America

The moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived: Donald Trump’s mugshot has been released to the world. With a furrowed brow and scowl, the former President posed for his mugshot at Fulton county sheriff’s office in Georgia in his trademark navy suit and red tie yesterday. Trump was booked by the sheriff’s office in Georgia after announcing his intention to surrender, following his indictment for allegedly attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. At the jail, Trump was formally arrested and will have had to have his fingerprints taken and his height and weight measured. He was released ahead of the trial in October after

One of the reasons that Donald Trump is so despised by the beautiful people of America – the people that the New York Times columnist David Brooks memorably evoked when he began a tweet ‘We in the educated class…’ – is that he consorts with so many unbeautiful people: not just working stiffs but B-list entertainers, Nascar enthusiasts and prize fighters.   It is from the world of the last-named agonistic endeavor that I learned a word that perfectly describes last night’s festivities. The word is ‘undercard’. It means that list of ‘minor or supporting contests printed on the same bill as the main event (primarily fighting or racing).’ Fox News, together with

Who is Perry Johnson? It is a question not many American voters can answer. He has a grand total of 16,000 followers on Twitter and recently pulled in precisely zero votes in a poll in Des Moines, Iowa. He describes himself as a ‘self-made businessman, problem-solver and quality expert from Michigan’. Nevertheless, this slightly cadaverous-looking businessman has joined the running to be the Republican party’s candidate for president. There have been so many upsets in American politics of late that almost everybody thinks they have a chance Does he stand a chance? Nope. The main way through he has found so far is by buying up advertisements on the right-wing

They are the Odd Couple of the United States Senate. She is a progressive Democrat and senior senator from true-blue Massachusetts, he a nationalist Republican and junior senator from ever-reddening Ohio. She has a 100 per cent rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League; he is ‘100 per cent pro-life’. She wants a path to citizenship for undocumented aliens; he wants a wall and to double the border patrol. She backs a federal assault weapons ban; his hero is his grandmother, who owned 19 handguns.  Although hailing from different sides of the culture wars, each is articulating material concerns that matter much more to the lives of Americans than whether Bud Light is woke No, Elizabeth Warren and JD Vance

In our age of mass attention deficit, the manifold legals trials against Donald Trump represent a big challenge. Maybe that’s the point. It’s hard to care when you can’t keep count. The whole objective of ‘lawfare’, as it is called, is to bully your enemy into submission through overwhelming paperwork. It might work. That doesn’t make it just.  Let’s be clear: calling the multi-dimensional legal campaign against Donald Trump ‘lawfare’ isn’t a statement of support for Trump, necessarily. It’s more a summary of observable reality.  The irony is that, at this stage in the presidential campaign, the legal warfare on Trump is increasing his appeal The latest of four criminal

‘Today was hard. I can’t imagine what it was like for the families of those we left behind.’ That was an email from a friend who’d served in Afghanistan, sent as the chaos of the western withdrawal from Afghanistan played out on rolling news almost exactly two years ago. His grief – mirrored across the military and the media establishment on both sides of the Atlantic – now feels a long time ago, at least to those detached from the 20-year fight against the Taliban. Like many a separation, however, over time it becomes clear it was the right thing to do. The US had spent almost a trillion dollars fighting and nation building in Afghanistan. They’d lost more than 2,000 men. And as events post-withdrawal were to

‘My breasts were taken away from me (and) the tissue was incinerated.’ Every word of destransitioner Chloe Cole’s testimony to the US Congress was harrowing. But it was her calm, frank description of a doctor’s destruction of her breasts when she was just 15 years old that haunts the mind. Such a sinister violation of the bodily integrity of a teenage girl should rankle the conscience of modern America. ‘Before I was able to legally drive’, she said, they ‘amputated’ my breasts. They were ‘perfectly healthy’, she told a panel of shocked politicians, but still they were cut off and burned, like trash: ‘I had a huge part of my

When Donald Trump’s attorney and spokeswoman Alina Habba took to the streets on Thursday in front of the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, she described the former president as ‘the leading candidate right now for president for either party’. It’s a slight stretch, but only slightly. Trump is within the margin of error against Joe Biden in virtually every poll, largely undamaged by the ever compounding series of ‘solemn days’ when he faces new legal woes. Biden’s team is calculating that Trump is the least formidable candidate for them to take on next autumn The American football cliché usually attributed to the NFL great John Madden is simple: if you’ve got two quarterbacks,

