Trump

Reflecting on the resignation of Cyrus Vance, James Thomson, the American historian and journalist, wrote in the Washington Post that the former secretary of state “has done us all a great public service.” In doing so, Thomson argued, Vance gave “new life and spine to a somewhat rare and weak convention in our nation: resignation in protest of an issue of principle.” The year was 1980. Vance had resigned in protest over the Carter administration’s decision to authorize Operation Eagle Claw, the ill-fated mission to rescue American hostages held in Iran after the Islamic revolution. The mission ended ignominiously. President Carter pulled the plug after equipment failures and a deadly

The politics of the Iranian war feature an observable gap between interest and action for nearly all parties. The Americans possessed overwhelming casus belli versus Iran for nearly half a century, and did not act upon it until three weeks past. The Iranians possessed none against America for just as long, but exerted themselves with religious fanaticism to bring this war upon themselves. The Arab autocracies of the Persian-Gulf region find themselves under direct attack from the Iranians, but do not respond in kind. The Chinese observe a core strategic proxy and key commodities supplier taken off the chessboard – for the second time in under 90 days – and

While Americans anxiously watch the price of gasoline tick higher as the war in the Middle East squeezes the global oil supply, the conflict has highlighted another energy vulnerability that could prove just as costly: Taiwan’s dependency on foreign natural gas. At first blush, energy issues an ocean away seem peripheral to American interests. They are anything but. Though the effect on the American economy won’t be immediate, energy insecurity in Taiwan is a looming disaster. Qatar, the source of 30 percent of Taiwan’s natural gas, has been effectively bottled up The reason is that AI – in fact, virtually all modern computing – is highly reliant upon the steady

In the unforgiving arena of American politics, few patterns are as reliable as the midterm election bloodbath for the party holding the White House. And this year Democrats are trying to capitalize on the midterm curse by fielding 150 candidates from medical and scientific backgrounds. All have entered the fray since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services and are putting his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) on the ballot. In particular, his vaccine reform program. Yet, a major driver of the rise of MAHA can be directly attributed to the Biden administration’s disastrous handling of Covid, when Democrats in power contorted science to fit

For someone who believes that “no one is illegal on stolen land,” it’s a surprise that Billie Eilish’s legal team may have blocked my entry to the US. My plan was to test her theory of land ownership, which she stated at the Grammys to great applause, and take over her LA mansion with the help of Native Americans. But, sadly, I was turned back at the border last weekend – my sacred and inalienable right to freedom of movement curtailed by border guards who were, I suspect, briefed about my arrival by Eilish’s team. I’m an Australian political activist, more usually focused on exposing the influence of the Chinese

While all eyes and ears at the Munich security conference will be on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday, it was America’s Democrats who were able to enjoy their moment in the spotlight on Friday. The party was out in force: Californian governor Gavin Newsom, member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer were among the high-profile party delegates on panels at the Bayerischer Hof hotel, where the conference is held. Campaigning for the next Democratic party presidential primary isn’t expected to kick off in earnest for another year. Nevertheless, it was an opportunity for Newsom, Ocasio-Cortez and other rumored 2028 presidential candidate hopefuls to flex

Remember the old quip about economists? “That’s all very in practice,” they say, “but how does it work out in theory?” Nobel laureate Paul Krugman of the New York Times is a splendid example of that sort of folly. On the evening of November 9, 2016, Krugman skirled that the election of Donald Trump would precipitate economic Armageddon. “If the question is when markets will recover,” he said, “a first-pass answer is never.” How could they recover since the nation had just elected an “irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people,” that is to say, he didn’t take advice from people like Paul Krugman. Reality

In announcing an end to the ICE surge in Minnesota, Tom Homan has become for Democrats an unlikely good cop to Kristi Noem’s bad. But the double-act might not last long – the person Homan truly wishes to bring to book is Noem. The White House Border Czar said this morning that the Trump administration was ending its aggressive operation and a significant draw down of 3,000 agents who flooded into the state last year was already underway. “As a result of our efforts here, Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” he told a press conference. Presenting the move as mission accomplished rather than a white

The real problem with US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson attending the Grammys wasn’t that it revealed her true colors as a liberal, but that it showed the slow and steady erosion of the court’s institutional reserve. Senator Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee Republican, demanded that Chief Justice John Roberts launch an investigation into Jackson alleging she breached ethics rules by appearing at the anti-ICE event. “Americans deserve a Supreme Court that is impartial and above political influence,” Blackburn gravely pronounced. “When a Justice participates in such a highly politicized event, it raises ethical questions. We need an investigation into Justice Jackson’s ability to remain impartial.” Yes, the crowd at

“I suspect that the FBI is going to find things missing.” As a member of the Georgia State Election Board, Salleigh Grubbs is an authority on the alleged 2020 election fraud that led to an FBI raid on an election center in Fulton County. “It could be ballots, it could be reconciliations, it could be poll tapes, it could be any number of things,” she told The Spectator. “They have been fighting to prevent anyone looking at this evidence and preventing investigations. If you don’t have anything to hide, why do you care?” Fulton officials finally admitted in December – after being subpoenaed by the State Election Board – they

A wave of school protests sweeping the US in response to the fatal shooting of two anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota has revealed how teachers’ unions have weaponized classrooms for their own left-wing agenda. The unions have revealed themselves as political operatives more concerned with indoctrinating kids than teaching them reading, writing and arithmetic. These disruptions didn’t materialize out of thin air. The teachers’ unions fired the starting gun by blasting out anti-ICE propaganda to teachers, urging them to rally against immigration enforcement and turn schools into battlegrounds for their partisan fights. The National Education Association is also pushing teachers to print out immigration-related political propaganda posters and put them in