it has proved a spectacular success. European officials clambered over one another to condemn the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez for the breach of Spanish — and therefore, European Union — territory.

Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, suspended her country’s agreement on free movement with Spain last week. She further called for Spain to be suspended from Schengen, Europe’s free travel zone, which the North African territories fall outside of. This week, the European commissioner for migration rebuked Spain’s recent decision to regularize half a million illegal migrants as “not a good signal” for Europe.

There is a sense in some European capitals that Spain’s lax approach to illegal migration has, by flaunting a soft underbelly to millions seeking to enter Europe, made the continent as a whole more vulnerable at a time when public anxieties around immigration are placing populist parties — long considered beyond the pale — in the ascendant.

The Spanish government claimed on Tuesday that it had returned most of the migrants who made the crossing, excepting the approximately 75 people who died in the process. The operational crisis has mostly subsided. But the symbolic damage for Spain and Europe’s border security has been considerable — such numbers overwhelming the Spanish border are likely to invite more of the same.

Most concerning from Europe’s perspective, though, is that Morocco’s claim to the cities has received tacit U.S. support. Morocco has long been willing to weaponize migration as a form of kinetic diplomacy. Last week’s crossing was a major escalation. It is unclear what prompted Rabat to ramp up the pressure; it might, however, feel emboldened after a budget report recently approved by the U.S. House of Representatives described Ceuta and Melilla as “located in Moroccan territory” and subjects of “Morocco’s longstanding claim.”

To make matters worse for Spain, Israel, a Moroccan ally, supported Moroccan irredentist claims over Western Sahara, a disputed territory in northwest Africa, in exchange for Rabat’s participation in the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Israel is one of the few countries to have done so, and some Israeli officials appear willing to lend rhetorical support to Morocco’s claims over Ceuta and Melilla, too.

Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, posted on X last week: “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy. Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.” The remarks led to speculation from Spanish opposition politicians — which remains unsubstantiated — that Israel and the U.S. had a hand in orchestrating the crisis.

Under Sánchez, Spain has become one of Europe’s most trenchant critics of Israel, so it is unsurprising Jerusalem seized on last week’s incident to return the opprobrium. Yet Israel is fast approaching pariah status in Europe, and the state swiftly distanced itself from Danon’s comments, with Dana Erlich, Israel’s ambassador to Spain, writing on X: “The comment made by Israel’s Ambassador to the UN on the issue does not represent the position of the State of Israel.”

While the U.S. and Israel have not publicly encouraged Rabat’s use of immigration as a form of blackmail, neither country has explicitly condemned Morocco’s actions. U.S. Vice-President JD Vance limited his criticism to “radical left-wing globalist policies,” an unlikely reference to Rabat’s autocratic monarchy.

The incident has highlighted a geopolitical fault line in which the interests of the U.S., Israel and Morocco appear to run against those of Europe. Europe’s response, in turn, has been to train its ire on Spain, which has become a pro-migration black sheep on a continent hardening in the other direction. In a Wednesday op-ed, Bruno Maçães, Portugal’s former secretary of state for European affairs, decried this emergent “common foreign policy” as “every man for himself.”

He might have added that Sánchez’s unilateral decision to regularize one-million migrants, as well as Angela Merkel’s move, as Germany’s former chancellor, to admit one-million asylum seekers into Europe’s free travel area in 2015 and 2016 , made such an approach all but guaranteed.

National Post

Global Affairs Canada was asked to identify the conditions governing one of Canada’s most consequential foreign-policy decisions in decades. Did Ottawa establish benchmarks before recognizing Palestine? Which had been met? Was there a monitoring process, and what consequences would follow if the remaining commitments failed?

It could not name one, I know because I emailed them to ask.

Instead, the department exposed a contradiction between what Prime Minister Mark Carney told Canadians one year ago and how his government now explains its decision. On July 30, 2025, Carney said recognition was “predicated” on commitments from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to fundamentally reform Palestinian governance, hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas could play no part and demilitarize the Palestinian state.

This week, Global Affairs used different language in its response : “Canada’s recognition decision was based on the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to reforms.” This distinction matters.

What Global Affairs now appears to be suggesting is that recognition was not based on completed reforms, elections, Hamas’s exclusion or demilitarization. It was based on a commitment to pursue them.

That is the difference between a condition and a promise.

Global Affairs also said the possibility of achieving two states through negotiation had been “gravely eroded” by Hamas terrorism culminating in the Oct. 7 massacre, Israeli settlement construction, settler violence, proposed annexation measures and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

“It is in this context that Canada recognized the State of Palestine,” the department said.

