Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Nicholas Farrell

What do Italy’s rioters want?

“Facciamo come in Francia!” shouted the masked and hooded rioters on Sunday in Milan and other major Italian cities, notably Turin and Bologna. “Let’s do like in France!” By far the worst violence was in Milan around the Duomo where about 3,000 rioters fought running battles with police and sacked and looted countless high-end shops. Most of the 200 rioters arrested in Milan on Sunday, plus the 70 odd on Saturday during similar though less destructive scenes, were Italian citizens who are the children of immigrants, according to media reports. They are known in Italian as “di seconda generazione.” Around 60 of those arrested were foreign nationals. Eighty percent were teenagers under the age of 18, some as young as 12. Far-left white activists were a small minority.

Cockburn

Ramaswamy’s bad political instincts strike again

Vivek Ramaswamy is unpopular. Particularly so this week, over a malicious attack ad against his Democratic opponent for the Ohio governorship, Amy Acton. The ad, which surfaced online on Monday before eventually being claimed by the campaign, features Acton’s estranged mother, Dorothy, decrying her daughter as a liar and mentally unwell. It was already a matter of public record that Acton and her younger brother have been estranged from their mother after Acton was allegedly raped by her stepfather at age 12.  As National Review reported, “Court records confirm many key parts of Acton’s account of her life,” including contemporaneous accounts of the abuse.

Cockburn

Is Abdul El-Sayed racist?

In his failed 2020 presidential campaign, "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg famously scored 0 percent with black voters in multiple polls.⁠ Abdul El-Sayed, in his bid to be senator for Michigan, is not doing quite so badly. But the evidence suggests he does have an issue with African-American voters, who make up around 12-13 percent of his state’s electorate. In the Democratic primary, his opponent Haley Stevens carried the black vote by large margins, and a Fox News poll suggested he enjoys only about 75 percent support among black voters, which is weak compared to, say, the 87 percent of black Michiganders who voted for Kamala Harris. In a very tight race against Mike Rogers across the state, these numbers could make all the difference.

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John Power

Is AI a bubble?

The news is full of speculation that we are about to see a bursting of a “bubble” in AI. “Will the AI bubble pop?” asks the Sun. The New York Post predicts that the entire market is about to “burst,” with a market correction to follow. But it isn’t just tabloids getting carried away – the IMF is concerned about an AI correction, as are luminaries from the financial world such as Ray Dalio and Michael Burry. Burry, who famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis, has denounced Anthropic and OpenAI (the creators of Claude and ChatGPT) as “bubble companies.” And there is already some evidence in the stock market of worries about AI infrastructure spend.

Yesterday

Gavin Mortimer

The dark horse who stands to benefit from France’s riots

Marine Le Pen is the political winner from the anarchy that erupted in France at the weekend. A poll conducted in the 48 hours after the nationwide riots found that the leader of the National Rally is the only figure whose approval rating has increased. Le Pen is now up to 38 percent, a popularity not seen since Francois Mitterrand enjoyed widespread support in the 1980s. According to Frédéric Dabi, one of France’s leading political scientists, Le Pen is regarded as “the representative of the party of order, the party of those who can no longer tolerate the chaos.” Her nearest rival is Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the far-left La France insoumise, the party that much of the country holds responsible for stoking disorder in recent weeks.

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John Fund

Vance’s delicate 2028 dance

J.D. Vance is clearly trying to thread a needle as he prepares to run for the Republican presidential nomination next year. On the one hand, the Vice President doesn’t want to appear too eager for the job. He insisted last week he might choose not to run because “we’ve got four little kids” at home. On the other hand, he told 2WAY's Mark Halperin Monday, “I think if I run, the President will endorse me.” But he left himself an out: “Because the President’s endorsement is so dispositive, you could absolutely see a scenario where the President says, ‘You know what? We need to let like this race play out and not preemptively prejudge the results.’” Vance himself has to perform a balancing act.

Tuesday

Peter Napier

What I saw in the French riots

It’s the third week of the student-led protests in Lyon, and the second that my university has been blockaded “in solidarity.” When clouds of tear gas drift onto my street on Saturday, it’s an almost routine sight. My neighbor across the road is sitting by his window, eating potato chips, pointing out some of the more family-friendly placards to his toddler. Smartly dressed shoppers move through the crowds with scarves as improvised gas masks. I decide to make myself some porridge.   I am interrupted by a series of heavy thuds. Out of my window I see a group of balaclava-clad men taking turns to launch themselves at my neighbor’s front door. It eventually gives way, and they rush into his stairwell. The toddler begins to cry.   Time to leave.

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Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Who will condemn Saudi Arabia’s Islamic barbarism?

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia executed a Bangladeshi man and woman over an “indecent act” inside a mosque in Mecca. While the Saudi interior ministry hasn’t specified the “indecency,” and some reports suggest that the two had kissed within the parameters of the Islamic worship place, the kingdom mentioned “adultery” as the offense in its prisoner list sent to the Bangladeshi consular general. Nonetheless, for any extent of “indecency” to be deemed a crime worthy of capital punishment is a barbaric affront to humanity.

