World

Freddy Gray

The truth about Gavin Newsom

Gavin Newsom has spent the last two years building a national profile for himself beyond his controversial governorship of California. But does he have what it takes for a presidential run in 2028, something that would take him far outside the left-wing political bubble of the Golden State? Freddy speaks to Christopher Rufo, author of the Christopher Rufo Substack and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, about the real Gavin Newsom and the decay of California under his watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx-gXQQfkqA&pp=0gcJCU4LAYcqIYzv Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano.

The truth about Gavin Newsom
Freddy Gray

Why is America’s radical left winning?

After success in the New York Democratic primaries for far-left candidates, President Trump says "the game is on. Enjoy Watching." Freddy speaks to Spectator columnist, Roger Kimball, about how Trump plans to deal with the radical left, the lawlessness of New York under Zohran Mamdani and how artificial intelligence is changing politics. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.

Why is America’s radical left winning?
Gavin Mortimer

Why is the New York Times celebrating the slave-trading Vikings?

Norway plays the Ivory Coast tomorrow afternoon in the first knockout phase of the soccer World Cup, and one suspects the New York Times will be backing the Norsemen. The Gray Lady has gone gaga for Norway’s "Viking Row," a synchronized routine where fans mime the rowing of a Viking longboat to the bang of a drum. It’s caught on among the Norwegian players as well as politicians back in Norway, who performed the row in parliament last week. For the last two weeks the NYT has been publishing breathless pieces about the zany Norwegians and their Viking antics. “The 'Viking Row' is in full flow” was one headline on June 18; five days later they described how it "has taken the World Cup by storm." And their editorial office from the sound of things.

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Paul Wood

The Iran war is Trump’s Suez crisis

Clarissa Eden famously declared that "in the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing-room." Does Melania Trump feel the same about the Strait of Hormuz? Or perhaps Donald will be reminded of the strait every time he hits one over the water at Bedminster. He ought to be. The Iran war will define his presidency. It is his legacy – just not in the way he imagined. In 1956, a British prime minister discovered that we were no longer a great power. It was an end to illusions. We liked to think we had the best navy in the world, but that was irrelevant to whether we could keep a canal in Egypt.

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Ukraine

Lisa Haseldine

Russia is relying on drones to bring it victory in Ukraine

Earlier this week, Ukraine was subjected to one of the largest aerial assaults by Russia since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion over four years ago. Overnight from Monday into Tuesday, Russia sent 73 missiles and 656 drones into Ukraine, killing at least 21 and injuring dozens across the country. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, this strike was retaliation for a Ukrainian attack on a vocational school in the occupied region of Luhansk on May 22. But, as the Kremlin’s war grinds on well into its fifth year, it also appears to signal a step change in how the Russian armed forces are choosing to fight.

russian
Theodore Griffin

Ukraine’s Jehovah’s Witnesses are refusing to go to war

Prison guards led Vitalii Kryschenko to an inhospitable, cramped cell. Inside, the prisoners were curious. They watched with great interest as Kryuschenko found his allotted place. A small, gentle man with a nervous expression, he wasn’t a typical criminal but a Jehovah’s Witness. Kryschenko was jailed by Ukrainian authorities for refusing to go to war; taking up arms is forbidden by his religion. He was now going to share his days with the very worst of Ukrainian society. This would include thieves, those guilty of assault or worse.  "I was living with murderers, people jailed for life," he said. "It was terrifying. On my first night, I asked myself how I would survive in these conditions. All the same, I continued my daily prayers and read the Bible.

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Svitlana Morenets

Putin’s nuclear escalation is a sign of desperation

As Vladimir Putin senses the momentum of the war shifting in Ukraine’s favor, he has redoubled his attempts to coerce Kyiv and its European partners. Russian troops are in retreat, losing territory overall for the first time since Ukraine launched its Kursk offensive in August 2024. Drone strikes have forced all of central Russia’s major oil refineries – accounting for a quarter of the country’s refining capacity – to halt or reduce output. Meanwhile, the cracks are beginning to show as Russians cease believing in their President, with some openly calling for an end to Putin’s so-called special military operation. His only available response, it seems, has been to resort to nuclear intimidation and threats of military confrontation with the Baltic states.

