Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Muriel Bowser’s praise for Donald Trump

Mayor Muriel Bowser has found herself in the middle of a political tightrope – and it’s one that many Democrats may soon have to walk. In response to rising crime and public unease, the Washington, DC Mayor acknowledged something few in her party dare to admit: that Donald Trump’s federal “surge” of law enforcement officers actually made the city safer.“This federal surge has had a significant impact on crime in Washington, DC, and we greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city,” Bowser said at a press conference yesterday.That single sentence captures the dilemma of the modern Democratic party.

Muriel Bowser
Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift: queen of the normies?

Politicos used to know how to take the temperature of the nation. They could talk to their cab driver. They could sidle up to the man fixing their toilet. There was the Iowa farmer, the diner waitress. There was Walter Cronkite.  Now there is only Taylor Swift. In a society that increasingly consists of mutually unintelligible niches – like multivolume works of Sonic the Hedgehog erotica or reenactments of the War of the Austrian Succession in Roblox – Swift can still fill huge arenas at short notice. Her fans cut across every social and economic class. To a political nation that's often baffled by this new society, Swift has become the great barometer.

Minneapolis shooting

Murder of the innocents in Minneapolis

​For the second time in two years, a deranged assassin has committed a mass shooting at a Christian school in America. Like Audrey Hale, Robin Westman identified as transgender and once attended the school he attacked. In Minneapolis on Wednesday, Westman murdered two children and injured seventeen more people in a terrifying attack on the Annunciation Catholic School. Westman chose to target the children’s morning mass before turning a weapon on himself to commit suicide. ​Before his attack on the children of Annunciation Catholic School, Westman posted YouTube videos showcasing firearms, ammunition, and a manifesto. Weapons bore handwritten messages reading “Kill Donald Trump,” “Where is your God?

Is Jack White washed up?

Once, it might have seemed strange for American politicians to use a rock star as a proxy means of sniping at one another, but these are not normal times. Gavin Newsom used the White Stripes’ song “Seven Nation Army” on Instagram to soundtrack various campaign posts, and the band’s songwriter Jack White commented that “Fans of this song and also democracy, notice that I'm ok with this track being used in this manner. Not so much when Trump and his gestapo try to use one of my songs. Keep hitting him back Gavin!” For good measure, he also attacked Trump’s redesign of the Oval Office, calling it “disgusting... a vulgar, gold leafed and gaudy, professional wrestler’s dressing room.

Smithsonian

Worse than woke, Smithsonian art is bad

There’s a common myth in American culture that only the left is capable of producing great art. Right-wing art must be formulaic and preachy because it values established norms, while only transgressive leftism can reach new frontiers of form – or so we’re told. But what happens when the left’s own norms become dominantly rigid?Well, you wind up with the 20 exhibits that the Trump administration now rightly aims to purge from the Smithsonian’s sprawling array of museums, along with many other abuses. Since his inauguration, Trump has worked to rid wokeness from our cultural institutions through executive order, prompting leftist outrage against a so-called “attack” on the arts.

Will Venezuela crisis spill into conflict with US?

The authoritarian left wing regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has mobilized his ruling Socialist party’s paramilitary militia in response to US President Donald Trump sending a task force of warships into Venezuelan waters as part of a US crackdown against alleged cocaine trafficking by the poverty-stricken country.Declaring that “no empire will touch the sacred soil of Venezuela “ Maduro sent his militia to reinforce the country’s borders with neighboring Colombia, who he has accused of collaborating with America in a pincer movement against his country.

Venezuela
Hooters

Trump should buy Hooters

In the wake of the US government taking on a 10 percent equity stake in Intel, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is floating the idea of the government investing in defense companies like McDonnell Douglas. “If we are adding fundamental value to your business, I think it’s fair for Donald Trump to think about the American people,” he said. When this news broke last week, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, the last true living conservative, told Politico, “If conservatives endorse this now, they hand Democrats a blueprint to expand government ownership over the private sector later. Socialism is literally government control of the means of production.” Sure Rand.

