Latest from Coffee House

Monday

20 Oct 2025

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.

Nigel Jones

Bolivia votes for ‘capitalism for all’

Bolivia has taken a decisive turn to the right after the Christian Democratic Senator Rodrigo Paz won the second round of the presidential election after years of left-wing rule left the country’s economy in chaos. Paz, 58, narrowly beat another right winger, Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga by 54.6 percent to 45.4 percent to take the presidency in the second round run off. He will be inaugurated on November 8. The landlocked country had been ruled by the leftist MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) party since 2006, which enjoyed enormous support from Bolivia’s indigenous Indian majority.

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

19 Oct 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

17 Oct 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

16 Oct 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.

Max Horder

Why woke doesn’t work

Many conservatives will have long suspected that “woke” language – the cocktail of victimhood narratives and group identity – alienates most Americans. It is simply too grating, and it is simply too divisive. And no matter what your politics, it is almost impossible to imagine a healthy society that is built on an aggressive competition over who is the most historically aggrieved. Up until now this has been mostly an intuition. But a new study by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) finally puts evidence on the table: that this “woke” language actively provokes real anger, defensiveness and bile in respondents.

Wednesday

15 Oct 2025

Neal Pollack

Zohran Mamdani pledges free everything on Fox News

Ahead of tomorrow night’s debate with Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, Democratic socialist and future mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani appeared on Fox News this afternoon for the first time. Anyone expecting a clash of cultures, or 15 minutes of pure ideological arguing, would have been disappointed. Fox anchor Martha MacCallum asked tough, pointed questions, but it was a respectful exchange between two New Yorkers who clearly don’t summer in the same ZIP code. That doesn’t mean the interview lacked news value. The most shocking part came before the commercial break, when Mamdani said it was “too early” to give President Trump credit for the Middle East peace deal.

Cockburn

Chat, how cooked are the Young Republicans leaders?

An unsavory chat thread containing leaders of Young Republican groups nationwide has gone viral. These young (meaning under 40) fellas refer to blacks as “watermelon people," use the slur “faggot,” say “I love Hitler” and make jokes about rape and sending people to gas chambers. “If we ever had a leak of this chat we could be cooked fr,” someone said in a moment of self-awareness. Well, the chat is leaked, and they are cooked. Fr. Cockburn takes this particular chatgate with a grain of sea salt. It sounds like young men shit-talking after a few beers to him. Yet every boomer lib on Facebook is shocked, shocked at this scandal, taking it as a sure sign that MechaHitler is about to institute The Handmaid’s Reich or some such thing.

John Mac Ghlionn

Justin Trudeau kisses Canada goodbye

Justin Trudeau has finally found something he can’t bankrupt – a washed-up pop star. The former prime minister, now liberated from the burden of office, was recently spotted aboard Katy Perry’s yacht in California, sharing a kiss so theatrical it would have been cut by a good director. But Trudeau was always drawn to drama. The kind with lighting, makeup and someone else footing the bill. His life has become a soap opera, though not the kind with decent writing or respectable ratings. There was the recurring racist phase, the peace-and-love phase, the power-and-profit phase and now the Malibu make-out phase. Once hailed as the fresh-faced heir to liberal idealism, Trudeau swiftly dissolved into a puddle of melodrama and moisturizer.

Neal Pollack

Is Marjorie Taylor Greene a Democrat?

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has spent the last week gnawing on the hand that feeds her, showing that no one in American politics is worse at reading the tea leaves. Taylor Greene entered Congress in 2021 wearing a face mask that read “Trump Won.” She was so fervently a supporter of January 6 pardons that Georgians invoked an "insurrectionist disqualification clause" to try to remove her from Congress. But now that MAGA is riding high on a wave of world peace and prosperity, Taylor Greene has changed her tune and, though she says she’s still conservative, is sounding more like an unholy fusion of Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi. Over the weekend, MTG appeared on comedian Tim Dillon’s podcast, claiming that she is still “MAGA through and through.

Tuesday

14 Oct 2025

Cockburn

You want a peace of me?

President Trump prevented World War Three yesterday, or so he claimed multiple times. “No one wants World War Three,” he said. Fact check: true. Trump and many of the world’s finest leaders gathered behind a large, tacky but also touching sign that read “Peace 2025.” Italy’s Giorgia Meloni also attended the summit. Trump called her “beautiful,” saying that in the US calling a woman beautiful could mean the “end of your political career.” Fact check: true. “I’ll take my chances,” Trump said. Cockburn enjoyed the day’s festivities, which featured enough comic moments to fill a season of The Office.

