Politics Archives

Tuesday

October 21, 2025

Trump inherited a weaponized justice system

Has Donald Trump “weaponized” the justice system to go after his political enemies? The answer is no. “What about former FBI director James Comey?” you ask. “What about New York Attorney General Letitia James?” Both went after Trump hammer and tongs. Now both have been indicted by the Trump Justice Department. Are those not textbook cases of “weaponization,” of “retribution,” of using the power of the system to punish people who have punished you? Hold on. I write this in mid-October. By the time you read it, I suspect that the list of indictments will be much longer.

Alexander M. Bielakowski

Why the Army needs the cavalry

A generation ago, I was an officer in the US Army National Guard and later in the Army Reserve. I did absolutely nothing important, and never saw any places more exotic than Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, and Camp Atterbury, Indiana. I then spent a dozen years working for the Army as a civilian employee. I had already decided before these events to devote my academic career to the study of the Army. I loved (and still do love) it in an abstract and historical sense. However, only after my personal association with it did I realize how profoundly shortsighted it was. I observed this myopia daily and marveled at its immensity. Veterans may remember the adage that there is “the right way, the wrong way and the Army way.” The Army way is usually just plain dumb.

Owen Matthews

Should the Nord Stream saboteurs be extradited to Germany?

The identity of the saboteurs who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 was for years the western security establishment’s worst-kept secret. Just two weeks after a series of explosions within the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark crippled three of the four undersea natural-gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany, Scandinavian diplomats in Brussels were already being quietly briefed that the most likely culprits were Ukrainian. By January 2023, a forensic investigation by German police had discovered traces of the explosives on board the charter yacht Andromeda and found that the vessel’s movements aligned exactly with the location of the blasts.

Daniel McCarthy

The Clinton curse

Democrats have almost lost hope. Nearly a year after Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, the party is rudderless. It opposes Trump, of course, but it can’t afford to oppose Trumpism. Denouncing the President for a short war against Iran’s nuclear program or for negotiating a Gaza ceasefire wouldn’t be smart. Criticizing his tariffs is safer – yet Democrats don’t want to be branded the party of free trade. Likewise, while they’re prepared to condemn the way the President is getting immigration under control, they know it would be suicidal for them to campaign for more immigration. Even on cultural questions, Democrats are Trump’s prisoners.

January Littlejohn

‘Gender-affirming care’ is never justified

Even now, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans just assume that there is a vast and vulnerable cohort of kids who are born “trans” and need so-called “gender-affirming care.” They look at the protests and listen to progressive politicians and assume that there must be at least some evidence that pediatric medical transition helps children in distress. It would be unthinkable to have put children through all this for nothing, and for American medics to have gone along with it all. But the awful truth is that there is no evidence that allowing children to transition actually works in any meaningful sense. An analysis recently published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy has finally cut through the noise with a simple but devastating tool: a calculator.

Ben Clerkin

Laura Loomer is in the crosshairs

“I get death threats every day,” Laura Loomer says matter-of-factly, as if discussing her junk mail. “I get death threats from Muslims, radical leftists, trannies, you name it.” ‘After what happened to Charlie Kirk, you have to wonder if people are hiding on a roof planning to kill you’ An alligator skull, a bullhorn, a red MAGA hat and a grinning pumpkin sit on a shelf behind Loomer in her pink-lit Florida studio – otherwise known as the spare bedroom of her Gulf Coast rental. This is the headquarters of Loomer Unleashed, the notorious podcast from which she has single-handedly ended the careers of dozens of members of the Trump administration by revealing their alleged treachery. Yet it is very much her future under discussion right now.

Monday

October 20, 2025

Neal Pollack

America’s king is Burger King

The nationwide No Kings protest attracted, according to varying estimates, between 600,000 and 600 million Americans. Republicans either denigrated the protests as a kind of retirement-home activity for permanently terrified MSNBC boomers or as cover for bloodthirsty Antifa terrorists who want to destroy America and, in the words of House Speaker Mike Johnson, bring about “a rise of Marxism in the Democratic Party.” Or, you know, why not both? Coverage of the protests reflected this schizo vibe. There were a lot of sad Boomer ladies in tie-dye T-shirts carrying Orange Man Bad posters, and some footage of grotesque, twisted far leftists mocking the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Cockburn

Is Kemi Badenoch plotting an American move?