That explanation raises an unavoidable question: did Canada, in effect, reward the strategy Hamas began on October 7?

Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 people, took hundreds hostage and triggered a devastating war. That war further transformed the diplomatic landscape, and Canada then concluded that recognition was necessary to preserve Palestinian statehood.

When Canada formally recognized Palestine on Sept. 21, 2025, Carney insisted it was “in no way” a reward for terrorism. But intentions do not erase incentives.

According to Global Affairs’ own explanation, Hamas’s terrorism helped destroy the previous diplomatic approach. That destruction created urgency, and Canada responded by granting recognition before Hamas disarmed and before the Palestinian leadership completed its promised reforms.

Hamas does not need to govern a future state to claim its violence produced a result. It needs only to point to the sequence: diplomatic stalemate, October 7, war, international pressure and recognition.

Canada waited just 53 days between announcing its intention and formally recognizing Palestine. Carney said “progress has already been made,” but did not identify that progress or the threshold it satisfied. Global Affairs has now declined to confirm whether benchmarks, assessments, timelines, monitoring or consequences ever existed.

Instead, it listed “steps” toward a social-welfare system, the “development” of educational materials, the “drafting” of an interim constitution, local elections and an “intent” to hold further elections. Every description refers to something minimal, unfinished, local or still in the future. Developing educational materials says nothing about their content. A constitution still being drafted is not constitutional reform. An intention to hold an election is not an election.

The April 25 vote was not the general election Carney promised. It selected municipal and village councils responsible for local services, not a president, national legislature or government.

It was also geographically limited. Elections throughout Gaza were postponed except in Deir al-Balah, where turnout was approximately 23 per cent, and the West Bank where it was 56 per cent . The Associated Press described the vote in Deir al-Balah as a largely symbolic “pilot” election .

Across the West Bank and Deir al-Balah, contested polling occurred in 183 of 420 local authorities. Another 197 councils were decided by acclamation, while 40 lacked enough candidates and were to have members appointed.

These elections did not renew Abbas’s mandate, elect a national government or test whether Hamas would be excluded from national political power. They cannot substitute for the general elections Carney described.

Global Affairs also cited an intention to hold Palestinian National Council elections on November 1, 2026. Separately, Palestinian Legislative Council elections are scheduled for November 28, 2026. Neither has happened, and Global Affairs did not explain whether one or both would satisfy Carney’s promise of “general elections in 2026.”

Scheduled elections are especially unconvincing under a leadership with a history of cancelling them. Abbas scheduled parliamentary and presidential votes in 2021 before postponing both . Presidential elections are now expected in 2027. Abbas was elected in 2005 for a four-year term, but no presidential election has been held since.

Nor has Carney’s assurance that Hamas could play no part been tested. Hamas may be formally excluded from the ballot, but it could still exert influence through affiliated candidates, allied factions, intimidation or its continuing armed power. Canada cannot know whether Hamas has genuinely been excluded until candidates are registered, ballots are cast, results are respected, and power is transferred. Yet recognition came first.

Then there is demilitarization. Hamas remains armed.

Global Affairs told me in their email response that they welcomed “the proposed agreement on the disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza that was announced on July 30, which if accepted and implemented by all parties, could mark an important step towards peace and security.”

A proposal is not disarmament, and an arrangement announced in 2026 cannot retroactively justify recognition granted in 2025. A report from Reuters last week suggests there are unresolved disagreements over implementation and the handling of different weapons.

Carney did not say Hamas should discuss surrendering some heavy weapons. He said Hamas must disarm and the Palestinian state must be demilitarized. Retaining other weapons, fighters, tunnels or an independent command structure would not satisfy that commitment. One year later, Hamas remains armed.

The final commitment was that Abbas would “fundamentally reform” Palestinian governance. Global Affairs’ response establishes only that the Palestinian Authority has started or announced several processes. Constitutional work remains unfinished, national elections have not occurred and Abbas remains president more than two decades after his election.

If Canada concluded that fundamental reform had occurred, it should identify the standard and demonstrate how it was met. If merely promising or beginning reform was enough, Carney should not have presented fundamental reform as a predicate. Abbas had already made those promises on July 30, so what was Canada assessing during the 53 days before recognition? Global Affairs will not say.

Recognition was one of Canada’s principal pieces of diplomatic leverage. It could have been withheld until elections occurred, Hamas was demonstrably excluded, governance reforms reached an identifiable threshold and armed factions surrendered their weapons. Instead, Canada spent that leverage while every major outcome remained unresolved.

