Cockburn’s Diary

The House of Medici patronized Michelangelo, Botticelli and da Vinci. The House of Obama patronized Nicola Green: the artist wife of David Lammy, who served as deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom until Monday. From August 2008 to January 2009, Green was offered, according to her website, “unprecedented artistic access to President Obama’s monumental campaign,” the fruit of which was In Seven Days…, a portfolio of seven abstract paintings of the new president, released in 2010. Cockburn’s favorite is “Day Six, Sacrifice/Embrace,” which shows the head and hands of the 44th president, splayed on a sky-blue field.

The effort to prosecute former Olympic canoeist David Hearn for damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has hit a snag. Judge Todd E. Edelman noted that the government is “operating at its own peril” if it alters the Reflecting Pool before the defense attorneys’ expert has the opportunity to sample the lining. Hearn’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case on Thursday, arguing that the government had not preserved the section of pool liner that Hearn stands accused of slashing. “Despite the importance of the pool liner to the case, in the brief period since June 19, 2026, the same government that presented and returned the indictment against Mr.

Dorchester House is a storied Art Deco apartment block in Northwest DC, noted for being John F. Kennedy’s first address in the capital. Fast forward a few decades and the building appears to offer far less glamor: a number of residents have complained about repeatedly finding urine and feces in the building’s stairwells. One resident told Cockburn he encountered excreta in the stairwell “daily during the winter.” The waste is cleaned up “usually within a few hours after I contact the front desk,” says the resident, “but in rare cases it can remain for days. There is still some dried feces in one of the stairwells that has never been cleaned up.” “I have to use the flashlight on my phone to avoid stepping in it,” he added.

“It could be really cool if Congress was filled with goth people,” Kelley Dennison, the 27-year-old Republican nominee for Colorado’s 2nd congressional district, told the Daily Caller. The Gen Z massage therapist is campaigning on an unexpected aesthetic, selling merchandise that tout her as “America’s Goth Baddie.” But her campaign is predicated on more than her dark eyeliner and tattoos. Dennison is “Colorado first,” running on traditional conservative and populist policies on affordability, environmental conservation and family. Though Dennison was raised in a Democratic household, she has come to believe that party’s principles “don’t pay my bills.” “Colorado won’t be gamed for political currency or an agenda.

Hunter Biden has worn many hats in his 56 years on Earth. Scion, serviceman (briefly), attorney, businessman, crack addict, painter and, lately, influencer. The former first son burnished his online credentials by joining Substack this week – and Cockburn welcomes his comrade. Hunter’s first meaningful post on “Where’s Hunter,” his blog on the platform, is called “It’s Dad.” The piece reads like something any other wealthy aspiring artist might shuffle up to read at an open-mic night. The sentences are short, the metaphors heavy. He muses – there is no other word for it – on the voicemail his father Joe left him and how it was heard around the world after the contents of his infamous laptop were published: The late hour. The quiet room.

The 2018 Florida governor’s race will go down as one of the great sliding-doors moments in American politics. Ron DeSantis, after “begging” for Donald Trump’s endorsement, eked out a 0.4 percent win over the Democratic mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum. In the years since, DeSantis became an anti-lockdown Covid champion, a very expensive failed presidential candidate and is now hotly tipped to fill a Trump cabinet vacancy once he leaves the governor’s mansion in November. Gillum has had a… different trajectory. Police officers found him in a hotel room with a male escort, suffering from a suspected crystal meth overdose in 2020. The married father-of-three checked himself into rehab and came out as bisexual later that year.

Former speaker of the House, Representative Nancy Pelosi, who will retire from Congress this year is lending her name and her leadership to the University of California Berkeley to create the Nancy Pelosi Institute. She explains that it will help to “train leaders for our future.”   The National Association of Scholars, being a non-partisan organization with a strong commitment to civic virtue, is delighted to see another prominent politician contribute to the realization of important principles in higher education. Admittedly, we have not always agreed with the former speaker on how best to advance the public good on campus, but Pelosi says she was drawn by the “notion of a bipartisan academic center” at Berkeley, “the epitome of public education.

Who will dare represent Pennsylvania at the Freedom 250 Great American State Fair? The commonwealth’s Governor Josh Shapiro announced last week that the state would not be represented at the fair because no businesses were interested in sponsoring the booth. Senators John Fetterman and Dave McCormick countered two days later that they had assembled a coalition of Pennsylvania companies, including crayon manufacturer Crayola, willing to step in. “Pennsylvania is where America’s story began, and there was no way we were going to let the Commonwealth go unrepresented,” McCormick explained. “Celebrating America’s 250th birthday and Pennsylvania’s special role in our country is important and bipartisan,” said Fetterman.

Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican congressman from Arizona, has reportedly been living with one of his male staffers, according to Juliegrace Brufke’s Sources Say News. The staffer, Will Hannen, now runs Hamadeh’s campaign. In recent weeks, Hamadeh’s team posted glamour shots of his office on Instagram where staffers sit and stand in staggered formation, like the cast of The West Wing, if they were House Republicans. At least one “looksmaxxing”-inspired video was posted featuring Hamadeh and his team titled: “Professional looksmaxxing office!” On the subject of Hannen being a live-in staffer, Hamadeh spokeswoman Lori Hunnicutt “denied the relationship was romantic, telling Sources Say News: ‘The Congressman and Mr.

