Politics

Is Texas, the Lone Star State, about to get a little lonesome for the GOP? There’s been lots of talk in recent months that Senator Ted Cruz may face a stiffer challenge for reelection than he had anticipated. But now a wave of Democratic voter enthusiasm today in primary elections is adding further credibility to that notion. The Washington Post reports that of almost 900,000 ballots cast in early voting, over 52 percent were for Democrats, a substantial boost over the last primary election in 2014. The question that looms for Republicans is this: will Texas turn blue? Is it going to become another California? Republicans are sounding alarms. Texas Senator John Cornyn says it would be “malpractice” not to ramp up Republican efforts to ensure turnout in November.

If accounts in the press are to be believed, President Trump has reached a fresh nadir. “These are the darkest days in at least half a year,” reports The Washington Post. “Sources close to President Trump say he is in a bad place,” chimes in the impressively-sourced Axios. Buried in the Post story is a contradictory take from close friend Chris Ruddy, the Newsmax chief: “I’m bewildered when I see these reports that he’s in turmoil. Every time I speak to him he seems more relaxed and in control than ever. He seems pretty optimistic about how things are shaping up.” At the end of the day, only the top man himself knows how he’s feeling. But read between the lines, and a compelling antithesis emerges.

U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is blocking former Ambassador John Bolton from taking over as National Security Advisor, Cockburn has learned. John Bolton was first reported as heir apparent to McMaster by The National Interest in January. McMaster was nearly ousted from the White House summer of last year, ostensibly by a faction lead by former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon. Though the White House officially denied his political demise on Thursday, this time McMaster’s position is far more precarious. NBC News reported earlier in the day Thursday that McMaster was to be imminently replaced—with Ford executive and Bush 43 alum Stephen Biegun, as Bolton was vetoed by Mattis—sending the American capitol aflutter.

When I mentioned on social media recently that I’d lost friends because of Brexit, I was quite surprised by the vehemence of the response. Lots of fellow Leavers had stories to tell about friends who now cut them dead or former clients who would no longer work with them. Many said they prefer to keep secret how they voted in the referendum for fear of the repercussions.This intolerance is especially bad if you’re a student. One undergraduate described to me how his politics professor had opened a lecture with a slide reading ‘Brexit is shit’ — apparently ‘to the cheers and adulation of the entire lecture theatre’.

Donald Trump recently disparaged Britain’s National Health Service for “going broke and not working,” leading Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to express his pride in a system “where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance.” But the news has been filled for months with stories of people unable to access care they need under the NHS, regardless of their efforts or financial resources. Beyond the nationalistic pride and defensiveness of politicians both sides of the Atlantic, how do British and American healthcare really compare? Are both sides as crazy as the other imagines, or do they each know something the other can learn from? Sweeping generalizations regarding the nature of American health insurance are so popular because the reality is so complicated.

If your week was less than fun, spare a thought for Justin Trudeau. The Canadian Prime Minister’s seven-day visit to India went down like an undercooked biriyani on the subcontinent. When he landed in New Delhi last Saturday, Trudeau was greeted on the tarmac, not by the Prime Minister or Foreign Minister but by the junior minister for agriculture and farmers’ welfare. Other world leaders, including Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, have been given a personal welcome by Narendra Modi. Prime Minister Modi, a savvy social media user, failed even to note Trudeau’s arrival on Twitter, though on the same day he found time to tweet about plans to unveil a new shipping container terminal.

Once in a while some Socialist Worker people set up a stall outside my local Tesco to shout slogans at the progressive middle-class folk who make up much of the local demographic. One of the phrases I’ve heard them use is ‘Refugees welcome! Tories out!’ which is great and everything, except – what if the refugees are Tories? But then there are Sacred Groups and Out Groups, and each has their role to play in the modern morality play that is leftist politics. Ideological tribalism is the subject of a new book by Yale’s Amy Chua, who argues that politics has replaced national or religious identity as a source of division.

As I write this, my Twitter timeline is filling up with tributes to Billy Graham, who has died at the age of 99. Donald Trump describes him as ‘the GREAT Billy Graham’. Well said, Mr President; for once, those Trumpian capital letters are perfectly judged. What’s interesting is that so many of those tweets come from Catholics. Graham started out as your standard-issue Protestant revivalist, not just a Bible-basher but also a Catholic-basher. But when Pope John Paul II died in 2005, he described him as ‘unquestionably the most influential voice for morality and peace in the world during the last 100 years’.Today, Catholics and Evangelicals recognise that far more unites them than divides them.