Politics Archives

Thursday

April 24, 2025

Trump’s impressive, unsettling digital fortress

Forget the towering slabs of steel and concrete sprawling across the southern border. Quietly, beneath the tangible symbols of Donald Trump’s immigration clampdown, another revolution has taken hold. A revolution of invisible digital watchtowers, wires and algorithms – that is as impressive as it is unsettling.The curtain shielding this vast expansion of America’s digital surveillance technology has, thanks to recent disclosures, been drawn back to reveal at its core a controversial and critically influential digital engine churning through data.Enter Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. DoGE has recently launched a master database targeting undocumented migrants, WIRED reports.

Neal Pollack

RFK Jr.’s hill to dye on?

If you’re to believe media accounts of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s extraordinary Tuesday press conference, the Health and Human Services Secretary has “banned” eight toxic colored dyes from American food products. Milder accounts say that the agency has ordered Big Food to “phase out” these dyes by the end of 2026. No one legitimate will argue against food-dye restrictions and anyone who does is either reflexively anti-Trump to an absurd degree or is a paid food-industry shill. But the problem is that there were no food-industry shills present at the press conference. RFK Jr. has essentially asked the food companies to do the right thing by American consumers – by self-deporting. “We don’t have an agreement,” RFK Jr. said. “We have an understanding.

Wednesday

April 23, 2025

Teresa Mull

How America can develop its own rare earth elements industry… safely

Give a country rare earth elements and it’ll have fighter jets, missiles and warships for a day. Force a country to extract and process its own rare earth elements and it’ll be safe from relying on countries run by unstable dictators forever. Such is President Trump’s sensible line of thinking as he keeps up America's trade war with China. As China imposed export licensing restrictions on seven rare earth elements, or REEs, last week, Trump signed an Executive Order “launching an investigation into the national security risks posed by US reliance on imported processed critical minerals and their derivative products.” The administration is now pursuing a deal to procure REEs from Ukraine.

Ben Domenech

What Pete Hegseth and his warfighters learned about Washington

Back in 2010, there was no more respected warfighter and general beloved by his men than Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan. Bob Gates once called him "the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I ever met." He was also a man of the people, uncomfortable around the fat and happy elites of the foreign policy and national security world. As the late reporter Michael Hastings wrote in his profile for Rolling Stone, McChrystal's favorite beer is Bud Light Lime, his favorite movie Talladega Nights, and dismissed fancy restaurants with candles on the table as "too Gucci". It was that notorious article that proved to be McChrystal's undoing and led directly to him offering his resignation to President Barack Obama.

Peter Wood

What the Singer Sewing Machine teaches us about student loan repayment

The Singer Sewing Machine Company is credited – that’s the right word – with popularizing the idea of the installment plan. Starting in 1856, a customer could buy a sewing machine for a very modest down payment and a rather lengthy commitment to further payments. Isaac Singer copied the idea from a piano company, but he turned it into a model of aggressive marketing to the average household. His “dollar down, dollar a week” slogan launched the era of consumer credit on a mass scale, and helped to marry mass production of durable goods to middle-class household economy. The idea spread quickly. By early in the 20th century, people could buy “washing machines, refrigerators, phonographs and radios” on the installment plan. The idea faced some resistance too.

Neal Pollack

NPR begs for its professional life

As the Trump administration continues its systematic effort to dismantle and humiliate every institution of liberal America, National Public Radio has issued its man-the-torpedoes command. In the equivalent of a red alert going off on the bridge in Star Trek, according to a New York Times report, NPR has ordered its local affiliates to contact their congressional representatives and beg for their professional lives. “Recission,” or revoking of already-allocated funding, is coming soon. “Engage your board members,” the memo goes, “Community Advisory Board, station volunteers, major supporters, community partners, business leaders, and emergency officials who work with your station and ask them to communicate to Congress your opposition to recission.