What happens if the elections are postponed, Hamas retains power, demilitarization fails or reform remains unfinished? Global Affairs identified no consequence. Canada has already recognized the state. It cannot offer recognition again.

One year ago, Canadians were told recognition was predicated on elections in which Hamas could play no part, fundamental governance reform and a demilitarized Palestinian state. Today, neither full general nor parliamentary or presidential elections have yet occurred, Hamas’s exclusion has not been tested, Hamas remains armed and fundamental reform has not been demonstrated. Canada’s recognition, meanwhile, is complete.

One year later, Ottawa has still not demonstrated that Carney’s predicates were ever genuine conditions. Canada granted recognition first and left elections, reform and demilitarization for later. Conditions that do not have to be met are not conditions. They are political cover.

National Post

Matthew Taub is the founder and executive director of Unapologetically Jewish, a national organization fighting antisemitism in Canada.

• Alan Baker: Anita Anand’s misguided condemnation of Israel
• Colby Cosh: Democrats’ attempt to limit the presidential pardon power is futile

The recent statement by Global Affairs Canada condemning “the ongoing violence in the West Bank” and exhorting against “the expansion of Israeli settlements” invites some analysis and clarification inasmuch as it appears to be both misinformed and misguided.

Violence of any kind directed against Arab or Jewish residents cannot be condoned, and must punished in accordance with the law. This is a clear societal norm in any civilized society, and is applicable whether committed by terrorists or marginal criminal elements. And it is no less applicable to violence committed by demonstrators, religious groups or soccer hooligans.

However, in specifically condemning violence in the West Bank, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand appears to forget, or chooses to ignore, the ongoing, near-daily acts of Palestinian terror carried out against Israeli citizens. In so doing, she is in effect turning a blind eye to such terror, and sanctioning it.

In singling out and condemning Israel for “violence in the West Bank” and linking it in such an obvious and blatant manner to Israel’s settlements, Ottawa is creating a false generalization and a malicious equation. This is totally unacceptable, all the more so when made by the Government of Canada, a country that has historically taken pride in the commonality between it and Israel.

Regrettably, Minister Anand and her colleagues, who are always apt to politicize anything connected with Israel, appear to be characterizing instances of violence committed by marginal and irresponsible groups of youth from the settlements, as if it is the officially sanctioned policy of the Israeli government to incite violence against Palestinians.

To characterize isolated instances as if they are a systematic, government-sanctioned policy of violence against Arabs, and to dub this “settler violence,” would appear to be ingenuine and contrived.

The absurdity of such a negative buzz phrase directed only against Israel is particularly blatant when one compares this with the violence and hooliganism seen around the world, including the violence and hate seen at political marches and demonstrations on campuses and on major thoroughfares throughout Canada.

There exists no Israeli policy encouraging or sanctioning violence against Arabs. Such violence is clearly illegal and, as in any normal society, law enforcement bodies are required to act against it. While laxity in such enforcement may well warrant criticism and require more assertive action by authorities, this cannot, and should not, be seen as indicative of any official policy of sanctioning violence. As such, the term “settler violence” is misguided, ill-advised and malicious.

Global Affairs’ statement that Israel’s settlements are “illegal under international law & undermine prospects for peace, security and stability” is no less ill-advised.

Customary international law enables an administering authority, in governing territory it holds, to use and benefit from land that is not privately owned, as long as it refrains from altering the status of the land, pending the negotiation of a peaceful settlement of the dispute.

Furthermore, the Oslo Accords between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel, which established a special legal regime applicable to the West Bank, overriding any other legal framework, accorded to both sides the power to conduct zoning, planning and construction projects in the areas under their respective control and administration, pending the outcome of negotiations between the parties on the permanent status of the territories.

Furthermore, the parties agreed that the issue of settlements would be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations.

To claim that settlements that were legitimately established and comport with Palestinian-Israeli agreements are illegal and “undermine prospects for peace, security and stability” would appear to indicate a lack of knowledge on the part of those advising Global Affairs Canada in general, and Minister Anand in particular.

The fixation by Minister Anand and her advisers with Israel’s settlements is curious, as is their evident lack of understanding that “prospects for peace, security and stability” are not being undermined by Israel’s settlements. They are being undermined by the consistent refusal of the Palestinian leadership to return to the negotiating table and by their preference for inciting, financing and engaging in terrorism.

