Features

Tuesday

July 15, 2025

How progressivism killed American Protestantism

Mainline Protestantism, once a primary cultural and political pillar of American life, is in freefall. Traditional Protestant denominations – Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and others – now account for less than 11 percent of the population, down 40 percent since 2007, according to the Pew Religious Landscape Study. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the main Lutheran body in the United States, had more than five million members when it was formed in 1988. That number now stands at fewer than three million. By 2050, the ELCA projects that membership will have dropped to a mere 67,000. At that point, American Lutheranism will virtually cease to exist as a denomination – soon to be joined, no doubt, by other stalwarts of the Reformation.

Luke Lyman

Why Mormons can’t get enough sugar

The most common vice among Mormons – besides, perhaps, being a little too nice – is a ravenous, insatiable, unyielding sweet tooth. That’s why members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are devouring the American dessert industry. You may have noticed, in recent years, a sprinkling of Crumbl Cookies stores in cities and suburbs. Or maybe a quirky customizable mixed-soda place such as Swig has opened near you. Or you’ve heard someone mention a “dirty soda.” These are the candied cultural exports of Utah and its predominantly Mormon culture. Over the past eight years, Crumbl – with its sugary-sweet marketing and bright pink boxes – has launched more than 1,000 franchises and become one of the largest dessert companies in the country.

Andrew Cockburn

Will we stop Saudi Arabia developing a nuclear weapon?

Though clearly resolved to declare victory over Iran’s nuclear program and move on, Donald Trump has been beset this summer by assertions that the Iranian effort has not been “obliterated” after all and that the mullahs will be back at work in no time cranking out the requisite materials for a bomb. Therefore, according to some, Trump should bomb some more – or at least unleash Israel to do so. Whether or not Trump is pushed into further strikes, the argument over Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities will not go away.

The Spectator

DoGE, alligators, public land and Mamdani mania

Daddy DoGE Despite Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s continued public fallout, DoGE is still slashing away at the federal workforce. From a peak of 3,015,000 employees on federal payroll in January, job cuts per month are as follows: February 13,000 March 11,000 April 13,000 May 25,000 June 7,000 Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics See ya later, alligator Would migrants at Florida’s “alligator Alcatraz” detention center be eaten by the surrounding wildlife if they managed to escape? “I guess that’s the concept,” said Trump. But which species would do the snacking? There are around 1.25 million American alligators in Florida which are native to the state.

Colin Freeman

Who replaces the ayatollahs if the Iranian regime falls?

The masked gunmen of Jaish al-Adl are probably not the kind of people Donald Trump had in mind when he talked about “regime change” in Iran. A terror group in Iran’s southeastern Baluchistan region, they have a bloodthirsty record of shootings and suicide bombings, all part of a jihad for a separate Baluchi homeland. They are, however, excited by Israel and America’s bombing campaign, which they see as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to achieve their goal. As they declared recently: “We extend the hand of brotherhood to all the people of Iran to join the ranks of the Resistance.” How long that brotherhood would last is another matter.

Aidan McLaughlin

Why President Trump can’t stop talking to reporters

The best time to call is the weekend. Or early in the morning. Or late at night. Definitely not when he’s on the golf course. If he’s alone, he’s more inclined to chat. If he’s in a good mood, you might get a few minutes. If he’s in a bad mood he’ll be brief, but you’re still liable to get a usable quote. That’s how White House reporters describe cold-calling Donald Trump, perhaps the most accessible president in American history. He’s not the first to smuggle a cell phone into the White House: Barack Obama insisted on keeping his BlackBerry throughout his time in office, despite the angst it caused his staff. But you couldn’t just call Obama. You can just call Trump.

Daniel McCarthy

The lessons of Ron Paul

As Elon Musk feuds with Donald Trump and looks to launch a political party of his own – the America party – he should stop to consider the lessons of Ron Paul. The former Republican congressman, who turns 90 on August 20, is best known as the leader of the GOP’s libertarian wing – which for years was practically a one-man faction. In 2008, however, Paul ran for the Republican presidential nomination and touched off a grassroots insurgency. It wasn’t enough to win him any primaries, but it laid the groundwork for the GOP’s populist turn, leading directly to the Tea Party movement and lighting the way for Trump’s arrival a few years later. Dr.