Daniel Foganholi

Let students and professors carry guns to class

Last week, I walked across Florida State University’s campus in Tallahassee, watching students laugh, read and relax in the sun. Today, that same lawn is a crime scene – the latest gun-free zone targeted by a coward intent on terrorizing innocent lives. The son of a sheriff's deputy shot two dead and injured six others in a campus rampage. Last year, Governor Ron DeSantis appointed me to the Florida Board of Education, where I serve the 3 million students who attend our K-12 schools and state colleges. It’s time to get real: gun-free zones do not protect our students – they turn them into defenseless, easy targets. At FSU, the shooter used his mother’s legally-owned service weapon. No law could have stopped him.

Tuesday

April 22, 2025

Aidan McLaughlin

Will AOC be the next leader of the Democrats?

What are we to make of an America in which David Brooks, the mild-mannered moderate of the New York Times opinion pages, calls for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” to fight back against the tyranny of President Donald Trump? It’s one in which the traditional thinking about how the Democratic party can wield power has been crushed to dust. It’s one in which voters, disillusioned by repeat defeats to Trump, have felt their hopelessness turn to rage. Moderates, such as Kamala Harris, are not channeling that fury.

Jennifer Sey

Sports are defying Trump’s trans ban

I was present when President Trump signed the executive order to protect women’s sports. But I knew the fight wasn’t over. In fact, it seems to be getting even uglier. The American “progressive” faction is digging its heels in to allow men to keep stealing women’s trophies and opportunities – turning hard-won female spaces into political battlegrounds. This Monday, for the first time, a man ran in the Boston Marathon in the women’s category – and a female athlete who disagreed with his inclusion was sent violent threats, highlighting the farcical state of American athletics. The rule change means that now it is possible for a man to win the men’s category, the non-binary category and the women’s category.

Monday

April 21, 2025

Ben Domenech

Pete Hegseth’s fight is about more than mere staff personalities

The Washington firing squad is out for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. His department has seen the dramatic departure of three top aides who were placed on leave and escorted from the Pentagon, before ultimately being fired on Friday. Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick have for their part maintained they were wrongly slandered by others in the building as leakers – and a fourth former spokesperson, John Ullyot, took the rare step of taking to the pages of Politico to publicly denounce the current Pentagon direction as a chaotic "Month from Hell.

Neal Pollack

The Trump administration attempts to correct the record on Covid

Last Friday the White House launched, without warning (which is how they like to do things), what is essentially a truth and reconciliation inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. While this somewhat vanished into the fog of President Trump’s ongoing battles against the post-Cold War liberal order, it’s still a significant political event. Dial your browser to covid.gov, and it takes you to a White House splash page, with the words LAB LEAK in all caps, and “The True Origins of COVID-19” below to the right. The letters “Covid-19” are in cursive, as though a baseball player had signed it as an autograph.

Michael R. Auslin

Freedom is still the Revolutionary War’s legacy

When the first shot rang out at dawn on Lexington Green, a decade of frustration and growing alienation between the American colonies and the British government boiled over into armed conflict. By the time the British staggered back into Boston on the evening of April 19, 1775, having fought a running battle for twenty-five miles from Concord’s North Bridge and losing at least 73 killed, the American Revolution had begun. Like many turning points in history, the encounter at Lexington Green was not planned. British troops acting on the orders of General Thomas Gage were on their way to capture arms and munitions stored by the Massachusetts militia when they ran into Lexington’s “Minutemen” drawn up on the Green.

Charles Lipson

Trump takes a hammer to the universities

President Trump has already dropped the first hammer on Harvard. He’s ready to drop the whole tool chest on a whole slew of universities – and it won’t be pretty. Outraged Democrats will call the punishing sanctions authoritarian, even fascist, and well beyond the authority of a constitutional officer. Republicans will back the president, saying universities had plenty of chances to correct their serious problems and did nothing. Some threatened sanctions are readily defensible, such as demanding better protection for Jewish students and eliminating discrimination in admissions, hiring and promotion. Some are not, such as demanding intrusive federal oversight of course content and departmental hiring. All Trump’s actions will be challenged in court.

Saturday

April 19, 2025

Daniel Lee

The plight of the Midwest Protestant church

One icy day in January, the 130-year-old First Methodist Church in Princeton, Indiana, burned to the ground after years of slow decline. Through the years the church’s beautiful crescent sanctuary had seen christenings, confirmations, weddings, funerals, the full circle of small-town religious life. Downstairs hosted the Pinewood Derby and the yearly pancake and sausage breakfast. Boy Scouts learned first-aid there; seniors practiced CPR. That was all long ago. The destruction left by the fire was so complete authorities in the small Southwest Indiana county seat couldn’t find a proximal cause. But ultimately, it was gradual social and generational change that left the building underused, expensive to maintain, impractical and finally vulnerable.