One may wonder why Canada’s leaders choose to single out and condemn Israel, while turning a blind eye to the support given by Iran, Qatar and Turkey to Hamas and other groups that continue to engage in terrorism targeting Israel and its citizens.

As the former ambassador of Israel to Canada, it is distressing to see how the relationship between our two countries has deteriorated. One can only wonder as to the reasons are for the souring relations.

National Post

Alan Baker served as the legal adviser to Israel’s foreign ministry and as Israel’s ambassador to Canada (2004-2008). He presently heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.

• Shimon Koffler Fogel: Don’t equate extremist Israeli settlers with Hamas
• Avi Benlolo: Carney has no moral clarity on Israel-Palestine

Few ideas live closer to the heart of U.S. President Donald Trump’s political brand than his consistent claim that the American left steals elections at his expense. If we don’t stop them, Trump warns his crowds, we won’t have a country anymore.

When he (fairly) defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, but without winning a majority of votes, he insisted that millions had voted against him illegally, and that the Democratic party had “rigg(ed) the election at polling booths.” When he lost to Joe Biden in 2020, he made these and more charges, and then encouraged a riot at the Capitol to try to halt the election’s certification. In 2024, he said Democrats had recognized his win over Kamala Harris only because the margin had been “too big to rig.”

Now Trump faces his final popular vote. His name won’t appear on the ballot this November, but the results of midterm elections for Congress are nearly always considered a referendum on the president and his performance. That’s especially true when, as now, his party holds majorities in both legislative houses.

This next election comes at a time of deep unpopularity for Trump. His poll numbers are lower at this point in his tenure than those of any second-term U.S. president in the past 80 years — with the sole exception of Richard Nixon on the eve of his disgraced resignation in 1974.

But this time, judging by his actions, Trump doesn’t seem to care about the election’s outcome. It’s true that, earlier this summer, he used a loudly trumpeted televised speech to rehash never-substantiated charges about previous elections, including accusations that China has created an “unprecedented election security nightmare” by hacking millions of voter registration files and manipulating social media (though not suggesting taking any policy actions against China in response). He also accused Democrats of hiding the evidence.

Trump also persists in pushing the Republican-controlled Congress for new laws that would require all voters to present identification at the polling place, a measure many of his fellow Republicans oppose. But none of this is new — and most of the Republicans now facing midterm challenges have done little to boost Trump’s various vote conspiracies.

The president also seems bent on sabotaging his party’s best re-election candidates more directly. In state after state, he has driven strong, if independently minded, Republican lawmakers into retirement and favoured GOP candidates who pledge loyalty to Trump over incumbents with a better chance of turning back popular Democratic party challengers.

He has repeatedly inflicted harm on the Republican leaders of the House and Senate by trying to force them to adopt deeply unpopular positions or pass legislation that has no chance of success. He has also pressed GOP lawmakers to cancel their August recess, crucial time for campaigning back in their states and districts.

Most importantly, Trump has devoted much attention to issues he cares about personally — a new ballroom for the White House, new monuments in Washington and political revenge against his enemies — while all but ignoring the problems of consumer price inflation that his war on Iran and tariff policies are helping sustain for voters across the nation.

So, what’s going on? Has Trump lost interest in protecting Republican majorities?

Democrats will almost certainly win control of the lower house, giving the opposition power to control government spending and launch official investigations into the president and his administration. They could even impeach him a third time. The upper house is a much closer call, but the opposition might still win a majority there too, undermining Trump’s ability to confirm senior officials, judges and even new Supreme Court justices.

But if Trump seems to be shrugging at his party’s endangered majorities, it’s because he knows he has little chance of success. Once the November votes are counted, the president will likely refuse to accept the outcome. It’s a safe bet that he will contest the close races, challenge the integrity of voting machines and election workers, particularly in majority Democratic states, and claim that shadowy foreign agents helped the opposition win. Trump is also likely to claim that Republicans would have won big had they simply done all that he demanded.

All this will further damage U.S. public faith in the institutions of American democracy, yet none of it will matter to the final election outcome. As in all Trump elections — the 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential votes, as well as the 2018 and 2022 midterms — ballots will be counted, and the legitimate winners will claim their seats. Trump can’t change that, because the U.S. federal government has no constitutional role in the administration of American elections.

The outcomes will be decided in the states. Once again, the nation’s institutional guardrails will hold. Whatever Trump says and does in the days, weeks and years that follow, U.S. courts will reject his challenges. Even his follow Republicans, whatever they say when pressed for personal opinions on Trump’s claims, will move forward to prepare for the many post-Trump political and legislative battles to come.