Chris Mondics

Is conversion therapy free speech?

Kaley Chiles is a Christian therapist who places the Bible at the center of her practice. To many of her patients, religious faith is often more important than Freud. They see Bible readings, prayer and a focus on spirituality along with traditional principles of psychotherapy as essential elements of any treatment plan. While outside the mainstream of psychoanalytic practice, Chiles’s technique combining traditional psychotherapy with Biblical precepts for years had been deemed non-controversial, if confined to more conservative regions of the country. But that all began to change in 2019 when the state of Colorado enacted legislation banning so-called conversion therapy for minors, a technique that aims to help gays change their sexual orientation.

Monday

13 Oct 2025

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump’s finest hour

This is Donald Trump’s finest hour. Speaking in the Knesset on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him Israel’s “greatest friend” and nominated him for the Israel Prize,” the nation’s “highest award.” Trump himself was greeted rapturously by the parliamentarians for securing a breakthrough peace deal in Gaza. Trump basked in the applause for his months-long diplomatic effort, declaring that “this is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.” But can one truly emerge? Or is this simply a temporary truce between the warring parties? Trump’s immediate accomplishment was to arrange for the release of the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages held by Hamas since its attack on October 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered.

Rachel K. Paulose

Why did the FBI spy on Republican Senators?

The United States Senate Judiciary Committee this week revealed that Joe Biden’s FBI spied on eight Republican Senators and a Republican House of Representative Member in 2023. The underlying FBI record reveals the agency sought telephone tolling data as part of the Arctic Frost investigation that Special Counsel Jack Smith used to concoct an election fraud case against President Donald J. Trump. Although the indictment was ultimately dismissed when the President was re-elected in 2024, Smith expended the resources of the federal government for two years investigating the President in search of a federal crime.

Saturday

11 Oct 2025

Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s story has become a Shakespearean tragedy

This week has been a tale of two presidents. On the one hand there is Donald Trump, who has masterminded a peace deal between Israel and Hamas which, the world hopes, will end the conflict in Gaza. Even Trump’s long-standing detractors acknowledge his role in bringing the warring parties to the negotiating table. "Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world appear to have contributed to this breakthrough," explained the BBC. It hasn’t been such a good week for Emmanuel Macron. On the contrary it’s been the most humiliating few days of his eight and a half years in office. On Monday his Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, tendered his resignation after 27 days in office. It was the shortest premiership in the 67 years of the Fifth Republic.

Jennifer Harrison

Let ‘Iryna’s Law’ be her legacy

We’ve seen it again and again – Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Christina Yuna Lee, Michelle Go, Jocelyn Nungaray, Kristal Bayron-Nieves and now Iryna Zurutska – all young women brutally murdered by repeat offenders who never should have been on the street in the first place.Mental health failures. Bail reform. Parole abuse. Open borders. Progressive DAs. Every layer of this system protects offenders and creates more victims. To most Americans, that seems unthinkable.To those of us who live it, it’s another day in a system that treats criminals better than victims. That’s why the passage of Iryna’s Law in North Carolina matters.

Juan P. Villasmil

Machado deserves the Nobel

I was fourteen when I clambered onto a boulder along Caracas’s Francisco Fajardo highway – what people called Piedra de la Libertad, the Liberty Rock – and spoke out about a government that had just ignored a referendum. “Tyranny” was more than a buzzword. To my astonishment, a woman I didn’t yet know – María Corina – helped me climb it. With her megaphone, I spoke of unifying, as a sea of flags from rival parties fluttered before me.Many dismissed her then. A woman who once called Chávez a “thief” to his face – too brash, too ideological, too direct for the choreography of Venezuelan politics. The old hands said she could never reach the people; she lacked the soothing tones, the feigned humility, the convenient ambiguity that defined our politicians.

Friday

10 Oct 2025

Marc Siegel

Why weed is the most dangerous drug in America

Weed is the most dangerous drug in America. The main reason for this is the fact that most people don’t think it is. In fact, they typically think just the opposite. They believe not only that pot is safe, but also that it has true medicinal qualities. Little do they know that those benefits are barely worth the paper you wrap your joint in. Marijuana is most commonly touted as a balm for anxiety. But it may actually increase anxiety to the point of psychosis – especially for those with underlying psychiatric conditions. Combine it with a diet of daily intake of violent video games and social media – as did Joshua Jahn, the man who shot three victims at a Dallas ICE facility – and you’ve got all the makings of an unstable American.