Israel

Jonathan Spyer

Can Israel fend off Hezbollah without alienating America?

As the 60-day period of negotiations stipulated by the Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and the US gets under way, the issue of Lebanon is fast emerging as a central bone of contention. It is also revealing significant differences in the stances of America and Israel.   Israel has sought throughout to detach its battle with the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah in Lebanon from the negotiations – and from the larger effort to settle the conflict between the US and Iran. The logic is as follows: Hezbollah intends to continue its war against Israel.

israel lebanon
Ben Clerkin

Israel is the new Ukraine

J.D. Vance didn't call Benjamin Netanyahu out by name, but in sternly reprimanding the "Cabinet of the Israeli government" from the White House podium on Thursday, he sent Israel and its Prime Minister a clear message. In demanding more respect, raising the threat of severe consequences and ordering the country to get in line, the Vice President echoed the public fight he picked with another world leader and US ally: Volodymyr Zelensky. It wasn't quite as spectacular as the now infamous Oval Office blow up in February last year between Trump, Vance and the Ukrainian president. But Vance went further in his criticism of Israel than any other US President or Vice President in recent memory.

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Ben Clerkin

Is Trump going to defund Israel?

Cutting US military aid to Israel was once an impossible dream of the most extreme fringe of the Democratic party. Today axing the $3.8 billion annual package is a bipartisan issue being spearheaded by the GOP. The number of free US tax dollars that Israel would receive to spend on its military under a GOP plan being discussed by both governments would be reduced to zero. The brainchild of Marlin Stutzman, a staunch Israel ally and Republican congressman from Indiana, the proposed memorandum of understanding, which would come into effect when the current deal ends in 2028, now forms the basis of the negotiations and was endorsed by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump

America

Europe

Matthew Parris

The death of British two-party politics has been greatly exaggerated

Every twist in the winding road of Britain's politics brings a latest thing to say. These wisdoms usually survive a season or two before succumbing to the new thing to say, which often asserts the opposite. This summer we have “Britain is moving into an era of multiparty politics.” Allow me, therefore, to leap ahead with my candidate for its successor: “Reports of the death of two-party politics are greatly exaggerated.” I don’t say our current governing party and principal opposition must always be the two parties in question. Labour may be dying. The Tories may be showing signs of life. In both cases I fervently hope so. But whether or not these remain our two options in elections to come, the tendency will always be for the choice to boil down to two.

politics
Charles Moore

Even Andy Burnham doesn’t know what Andy Burnham stands for

The British constitution is an admirably flexible thing, so I would not claim that Andy Burnham’s leadership campaign, and the coverage thereof, is unconstitutional, but it is certainly unseemly. Why did a BBC helicopter follow his train from Manchester to London (which arrived, of course, late) as if he were Lenin heading for the Finland Station? And why was he allowed to preempt his result with a mass selfie with about 200 of his supporting MPs in Westminster Hall? He is merely a new Member of Parliament, until he isn’t. Turning the place into his stage set is a way of intimidating possible challengers. If he is challenged, he will surely still become leader, but the point of a challenge is to force him to say what he means to do.

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Michael Gove

The Brexit decade: was it worth it?

It may not feel or sound like it but Keir Starmer is a born-again Brexiteer. His achievements in office may be nugatory, his search for a legacy tragicomic, but there are countless actions this government boasts of which simply would not have been possible if we had stayed in the EU. Earlier this year, Labour moved to protect our steel industry with a tariff package possible only because we have an independent trade policy. I was delighted this month when the minister in the Lords made it clear this was a Brexit benefit. Those same Brexit freedoms allowed the Chancellor last month to cut tariffs on more than 100 foodstuffs to ease the cost-of-living crisis.

brexit

Monday

Yossi Melman

Is the US-Israel special relationship over?

