It’s one of America’s most popular political myths: the idea that George Washington considered the Senate necessary as a “legislative cooling saucer.” Just as tea or coffee had to be poured on the saucer to get its temperature down, the Senate was needed to reflect on legislation and be the wiser of the chambers. The idea seems more appealing today than ever, but one wonders how much the Senate still lives up to its wise reputation. With 53 seats, the Republicans are the majority, making a net gain of four seats in the 2024 election. We are in luck that one of the key architects of the victorious campaign is a guest at this year’s St.Gallen Symposium and can take us behind the scenes of the US Senate: Jason Thielman.

Jason Thielman is the Principal Founder of S2R Public Affairs. He previously served as Chief of Staff to Senator Steve Daines, a member of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. During the 2024 election cycle, he was Executive Director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), where he played a pivotal role in securing the Republican Senate majority.

Since the early 18th Century, an estimated 300,000 Swiss emigrated across the Atlantic and settled in the United States. Thus, more than a million American citizens claim Swiss roots. There’s hardly a place that more proudly celebrates its Swiss ancestry than a small town in Wisconsin: New Glarus. Founded in 1845, the town was founded by emigrants from the Canton of Glarus with which it maintains a close bond. If you are craving for Rösti or the – so we are told – best beer of the region, New Glarus is the place that serves it all!

Bekah Stauffacher helps preserve the Swiss spirit of New Glarus: an archeologist by training and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she is the president and CEO of The Swiss Center of North America, a nonprofit organization located in New Glarus, Wisconsin, that shares the stories of the Swiss in America and Canada through its museum and archives.

It was a watershed moment: Vice President JD Vance’s speech at this year’s Munich Security Conference shook European observers. Instead of reaffirming transatlantic ties, the Vice President scolded European governments for what he perceived as the marginalization of dissident voices. The Oval Office confrontation between Presidents Zelenskyj and Trump further fanned fears that the United States might abandon its long-time commitment to European security. And, most recently, a Signal chat between Cabinet members further revealed a disconcerting level of disdain for Europe. While anti-American reflexes are nothing new in transatlantic relations, many observers consider anti-Europeanism as a new phenomenon. But is that true? What might be historical precursors of Trump’s foreign policy? And are we indeed witnessing a transatlantic divorce?

Jack Thompson is the perfect person to the current changes in foreign policy as his career not only crisscrosses the Atlantic but also practice and academia: prior to joining the University of Amsterdam as a Lecturer in American Studies, he worked as a Team Head and Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, Senior Strategic Analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, and Lecturer at The Clinton Institute, University College Dublin. His first monograph, Great Power Rising: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press), won the 2020 Theodore Roosevelt Association Book Prize. He also co-edited three books, including Progressivism in America: Past, Present, and Future (Oxford University Press). He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Cambridge and a M.A. in American Foreign Policy and International Economics from The Johns Hopkins University SAIS.

Links to recommended podcasts:

• The Ezra Klein Show, ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ - The New York Times
• Know Your Enemy, Know Your Enemy Archives - Dissent Magazine
• Ross Douthat, "Interesting Times," Opinion | Introducing ‘Interesting Times’ - The New York Times
• The Joe Rogan Experience, JRE - 10 Years in Review
• Theo Von, This Past Weekend, Theo Von - YouTube
• Steve Bannon's War Room, „Bannon`s War Room“-Podcast –Apple Podcasts

For Europeans, they are a staple of their media habits: public media. Whether it’s the grand old lady BBC in the United Kingdom, or the many different stations run by Switzerland’s SRG/SSR, many Europeans rely on public broadcasting for news and entertainment. According to the EU, 48% of its citizens select public TV and radio stations as a news source they trust most. While funding cuts are not unknown to European public broadcasters, few are subject to constant political battles as seen in the United States: since they went on air in the 1970s, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS; 1969) and National Public Radio (NPR; 1970) have always been under scrutiny by Republican presidents. Now, President Donald J. Trump has issued an executive order to withdraw federal funding entirely. What does this mean for public media in the United States? We discuss this with none other than NPR’s CEO, Katherine Maher.

Katherine Maher has served as President and CEO of National Public Radio since 2024. She also worked for seven years as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, and before gained experience at Access Now, the World Bank, the National Democratic Institute, and UNICEF. Alongside numerous other engagements, Ms Maher is the Chair of the Board of Signal Foundation, and from 2022 to 2024 served as an advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State's Foreign Affairs Policy Board regarding issues of technology, governance, and human rights. In 2023, she was briefly the CEO of Web Summit and served on its Board of Directors. Katherine Maher holds a degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies from New York University.

