Politics Archives

Friday

July 18, 2025

Stephen Colbert kills The Late Show

“When you die at the palace, you really die at the palace,” laments Comicus, the ancient Roman “stand-up philosopher” played by Mel Brooks in his iconic, if not exactly well received, History of the World, Part I (1981). Forced to improvise a comedy routine for Dom DeLuise’s Emperor Nero, Comicus repeatedly puts his foot squarely in his mouth, insulting the capricious ruler for his corruption and weight. An enraged Nero sentences him to death, setting up a madcap escape sequence.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Was Trump in Epstein’s birthday book?

Bombshell or damp squib? The Wall Street Journal has dived into L’Affaire Epstein with a vengeance, reporting tonight that Donald Trump contributed an epistolary effort to a leather-bound birthday book in 2003 for his Palm Beach buddy that contained what it delicately refers to as “bawdy language” as well as a drawing of a naked woman. The letter that has Trump’s name affixed to it apparently concludes, “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.” This is catnip for Trump’s detractors who apparently are starting to include a number of disaffected MAGA followers. They’re disenchanted by Trump’s volte-face.

Thursday

July 17, 2025

Neal Pollack

RIP NPR, the broadcaster that thought emojis were racist

"Nearly 3-in-4 Americans say they rely on their public radio stations for alerts and news for their public safety,” National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher said in a statement after the Senate approved a rescissions package that would, once and for all, take NPR off the federal funding payroll. It was a very NPR way of deploying the usual Democrat policy complaint that “people will die,” which they won’t. In reality, most Americans learn about public emergencies from phone alerts or while watching Wheel of Fortune, or, in the case of non-NPR listening Kerr County, Texas, when the water is at their front door. But these are desperate times at NPR headquarters, so “people will die if they defund us” is their last strategy.

Ben Domenech

Will Trump bail out Texas Republicans?

With the retirement of North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, the Republican with the heaviest Senate primary burden in 2026 becomes John Cornyn. The Texas incumbent faces off in a contest against MAGA favorite Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton is relying on backlash against some of Cornyn’s more centrist moves in recent years and a range of financial backers who poured nearly $3 million into his campaign coffers in the first quarter, a number Cornyn exceeded – but not by a lot. It’s too close for comfort for some Republicans, who are concerned the clash puts Texas at risk of a rare turn from red to blue.

Charles Lipson

Axing the Department of Education will improve education

The big education news this week is a court ruling that allows the Trump administration to begin cutting jobs at the Department of Education. A cascade of familiar voices can be heard lamenting that ruling. That’s the angry, unified message from Democrats, the Washington Blob and their Media buddies. Woe betide the students, they wail. Damn this President. They are not just wrong. They are 180 degrees wrong. Why? First, they are wrong for democratic reasons. Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to demolish the Department of Education. He’s carrying out that pledge, not backpedaling. That’s what citizens should expect from elected leaders in a constitutional democracy. They seldom receive it. Trump is not only right democratically, he’s right educationally.

Isaac Schorr

It’s Kamala 2028!

Even amidst a news cycle full of Republican infighting, the Democrats are finding new and exciting ways to cut through the noise and announce their own impotence. According to a new survey from Echelon Insights, former Vice President Kamala Harris remains the favorite to reprise her role as the party’s presidential nominee in 2028, boasting the support of 26 percent of likely Democratic voters in a hypothetical primary field. Never mind that Harris blew through $1.5 billion during a 15-week campaign that ended with her falling short in every swing state. Never mind that she didn’t make it to Iowa the last time she had to compete in a presidential primary.

Wednesday

July 16, 2025

Cockburn

The secret life of Agent Melania

The activities of First Lady Melania Trump have been the subject of much discussion in Cockburn’s circles during her husband’s second term. Where is she? What is she up to? For the most powerful spouse in the world, she keeps an extraordinarily low profile. But now a new theory has emerged: she’s been spying for Ukraine. Over the weekend, an X user named “Kate from Kharkiv” posted a photo of Melania wearing a blue blazer bearing the Ukrainian trident insignia. Melania is also wearing one of her signature wide-brimmed hats, which shield her eyes from enemy view. “Agent Melania Trumpenko,” the caption read. https://twitter.