Brits who make a pivot to America tend to fall into two categories. There are those who seek a bigger stage – like Alfred Hitchcock or Christopher Hitchens. Then there are those who were in some sense “run out of town” back in Britain and now seek solace and refuge in the New World. Under this heading we can put the Pilgrim Fathers, Thomas Paine, Mark Thatcher (wayward son of Margaret Thatcher), and now, Kemi Badenoch – beleaguered leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. Badenoch has penned an odd op-ed for the New York Post celebrating the policies of the second Trump administration.

Ben Domenech

Why does the left hate J.D. Vance so much?

Freddy Gray's latest Spectator cover piece on J.D. Vance's status as the heir apparent for Donald Trump, well-above the scrum of potential alternatives despite his relative youth and the fact he has been an elected politician for not even three years, brings to mind an underrated aspect of his appeal. I am often asked by conservatives across the country some version of the question: Why does the left hate J.D. Vance so much? Why does he prompt so much vociferous loathing? The answer is somewhat disguised by his uniqueness in background and resume, but the truth is: They hate him because they view him as a traitor to their class, after they welcomed him with open arms.

Margaret Mitchell

Is the Virginia election a referendum on Trump?

The Virginia state elections had looked predictable. Nearly every poll showed the Democrats poised to win all three executive offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. Then, a series of violent texts from the Democratic candidate for attorney general surfaced. In 2022, then-delegate Jay Jones had texted his Republican colleague Carrie Coyner saying that if he had a gun and two bullets, in a room with Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert, he’d shoot Gilbert twice. Then he called Coyner to say he wanted Gilbert’s wife to watch their children die in her arms. Coyner expressed her horror over text. But Jones kept going: “Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy”.

Sunday

October 19, 2025

Gage Klipper

Will a Republican be the next New Jersey governor?

The national spotlight is on New Jersey as the long-blue state’s gubernatorial race narrows, but it wouldn’t be Juh-zey without a little last minute drama. Lying, suing and a last minute showing from Donald Trump – this race has just about everything. And the Republican may actually win. Democrat Mikie Sherrill has been the conventional favorite throughout the race. She’s a relatively fresh face, despite being a four-term U.S. Congresswoman, and she checks all the boxes: Navy veteran, Georgetown Law, and a respectable patina of moderation to go with the Girl Boss pantsuit. Still, the VoteView database shows her holding the party lines 95 percent of the time in Congress.

Friday

October 17, 2025

Germán Saucedo

We need Sabrina Carpenter

Sabrina Carpenter, who will for the first time this week be hosting NBC’s Saturday Night Live, continues to be a cause of controversy. Over the summer, the five-foot, honey-voiced singer revealed the cover for her newly released album, Man’s Best Friend. It shows her wearing a black minidress on her hands and knees, while a faceless man holds a handful of her hair. The image immediately stirred outrage online. Those who usually find themselves on the side of unfettered female sexual liberation called the cover regressive, degrading, and submissive toward the male gaze. Some fans defended the image, arguing that Carpenter was clearly satirizing incompetent and controlling men as well as her portrayal by the media as a “sex obsessed” pop star.

Alexander Larman

Have the Virginia Giuffre revelations got Prince Andrew sweating?

It is a staple of Gothic fiction that the malefactor is often caught out by a document or apparition that appears from beyond the grave. And so it appeared for Britain’s scandal-riddled Prince Andrew, ever since it was announced that Virginia Giuffre, who the now-former Duke of York allegedly had sexual relations with when he was 41 and she was 17, was posthumously publishing a memoir, entitled Nobody’s Girl, in which she offered candid accounts of what, precisely, happened with Andrew, courtesy of the disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Everyone – including the royal family – braced for impact, and the decision to remove Andrew’s title and Order of the Garter must surely have been dictated by this latest humiliation.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump, the foreign policy president?