In the process, we will begin to turn the page from the Trump chapters of American presidential history. Vice-President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and many others will carefully open their bids to break free from the decaying orbit of Trump’s political star. Without this president to unite them, Democrats will soon wage their own internecine battles. U.S. allies and rivals will begin to consider how the next U.S. president, Republican or Democrat, might change America’s political and policy trajectory.

For geopolitics, two years is a long time. New Trump stories remain to be written, and this president will continue to shape America’s politics and its role in a fast-changing and fragmented world. But this November’s midterm elections, however colourful the dramas that surround them, will mark a turning point for America’s recent history. Donald Trump’s ability to redefine what is possible inside the United States and the nation’s relations with friends and foes has reached its peak.

National Post

• Conrad Black: Trump’s unfair tariffs are an opportunity for Canada
• Kelly McParland: Midterms coming to cast judgment on Trump

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — The prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, first took office 20 years ago this summer. He has been in and out of office since, his current (and fourth) mandate beginning in 2023. Slovakia is a small country (5.5 million people), but its prime minister is part of some bigger trends. Fico is a man of the left; his party, Direction — Social Democracy, is part of the wider array of European social democratic parties. Yet his version is not what you might expect.

Fico supports larger social welfare payments and bigger government, but is strongly anti-immigration (especially in regard to Muslims and Roma) and takes strong socially conservative positions on homosexuality and gender. After Viktor Orbán’s defeat in neighbouring Hungary, Fico is Russia’s closest ally in the European Union.

Leftist economics, reduced immigration, social conservatism and Putin-friendly foreign policy. That is more or less the MAGA agenda that arose 10 years after Fico first took office. He could comfortably sit in the Trump cabinet.

Like President Donald Trump, he is mired in corruption allegations, though Slovaks seem more fussed about corruption in high office than Americans are. His social conservatism may well be a matter of opportunism rather than sincerity, another similarity with Trump. And both survived assassination attempts in 2024, though Fico’s shooting was much more serious.

As Trump has made conservatism much less conservative in the United States, so Fico has taken social democracy in an idiosyncratic direction too. On opposite sides of the Atlantic, a new combination of political phenomena has coalesced — a coarse, combative, personal political style in service of bigger government, higher taxes, restricted migration, national identity, corruption in high office and hostility to Ukraine. Mar-a-Lago on the Danube.

Fico was the only European Union head of government to visit Moscow in May for the annual Victory Day celebrations (over Nazi Germany, not Ukraine). Like Hungary, Fico took an anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia policy from the beginning, not unrelated to Slovakia’s dependence on Russian oil supplies.

This is my first trip to Slovakia, so I visited Bratislava’s Freedom Square. It’s where the Velvet Revolution actually began in 1989, with a candlelight protest that was put down violently with water cannons. The culminating events took place in Prague, capital of then-Czechoslovakia, but it started here and there is a monument to November 1989 in Freedom Square.

In 2025, enormous protests returned to Freedom Square and other cities across Slovakia, against Fico and particularly his pro-Russia policies. The slogan was “Slovakia is Europe.” In the 1980s, Czechs and Slovaks wished to return to Europe, having been cut off by the Iron Curtain. Now Slovaks see Russia desiring to divide Europe again.

“Bratislava is not Moscow. Slovakia is Europe,” a grateful Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on social media last year, welcoming the support of the Slovak people, if not their government.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech began by invoking Václav Havel, the hero of the Velvet Revolution and soon after president of Czechoslovakia. Carney spoke of the dissident’s 1978 essay about refusing to live by lies.

The protests against Fico’s Russia policy show that the capacity to recognize lies remains in Slovakia. Lies have gained new prominence in democracies in recent years. It is no longer only the propaganda of totalitarian tyrants that is shot through with mendacity, but even the rhetoric of democratic leaders, unchallenged by the digital echo chambers of their own supporters.

That’s why last week’s column by Adam Zivo on the reach of Russian propaganda was important, occasioned by the “redemption tour” of MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, who had parroted Putin’s talking points for years. Astonishingly for someone who claims to follow current affairs, she swallowed entirely the propaganda of Russia Today, the Putin-controlled state media outlet.

Why? Follow the logic, such that it is: Twitter threw Loomer (and Trump) off its platform. Loomer went to Telegram. Telegram features Russian propaganda. Hence Russia must be on the Trump-Loomer team. Loomer thus accepted Russian propaganda as true and amplified it.