Melania and Donald Trump at FIFA Club World Cup (Getty)

Cockburn

Trayon White is DC’s Donald Trump

Cockburn is delighted to announce the special election winner replacing Trayon White (who was unanimously expelled from office in February) in his Ward 8 DC City Council seat: Trayon White. The Department of Justice charged White for bribery in August 2024, alleging that the councilman “corruptly agreed to accept $156,000 in cash payments in exchange for using his position” to “pressure government employees” in several offices to influence $5.2 million in violence intervention contracts. These impending charges were not enough to deter White from seeking reelection last November, which he walked away from overwhelmingly victorious with 84 percent of the vote.

Trayon White Sr. after the vote for his expulsion from the City Council (Getty)

Richard M. Reinsch II

Trump should bring the Fed to heel

President Trump’s criticism of Jay Powell has increasingly triggered calls for the Federal Reserve’s independence. But those defending Powell’s autonomy are making ahistorical claims about the Fed’s relationship to the executive and legislative branches of government: the Fed has never been independent. The president appoints the Fed’s chairman. The bank enjoys broad authority to implement the policies necessary to achieve its mandates of stable prices, full employment and interest-rate stability, but these objectives are defined by Congress and could be altered by Congress. Congress created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and has amended the Federal Reserve Act more than 200 times. It could do so again.

Laura Powell

Gun-toting Newsom’s alpha male rebrand

In a 2023 interview, California Governor Gavin Newsom was asked how he ended up in a leadership position. After struggling with his response, he eventually paraphrased a line from George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant: “I put a mask on and my face grew into it.” It was a remarkable admission that inadvertently validated his most common critique – that he is fundamentally inauthentic. Newsom has always seemed as though he were grown in a lab to be a politician. In a way, he was. The son of a well-connected judge and insider of the Getty family dynasty, he has glided through public life with the polished ease of someone born to power. He looks like a central casting governor, speaks in political platitudes and has successfully learned to suppress any sign of human spontaneity.

Tuesday

July 15, 2025

Neal Pollack

Prizes, bets and venture capital: how Democrats plan to win

“The old ways of doing business just aren’t cutting it” for the Democratic party, the New York Times wrote. Democrats are acting like a bloated, out-of-touch corporation that has no idea why it’s bleeding customers. The Times article talks at length about several PACs, activist groups and nonprofits that are trying to inject fresh ideas into the Democratic machine. These ideas add up to: knocking on doors and creating targeted digital ads. One functionary from a group called Priorities USA says that he wants the group to function “more like a venture capital firm, making a number of smaller bets on a wide range of initiatives and funding only the best performers – and using the incubation process as a way to learn about what works and doesn’t.

Spectator Editorial

The real threat of AI is spiritual

Peter Thiel is one of the world’s most powerful men. He was an early investor in companies such as Facebook, SpaceX, Airbnb and an early backer of Donald Trump, as a leading donor to his 2016 campaign. He is a friend and mentor to the man who would be president in 2028: J.D. Vance. Thiel, a multi-billionaire, is also one of the few individuals who clearly have a hand in shaping the future of humanity, so it was disturbing to learn recently that he’s unsure whether humans are worth preserving at all. In conversation with the journalist Ross Douthat, Thiel was asked whether he wanted the human race to endure. He seemed unsure. “I don’t know,” he said, after a long pause. “I would, I would… there’s so many questions implicit in this.

Marc Warner

What happens when AI surpasses humans?

I recently sat down to dinner with some very smart economists. I am the chief executive of an artificial intelligence company and so the conversation swiftly turned to the value of AI for the economy. The economists had many interesting things to say, both about the advantages of AI adoption and about the displacement effects on jobs. But about halfway through the dinner, another AI chief executive offered an opinion that struck me. He said: “I can’t quite articulate it, but I have a sense that what you are measuring with your GDP analysis is not what I care about. You treat this like an economic question. But it’s more like a geopolitical question.” At a gut level, I knew exactly what he meant – but I also couldn’t clearly state the distinction.