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine continued his excellent sartorial adventure at the White House, appearing in an elegantly cut black suit and shirt on Friday as he met with President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room. But while they may have helped avoid any emanations of wrath from his host, his habiliments did not appear to prompt Trump to approve the dispatch of Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv, a coveted item indeed. “We’d much rather not need Tomahawks,” Trump said. “We’d much rather get the war over. It could mean a big escalation. It could mean a lot of bad things could happen.” Back to square one, in other words. In August, Trump had claimed that his summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin would lead to a breakthrough. It never happened.

Cockburn

Tucker Carlson, ‘belle of the ball’

Tucker time In the month since his death, Charlie Kirk has been credited for his role as a unifying figure on the American right. Nowhere was that more evident than at the Tuesday afternoon service posthumously awarding him the Presidential Medal of Honor, where four hosts of Fox News’s prestigious 8 p.m. slot posed for a photo together: Jesse Watters, Glenn Beck, Bill O‘Reilly and Tucker Carlson. Tucker also got a picture with Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham – incredible considering how acrimoniously things ended between him, his former network and a number of his other high-profile colleagues. (Carlson branded Hannity a “warmonger” as recently as June.

Neal Pollack

John Bolton’s AOL chat with Iran

“John Bolton Surrenders To Federal Authorities” is a headline I could have only dreamed of seeing 20 years ago, but this morning it came true. Following yesterday’s grand-jury indictment of Bolton, the former Trump National Security Advisor and W. Bush Iraq War architect/manipulator gave himself up and pled not guilty in federal court on charges of mishandling classified information. But if Bolton isn’t guilty, I’m a high-stakes poker professional. The charges claimed that Bolton was “unlawfully hoarding” documents, that he sent classified information over grandpa communication medium AOL instant Messenger in 2018 and that he shared more than 1,000 pages of notes, while working on a memoir, with his wife and daughter, neither of whom had security clearances.

Ben Domenech

Schrödinger’s covert action

While much of the pushback from the right wing to Donald Trump’s international hawkishness has come from voices focused on the Middle East, and feared potential for wider wars prompted by support for Israel, the actual test of a break within the Republican coalition on foreign policy disputes could come over the president’s stepped up focus on Venezuela.The most recent development, with Trump issuing a rare public acknowledgement that he has authorized covert CIA actions on land. “I authorized for two reasons, really,” he explained this week. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. And the other thing are drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.

Gavin Mortimer

Why the French are dreaming of a Donald Trump à la française

A year ago Donald J Trump was still roundly disliked by the French commentariat. Even the conservative Le Figaro newspaper held its Gallic nose in disdain, running a haughty article headlined "Trump, vulgarity runs rampant." The left still loathe the president of the United States but for the right in France he has become a role model. The same Le Figaro now writes approvingly of Trump and admits it got him wrong. "We expected an isolationist Trump, focused solely on American interests," it declared on Friday. "But in nine months, the president has established himself as a peacemaker in multiple international crises." The French perhaps more than any European nation have never got The Donald.

Thursday

October 16, 2025

Shay Khatiri

Who deserves credit for the Gaza ceasefire?

Since the Gaza ceasefire was announced last week, two distinct narratives have emerged. The first gives President Donald Trump the lion’s share of credit. The second, mostly pushed by former Biden officials, is trying to share the glory. Both are wrong and for the same reason: they give the United States unrealistic credit and ignore the obvious fact that it is the belligerents who decide the fate of a war. More than any world leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserves credit.

Isaac Schorr

The UN’s ‘climate crisis’ tax

In between votes to legitimize the world’s worst regimes and condemn the world’s only Jewish state, the United Nations has found the time to introduce itself as a global governmental structure with the power to levy taxes on every inhabitant of Earth. No, really. The UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) is of the opinion that it can impose duties on the carbon emissions of ships to the tune of between $100 and $380 per metric ton. All of the revenue generated would be paid out to the UN’s “Net Zero Fund,” which would be used to “reward low-emission ships,” or pick winners and losers.