Until recently, the Israeli right regarded President Donald Trump as its greatest ally. He was often described in quasi-religious terms – as a savior, even a messiah sent to rescue Israel from international pressure and the constraints imposed by previous American administrations. According to several American media reports, Trump told Netanyahu: "You’re fucking crazy" and "All the Jews are sick of you" That admiration stemmed from Trump’s unwavering support during his first term. He moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and adopted Netanyahu’s position that Washington should withdraw from the nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated in 2015 under president Barack Obama.

Saturday

Catherine Ellis

Venezuela’s earthquake is the cruelest blow

Venezuela thought its luck was changing. Then the earthquakes stuck. For a country that's economy has long been in tatters, parts of Venezuela are now in ruins. The huge 7.2 of and 7.5 magnitude quakes have devastated pockets of Venezuela, with parts of the capital, Caracas, and the northern coast dotted with mounds of rubble. Rodriguez could also use this tragedy to argue an election is not what the country needs It's a cruel twist of fate the South American nation that was finally beginning to pull itself out of dismal abyss it had found itself in. Many Venezuelans, little by little, were allowing them to be more optimistic this year. Nicolás Maduro was out of the picture following his capture in January. Hundreds of political prisoners had been released.

Friday

Tim Shipman

Can Burnham resist the siren call of the left?

Power, when it is gained and lost, is transferred in stages: the actual, the visual and the constitutional. The latter took place on June 23 when the prime minister presumptive sent a letter to Antonia Romeo, the Cabinet Secretary, requesting that she commence access talks with his team. Keir Starmer had already given permission for them to proceed, but the propriety and ethics team in the Cabinet Office had told Romeo she could not initiate proceedings. Andy Burnham had to ask first. To all intents and purposes, he is already the vessel from which power flows. At the same time, it became clear that James Purnell, the former Blairite cabinet minister, will lead the transition team and stay on to become chief of staff in 10 Downing Street.

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South Africa
Geoff Hill

South Africa now has its answer to ICE

A force of 10,000 inspectors is being recruited to weed out foreigners: door-to-door across the nation, they will check mines, factories and shops, rounding up those without papers for deportation. Oh, and the target will be black people! Trump madness? Marine le Pen? No, this is South Africa and a project launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa to expel millions of black migrants from across the rest of Africa who have jumped the border or overstayed their visa.  It's Africa's answer to ICE, though you won't find many people protesting: quite the opposite.  Government and the police are desperate to demonstrate they're on top of the problem; to assuage the rising rage of native South Africans, and try to stop them taking matters into their own hands.

Bibi
Arieh Kovler

Will Bibi go into exile?

In January 2027, Benjamin Netanyahu could leave office for the final time. In the middle of a corruption trial at home and facing arrest in many countries due to an International Criminal Court warrant, Netanyahu can’t spend his retirement traveling the world or relaxing at home.  Some have speculated that Bibi, who’s grown to enjoy the finer things in life, might follow in the footsteps of the two Yairs – his younger son Yair and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro – and head off to a luxurious exile in Florida, sheltered by the Trump administration from his worries at home and abroad.  Of course, this all depends on whether he loses the election.

Thursday

James Lewisohn

What Iran could learn from Denmark

Iran is looking increasingly Danish, which sounds like a strange thing to say. What could Iran (a theological dictatorship which massacred 30,000 of its citizens earlier this year) and Denmark (a social democracy which is one of the world’s most generous foreign aid donors) possibly have in common? Iran has chosen a great short-term policy in asserting its control over Hormuz, but a mediocre long-term one But Iran’s theologians like to keep themselves half a millennium back from contemporary mores.

Wednesday

Andrew McQuillan

Northern Ireland has been the biggest loser from Brexit

In the decade since the vote to leave the European Union, arguably no issue has consumed more energy, column inches, political capital and careers than how to solve the problem of Northern Ireland. It was on that narrow, jagged border between North and South that the substantive skirmishes took place between the UK and EU on what their future relationship would look like. While Michel Barnier and Lord Frost arguing the toss over the finer points of agri-food regulation may lack the luster of the Battle of the Boyne or the romantic connotations of 1916, it was no less significant a moment in Northern Ireland’s history.

northern ireland
Gavin Mortimer

Britain is the weak man of Europe on border control

Britain and France have rewritten the "one in, one out" migrant deal nearly a year after it came into effect. The treaty, described as "groundbreaking" by both countries last summer, has struggled to stem the numbers of migrants heading from France to England in small boats. It soon became apparent that the deal contained a loophole that enabled a handful of deported migrants to return to Britain in the back of a lorry. Britain's Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has agreed with her French counterpart, Laurent Nuñez, to close this loophole by tweaking the treaty to stipulate that its terms apply to any returning migrant regardless of whether they enter a second time by boat or by vehicle.