Andrew Cockburn

Is a robot running the Fed?

We recently learned that Donald Trump has been taking guidance from Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot best known for enabling nude images of real women. As TIME magazine reported: In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy… He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the US captured Maduro… the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.

Monday

Owen Matthews

Putin can smell Washington’s desperation

Donald Trump has staked a big chunk of his political credibility on finding peace in Ukraine – and by doing so in partnership with Vladimir Putin, and on the Kremlin’s terms. But is Putin ready to play ball and help save Trump’s backside, politically and economically? The answer is yes: Putin will probably play along with small gestures like partial ceasefires and prisoner releases. But when it comes to the big stuff like actually stopping what Putin calls his "special military operation," the Kremlin is likely to stick to its guns and ignore Trump’s special pleading while it continues pulverizing Ukraine’s cities.

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Robert Bryce

In Texas, it’s Musk vs Talarico

Here’s an update on the state of Trumpism in America: last month, the richest man in world history threw $158 million into a last-ditch attempt to rescue the worst candidate for US Senate in American history.  It’s part of what one US media outlet is calling “Elon Musk’s massive Texas rescue mission.” But even a trillionaire’s fortune may not be able to rescue the execrable Ken Paxton from defeat on November 3.  That $158 million donation followed a $10 million gift in August from the “Elon Musk Revocable Trust” to a political action committee closely tied to Paxton.  If Paxton, the sitting Texas Attorney General, loses to Democrat James Talarico, historians will remember it as a massive defeat for Donald Trump and Trumpism. Why?

Friday

Freddy Gray

The winter of Trumpian discontent

We seem to be fast approaching the winter of Trumpian discontent. The midterms are just weeks away, the mood within the White House is strained, and knives are being drawn on Pennsylvania Avenue. There’s the fuss over Katie Zacharia, the somewhat verbally challenged White House press secretary, and the surprisingly tough treatment meted out to her by Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night. There’s the apparent volte-face over the fate of Nidal Malik Hasan, as Donald Trump declared that Hasan’s execution will not in fact be live-streamed. "He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad," said the Commander-in-Chief. "But this event will not be streamed.

Graham Keeley

After years of socialism, is Spain about to turn to the far-right?

Good-looking and always smartly dressed, Vito Quiles sports a wristband with the red and gold of the Spanish flag. It is ubiquitous among Vox supporters. He has made a name for himself in Spain by supposedly reporting on the hate figures for the far-right: migrants, housing rights protesters, students and far-left leaders. He confronts these figures to create provocative content online. Quiles, who has 1.5 million followers on Instagram, is part of a small but growing number of right-wing agitators who are attracting young people to Vox, a far-right party which less than a decade ago was regarded as a political joke.

Jack Smith
Roger Kimball

Jack Smith’s plot against the republic

Six hundred and thirty-nine thousand. Thanks to the indefatigable Chuck Grassley, we now know that that’s the number of individuals whose names Special Counsel Jack Smith hoovered up for Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice when Joe Biden occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (“Occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” it may almost go without saying, seems more accurate than saying “when Biden was president.”)  Senator Grassley has been terrier-like in pursuing evidence of wrongdoing by people like Jack Smith, Merrick Garland and their many confrères in the deep state, which is to say, the Democrat State. Grassley had earlier shown that nearly 5,000 GOP donor checks, mostly for piddly amounts, had been collected as “evidence” by Garland’s minions.

Jonathan Spyer

The West needs a coherent plan for tackling Iran’s proxies

Saudi missiles hit the Houthi-controlled Yemen Petroleum Company’s al-Sabaha facility near the Yemeni capital of Sana’a on Tuesday night. The Saudi strikes came in response to the Houthis’ earlier targeting of King Khalid International Airport on Saturday, when 12 people were killed. Another individual died in a similar attack the following day.    The ongoing and deadly exchanges of fire accompany a fierce ground conflict now under way in Yemen between the Iran-backed Houthis and the forces of the Saudi-supported Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), representing the legally constituted government of Yemen.

Freddy Gray

Robert Pape: America’s political violence is spiraling

32 min listen

Freddy speaks with University of Chicago international security scholar Professor Robert Pape about his book, Our Own Worst Enemies: America in the Face of Violent Populism, exploring how demographic transformations, widening wealth inequality, and the normalization of political violence across the political spectrum are intersecting to pose a profound internal threat to American democracy and global stability https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Thursday

Simon Diggins

Revealed: NATO’s plan to combat Russia

Amid the Sturm und Drang of Donald Trump’s White House and Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon, General Alexus Gregory "Grynch" Grynkewich laid out what he terms NATO’s “Theory of Victory.” This is a concept of operations that will “block the initial attack... blunt it and prevent further advance. And, if required, break the enemy’s forces and the operational war fighting system that is arrayed against us.” In short: Block, Blunt and Break. General Grynkewich was careful not to point fingers but the location of his talk, at the Warsaw Security Forum, left no doubts as to who the potential ‘adversary’ General Grynkewich is both SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO’s lead operational commander) and USEUCOM, the commander of all US troops in the European theater.

