| I never thought of politics as having a scent — aside from stale pizza and blue slips — but now it does: President’s Donald Trump’s “Victory” perfume smells like a “rallying cry in a bottle.” If that’s the scent of the Republican Party, then what do Democrats smell like? Then again, maybe this isn’t a red vs. blue thing at all. Politics used to be easily sniffed out along those lines, but 2025 may go down as the year that the left/right divide quietly faded. In its place, Allison Schrager says, is a new kind of split: centrists versus populists. Centrists hailing from both parties now have more in common with each other than with the populists who prefer extreme versions of their ideologies. Those radical thinkers view the world as a zero-sum game and condemn “the concentration of power — not of the rich, but among foreigners and institutions: universities, technology firms, government bureaucracies, international agencies, and so on,” she writes. President Trump embodies that ethos, but so do plenty of far-left Democrats. Allison believes “this realignment will shape America’s economic discourse and policies for the foreseeable future,” and in many ways, it already has. Look no further than Trump’s condemnation of the Federal Reserve, says John Authers. He has made it no secret that he thinks Jerome “Too Late” Powell is terrible at his job.  Source: Truth Social “Politicians will always try to influence the Fed, but this administration’s tactics are growing subtler and cleverer,” writes John. Instead of firing Powell outright, he says Trump will likely choose a successor prematurely, relegating the Fed Chair to lame duck status until his official exit in May. “With his replacement likely to be more craven,” Mark Gilbert and Marcus Ashworth say “the Fed’s independence in setting monetary policy looks worryingly compromised.” At the Treasury, too, Jonathan Levin says Scott Bessent is “now openly bucking the time-honored Treasury principle of ‘regular and predictable’ funding.” The idea of anything being “regular” or “predictable” these days is laughable in the face of a president who casually says he’ll “take a look” at deporting Elon Musk on a random Tuesday. Although media coverage on Trump’s falling out with the billionaire isn’t scaring away Matthew Winkler, a lot of investors aren’t willing to touch Tesla’s stock with a 10-foot-pole. At the center of Musk’s most recent row with the administration is the GOP’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which just barely passed in the Senate and is now headed to the House. Mary Ellen Klas says the legislation “is forcing independent-minded Republicans to make hard choices — like whether to stay in politics at all.” In the span of 24 hours, Representative Don Bacon and Senator Thom Tillis, two moderate Republicans who disagreed with Trump on a number of policies, announced they wouldn’t be seeking reelection, further evidence of the party’s shifting political goalposts. The same trend can be seen across the aisle with Zohran Mamdani, the surprise frontrunner to serve as New York’s next mayor. David M. Drucker says “Republicans are eager to turn every Democrat into a Mamdani,” despite there being a plethora of “rising Democratic centrists and pragmatists who appeal to a broad base of voters.” In the purple state of Arizona, Erika D. Smith says the divide haunts the race to fill the seat of Representative Raul Grijalva, a popular progressive who died in March. “Democrats outnumber Republicans, so whoever wins the primary is likely to win the general election. The only question — the same one being asked by many in the party nationally — is what kind of Democrat,” she writes. Adelita Grijalva — the progressive heir — is up against Daniel Hernandez Jr., a former state representative and Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old uber-progressive TikTok activist. “Do voters want moderate politicians or progressives, experience or fresh faces?” Erika asks. “It’s unlikely Foxx will win, but it’s not as unthinkable as it once was.” Bonus Big, Beautiful Bill Reading: An Overture on Overtourism | There’s no way to squeeze 700 years of history into a newsletter, but here goes nothing: Howard Chua-Eoan says locals have been bemoaning tourists since the days of Divine Comedy. “When Dante sketched out his eighth circle of hell, he had horned demons whipping queues of sinners to keep them in line, comparing them to the crowds of pilgrims in Rome,” he writes. “Pilgrims were the first tourists — and they traveled not only to gawk at the holy sites but to buy blessings and souvenirs and, often, to fraternize with the locals.” But today’s pilgrims are far less pious. In Kyoto, Japan, bros with “zero zen” cosplay Shōgun in $20 polyester kimonos. In Cannes, France, cruise ship schedules get canceled to limit pollution and overcrowding. In Rome — where Howard just visited — people deface 1,953-year-old ruins with little care. Not everyone is trying to sign the Colosseum like a personal yearbook, yet a few bad apples give foreigners a bad name. How can you be responsible when visiting a new city this summer? In addition to hiring a local guide, [1] Howard says to “skip the generic bucket list and come up with an original one. Do the research. Don’t go flowing downstream with the perspiring masses of humanity that know only to stare at the Trevi fountain.” | 
