Jonathan Capehart
Jonathan Capehart is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, co-host of MS NOW’s “The Weekend,” and a PBS NewsHour political analyst featured on “Brooks and Capehart.” He previously served as an associate editor and opinion writer at The Washington Post and is the author of “Yet Here I Am: Lessons From a Black Man’s Search for Home.”
Middle Powers Need U.S. Power to Resist Chinese Coercion
Middle powers are seeking leverage between a less reliable Washington and a more coercive Beijing, but the speakers argued that coordination cannot substitute for American power. In a Jonathan Capehart-moderated Aspen Ideas Festival panel, Chrystia Freeland, Sadanand Dhume, and Shannon O’Neil said countries outside the two dominant powers need deeper cooperation, but remain constrained by divergent interests, supply-chain dependence, collective-action problems, and the continuing indispensability of the United States.
The American Dream Depends on Rebuilding Trust in Institutions
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, business and civic leaders argued that the American dream remains politically useful only if it is treated as unfinished work rather than a settled promise. Samantha Tweedy, Tom Wilson, Brian Hooks and Skye Perryman differed on how much responsibility business should bear, but tied declining trust in institutions to unequal access to opportunity, economic insecurity and threats to democratic rights. Their shared case was that rebuilding the dream requires concrete institutional action, local problem-solving and a broader account of freedom than markets or formal rights alone can provide.
Digital-Asset Rules Near Senate Test as Lawmakers Negotiate Three Safeguards
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand argued that Congress can no longer leave digital assets in a regulatory gray zone as crypto, stablecoins and token markets become more widely used. In conversation with Jonathan Capehart, she made the case for bipartisan legislation that would split oversight between the SEC and CFTC while adding ethics rules for public officials, stronger consumer protections and enforcement against illicit finance. Gillibrand presented the effort as a test of whether lawmakers can govern a fast-moving financial sector without either protecting incumbents or deferring to crypto issuers.