I read an essay this morning about the end of the American-led world. Its argument stayed with me because it gave a larger shape to things that can look like separate stories in the news: tariffs, hostility to immigration, demands to bring factories home, arguments over energy, rearmament and the growing distrust between allies.

America’s weak center is giving way to energized populist edges, as Trump nationalism and Mamdani-style left politics expose a deeper collapse of trust in the old political machinery.