Tuesday

Robert Tombs

The real threat to democracy after Brexit

Ten years after the Brexit referendum, its long-term impact on British politics is evident. Not so evident is why this is the case. Every general election sees comparable debates. So too did the 1975 referendum on membership called by Harold Wilson. But none of these other elections has ever produced such an extreme and long-lasting reaction, or a concerted attempt to use both informal and formal methods – constitutional and legal – to block the result.

brexit
Aiden Abbott

Ahmed al-Sharaa can be a great man of history

Trump’s Middle East tour in May last year felt like the end of an era. Here was the former al-Qaeda commander, Ahmed al-Sharaa, now leader of Syria, shaking hands with a vulgar American Commander-in-Chief, who resembles the caricature of a US president we might find in an al-Qaeda cartoon. Yet the War on Terror’s two leading men, the President and the Jihadi, having ended the last act at each other’s throats, have returned to the stage arm-in-arm to take a bow. Al-Sharaa has trimmed his beard, put on a suit, replaced Bashar al-Assad as president and begun welcoming western investors to help him rebuild his country after a decade and a half of civil war. Trump has dropped the showy religiosity and moral posturing of his predecessors.

Monday

Ben Clerkin

What I saw at the Montréal shooting

We were running late to check out of our hotel because my two young girls had demanded to use the pool one last time. I indulged them. The squeals of laughter were worth it. Afterward, we hustled to pack, race out the room and at 11:40 a.m. the elevator doors opened in the lobby of the Hilton in Côte-des-Neiges district of Montreal. Our path was blocked by staff. There was, one hotel worker informed us, a shooter. I sent my wife and children back up to our room and, with the dubious conviction of a professional journalist, went to investigate. My family and I had come to Montréal for a joyful Jewish wedding Through the glass of the hotel entrance, I saw a male officer lying in the street and female cop with her pistol drawn scanning the area.

montréal montreal
Madeline Grant

The truth about Keir Starmer’s legacy

It was when Keir Starmer claimed never to have had a dream that I knew we were dealing with potentially one of the funniest prime ministers Britain had ever seen. Sure, some people would have been amused by the magnetism for calamity exhibited by Theresa May, the almost comedically unbelievable mendacity of Boris Johnson or the downright absurdism of Liz Truss, but a really funny prime minister is the one who demands to be taken seriously, and particularly one who is convinced that he has forced the British people to do so.

keir starmer
Philip Patrick

Why Japanese students aren’t woke

One of the joys of living in Japan is the lack of wokeness. It is not that it doesn’t exist – there is a Tokyo Pride, the odd Gaza protest, and gender equality is increasingly discussed – it’s simply that the concept doesn’t quite translate. Like the strikes that only take place at the weekend so as not to inconvenience customers, woke protesters here are tiny in number, generally polite and devoid of the threatening aggressiveness of the West. And diversity isn’t really a thing. Maybe that’s another reason tourist numbers have exploded. You can get away from all that here…  The young in particular seem charmingly oblivious to the culture wars, and universities are generally safe spaces for the woke-phobic.

Mark Galeotti

Is Zelensky about to attack Belarus?

There has long been a worry that Russian escalation or miscalculation might see the Ukraine war widen into a broader European one. But what if it’s Kyiv, not Moscow, that starts this process? The flashpoint is Belarus. Minsk’s dictatorial leader, Alexander Lukashenko, is beholden to Vladimir Putin, but not a helpless vassal. On the one hand, he has refused to join Putin’s war directly, saying that he won’t allow Belarusians to become "mincemeat." On the other, he has been willing to let Russian troops use facilities in his country, and fly drones and missiles through his airspace.

