Politics Archives

Sunday

September 7, 2025

Camus comes to America

The 20th-century French writer Albert Camus remains a living author, a permanent contemporary, in a way that the far more dogmatic and ideological Jean-Paul Sartre does not. The latter provided a caricature of “existentialism,” nihilism dressed up as absolute freedom, beholden to no limits and no enduring truths. In contrast, the author of The Stranger and The Plague rejected Sartre’s facile nihilism, as well as his repellant accommodation with murderous messianism, typically conveyed in fashionable leftist nostrums. The more hopeful side of Camus comes through in his recently re-released Travels in the Americas: Notes and Impressions of a New World.

Saturday

September 6, 2025

Richard M. Reinsch II

Will Trump’s stake sink Intel?

In a move supported by Vermont’s socialist champion, Senator Bernie Sanders, President Donald Trump has arranged for the federal government to become the single largest shareholder of Intel Corporation. All for national interest, according to the White House.Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick announced that the deal gives the government “a piece of the action.” Is it in fact a piece of the action, or a disaster to come for the American business community? Created in 1968, Intel is an American multinational technology company that designs, manufactures and sells semiconductor chips and related products. Following its early successes, it has been in decline as a result of bad management decisions for the last 20 years or so.

Rachel K. Paulose

Can Trump fire Lisa Cook for cooking the books?

President’s Trump’s efforts to reign in the administrative state and prod the Federal Reserve to adopt more Trumpian policies took a dramatic turn when he ousted Dr. Lisa D. Cook, an alleged miscreant, from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors last week. The drama, and there’s always high drama in Trump World, unfolded after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte made a criminal referral to the U.S. Department of Justice based on Cook’s apparently falsified mortgage documents for homes in both Ann Arbor, Michigan as well as Atlanta, Georgia. Cook claimed the Ann Arbor house as her primary residence, which would allow her to obtain more favorable financing terms. Just two weeks later, Cook claimed her Atlanta condominium as her primary residence as well.

Liv Hagye

Why America’s schools are failing

It seems that every few years America rediscovers that its children can’t read. In 2024, only 30-31 percent of eighth graders were deemed proficient in reading, and our numbers in history and math are even worse. Since 2020, no state has reported improvement across subject areas.It’s tempting to blame “the pandemic” for these declines, but in reality, Covid only accelerated trends that were already underway. For decades before 2020, US students were struggling to reach proficiency, and the truth is that the problem isn’t today’s culture-war skirmishes over pronouns, politics and school closures. It’s the more mundane question of how children are taught to read, to count and to remember.Let’s take phonics, for example.

Kate Andrews

Britain’s war on free speech is worse than you think

Where do you strike the balance between expression and security? It is a question Americans don’t need to ask. Our Constitution is plain and unambiguous about our fundamental rights to say what we want, write what we like, to gather in protest and – sweet relief – to mock our government. Not everyone is so lucky. Not even our friends. “It doesn’t give me any great joy to be sitting in America and describing the really awful, authoritarian situation that we have now sunk into,” Britain’s Nigel Farage told the House Judiciary Committee yesterday afternoon, as he detailed the speech crackdown being carried out in the UK. “At what point did we become North Korea?

Friday

September 5, 2025

Laura Powell

The Senator from Virginia vs. the Declaration of Independence

At a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia – Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate – decided to pick a fight not with the nominee before him so much with the American founding itself. In a remarkable four-minute speech, clips of which went viral, Kaine challenged the very idea of natural rights – that is, the belief that human beings possess fundamental freedoms simply by virtue of being human, not because government chooses to grant them. His lecture was provoked by a seemingly uncontroversial statement.

Juan P. Villasmil

Why Venezuelan F-16s buzzing US warships prove Trump right

First the boat, then the buzz. On Tuesday, an American strike in the Caribbean shredded a vessel ferrying narcotics out of Venezuela, killing eleven alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang – which Caracas, strategically, dismissed as an AI hallucination. Two days later, Nicolás Maduro tried his own spectacle, dispatching a pair of F-16s to roar over the USS Jason Dunham, one of the U.S. destroyers recently sent on a counter-narcotics patrol off Venezuela’s coast. The maneuvers – and the steady drumbeat of pressure that preceded them – have regime-changers daydreaming about intervention and restrainers losing sleep. But before mistaking the noise for reality, it’s worth asking: what is Washington trying to achieve?