Peter Pomerantsev

Inside Russia’s repression of Ukraine’s churches

Vladimir Putin celebrated Palm Sunday by murdering over 30 civilians in Sumy with two missiles laced with shrapnel to maximize mortalities. But it’s not only rocket fire that will endanger Ukrainians over the Easter weekend. Inside the occupied territories, any worshipers outside of the Kremlin-controlled Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate are in danger. Since Russia’s invasion, more than 67 pastors and other faith leaders have been killed by the invaders. There are over 100 known cases of interrogations, forced expulsions, imprisonments, and arrests, and more than 700 houses of worship have been destroyed or expropriated. And these are just confirmed figures: the censorship on the occupied territories means the real number is likely much higher.

Ben Domenech

El Salvador deportation is just another partisan jump ball, says poll

The barrage of media coverage and political activity surrounding the deportation of an illegal migrant to El Salvador might suggest the story plays to the advantage of Democrats targeting President Trump’s immigration crackdown. But that’s actually not the case according to new poll data provided to The Spectator. Polling this week conducted by OnMessage, one of the top Republican-aligned firms, found that despite the drumbeat in support of the Democratic storyline on Kilmar Abrego Garcia over the past several weeks, American voters are evenly split on the issue overall – reflecting how quickly this case has become a simple partisan divide. Overall, support for the Garcia deportation is dead even at 49-49.

Friday

April 18, 2025

Peter Wood

Harvard against America

This is drumming season. That’s the time of year when the woodpeckers stake out their territories by tapping out tattoos on hollow trees. Road signs or “no trespassing” edicts make an even more impressive racket. I come to Vermont to get away from Midtown Manhattan’s horns and sirens – but this time of year, it’s just a visit to the percussion section. But the real racket isn’t from the birds declaring their sovereignty over the woods. It is from Harvard declaring its sovereignty over American higher education. In a letter dated April 14, the principals of two Washington law firms wrote a brief letter to three officials in the Trump administration telling them they need not worry about antisemitism at Harvard.

Neal Pollack

Luigi Mangione and the left’s warped choice of heroes

Luigi Mangione has yet another day in court. A fresh collection of glamorous perp walk photos will emerge. Sexy orange-jumpsuit clad come-hither glances are forthcoming. This will surely appeal to his many fans – his stans – who’ve been dying to get a fresh look at their alleged murderous dreamboat. Luigi’s re-emergence comes at the end of an extraordinary week where the American left embraced a rogue’s gallery of villains so ridiculous that they almost seem fictional. You have Mangione, accused of shooting a healthcare CEO in cold blood; Mahmoud Khalil, who faces deportation for his role in Columbia's radical protests; and the latest entry into the sinister sweepstakes, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Ben Domenech

Democrats are doing themselves no favors on El Salvador

The political battle over the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, where he is imprisoned based on a belief that he is a member of MS-13, has taken over the conversation in Washington for weeks. Several Democratic members of the House and Senate have already announced plans to follow Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland on trips to El Salvador – where he met with Garcia. I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return. pic.twitter.com/U9y2gZpxCb — Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) April 18, 2025 Whether they'll follow through, given President Nayib Bukele's trolling, is another matter.

Thursday

April 17, 2025

Jacob Heilbrunn

How much hope did Trump offer Meloni?

In early March Donald Trump said Elon Musk was doing “an amazing job.” Last week he said Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan was doing an “excellent job.” On Thursday it was the turn of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni during her meeting at the White House. Trump declared that she was “doing a fantastic job.” What Trump found so fantastic was never specified, but he tossed a variety of bouquets in Meloni’s direction. Not least was his vow that “there will be a trade deal, 100 percent” with the European Union. It was qualified, however, by Trump’s claim that he’s in no rush to strike a deal with Ursula “the West no longer exists as we knew it no longer exists” von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.