Catherine Ellis

How a Trump-loving lawyer nicknamed ‘The Tiger’ became Colombia’s president

Abelardo de la Espriella was never going to be a typical Colombian presidential candidate. Nicknamed "The Tiger," the defense lawyer who has represented a string of controversial clients is also a businessman and owns a number of clothing and alcohol brands, a Miami restaurant and even music albums. De la Espriella campaigned on a radical and robust security agenda, vowing to rid Colombia of its violent and criminal woes. “I will wipe out narco-terrorism..I will unleash the wrath of God upon them as never seen before,” de la Espriella said “I will wipe out narco-terrorism, those I have sentenced and declared military targets, like cockroaches, like rats. I will unleash the wrath of God upon them as never seen before,” de la Espriella said during his campaign.

Sunday

Arnout Nuijt

The small Dutch town that said no to more asylum seekers

A political crisis is unfolding in the small Dutch town of Maassluis, a former fishing village which sits between Rotterdam’s vast port and industrial complex, the glasshouses of the agribusiness powerhouse known as the Westland, and the historic fishing town of Vlaardingen. Despite what some may claim, it is not a far-right insurgency, just a group of local politicians responding to concerns widely shared by their electorate The natives of Maassluis were once nicknamed "snails." They acquired the name in the 1770s, when the parliament of the Dutch Republic decreed that Psalms should be sung at a faster tempo in church.

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hans-georg maassen
Elisabeth Dampier

‘Make Germany normal again’: an interview with Germany’s exiled spy chief

Hans-Georg Maassen is an unlikely dissident. In his trademark three-piece suits and small glasses, he looks more like a law professor. Indeed, that is what he studied, earning a doctorate on the legal status of asylum seekers in international law. This bourgeois exterior is the perfect cover for a man who was Germany’s top spy, charged with protecting the country from the far-right and Islamists. But now he is no longer under the quiet protection of the German state; he is its victim. He is under investigation from the agency he once led, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). Like George Smiley, Maassen is a remnant of an older and more powerful country, soldiering on in spite of the decline, trying to preserve what he can.

Friday

Freddy Gray

Will Vance regret being the face of the Iran deal?

After a week of international agonizing, it looks as if the first round of the latest peace talks between America and Iran will not begin today – at least, not formally. The Memorandum of Understanding has been signed – electronically by Iran and by Donald Trump’s hand in Versailles on Wednesday. But J.D. Vance’s big Switzerland trip, originally planned to kick off the talks, has been put on hold as the Lebanon issue reared its troublesome head overnight. Late yesterday afternoon, Hezbollah fired several salvoes of rockets at IDF targets, killing four soldiers. Israel responded with a wave of airstrikes in Southern Lebanon, killing 18 and wounding 33, according to the Lebanese ministry of health.

Iran
Charlie Gammell

Iran’s loser victory

After years of negotiations, two wars, a succession of ruthlessly quashed uprisings in Iran and countless billions of dollars’ worth of ordnance smashing into rubble across the region, we have the bones of an agreement. Not a deal, it should be said. Instead an understanding that manages to speak volumes and yet say very little in the way of concrete details. Vice President JD Vance's trip to Switzerland may have been postponed -- after Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire over Lebanon last night -- but the Memorandum of Understanding between America and Israel has been signed, and both sides seem confident that the peace process has not yet been derailed. Who won, you might ask? Surely, Iran.

Thursday

Daniel DePetris

Only Iran is happy with Trump’s peace deal

President Trump might have thought that negotiating an interim diplomatic understanding with Iran was going to be the hard part. But selling the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding to the public is proving to be just as laborious.  Trump deserves blame not because he negotiated a poor peace deal but rather because he decided to go to war in the first place Less than 24 hours after the document was released, virtually nobody is particularly satisfied with it. Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, normally deferential or wholly supportive of Trump’s agenda across-the-board, are already expressing nervousness at the terms and demanding a full briefing from the administration about how the White House plans on executing them.

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