It all seemed reasonable enough. After Trump’s return to office, didn’t JD Vance berate Zelenskyy in the Oval Office? Didn’t Trump then roll out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska? Hasn’t Trump refused to let his special envoys set foot in Ukraine, despite regularly paying court to Putin in Moscow? In Trumpworld, believing Russian propaganda seemed reasonable.

Not even Putin claims that Slovakia is part of Russkiy Mir, the Russian world, or imperial Russia. But its prime minister may well be part of Trumpworld, or at least a European version of it.

After Orbán, Fico is rather alone. But there are rumblings on the European right, and so perhaps others may join the Slovakian leader, a curious man of the left.

National Post

On Wednesday morning, a group of Democrats in the U.S. Senate released a proposal for legislative reforms to the much-abused presidential pardon power found in Article II of the constitution. I’m preoccupied with the issue of pardons, as it manifests in the U.S., because it seems to represent an unfixable but slightly mysterious leak in the constitution itself. As I’ve sometimes had occasion to remark, I’m a small-R republican for Americans but a monarchist for my own country. I think this is the only sensible attitude for Canadians; I think we can recognize that the U.S. Constitution is a brilliant product of the human political imagination, quite worthy of the public veneration that secures it. If it still does.

But when it comes to presidential pardons they’ve got a real obvious problem without any equally obvious solution. Most countries’ constitutions have some sort of broad last-resort executive power to absolve persons of crimes in cases where the law or the judiciary might be seen to have gone awry. Canada’s monarchy has retained the ancient royal prerogative of mercy, which is available to the prime minister acting through the governor general, and it creates no controversy or occasions for shameless self-interested use. Yet. (And just think of some of the monsters and weirdos we’ve had as prime minister!)

But the U.S. has encountered a long series of ascendingly outrageous uses of the pardon power, culminating in former president Joe Biden’s unapologetic use of it to protect a wayward son and President Donald Trump’s routine rewarding of donors and cronies. One hopes, at least, that it is culminating; perhaps the republic will just keep tumbling down the slippery slope.

The pardon power was adopted into the U.S. Constitution from the British model, after some discussion amongst the framers, without any of the obvious “checks and balances” that characterize other features of the document. (The lone exception in the text is that the president cannot pardon a public official impeached by a legislature.) From a constitutional-engineering point of view, the ability of a chief magistrate to pardon a criminal is itself a check, one belonging exclusively to the executive, on the power of the judicial branch.

So there is no explicit limit on who can be pardoned; it is not obvious that a president cannot pardon himself; and there is no explicit rule that a pardon need even follow the offence being pardoned, let alone a trial and a conviction. Insofar as the Supreme Court has considered the pardon power, which has happened rarely, it has refused to discover any implicit limits.

Again, the basic situation is no different in constitutional monarchies like ours. (Not assigning a pardon power to anyone in particular is an option for a state, but this would make the actions of judges un-revisable by any earthly authority — which, honestly, may be the system of government toward which Canada is speeding.) The founders understood perfectly well that a president might make unscrupulous or self-interested use of the power, especially on the way out of the office; they just expected that republican virtue, along with the popularly elected legislature’s power to impeach, would protect the state from disgusting and obvious excesses at the top. And if it came to that, the American people would retain the power to amend the constitution as it thought necessary — although, again, any solution to the problem must leave the final decision-making power to somebody or other.

Well, the Senate Democrats, you will notice, aren’t proposing a constitutional amendment. That fail-safe is too fantastic to be invoked. The new bill repeats features of dozens of other pardon-reform acts that have been proposed since the time of presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and, just like those bills, it is bound to get nowhere at all.

And even if you could pass one, it’s not clear that it would have any effect at all once the courts were done with it. The bill includes a purely legislative declaration that presidents can’t self-pardon; no one knows if the Supreme Court would accept such a principle invoked by such a source, although it is sometimes thought they would act on the (supra-constitutional?) legal maxim that no man should be a judge in his own case. It also proposes to impose procedural “transparency” requirements on the recipients of pardons, in the hope that sunlight will serve as a proverbial disinfectant. The truth is that everybody knows Trump hands out pardons to criminal supporters according to his own partisan interests; there’s no lack of sunlight in this sewer at all. It’s just one the American people, by and large, are content to live in.

National Post
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• Kyle Seeback: It’s not Trumpian to hold the Liberal government to account
• Raymond J. de Souza: The world grapples with the limits of military force