Cockburn

Shutdown siestas

Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday Washington is ten days into the government shutdown, and the Republicans and Democrats remain at loggerheads. Members are accosting each other in the corridors of power – in front of a gawking media, naturally – and challenging their adversaries to debate on TV shows. The impression our leaders are trying to give us is that they are working hard to reach a solution to the impasse. The same can’t be said for admin officials: Cockburn understands a large swathe have taken the opportunity to head off on vacation – and are doing their best to ensure they don’t post any pictures. (As ever, if you’ve spotted a secretary soaking in the sunshine, let Cockburn know at cockburn@thespectator.com.

Neal Pollack

By order of the non-doctor

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not say, in yesterday’s cabinet meeting, that circumcision causes autism. But the fact that we’d even consider that a real statement shows just how far down the rabbit hole into the MAHA Wonderland of his mind RFK has dragged us. In fact, RFK said that after doctors circumcise boys, they give them too much Tylenol, and that causes autism. President “Don’t Take Tylenol” responded, “there's a tremendous amount of proof or evidence. I would say as a non-doctor, but I've studied this a long time.” A non-doctor is right, and I say this as someone who’s not a fan of male circumcision, a practice based on dated religious superstition.

Thursday

9 Oct 2025

Neal Pollack

Give the Nobel to Jared

On a season eight episode of The Simpsons, newscaster Kent Brockman interviews a man who’s woken up from a 23-year-long coma, and lets him know that Sonny Bono is now a Congressman and Cher has won an Oscar. The man dies soon after. If someone were to wake up from a coma today to find out that Donald Trump, who 23 years ago was hosting The Apprentice, is now the leading candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, it would have a similar result. But who else deserves the award? If you can give Peace Prizes to Al Gore and Barack Obama for basically being Cool Liberal Guys Who Aren’t Dick Cheney, you can give one to Donald Trump. Look at who’s nominated him: Benjamin Netanyahu, the government of Pakistan, The Israeli Hostages Family Forum.

Katherine Dee

Life in Chicago with ICE and the National Guard

Every day, Chicagoans outside the immediate areas where federal forces are deploying pick up fragments of what feels like an unfolding drama. Here’s a representative example: on the app NextDoor, the Chicago subreddit and in neighborhood Facebook groups, we watch cell-phone footage from Logan Square of smoke spreading through an intersection as a federal vehicle pulls away. Eventually, local outlets verify that a masked federal agent dropped canisters outside the Rico Fresh supermarket near Funston Elementary. It appears the air was filled with a chemical irritant, causing people to panic, and the vehicle departed.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Has Trump won peace – or a pause?

Donald Trump is on a roll. He not only wrangled Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu into submission, but also the terrorist organization Hamas, which has apparently agreed to release all remaining hostages. The war in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of at least 67,000 Palestinians, looks to be coming to an end. On Thursday evening, Trump took a victory lap as Israel and Hamas, who have been negotiating in Egypt, assented to the first phase of his 20-point peace plan. “I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan.

Wednesday

8 Oct 2025

David Sypher Jr.

The Democrat who fantasized about killing a Republican

When it was revealed that Jay Jones, Virginia’s Democratic nominee for attorney general, joked in text messages about shooting a Republican lawmaker, Democrats didn’t rush to condemn him. They scolded the comments, sure. But they didn’t demand he drop out. That hesitation tells you everything about the new Democratic mindset: they don’t see this as hypocrisy. They see it as adaptation.For years, Democrats have insisted that Donald Trump changed American politics – that he shattered the old civility and made rage fashionable. Now they’re quietly admitting that rage works. They’re not abandoning their moral high ground; they’re repaving it with something harder and sharper. In their eyes, the game changed – and if the only way to win is to play by Trump’s rules, so be it.

Cockburn

Has Katie Porter just tanked her chances of becoming California governor?

How do you give an interview so bad that it tanks your chances of winning an election by nearly 40 points? Ask former California congresswoman Katie Porter, who until yesterday was the presumptive favorite to become the state’s next governor. In a sit-down with Porter that resembles an old-school satirical Daily Show segment – before TDS turned that show into another partisan screed-fest – CBS News California Investigates correspondent Julie Watts asks Porter, simply, how she plans on winning Republican votes. “How would I need them in order to win, ma’am?” Porter sneers. "I have stood on my own two feet and won Republican votes before.