Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator and the editor of the US edition. He hosts Americano on YouTube.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

AOC’s Roe v. Wade grandstanding has gone too far

If you’ve bothered to actually read the Supreme Court’s opinion on Roe v. Wade – rather than the endless social media memes – you’ll know that America’s chief justices have not decided they can rule over women’s bodies. The court has rather declared that the issue is not a matter for the court – that abortion should be returned to the nation’s elected representatives. Funny thing, though: the nation’s elected representatives, at least the Democratic ones who most vocally support abortion, don’t seem to want that power – and they are furious with the Justices who have handed it back to them.

Saturday

Freddy Gray

The problem with Billie Eilish’s Roe v. Wade intervention

The words ‘dark day’ went viral yesterday — in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in America. Women and men the world over took to social media and the airwaves to say that the news was a great leap backwards for humanity. Almost nobody bothered to read the court’s opinion, of course, or even beyond the first two paragraphs of any news story on this actually rather complicated legal subject. But why should that stop people feeling really angry? At Glastonbury, natch, the performers did their utmost to speak to the sombre mood while still somehow having fun. Billie Eilish, the headline act, said: ‘Today is a really, really dark day for women in the US’.

Friday

Freddy Gray

The truth about the Roe v. Wade abortion ‘ban’

You wait decades for landmark reforms in America and then, like culture-war buses, two come along at once. Earlier this week, the Senate passed a gun control bill – the most significant firearm control legislation in US history. Now, the Supreme Court has voted 6-3 to overturn Roe v. Wade – as everyone expected since Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion was leaked on 2 May. 'The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,' a syllabus of the opinion said. Barack Obama has tweeted that the news is ‘devastating’ There will be lots of anger all over the world – on social media and the streets.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Biden’s racial ‘equity’ plan is bound to backfire

‘America is a nation that can be defined in a single word,’ said the proud Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden, standing outside the White House earlier this year. ‘Alsdfnalcaofjlksfa.’ https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1539581635154350081?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw We shouldn’t laugh. The poor man has a speech impediment. Still, that ‘Alsdfnalcaofjlksfa’ word will strike many Americans as an amusingly apt description of their country in 2022. It sums up Joe Biden’s whole administration: nonsense pretending to be clear leadership. America is, as everyone knows, in an inflationary crisis. The cost of petrol has reached such highs that Biden has called on Congress to suspend gas (petrol) tax for three months.

Friday

Freddy Gray

Can California be saved from ruin?

50 min listen

Freddy Gray talks to Michael Shellenberger, the author and campaigner, fresh from his recent run in the primary elections for governor of California. Shellenberger’s most recent book, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, is available to buy now.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

The death of political authority

37 min listen

In this week’s episode:Why is there a lack of faith in western leaders? Spectator deputy editor Freddy Gray, Callum Williams from the Economist & Harvard professor Barbara Kellerman discuss why the world feel so leaderless. (00:44)Also this week:How do you escape the Church of Scientology? Spectator Columnist Mary Wakefield talks with former scientologist Claire Headley about her life inside the organisation and how hard it was to leave. (15:07)And finally:Should we all give boxing a go?Anil Bhoyrul & James Amos organiser of Boodles Boxing Ball on the strange world of White Collar Boxing. (27:40)Hosted by Lara Prendergast & William Moore Produced by Sam HolmesSubscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher: spectator.

Freddy Gray

The death of political authority

Are we living in the age of the strongman – or the weak man? Politics in the 21st century has so far been defined by a global drift away from liberalism, whatever that was, and towards authoritarianism – Xi in China, Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey, Modi in India, Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil and that delightful Mr Duterte in the Philippines. In the 2020s, however, in our supposedly more advanced democracies, the political leitmotif has been one of feeble and failing leadership. Look around the world. Boris Johnson is often accused of being a wannabe dictator – an egomaniac desperate to achieve his childhood ‘world king’ fantasy. That doesn’t seem to be going very well.

Friday

Freddy Gray

What is the point of the January 6th committee?

30 min listen

Freddy Gray talks to journalists Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of The National Interest, and John Daniel Davidson, senior editor of The Federalist, about the beginning of public hearings at the House Select Committee into the events of January 6th 2021.

Freddy Gray

The Capitol riot hearings are farcically partisan

Let’s get the boringly obvious out of the way. What happened in Washington on 6 January, 2021 was bad. Very bad. America, the world’s most powerful democracy, looked a horrible mess. Rioting is always wrong. Rioting on Capitol Hill on the day when power is meant to be peaceably transferred is anti-democratic and anti-conservative. Even if you believe the presidential election of 2020 election was rigged, as many ardent Trump supporters do, it is never acceptable to smash up federal property. To target America’s most important building is especially egregious. It doesn’t matter how angry you are. Obvious point two: from the election in November to January, Donald Trump behaved irresponsibly, dangerously and stupidly.