Poor old BBC political editor Chris Mason got a rude awakening during his interview with Donald Trump’s former aide this morning. Sebastian Gorka blasted Mason for putting ‘words in his mouth’ in a fiery appearance on Radio 4’s Today programme. Gorka, who served as Trump’s former deputy assistant, defended his former boss who was charged overnight with attempting to overturn the 2020 US election. But when Mason suggested Gorka was ‘talking down’ the US’ reputation as a ‘rich and vibrant democracy’, with no one being above the law, Trump’s ally was not impressed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2lQSOST4lU ‘Why are you putting words in my mouth? I’m talking about the absolute opposite. Do you

Every country that imposed a lockdown during the pandemic accepted that there would be an economic price to pay. But governments hoped that, on this measure, their own nation would fare better than others. The objective here was simple: don’t be the ugliest country of the bunch. Now, with some distance between those lockdowns and life today, we’re returning to a more established form of economic competition. Rather than focusing on whose economy looks particularly bad, the emphasis has returned to who is looking good. And on this metric, the United States is putting Europe – and Britain – to shame. The US government reports that its economy grew by

This week, the European Union, in its infinite wisdom, made pretty much the only blunder which, in the eyes of Falkland Islanders, there is no coming back from: referring to the Falklands as ‘Las Malvinas’.  The row was sparked after the EU chose to sign a declaration with Argentina and 32 other South American countries, referring to the UK overseas territory as both ‘Islas Malvinas’ and the ‘Falkland Islands’. Brussels might not – perhaps – quite realise the extent to which the M-word is no laughing matter in these latitudes. (Just ask a Spanish teaching friend of mine!) But Argentina’s government instantly hailed the usage as a ‘diplomatic triumph’ and their foreign minister declared openly they want to use this ‘to further expand dialogue with the EU regarding the question of the Malvinas Islands.’  To say that Islanders are not

It’s widely acknowledged that, as governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis has been a success. As a presidential candidate, however, he has been a disaster – at least, so far. Last weekend, amid reports that his bid for the White House was floundering, DeSantis sacked a dozen of his staff and scaled back his travel plans. He may have raised some $20 million between April and June, but some of the biggest Republican donors, who flocked towards him at the end of last year, are starting to turn away. His campaign is now concerned about funds running out. ‘The question comes down to: do you want boring Trump? And the answer

Joe Biden cannot be trusted to protect the American people’s freedom of speech. He needs to be restrained, by law, from interfering with people’s First Amendment right to express themselves as they see fit. That is the implication of an extraordinary preliminary injunction slapped on the Biden administration this week by a federal judge. The injunction was issued by US District Court judge Terry Doughty. He says Biden officials likely conspired with social media companies to remove content, in particular content on Covid-19, that the government considered undesirable or dangerous. This would represent a flagrant usurping of the First Amendment, he says, which holds that the government shall take no action that

President Joe Biden is either not being briefed on what is going on in Afghanistan, or more likely choosing not to believe what he is being told. In an unscripted aside at the end of a press conference on Friday he said, ‘Remember what I said about Afghanistan? I said al-Qaeda would not be there. I said we’d get help from the Taliban. What’s happening now? What’s going on? Read your press. I was right.’ The president was not right. In fact, he was wrong. What he was referring to was a commitment by the Taliban to support operations against international terrorists operating in Afghanistan. Not only has that commitment

No sensible reader of the news could look at America and think it is flourishing. Massive economic inequality and the breakdown of family formation have eroded the very foundations of society.  Once-beautiful cities and towns around the nation have succumbed to an ugly blight. Cratering rates of childbirth, rising numbers of ‘deaths of despair,’ widespread addictions to pharmaceuticals and electronic distractions testify to the prevalence of a dull ennui and psychic despair. The older generation has betrayed the younger by saddling it with unconscionable levels of debt. Warnings about both oligarchy and mob rule appear daily on the front pages of newspapers throughout country, as well as throughout the West. A growing chorus of voices reflects on the likelihood