Graham Boynton

Can Clarksdale find its mojo again?

When Bubba O’Keefe announced he was running for mayor of Clarksdale this spring, there was a mixed response. This dirt-poor, crumbling Mississippi Delta city is more than 80 percent African American – and Bubba is white. But so poorly had the current mayor, who is African American, been performing that Bubba’s supporters thought he’d be a shoo-in, and that the residents would buy into the mantra that he was Clarksdale’s last hope, white or black. Locals describe Mississippi as the crime state. And Clarksdale is the worst city in Mississippi. There are 20 times more murders per capita in Clarksdale than in New York. As Bubba says: “We only have a population of 13,000 and there are 19 or 20 murders a year.

Ben Domenech

Inside Texas’s bold takeover of the American film industry

When Dennis Quaid dropped out of the University of Houston to pursue his acting dreams, there was nowhere to go but Hollywood. Coming off a decade of its biggest hits and at the height of critical acclaim for the movies of the 1970s, California dominated the culture of the United States, and therefore the world. “It was a paradise,” Quaid says. “Creativity, community, the greatest films were made there, a vibrancy of the new wave, Bonnie and Clyde, The Conversation, The Right Stuff, it was an incredible place of palm trees and a real atmosphere of creativity and inspiration where we were making great films with great people we knew and loved… and now all that is gone.” ‘California really is insanely expensive. Rarely did we shoot anything there.

Tuesday

June 3, 2025

Spectator Editorial

Can anyone balance America’s books?

Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill was supposed to slash government waste and inefficiency. So why is it going to result in an even bigger, uglier deficit? The legislation was still being picked over in the Senate as this magazine went to press. But the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has calculated that the bill will add $2.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade – and that estimate is far more likely to go up than down. The President’s opponents have characterized the Big, Beautiful Bill as a swindle that steals from the poor to give to the rich. That may be true to some extent, in that it could become harder for some people to qualify for Medicaid, while wealthy Americans will enjoy the extension of lower tax rates.

Kelly Chapman

MAGA tourism in the heart of DC

On Friday night I arranged for a group to meet at Butterworth’s for a small dinner. I joke that I’ve become the Butterworth’s Whisperer, chaperoning curious and skittish liberal friends to DC’s Trump-era living museum for lamb tartare, cozy lighting and dissident ambiance. I needn’t waste too much time describing the scene. The restaurant has been profiled more often than the new Pope. Suffice it to say the fries are sliver-thin and seed-oil-free, the martinis flow like water and there are always at least a couple of Republican who’s-whos to point at in the dining room. Nothing to be afraid of. Some nights there’s even a party if you show up at the right time, as I did a couple of months ago during the Conservateur’s “Make America Hot Again” event.

Max Horder

Left-wing violence is being normalized

Something has changed in America’s psyche. Violence has become more acceptable. It’s not just that we’ve seen two attempted – and very nearly successful – attacks on Donald Trump’s life, it’s that a worrying number of young Americans cheered on those attempted assassinations and still wish they had succeeded. Since early this year there has been widespread public support for smashing up Tesla dealerships – and for shooting Elon Musk. An unprecedented 10,000 new threats have been made against Senate and congressional members just this year, according to Capitol Police. Applause for the actual murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December goes on, unabated, online.

Charles Cornish-Dale

Are antidepressants making Americans violent?

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered Columbine High School in Colorado, armed to the teeth, and set about murdering their fellow classmates and teachers. When the shooting was over, 12 children and one teacher lay dead. Harris and Klebold were dead, too, and 20 others were wounded. Within a little over a week of the atrocity, there was already speculation that psychotropic drugs might have been a factor, specifically the powerful and relatively new antidepressant Luvox (fluvoxamine), which Harris was known to have been taking. Fluvoxamine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), a class of antidepressant medication that was first trialed in the 1970s and then brought to market in the US in the late 1980s.

Ben Domenech

Who can bring the Democrats together by 2028?

