Josh hawley

Why Trumpism won’t outlive Trump

Trumpism is, according to its adherents, meant to replace Reaganism, the political doctrine that has dominated the Republican party and the conservative movement since Ronald Reagan left office. Reaganism is identified by a commitment to free market economics, internationalist foreign policy, strong national defense and an open door to immigration.But then Reaganism and its British version, Thatcherism, have also been associated with an intellectual revolution that swept the West in the 1970s and that was headed by Nobel Prize-winning economists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and driven by think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and the Center for Policy Studies that transformed the political discourse worldwide.

trumpism

Twitter’s fact-check reignites calls for big tech regulation

Twitter began ‘fact-checking’ President Trump’s tweets for the first time last week, raising questions about the role that social media giants play as gatekeepers of digital information.After the President asserted that mail-in ballots would be ‘substantially fraudulent’, a blue notification was placed at the bottom of the original tweet: ‘Get the facts about mail-in ballots’. The notification links to a fact-checking page with the heading ‘Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud’.

Twitter Flags Two Of President's Trump Tweets

Americans are paying the price for the rotten meat business

Please don’t make me eat the tofu dog. America has reopened in time for the Fourth of July, but COVID-19 is forcing plant-based mock-meat onto the nation’s festive paper plate. The meat industry’s supply chains are disrupted. Families will be forced to consume tofu, mycoproteins and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Meat at their annual cookouts. This is not the American way — but meat is money. The meat industry, like any other American industry, is being wrecked by corner-cutters and monopolists — and we all have to digest the results. More than 4,000 meatpacking workers have been infected with COVID-19. Single plants have experienced hundreds of cases. Entire operations have closed down.

meat

What happens if Trump gets the coronavirus?

The White House has announced that everyone coming into range of President Trump will be tested for COVID-19. Trump, meanwhile, insists that he won’t wear a mask when meeting other leaders — or, as he put it in order of reverse dignity, ‘presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens’.Unfortunately the worst-case scenario — that a 73-year-old might catch a dose and get seriously ill — no longer seems outlandish. On Sunday night, Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized after falling sick 10 days ago. Today he went into critical care. What if someone sneezes and Trump catches a cold?Welcome to the nasty, brutish and short Pence presidency.

trump corona

Trump’s economic nationalism is an effort to save capitalism

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Elizabeth Warren looks like a deadly serious prospect for the Democratic presidential nomination. Bernie Sanders may never make it to that promised land, but there is no question that his spirit is still moving the Democrats toward democratic socialism. The party’s activist base and youth wing grow more anti-capitalist by the month. It’s enough to turn many a libertarian or Chamber of Commerce conservative into a Trump supporter, despite the president’s own defiance of free-market orthodoxy on trade. Yet the president might as well be Milton Friedman compared with some on the right who are, if anything, outflanking the left in their critiques of capitalism.

capitalism

Washington’s war on internet free speech

The United States is apparently angling to outpace its European counterparts when it comes to silly, censorious, and sometimes dangerous internet policies. The latest batch of bad proposals in Congress and the White House would, if enacted, kill social media, search engines, and so much other online life as we know it. While conservative politicians here grumble about ‘hate speech’ and ‘data protection’ laws abroad, the alternatives they keep proposing here are just as speech-squelching and business-burdening. And while Republican party leaders have historically hated US plans like the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ and ‘net neutrality’, they keep pushing their own versions of these for social media.

internet

The talented Mr Hawley

‘I met Josh Hawley 10 years ago, and he told me he would be president of the United States,’ a person who knows Missouri’s junior senator tells me. ‘It’s been terrifying to watch him to execute on that pledge perfectly ever since.’Joshua David Hawley, 39, is the upper chamber’s youngest member. Elected in 2018, a bad year as a whole for the GOP, Hawley would seem to be the Right’s answer to Pete Buttigieg: Xennial, Midwestern, Ivy League, sincerely religious, scary smart.Like almost everyone who matters on the Right, Hawley addressed this week’s National Conservatism Conference: ‘As we gather tonight, we face a nation divided, a political class paralyzed, the old political programs in shambles, the future uncertain.

josh hawley

Trump vs tech

Remember when Donald Trump’s administration courted the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk? What about when the American right was still enamored with Big Tech? That seems a long time ago now. On Friday President Donald Trump tweeted: ‘I am continuing to monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS on social media platforms. This is the United States of America — and we have what’s known as FREEDOM OF SPEECH! We are monitoring and watching, closely!!’ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1124447302544965634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1124447302544965634 Conservatives increasingly accept that Big Tech is a problem, something that stifles creativity and ideas. But will anyone in power ever do anything about it? Sen.

josh hawley big tech