Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
PARIS — Françoise Giroud's old warning resonates across Europe like an air-raid siren. As a reporter, a Resistance runner and a Gestapo prisoner, she learned the hard way what can happen when a power-mad deviant unleashes fanatic ideologues.
"This is how fascism begins," she wrote. "It never says its name. It creeps, it floats. When it reaches the tips of people's noses, they say: 'Is this it? You think? Don't exaggerate!' And then one day it smacks them in the mouth, and it is too late to get rid of it."
Giroud, co-founder of the weekly L'Express, was the first French cabinet minister for women's affairs. Her Jewish father ran an Ottoman Empire news agency before fleeing Turkey with his family in 1916 to find refuge in France.
She watched Americans overcome an aversion to foreign entanglements after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. The United States took the lead in beating back an evil axis, then spent heavily to pick up the pieces of a shattered world.
President Harry Truman rallied international support for Geneva conventions on human rights and a United Nations as bulwarks against future tyrannies.
Despots succeed with fear, not love, Machiavelli wrote in his demagogues' playbook. They cow dissenters into submission, then reward sycophants in calculated measure. And they mask their own failings by demonizing vulnerable minorities in their midst.
These days, Americans mostly fixate on the moment, ignoring history. Protecting democracy depends not on heeding a 15th-century Florentine but rather a cartoon possum. Walt Kelly's Pogo had it right: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
America's face to the world is now a treacherous, semi-literate felon who mocks the rule of law and spurns free trade. Dictators play on his narcissism. And even the closest, oldest U.S. allies, infuriated, intend to push back hard in every way they can.
PARIS — The view is clear from across an ocean that is suddenly a whole lot wider: Donald Trump, trying to remake the world in his own hateful image, has aligned himself with Vladimir Putin and fellow despots. It seems that was his plan all along.
France is readying its tactical nuclear force to defend Ukraine. Its army now drills to fend off attack. The government distributes "survival manuals" and emergency kits. Families are urged to stockpile food, water and essentials to shelter for at least 72 hours.
Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy speaks diplomatic niceties to mollify Washington. Privately, he echoes what he said of Trump six years ago as a Parliament backbencher: "a tyrant" and "a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath."
Denmark's prime minister minces no words. She says as many Danes died per capita as Americans to support U.S. military operations. A Greenland invasion would trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty, making America the alliance's first wartime adversary.
And Germany's likely new chancellor warns NATO may be gone by June.
China prepares for potential hot war while winning a cold one across the global south, moving in as America cedes ground. Trump's punitive, insulting tariffs sparked harsh ripostes that could cripple world economies for years to come.
The Chinese think in decades and centuries, not four-year terms. "Losing face" is cultural anathema. An official told foreign reporters in Beijing that China remembers humiliating 19th-century opium wars when Western powers occupied its ports.
At home, Trump is taking America back 95 years, heedless of crippling immediate hardship among citizens he is sworn to protect. His tariffs are higher than those in 1930 that deepened the Great Depression and led to World War II.
Time remains to stop the Republican juggernaut before it implants itself permanently with rigged elections and voter suppression. Americans are waking up with nationwide peaceful protests and pressure on legislators. But there is not a day to lose.
A third of eligible voters opted out in 2024, including 21 million who cast ballots for Joe Biden in 2020. America's survival and the world's future depend on how citizens grasp the looming danger.
Franklin Roosevelt revived a sound economy largely with the Civilian Conservation Corps. Volunteers helped by military logistics earned basic wages by protecting the environment, farming fields and building vital infrastructure.
Today, America depends on a different CCC: Congress, courts and courage.