Rachel Tyrell

The race to superintelligence

This summer, two of the leading contenders in the great AI race have suddenly, alarmingly, declared that the endgame is in sight and that they’re now spending vast amounts of time and money to try to ensure that their own AIs beat the others. What does winning mean? It means that their models (you know them perhaps as GPT, Claude and Gemini) reach first AGI (human-level intelligence), then superintelligence. No one quite knows what superintelligence will do (we’re not smart enough) but it’s clear that whoever owns the winning model will wield unimaginable power. They’ll dominate the world. A new Alexander the Great. The first to show his hand was Sam Altman, the chief executive and founder of OpenAI, a company he once shared with his former friend Elon Musk.

Paul Wood

Should AI have rights?

Mary Shelley was challenged by Lord Byron to write a ghost story during a summer of “incessant rainfall” on Lake Geneva in 1816. She came up with something far more interesting than a mere ghost story: the tale of Dr. Frankenstein, a scientist who creates life by reanimating a corpse. Shelley, who was just 18 at the time, was horrified by her “waking dream.” The thought that man could “mock” God’s creation of life was “supremely frightful.” Some of the scientists building artificial intelligence today believe they, too, might be creating life. The implications are frightening – and not just because an AI might decide to kill us all. What if we could hurt the AI?

Michael Lind

How should AI be regulated?

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly sophisticated, the time has come for humanity to choose. Should the nations of the world shut down or tightly regulate AI until it is clear a godlike artificial superintelligence will not gain consciousness and exterminate the human race? Or should governments not regulate AI at all, in the hope that it will cause an acceleration of technological progress that results in our colonization of the universe, our uploading as bodiless computer programs into the galaxy-wide web – or both? Or how about a third option: AI regulation by AI-enabled industry? AI may turn out to be the latest in a series of “general purpose technologies” (GPTs) that transform the economy, politics and society.

Sean Thomas

The 2020s are too far-fetched for fiction

I write thrillers for a living. All kinds of thrillers. At one point I was in the business of penning Dan Brown-style romps, where ruggedly handsome academics find themselves embroiled in a global chase for the Holy Grail. Then came a stint in domestic noir – sad, isolated women on Scottish isles. Then I had a brief mid-career burst of erotic chillers. Now I’m moving on to folk-horror meets psych-thriller. This might sound ludicrous. It is quite often ludicrous. But it’s also fun: the books translate well and the location research can be a blast. There is a downside, though: plotting. Building a plot is fiendishly hard. You have to steer a fine line between entertainment and believability. The Holy Grail in the jungle can’t just show up – it needs some explanation.

Bridget Phetasy

The internet is dying and so are we

Sometime in the mid-2010s, a conspiracy theory called the “dead internet theory” started circulating on the darker parts of the web. It made its way to 4chan’s /x/ board in 2020 and from there it has gained traction. The theory posits that the internet will eventually become entirely devoid of genuine human activity and that all online content, interactions and accounts will be generated by bots, AI or automated systems rather than real people. The conspiracy is that the entire internet is a government-manipulated psy-op used to influence public opinion, control news narratives or boost engagement metrics for commercial or political purposes. The terrible reality is that dead internet theory isn’t wrong. It’s becoming true, more and more so all the time.

Charles Lipson

What’s the matter with Chicago?

As the song goes: “Chicago, that toddlin’ town.” It was certainly toddlin’ in the 1950s and 1960s, when that song was a hit for Frank Sinatra. The city had bounced back from the Great Depression, begun building skyscrapers again and renewed its status as a vibrant financial and commercial hub. But Chicago has gone from toddlin’ to totterin’, thanks largely to incompetent governance by a succession of local officials – and far better leadership and lower taxes elsewhere in the country, in the places people are moving to. The city’s latest bungler, Mayor Brandon Johnson, was an apparatchik in the Chicago Teachers Union, the most powerful union in the state of Illinois.

Kara Kennedy

Where is Jared Kushner?

Where is Jared Kushner? In the first Trump term, as senior advisor to the President, he was everywhere and into everything. At home, he designed policies and plotted re-election efforts. Abroad, he orchestrated the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Muslim nations. This magazine even produced a 2020 cover (pictured) examining the pervasive power of “Prince” Jared. In 2025, however, Kushner seems to have learned what most people don’t understand: to call the shots in Trumpland, it helps to operate behind the scenes.