Monday

Freddy Gray

We’ll miss Boris if he goes

Boris Johnson is often talked about as the luckiest politician on earth — and in a sense he has been. Outrageous fortune powered his ascent. A child of privilege, he always seemed to get away with it, no matter what it might be. In elections, his timing has been almost miraculously perfect, culminating in his big win over the hapless Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. But Lady Luck turns out to be the cruellest mistress Boris ever had. She built him up to tear him down. And if this ‘Jubilee Coup’ — and tonight’s vote of no confidence — end up removing him from power, he may be looked back on as one of Britain’s unluckiest Prime Ministers. Many will feel delight at his demise. Many will be relieved. Those feelings won’t last. They hate him now.

Friday

Freddy Gray

Will Joe Biden be impeached?

Before inflation began to eat the American economy alive, impeachflation had already undermined the office of the presidency. Donald Trump was only the third president to have been impeached. Yet he was impeached twice: in December 2019, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress; and in January 2021, for ‘incitement to insurrection’ following the riots on Capitol Hill on 6 January. People argued about whether these impeachments were right or wrong, but that’s not all that relevant now. What matters today is that Republicans saw that their political opponents were willing to use impeachment as a cudgel to hurt the nation’s Commander-in-Chief. And now they want revenge.

Freddy Gray

Why are there so many mass shootings?

40 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to award-winning author and Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver about mass shootings and gun culture in the United States, in the wake of the tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Is Kissinger right about Ukraine?

32 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Sergey Radchenko a Cold War historian and Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and visiting professor at Cardiff University. They discuss a recent speech by Henry Kissinger who believes that Ukraine should made territorial concessions to Russia – is he right?

Freddy Gray

The Texas school shooting won’t change a thing

Joe Biden gave one of his more eloquent speeches yesterday in response to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. He didn’t sound doddery, possibly because it’s pretty much the same speech that he and/or Barack Obama have given after almost every school shooting for over a decade. He’s passionate about this issue. He’s also well-rehearsed. ‘To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,’ he said, speaking as someone who has lost two of his own children: There's a hollowness in your chest you feel like you're being sucked into it. And never going to be able to get out. Suffocating. And it's never quite the same.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

What is Black Lives Matter?

It’s hard not to admire Patrisse Cullors, the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter foundation. Under fire over yet another set of revelations that suggest her world-famous anti-racism organisation is in fact little more than a racket, she has admitted she made ‘mistakes’. But what else could a poor girl do? An organisation of BLM’s size was simply not equipped for the millions upon millions of dollars it suddenly received in the summer of 2020, when the locked-down world went crazy over the death of George Floyd. It was all ‘white guilt money’, says Cullors. She’s absolutely right, of course.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Is the MAGA saga coming to an end?

Did the Trump movement get a bloody nose in last night’s Republican primaries? It’s a story that most of the media and important parts of the Republican party – desperate to move on from the Orange Years of 2016 to 2020 – really want to be true. But the evidence so far is mixed. In North Carolina, the wheel-chair bound Trump devotee Madison Cawthorn, once a darling of the Make America Great Again movement, was ousted by state senator Chuck Edwards. Cawthorn had faced a number of scandals in recent weeks, but the Donald called on voters to look past his sins. On his new social site Truth Social, the 45th President wrote: ‘Recently, he made some foolish mistakes, which I don’t believe he’ll make again ...

Thursday

Freddy Gray

How bad could ‘Biden-flation’ get?

14 min listen

Though inflation has recently gone down a little in the States, it is still at a 40-year high. Inflation is an issue affecting most of the world due to several external factors, but many critics of Biden say that his policies are worsening this crisis rather than fixing it. Is that the case?Freddy Gray sits down with The Spectator's economics editor Kate Andrews to discuss what this cost of living crisis will mean for the future of the Biden administration.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Why progressives can’t tolerate Christians

For decades, Christians have talked about feeling persecuted in advanced secular and liberal democracies. They’ve often sounded a bit hysterical. It’s true that governments and societies have moved towards a kind of post-Christianity. The world in which we live has adopted some of the gentler stuff about love and ignored the challenging stuff about sex. Devout Catholics, Anglicans and Evangelicals can therefore be made to feel a bit weird and out of place. But persecuted? Not really. Christians are on the whole free to live according to their faith without harassment, which is very unlike the situation in some Muslim counties — or China. Look at the vicious reaction to the big Supreme Court news about Roe v. Wade in America, however, and you see something changing.