Queers for Palestine

Queers for Palestine burst Pride

The annual Ottawa Pride rally was cancelled on Sunday after the group, Queers for Palestine, blocked the parade, owing to the refusal of the organizers, Capital Pride, to agree to the demands of “pro-Palestine” activists. Among the demands was for Capital Pride to back a complete boycott of Israel, and for Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe to apologize for not attending last year’s parade, which was described by Jewish groups as more a ‘protest against Israel’ than a rally for LGBT rights.

The devastating cost of cashless bail

The President taking such decisive action to save lives this past week is bittersweet beyond words. For years, we begged and pleaded for help to stop the insanity that has spilled blood across our streets. We went to the media. We testified before Congress. We sat across from lawmakers, poured out our stories and prayed someone would care enough to act. But time and time again, our cries fell on deaf ears. Now, finally, something is being done. For those who have never stood in our shoes, it’s hard to explain what it feels like to bury someone you loved unnecessarily – to hold a folded flag or a photo instead of a spouse, child, sibling, or parent. We as victims went through the worst nightmare imaginable.

Donald Trump

Trump’s Squid Games with South Korean President

“WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA?” President Trump posted over breakfast. “Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there. I am seeing the new President today at the White House. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!” Trump wasn’t talking about the global box-office success of K-Pop Demon Hunters, and wasn’t warning about the proliferation of zombies on the Train to Busan. Instead, word had reached Trump of recent raids by the government of newly-elected liberal South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on some conservative churches, including the Unification Church. These were related to documents about the coup that embroiled the country last December and nearly toppled Lee’s newly-elected government.

Donald Trump korean

Zohran’s embarrassing scavenger hunt

I still look back fondly on my 10th birthday party – a cute little scavenger hunt through the landmarks of Central Park. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to waste a peaceful Sunday afternoon reliving those glory days 20-odd years later.  Zohran Mamdani is cut from a different cloth, it seems. New York’s socialist soon-to-be mayor hosted his very own campaign-themed “Zcavenger Hunt” on Sunday, and thousands of over-worked (or unemployed?) New Yorkers seemingly had nothing better to do than embrace their inner whimsy.  Mamdani announced the event on Saturday in typical fashion – a highly produced video clip poking fun at his opponents.

J.D. Vance: proconsul to Britain?

Vice President J.D. Vance’s family vacation in Britain was disrupted by protesters who insisted that he was not welcome in the country. In the Cotswolds, an area northwest of Oxford and the British equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, ultraliberal white protesters huddled together on August 12 to make their meager numbers look large for the cameras, wielding signs bearing such slogans as “End Genocide!” and “Stop Fascists!” One participant quoted by the Guardian explained: “I’m most worried about his environmental policies. They risk eliminating the whole of humanity, all the creatures on the Earth.

Vance Britain

Will Trump go to war with the cartels?

President Donald Trump has signed off on a secret directive that, if activated, would let the US military hunt Mexican drug cartels the same way it once hunted al-Qaeda. Cartels branded as Foreign Terrorist Organizations could suddenly find themselves in the crosshairs of US drones, special forces and the full arsenal of counter-terror laws. Sinaloa, CJNG, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and even Nicolás Maduro’s own Cartel de los Soles are on the list. In Washington, the move is framed as a clean break with decades of failed “law enforcement” tactics. No more just DEA stings or financial sanctions, this is now a national security war. Marco Rubio put it bluntly: "We can't continue treating these guys like local street gangs. They have weapons like terrorists.

Cartels

Can Trump really send troops to Chicago and New York?

President Trump has once again identified a critical national need: this time, it is the desperate plea for backup from overwhelmed local police, particularly in large metropolitan areas.  Under the Home Rule Act, the President possesses clear statutory authority to exercise at least temporary law enforcement authority over the nation’s capital city by federalizing the Washington D.C. police force and deploying 800 National Guard troops. The city’s own crime statistics depict a municipality raging out of control. Homicide rates have doubled in the last ten years. Washington, D.C. is one of the fifty most dangerous cities in the world and the fourth most dangerous city in the nation.