As far as the controversy over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool goes, Donald Trump is reverting to type: like any other Florida man with a pool, he won’t admit that maintaining one is complicated and blames external factors when things go wrong. The President ordered that a new blue coating be applied to the pool’s base, which has already started flaking. In a testy exchange with CBS’s Ed O’Keefe yesterday, Trump said that the contractors who installed the new surface were not to blame. “We had vandalism,” he said. “Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind.” “Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?” he wondered aloud. Quite.

The Washington Post recently published two op-eds by Scott Greer, "a writer who years ago expressed racist and antisemitic views for an online white-supremacist publication," according to Politico. For context: Greer wrote for Richard Spencer's "Radix Journal" under a pseudonym. After Politico reached out for comment, WaPo removed the articles.That move might come across as a squirrelly act of insecurity in the middle of a turbulent time for Post Opinions.

Since Donald Trump retook office in January 2025, Washington has experienced significant upheaval in its institutions. The United States Institute of Peace underwent a DoGE takeover that involved federal police occupying the building, taking over its board of directors and seizing control of its assets and operations. The majority of people who had worked there prior was fired or nudged toward resignation – with their severance conditional on a promise not to sue their old employer. It was renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. In May 2025, the District Court ruled the takeover unlawful, which was appealed, pausing the decision’s impacts until further proceedings.

The World Cup begins this week, and Americans have been celebrating as only we know how: by fighting Europeans on social media about stadium size and atmosphere, and banning Africans and Middle Easterners from the country. Nonetheless, the next month offers a great opportunity to take advantage of DC’s status as a truly international city, and fraternize with foreigners while watching multimillionaires pass a ball around in 100-degree heat. For today’s special sports edition of Cockburn’s Diary, here’s your correspondent’s guide on where to watch each team in the District. Germany The Brig The Brig describes itself as a “secret beer garden.

Starting a new job is never easy, but Nick Bilton, the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, has had an extra rough first two weeks after firing veteran correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday. Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker released a joint memo today condemning the firings but declaring their intention to remain in post. CBS’s management has been accused of ignoring the demands of the (dwindling) core viewership and making top-down political changes to drag the station’s coverage to the right. In that spirit, Cockburn is offering Bilton some suggestions of feet to fill Pelley’s shoes. Thanks for reading Cockburn’s Diary from The Spectator. Subscribe to receive new posts and support his work.

Today is a big day for the 2026 midterm season, with primaries in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. While the national media’s attention is fixated on the Golden State’s jungle primaries for governor and LA mayor – (will it be a Pratt summer?) – a Trump endorsement in a lower-profile race caught Cockburn’s eye last night. “Congressman Tom Kean is a Great Representative for the People of New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District!” President Trump wrote on Truth Social, describing how the Republican has been “working tirelessly” to advance Trump policy goals. “GET OUT AND VOTE FOR TOM — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!

Cockburn steeled himself Wednesday after a press release from the Trump administration’s “Freedom 250” plopped into his inbox. The missive promised a line-up of “Star-Studded Entertainment” for the Great American State Fair, set to take place on the National Mall for three weeks over the nation’s semiquincentennial. Nine “music icons” would perform for free, including the Commodores, Flo Rida and a smattering of one-hit wonders. Two days later and the schedule is in tatters: eight of the nine acts have withdrawn following fan backlash, with critics branding the event “DC’s very own Fyre Fest.” Only Flo Rida remains.

Fears are mounting about the possibility of a global Ebola outbreak. The CDC has already initiated various containment measures, including redirecting flights from the Democratic Republic of Congo and surrounding countries to Washington Dulles and Atlanta airports. But fear not – the US has its best man on the job. “We’re working on it,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. yesterday told ABC News, when asked about Ebola. This morning, he posted a 21-second clip on X in which he corners and catches two black racers with his hands during a visit to Dr. Oz’s home. https://twitter.com/robertkennedyjr/status/2059273262220115998?s=46 The clip is captioned, “Cheryl cheerleads the removal of a pair of Black Racers from Dr. Oz’s patio.

Cockburn isn’t the only one heading to the Bahamas this weekend. So is Donald Trump Jr. – to get married to Bettina Anderson in a private ceremony of around 50 people. It will be his second marriage and Anderson’s first. It sounds like Don Jr.’s father might be sitting this one out. “He’d like me to go,” President Trump told reporters Thursday, “but it’s going to be a small little private affair, and I’m going to try and make it… I’m in the midst – I said, ‘You know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things.’” “He’s a person I’ve known for a long time,” he added. Political careers and family life often conflict but Cockburn won’t accuse Trump of being an absentee father just yet.

“This is Greek… more or less… it comes out of Greece… this is the ultimate facade for Greece.” Donald Trump is wielding a blown-up graphical rendering of one of the planned porticos of the new White House ballroom. “This is a different facade,” he says, pointing to another placard propped up on an easel, “This one’s Rome.” The President spent the morning touring the ballroom’s construction site with the press. Currently a forest of rebar and metal prongs, the project has now burst its bounds and is developing into a general fortress-cum-lair. A vast underground complex is to be built below the ballroom, housing a hospital, research facilities and meeting rooms for the military.

Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks has resigned, ostensibly “to retire and return home to Texas to focus on my family and ranch.” Banks served under President Biden but quit in frustration over the administration’s lax border policies. When Trump returned to office, Banks took up his old job again: like Cincinnatus, he came out of retirement to serve, and will now return to his plow. Perhaps “plow” is the operative word here. It’s widely speculated that Banks is in fact resigning because of a Washington Examiner investigation, which claims that he was a sex tourist who made regular trips to Colombia and Thailand while in post.