The Lost Liberal Dominion
The Lost Liberal Dominion
By Abe Greenwald Executive Editor for Commentary
What do multiple federal agencies, the Ivy League, PBS, NPR, and Stephen Colbert have in common? They’re all parts of the liberal establishment that understood itself as an eternal fixture of the national landscape. And then came 2025.
We’re now witnessing the political and cultural equivalent of grand geological change. Erosions, tectonic shifts, volcanoes, deposits, and continental drifts are remaking the country at various levels and in assorted spheres. As with geology, culture can endure for such a long time that one tends to mistake its present configuration for something permanent. But, aside from the laws of the universe, there’s no such thing.
It’s been widely noted that many federal workers seemed to have assumed lifetime employment. In this they were reassured by their unions’ collective-bargaining efforts and reading of the law. But, as the Supreme Court ruled more than once this month, the Trump administration is within the bounds of the Constitution to proceed with the wholesale reshuffling of the civil service. This means gutting left- and liberal-leaning agencies that have been ineffective for years, morphed into unapologetic engines of social justice, or both.
The Ivy League, similarly, felt impervious to forces outside the campus. Flush with multibillion-dollar endowments, perennially infused with additional sums from the government, and thoroughly stoned on their own reputation, elite universities thought they could continue to teach anti-American radicalism, encourage anti-Semitism, grow their administrations, and charge a fortune to those being indoctrinated—without consequence. But Donald Trump woke them up, too. Harvard and Columbia are now facing withheld federal grants, potential new taxes, and other impositions unless they can get their houses in order.
PBS and NPR have been around for about 55 years, but it felt as if they’ve existed since the dawn of broadcasting. Whatever they once were, they now function as liberal messaging platforms. There are few good arguments for taxpayers footing the bill of any media organization, let alone those with aggressive political agendas. Congress has rightly voted to cut $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Nationally, PBS and NPR get most of their funding from corporate sponsors and direct individual contributions. If their supporters can keep the lights on, good for them. If not, they will have demonstrated their superfluousness.
Stephen Colbert is hardly an institution. But this week, he serves as a good stand in for one: commercial media. Since 2015, Colbert hosted The Late Show, part of the glut of late-night talk-show leftism that arose in the Trump era. These are shows aimed at creating anti-Trump social media moments instead of delivering TV entertainment. And so, TV audiences became less than entertained. Puck News reports that The Late Show was losing CBS more than $40 million a year, so the network just pulled the plug. Meanwhile, the leader of the late-night pack is Fox News’ Gutfeld!, a lighthearted comedy show that, while right wing in nature, actually strives to be funny. The end of The Late Show will surely reverberate through TV Land with interesting consequences.
Liberals are learning that there’s no such thing as lifetime tenure, eternal cultural dominance, and unending access audiences or the levers of power. To be honest, many of us outside the liberal establishment are learning it too. I’d become half-resigned to the endurance of the liberal Pangea. But the ground is now shaking beneath everyone’s feet.