National Guard
Trump World Cup

FIFA president joins Trump for Oval Office kickabout

Washington, DC President Trump had balls on the brain on Friday. At an unannounced stop at the People's Museum by the White House – where he was checking out the newly refurbished gift shop –  he laid down the gauntlet to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser. “I think the mayor has to get on the ball, because we have a situation, and she’s a nice woman, but I tell you what she’s got to get on the ball,” the President told the press. “I don’t want to see phony numbers.” We are now in the 12th day of Trump’s federal takeover of law and order in the capital. In that time, 719 arrests have been made, 36 of them illegal aliens, according to the White House. Next, the President headed over to the Kennedy Center to inspect the ongoing reconstruction efforts.

Trump’s command economy

Donald Trump never made a secret of the fact that he wanted to be a commanding president but it wasn’t clear that it included a command economy. In the past few months, though, Trump has been steadily meddling with it, ranging from his insistence on a 15 percent cut of the profits from his threats against computer chip manufacturers Nvidia and AMD to his threats against the independence of the Federal Reserve – including his peremptory demand that Fed Governor Lisa Cook resign, which she has vowed to resist. Others are not as resistant. It appears that Trump has successfully extorted a cool $10 billion from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan whom he has previously derided as in cahoots with China. Trump is depicting his move as a grand bargain that will benefit both sides.

Donald Trump

Is Colombia reverting to chaos?

Two terror attacks which hit Colombia on Thursday revealed a scary new level of sophistication among the country’s ever present narco-terrorists – and threatened to return the country to the violence and chaos that many had hoped it had finally escaped.The double terror strikes killed 18 people and involved a car bomb in Colombia’s third most populous city of Cali in which at least six people died, and an earlier drone downing of a police helicopter near the city of Medlllin – long notorious as Colombia’s drugs capital – in which 12 people died.

Colombia

Will one rotten rebrand spoil Cracker Barrel?

No one thinks the Cracker Barrel rebrand is a particularly good idea. The entire charm of Cracker Barrel lay in the farmhouse attic vibe, the nana’s candy dish assortment in the gift shop and the menu, which served up the best chicken and dumplings or biscuits and gravy and sweet tea possible from a fast-casual chain with horrible wooden chairs. Still, the melodrama surrounding this story, the rising and falling stock prices, the online mocking and gloating, seems a little overblown. Not everything has to be political. Cracker Barrel certainly doesn’t. For those of you who’ve been wandering around the fields with a bucket on your head this week, Cracker Barrel has streamlined.

Cracker Barrel

The Democratic party is now messianic

The New York Times recently announced that Democrats face a “voter registration crisis.” With its delicate, frilly font, the Times story agonized over younger voters, Latinos, and men, especially young black men, who appear to be drifting away from the Democratic party. The Times diagnosis? It’s an accounting problem: The party isn’t signing up enough people. Its cure, predictably, was more money, more organization and more clipboards.This is the answer you’d expect from a bureaucracy. If the shelves are full of unsold tins of beans, the problem is obviously the warehouse. In truth, Democrats don’t have a logistics problem. They have a product problem. Americans don’t want to buy the party they are selling.

Democrats

A presidential pizza delivery service

The excited word went out late Thursday afternoon that President Trump was going to do an evening ridealong with the National Guard. According to Twitter, he was now officially the roughest dude to occupy the White House since Teddy Roosevelt. Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when the Trump gets you? Fight fight fight! At the height of rush hour, POTUS climbed into “The Beast,” the Presidential limo, in a motorcade that included chief of staff Susie Wiles, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, most-hated-man-in-America Steven Miller, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, among others. This was going to be one hell of a ridealong. At 5:32 pm, Trump arrived at U.S.

Donald Trump