Mike Coté

Why America needs the Department of War

Six months into President Trump’s second administration and there is perhaps no other government department that has been subject to more controversies than the Department of Defense. Brouhahas have ranged from the in-fact favorable (see the banning of affirmative action) to the admittedly concerning (see significant leaks of sensitive information). And now Trump has pulled the pin on possibly his most powerful grenade so far – and rolled it Pete Hegseth’s way. But after the smoke clears from this particular explosion, there is a real opportunity for the department to be born again, fighting fit, from the debris. President Trump has signed an executive order returning the Department of Defense to its original moniker, the Department of War.

Ben Domenech

By taking on the cartels, Trump is reasserting American authority

The reporting process on Donald Trump's war on the cartels for my latest cover story for The Spectator, published here today, mostly focused on the administration's theory of the case: what they intend to do about the challenge of the drug running, human trafficking and terrorist activity by the narco syndicates to America's south and why they believe a major escalation is necessary. In the intervening time between filing a piece and going to press, the theoretical became very real with the fiery destruction of a boat carrying drugs in international waters, allegedly steered by 11 now-dead members of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua cartel.

Paul Eckloff

Why California shouldn’t foot the bill for Kamala Harris’s protection

The first time I worked alongside the California Highway Patrol’s Dignitary Protection Section was in Beverly Hills in the late 1990s. Think swimming pools and movie stars. The setting could have been a Hollywood caricature of itself: manicured hedges, a mansion where priceless Old World paintings hung in the hallways, and a guest list that ran from President Clinton to Barbara Streisand. The rest is appropriately redacted. I was a new Secret Service agent then still learning the art of protection, but amid the clinking glasses and camera flashes, what struck me most wasn’t the celebrities. It was the calm professionalism of the CHP officers beside me.

Thursday

September 4, 2025

Jennifer Harrison

Why Trump should impose a trans gun ban

As President Trump’s Department of Justice deliberates over a gun ban on transgender people, we must stop and reflect on the environment we have created for our children and ask whether we are truly protecting them. Whenever tragedy strikes, progressives rush to the microphones to declare that the problem is “guns.” They insist that if only we banned this weapon or restricted that accessory, shootings would stop. They blame inanimate objects instead of focusing on the people who actually pull the trigger. The recent shootings in Nashville (2023) and Minneapolis (2025) should force us to confront uncomfortable truths – not about firearms, but about what is happening inside our culture and what our leaders are pushing on the next generation.

Gage Klipper

RFK Jr. triggers Vax War Two

Throughout COVID, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ aggressive leadership made Florida the national model for resisting vaccine tyranny. But Vax War Two is coming, and the state seems to have chosen the inevitably losing side. Florida now aims to eliminate vaccine mandates altogether, including those long required for children to attend school like the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. If the move goes through, Florida would become the first state in the nation to do so. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said of the mandates Wednesday in a press conference alongside DeSantis. “Who am I as a government – or as anyone else – as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?

Neal Pollack

After Rosie O’Donnell, the Americans Trump should strip of citizenship

As he often does when things get a little hot in the kitchen, President Trump went after Rosie O’Donnell again yesterday. "We are giving serious thought to taking away Rosie O'Donnell's Citizenship," he wrote on Truth Social. O’Donnell, he said, is "not a Great American," layering that on top of what he said in July, that Rosie is "not in the best interests of our great country." I don’t think anyone other than her closest associates would argue that Rosie O’Donnell is “Great,” but she is, technically, an “American.” If the Trump Administration wants to revoke citizenship for every mediocre celebrity who criticizes the President, well, then, Hollywood is going to have to do some fast outsourcing. Let’s think about who else is on the chopping block.

