Cockburn

Dorchester House is a storied Art Deco apartment block in Northwest DC, noted for being John F. Kennedy’s first address in the capital. Fast forward a few decades and the building appears to offer far less glamor: a number of residents have complained about repeatedly finding urine and feces in the building’s stairwells. One resident told Cockburn he encountered excreta in the stairwell “daily during the winter.” The waste is cleaned up “usually within a few hours after I contact the front desk,” says the resident, “but in rare cases it can remain for days. There is still some dried feces in one of the stairwells that has never been cleaned up.” “I have to use the flashlight on my phone to avoid stepping in it,” he added.

“It could be really cool if Congress was filled with goth people,” Kelley Dennison, the 27-year-old Republican nominee for Colorado’s 2nd congressional district, told the Daily Caller. The Gen Z massage therapist is campaigning on an unexpected aesthetic, selling merchandise that tout her as “America’s Goth Baddie.” But her campaign is predicated on more than her dark eyeliner and tattoos. Dennison is “Colorado first,” running on traditional conservative and populist policies on affordability, environmental conservation and family. Though Dennison was raised in a Democratic household, she has come to believe that party’s principles “don’t pay my bills.” “Colorado won’t be gamed for political currency or an agenda.

Hunter Biden has worn many hats in his 56 years on Earth. Scion, serviceman (briefly), attorney, businessman, crack addict, painter and, lately, influencer. The former first son burnished his online credentials by joining Substack this week – and Cockburn welcomes his comrade. Hunter’s first meaningful post on “Where’s Hunter,” his blog on the platform, is called “It’s Dad.” The piece reads like something any other wealthy aspiring artist might shuffle up to read at an open-mic night. The sentences are short, the metaphors heavy. He muses – there is no other word for it – on the voicemail his father Joe left him and how it was heard around the world after the contents of his infamous laptop were published: The late hour. The quiet room.

The 2018 Florida governor’s race will go down as one of the great sliding-doors moments in American politics. Ron DeSantis, after “begging” for Donald Trump’s endorsement, eked out a 0.4 percent win over the Democratic mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum. In the years since, DeSantis became an anti-lockdown Covid champion, a very expensive failed presidential candidate and is now hotly tipped to fill a Trump cabinet vacancy once he leaves the governor’s mansion in November. Gillum has had a… different trajectory. Police officers found him in a hotel room with a male escort, suffering from a suspected crystal meth overdose in 2020. The married father-of-three checked himself into rehab and came out as bisexual later that year.

Who will dare represent Pennsylvania at the Freedom 250 Great American State Fair? The commonwealth’s Governor Josh Shapiro announced last week that the state would not be represented at the fair because no businesses were interested in sponsoring the booth. Senators John Fetterman and Dave McCormick countered two days later that they had assembled a coalition of Pennsylvania companies, including crayon manufacturer Crayola, willing to step in. “Pennsylvania is where America’s story began, and there was no way we were going to let the Commonwealth go unrepresented,” McCormick explained. “Celebrating America’s 250th birthday and Pennsylvania’s special role in our country is important and bipartisan,” said Fetterman.

Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican congressman from Arizona, has reportedly been living with one of his male staffers, according to Juliegrace Brufke’s Sources Say News. The staffer, Will Hannen, now runs Hamadeh’s campaign. In recent weeks, Hamadeh’s team posted glamour shots of his office on Instagram where staffers sit and stand in staggered formation, like the cast of The West Wing, if they were House Republicans. At least one “looksmaxxing”-inspired video was posted featuring Hamadeh and his team titled: “Professional looksmaxxing office!” On the subject of Hannen being a live-in staffer, Hamadeh spokeswoman Lori Hunnicutt “denied the relationship was romantic, telling Sources Say News: ‘The Congressman and Mr.

As far as the controversy over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool goes, Donald Trump is reverting to type: like any other Florida man with a pool, he won’t admit that maintaining one is complicated and blames external factors when things go wrong. The President ordered that a new blue coating be applied to the pool’s base, which has already started flaking. In a testy exchange with CBS’s Ed O’Keefe yesterday, Trump said that the contractors who installed the new surface were not to blame. “We had vandalism,” he said. “Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind.” “Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?” he wondered aloud. Quite.

Since Donald Trump retook office in January 2025, Washington has experienced significant upheaval in its institutions. The United States Institute of Peace underwent a DoGE takeover that involved federal police occupying the building, taking over its board of directors and seizing control of its assets and operations. The majority of people who had worked there prior was fired or nudged toward resignation – with their severance conditional on a promise not to sue their old employer. It was renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. In May 2025, the District Court ruled the takeover unlawful, which was appealed, pausing the decision’s impacts until further proceedings.

Starting a new job is never easy, but Nick Bilton, the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, has had an extra rough first two weeks after firing veteran correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday. Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker released a joint memo today condemning the firings but declaring their intention to remain in post. CBS’s management has been accused of ignoring the demands of the (dwindling) core viewership and making top-down political changes to drag the station’s coverage to the right. In that spirit, Cockburn is offering Bilton some suggestions of feet to fill Pelley’s shoes. Thanks for reading Cockburn’s Diary from The Spectator. Subscribe to receive new posts and support his work.

Today is a big day for the 2026 midterm season, with primaries in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. While the national media’s attention is fixated on the Golden State’s jungle primaries for governor and LA mayor – (will it be a Pratt summer?) – a Trump endorsement in a lower-profile race caught Cockburn’s eye last night. “Congressman Tom Kean is a Great Representative for the People of New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District!” President Trump wrote on Truth Social, describing how the Republican has been “working tirelessly” to advance Trump policy goals. “GET OUT AND VOTE FOR TOM — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!