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Wednesday

Daniel Thorpe

Azerbaijan’s hijab ban has infuriated Turkey

There are few countries in the world with relations as close as Turkey and Azerbaijan. The two countries hail from the same Turkic ethnic roots, their languages are more or less mutually intelligible, and military cooperation has been strong – particularly in Nagorno-Karabakh against the Armenians. There’s even a phrase, “one nation, two states,” commonly echoed by both sides. Yet, a rift is now brewing between the two brotherly Muslim countries – over hijabs. Last month, the Azerbaijani government imposed restrictions in schools that “do not correspond to the principle of secular general education,” effectively banning headscarves worn by schoolgirls.

Alexander Kolyandr

What was the point of Trump’s diesel deal with Russia?

Donald Trump’s telephone call with Vladimir Putin last Friday was supposed to be about a suspected outbreak of plague in Russia, but it ended, as their conversations tend to, with a deal. Russia, the President announced, would supply America with more than 300,000 tons of diesel immediately, 500,000 tons in November, a million tons “immediately thereafter” and another three million “within a short period of time.” The Treasury issued a license exempting Russian diesel from American sanctions until April. In the same breath, Trump proclaimed another energy ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv, the second in a month, and took another swipe at Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he would plainly like to see replaced at the ballot box.

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Why Tom Cruise’s Digger flopped at the box office

Has climate hysteria finally run its course? I ask because the latest Hollywood blockbuster on the subject seems to have bombed. Digger, in which Tom Cruise plays an oil tycoon so intent on drilling that he causes an ice shelf off Greenland to collapse, provoking climatic disaster, took only about $8 million in its first weekend, not great when it needs $280 million of box office takings just to break even. According to seasoned observers it is on course to lose Warner Bros $245 million, which would make it one of the worst cinema disasters of all time. Not even an endorsement from Jane Fonda, who described it as “a new way to wake us up about climate change” seems to have enticed the public. This didn't used to happen.

Gareth Roberts

Greta Thunberg is a protest addict

Greta Thunberg is in Paris. Yes, as if the French haven’t got enough on their assiettes with “youths” and “students” reducing the cradle of European civilization to smoking ruins, the overgrown Shirley Temple of Stockholm rocked up this morning outside a school in Saint-Denis. She told the crowd, “Young people are not being included in the conversation. Our future is being robbed away from us!” The clumsy structure of the latter sentence gave me an eerie sensation of an Armageddon-themed ABBA lyric. I can picture a mournful Frida singing it over flickering firelight. Few are the child stars, like Roddy McDowall or Bonnie Langford, who can sustain an adult career Greta certainly gets around, doesn’t she? Her passport must be like a tattered old dollar bill.

Aiden Abbott

Trump’s unconvincing imitators

The recent US adventures in Venezuela and Iran have not, on the American side, wrought the same losses of life and limb as those of Vietnam or World War Two. No field medics ferrying the dying and the dead. No trenchfooted cripples waiting for their commanders to find the difficult words for the difficult hour. Nobody in front of whom one might feel it inappropriate to begin a speech with: “Warriors, good afternoon.” Hegseth reached for an epic register only to be let down by his B-movie rhythm and hiccupy delivery Or, as Pete Hegseth, the self-styled Secretary of War, put it last month: “We are no longer the ‘Woke Department’ or the ‘Weak Department.’ Simple translation of that: No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals.

Benedict Rogers

The bravery of Joshua Wong

Joshua Wong, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy activists, turns 30 today. He should be in the prime of life, developing a career, perhaps starting a family. Instead, he is languishing in a prison cell, where he has spent much of the past decade. Wong faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars. His crime? Peacefully – though persistently – demanding the freedoms that were promised to Hong Kong. Wong's crime? Peacefully – though persistently – demanding the freedoms that were promised to Hong Kong Wong was first jailed nine years ago, when – together with pro-democracy legislator Nathan Law and student activist Alex Chow – he became one of Hong Kong’s first political prisoners.

Gavin Mortimer

France’s schools protest has been hijacked

This is not going to be an easy week for the French police. More than 200,000 people are expected on the streets today in “Act 5” of the high school protest, and on Saturday the Gilets Jaunes will join a demonstration about the cost of living crisis. The extreme-left and their anarchist allies are set on disorder There will be violence. There was on Monday, which was supposed to be a relatively quiet day in preparation for today. It was anything but. In a school in Aubagne, in the south of the country, a 14-year-old boy opened fire with a hunting rifle, wounding two teachers and terrifying his classmates. Police are still working to establish a motive. Elsewhere in France, eight teachers were assaulted by protesters.