Few Harvard professors have been as outspoken against the Trump Administration’s attack against their University as he has: Ryan Enos has spoken at rallies, given interviews, and written in defense of academic freedom. This isn’t a new quest for him, as he was critical of Harvard’s leadership in the wake of October 7. We take Professor Enos’s attendance of the St.Gallen Symposium as an opportunity to discuss the state of the union, and of the Democratic Party in particular.

Professor Enos’ research is situated at the intersection of psychology, geography, and politics in the United States and other countries. He is Professor of Government and Director of the Center for American Political Studies (CAPS), Working Group on Political Psychology and Behavior (WoGPop), and the Harvard Digital Lab for the Social Sciences (DLABSS). Before joining Harvard University, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His first book, The Space Between Us: Social Geography and Politics (2017), won the American Political Science Association Experimental Research Section Best Book Award.

Recommendations:

• John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origin of Mass Opinion, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
• Daniel J. Hopkins, The Increasingly United States, The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized, Hopkins
• Jim Sidanius & Felicia Pratto, Social Dominance, Social Dominance | Cambridge University Press & Assessment

Disney turned its beloved Snow White into a live action movie – and no one seems happy: some criticize the casting with a Latina star whose skin is not “white as snow,” while others take issue that the color of skin is a topic of controversy at all. And then there’s the problem of the seven dwarves who are, this time around, not dwarves at all which, again, doesn’t please anyone either. The list goes on, and it is exemplary of the way some movies get caught up in the U.S. culture wars. But is this an entirely new phenomenon? How political is Hollywood these days? And might the studios be reigned in by the Trump Administration?

We dive into these questions with Suzanne Enzerink, HSG’s Assistant Professor of American Studies. A Dutch native, she did most of her American Studies coursework at the University of Groningen, with an exchange at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, before pursuing a PhD at Brown University. Before joining HSG, she served as an Assistant Professor at American University in Beirut. Her first book, Give Me Color, is scheduled to appear later this year.

Suggestions:

• The Apprentice
• Adolescence
• 90 Day Fiancé
• "Hollywood's Embassies How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World"

Many tried to predict what Donald J. Trump’s first 100 days in office would amount to. The best advice stemmed from Karl Rove, long-time Republican strategist and political legend: “Buckle up, buttercup!” And yes, a wild ride it has been, particularly since “liberation day” which brought tariffs for America’s friends and foes alike, even uninhabited islands. While some have dismissed Trump’s economic agenda as sheer madness, others claim to detect method and believe it all part of a larger plan to plunge the US into recession. But is there any truth to these claims? What to make of the economic rollercoaster we have been dragged onto by Trump?

Generations of HSG students have been introduced to international economics by Professor Simon J Evenett who will kindly give us a survey in Rollercoaster Economics. After nearly two decades at the University of St.Gallen, Simon Evenett has joined IMD as Professor of Geopolitics and Strategy. He also serves as Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Trade and Investment and he founded the St Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade (SGEPT). SGEPT currently hosts three leading independent commercial policy monitoring initiatives: the Global Trade Alert, a key resource for trade monitoring and assessing trade tensions, the New Industrial Policy Observatory, and the Digital Policy Alert. Launched in 2023, Evenett created the Crux of Capitalism initiative which provides valuable insights into the performance of firms and sectors in 21 major economies. Additionally, he has served as a World Bank official twice, on the UK Competition Commission, was a Member of the Trade and the Economy Panel at the UK Department of International Trade, and has sat on several high-profile commissions relating to the future of world trade.

“But – it can’t happen here!” many Americans asserted in light of the Nazi takeover in Germany. Novelist and muckraker Sinclair Lewis ran with this line and sentiment, outlining a scenario in It Can’t Happen Here (1935) in which it did happen: an authoritarian turn in the United States. Similarly, Philip Roth imagined The Plot against America (2004) in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt would lose the election to “America First Committee” candidate Charles Lindbergh. Scholars and journalists now claim that it has indeed happened here and the plot against America was successful. The “coup from within” succeeded in ringing in “technofascist” age. Is all hope lost?

We discuss these different diagnoses of the present political moment with the first “repeat offender” on the podcast, political theorist Lee Trepanier. Professor Trepanier joined Assumption University in July 2024 as the Dean of the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Previously, he was Chair and Professor of Political Science at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, which he joined after serving in the same roles at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan. With a PhD from Louisiana State University, he established himself as a specialist of Eric Voegelin and has published extensively on conservative thought in the USA and beyond, with books on Canadian Conservative Political Thought (co-edited with Richard Avramenko) and on political conversion in Walk Away: When the Political Left Turns Right (co-edited with Grant Havers).