“Why is the Democratic party viewed as toxic by so many? Even people inside the party acknowledge that,” journalist Tara Palmeri recently asked the Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania on her ominously titled Somebody’s Gotta Win podcast. John Fetterman’s answer was blunt: “I think their primary currency was shaming and scolding and talking down to people and telling them, ‘Hey, I know better than you’ or ‘You’re dopes’ or ‘You are a bro’ or ‘You’re ignorant or you know it, don’t you’? You know, ‘How can you be this dumb?’ I can’t imagine it. And then, by the way, ‘They’re fascists, how can you vote for that?’ When you’re in a state like Pennsylvania, I know and I love people that voted for Trump and they’re not fascist.

Kate Andrews

How Trump’s favorite anthem became the barometer for his policies

“The so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built,” said Donald Trump on stage in Riyadh at the joint US-Saudi Arabia investment conference in May. “The interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.” Calling time on the neoconservative framework for diplomacy – also known as waging war – was jaw-dropping enough. But President Trump wasn’t done. He wanted to celebrate. Wrapping up his speech, the self-proclaimed President of “common sense” brought his friend, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, onto the stage to commemorate the moment. Naturally, the speakers blasted out the President’s favorite anthem: the Village People’s “YMCA.

Christopher Caldwell

Why everyone is talking about Bill Belichick

In early May, the 73-year-old former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick published The Art of Winning, an autobiography of sorts, laying out the principles that made him the greatest coach in the history of professional football. It’s the book fans have been waiting to read for 20 years. Yet hardly anyone noticed, not even people thrilled at the prospect of Belichick’s move to the University of North Carolina next fall – his first crack at coaching college ball. People are distracted by his relationship with a 24-year-old beauty queen: two-time Miss Maine finalist Jordon Hudson. You can see why. Forty-nine years is an attention-grabbing age difference and Hudson is a force in her own right.

Nicholas Farrell

How Giorgia Meloni became Donald Trump’s EU whisperer

Henry Kissinger once complained: “Who do I call when I want to speak to Europe?” Today the answer would be Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female Prime Minister, who has emerged as the most important leader in the European Union. No Italian leader has filled this unofficial role before: it is usually reserved for the heads of the bloc’s two largest economies, Germany and France. Yet Meloni has capitalized on the weakness of their leadership. French President Emmanuel Macron may delude himself that he is Napoleon or Jupiter, but in reality he is the deeply unpopular head of a lame-duck government. To borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, he doesn’t “have the cards.” Meanwhile, Germany’s Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, heads up a flimsy coalition.

Owen Matthews

Can Ukraine secure its military survival?

The Trump-Putin honeymoon is over. After three months of lengthy one-on-one phone calls, a handful of false starts on negotiations and flashes of Trumpian boosterism over the prospect of great commercial deals with the Kremlin, a fourth summer of war in Ukraine looks inevitable. Vladimir Putin will pretend to negotiate, while at the same time continuing to pound Ukraine’s cities with missiles and pressing forward on the ground. The Ukrainians will continue to scramble for men and resources with which to defend themselves. And the White House will continue to blame both sides for not reaching a deal. Over these three months of false hope, Putin has made two things very clear.

Daniel McCarthy

America no longer knows how to fight a war

When educated Americans think about war, they’re apt to think of it in ideological terms. Wars are fought between dictatorships and democracies and the goal is to establish one form of government or the other in the defeated opponent’s territory. That’s certainly been the way American policymakers have thought about the wars of this century and it was the framework during the Cold War as well, when the conflict was said to be, fundamentally, a clash of ideologies. The French Revolution is probably the source of this concept, as the wars it set off were indeed largely about regime change, if not that alone.

Kara Kennedy

The rise of Eric Trump

For years, Eric Trump perfected the art of strategic invisibility. In the grand theater of Trump family politics, he played the understudy: the dutiful son who minded vineyards and managed golf courses while his older brother courted Twitter controversies and his older sister pursued power. It was a calculated public persona. Eric appeared refreshingly uncontroversial and unbothered – and relatively non-political – compared to the rest of his family. But here’s what everyone missed: while his siblings were soaking in the limelight, Eric was quietly orchestrating moves of far greater consequence. His dutiful pose, it turns out, was the perfect cover for building an empire.