Roger Kimball

Poland’s Nawrocki heralds a more mature populism

Yesterday, September 3, President Trump welcomed Karol Nawrocki, the newly inaugurated president of Poland to the White House. It was a stirring occasion, replete with a surprise military fly-over of F-16 and F-35 fighter jets flying in “missing man” formation to honor Major Maciej “Slab” Krakowian, the Polish pilot who died in a crash in Radom, Poland, last Thursday. Nawrocki, who narrowly won the presidency in June, is often described as “the Polish Trump.” It’s an accurate epithet. Nawrocki is as much a “Poland First” president as Trump is an “America First” president. The 42-year-old historian (Nawrocki holds a PhD in history) supports a list of policy initiatives that could have come right out of the MAGA playbook.

Charles Lipson

The death throes of free speech in Britain – and its opponents

Free speech, the very bedrock of constitutional democracy, is writhing on its deathbed in England. It will take a mass movement to restore its vitality. Fortunately, one can see that movement emerging among a once-free people, tired of government suppression. The dire state of British liberties was outlined Wednesday in Congressional testimony by British MP, Nigel Farage, who testified before the US House Judiciary Committee. He was backed by the committee’s Republican members and attacked, alas, by Democrats.

Nigel Jones

Will Trump cripple Brazil if Jair Bolsonaro is found guilty?

The trial of Brazil’s former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro on charges of plotting a coup to topple the current President Lula da Silva is entering its final stages.Bolsonaro, 70, and seven co- defendants are accused of conspiring to oust Lula, the veteran left-winger who narrowly beat him in the 2022 Presidential election. The Supreme Court in Brasilia will consider its verdict this week. If – as expected – the court convicts Bolsonaro, the ailing ex-President is looking at a lengthy jail sentence, and may die in prison as a result. Bolsonaro has been in poor health since he was stabbed in the abdomen in an assassination attempt while campaigning during his successful bid for the presidency in 2018.

Wednesday

September 3, 2025

David Sypher Jr.

Cynthia Nixon and the battle for Broadway

When Representative Jerry Nadler announced his retirement this week, Democrats in New York instantly began preparing for a political drama worthy of its stage. Nadler’s district – the 12th, which covers the Upper West and Upper East Sides, Midtown, Times Square and the United Nations – is the geographic heart of Manhattan. It’s also one of the safest Democratic seats in the country. Whoever wins the primary will not only control a powerful perch in Congress, but also inherit a stage in the very center of America’s media capital.That’s the problem. In New York’s 12th, politics isn’t about solving problems. It’s about performance.For decades, Nadler played the part of Manhattan’s liberal lion.

Cockburn

Trump brothers go mining

After a day where the very alive President Trump bombed a Venezuelan drugs boat, moved Space Force headquarters out of Colorado because that state has mail-in voting, declared he was sending federal troops into Chicago and claimed that AI generated a video of someone throwing a plastic bag of construction debris out of the window of the White House, it became clear that the real action was going on outside the White House walls, with Trump’s very rich sons. As Cockburn reported yesterday in The Spectator, the Trump Brothers, Don Jr, Eric, and the true genius behind the operations, Barron, had somehow amassed $5 billion in paper wealth thanks to savvy investments, based in no way on shady insider information, in WLFI, the family’s nascent cryptocurrency venture.

Nigel Jones

Trump’s strike on the Venezuelan ‘narco terrorists’

President Trump has authorized what he called a "kinetic strike" from a US warship that destroyed a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela bound for the US, killing 11 so called "narco terrorists" aboard. The action by a US naval task force in international waters in the southern Caribbean is the first since the President threatened armed intervention against narcotics smuggling by Venezuela’s drugs cartels in January. Trump said that the attack was aimed at members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua drugs cartel which the US branded a terrorist organization in February, and which it claims is controlled by Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime. The US Department of Justice has called Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro "the world’s No.

Tuesday

September 2, 2025

Cockburn

For Trump and Ilhan, Washington pays

How does Ilhan Omar make her money? How does the Trump family make its money? Is money real? What is reality? These are the questions Cockburn is asking himself after this weekend’s financial news. First, let’s fly over Minnesota. Founding “Squad” member Omar, the Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday, is currently worth more than $30 million, despite telling the press earlier this year that it’s “categorically false” that she’s a millionaire. If by false, you mean “true,” then yes. The Free Beacon obtained Omar’s latest financial disclosure, which indicated that she and her husband, shifty “former political consultant” Tim Mynett, are worth somewhere between $6 million and $30 million – a wide range.