America

If Donald Trump does return to the White House, then another restoration could soon follow. Woody Johnson, a confidant of the president since the 1980s, served as his man in London from 2017 to 2021 and is now tipped for a second spell as ambassador. ‘What I know about President Trump is if he asks you to do something, you probably do it,’ Johnson says. ‘So, it depends on what he would want me to do, if anything. If he would want me to do something, of course I would consider it.’ When we meet at the Republican National Convention in the splendour of Milwaukee’s Pfister Hotel, it is just

There are sore losers and then there’s Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. The socialist president has ruled the South American country for 11 years, and despite opinion polls – and now physical vote tallies from the presidential election – proving that he’s not as popular as he wants to be, he seems to really want to stay in his job. So much so, that there are reports Maduro’s regime may be plotting the arrest of the man who is not only beating him in the popularity contest, but appears to have thrashed him at the polls: Edmundo Gonzalez. A similar scheme is reportedly being hatched against Maria Corina Machado, the woman whom Gonzalez

In a society that worships the self, identity politics is a very powerful force. We see this now in Kamalamania – the dizzying speed with which the vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee has been turned, through mass acclamation, from national embarrassment to Democratic saviour.  Will Kamalamania last until the election is over? The fact that Harris’s transfiguration doesn’t make much sense is sort of the point – the more improbable it seems the better. We are memetic creatures, especially in the digital age, and the meme of the moment is that Harris has magically invigorated the Democratic base and turned the 2024 US presidential election around in their party’s favour. It’s

Donald Trump has said he would not rule out military action against Mexico’s narco-cartels which he blames for the opioid crisis killing astronomical numbers of Americans. ‘Mexico’s gonna have to straighten it out really fast, or the answer is absolutely. They’re killing 300,000 people a year with fentanyl coming in,’ he told Fox News host. The narcos are invisible, deeply embedded within their communities This isn’t the first time Trump has talked tough when it comes to drugs. The former and possible future president has mulled deploying commando teams to take out the narco godfathers bin Laden-style. He has also weighed up putting Mexico under naval embargo.  Trump also isn’t the the only Republican to

Kamala Harris is the Democrats’ new hope for keeping Agent Orange out of the Oval Office. It’s probably for the best. Many younger, more progressive voters saw president Joe Biden as a dinosaur, a relic of a bygone era. Among other things, Biden was an old-school drug warrior who co-wrote the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which made the penalty for handling crack rocks a hundred times more severe than powder cocaine; the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill, which massively expanded the prison-industrial complex; and, in 2002, he proposed the Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act, which would have held party organisers liable for drugs consumed on their premises (this had the

For the past decade, the basic lines of conflict in American public life seemed clear. Donald Trump was pitted against the establishment, the ‘basket of deplorables’ who supported him against the elites. The reality was more complicated. Yes, plenty of rich and powerful Americans supported Trump and plenty of poorer Americans on the fringes of society were against him. But in a certain section of society the disdain for Trump was unequivocal. Among the country’s elite – at Harvard and Stanford, at Google and Goldman, near the beaches of the Hamptons and the mountains around Aspen – anyone who defied the anti-Trump consensus could expect swift consequences for their social

In the two days since Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid and endorsed vice president Kamala Harris as the Democratic party nominee, much attention has been devoted to the mechanics of Biden’s decision, which close advisers or family members may have convinced him to pull out and how the entire episode will shake up the race. But with Harris the strong favourite to become the Democratic’s presidential nominee, it’s worth asking what president Harris could mean for other countries, not least the United State’s allies – and enemies. The VP is tougher on Israel than Biden for the way it’s prosecuting its war on Hamas Does Harris have a foreign

Kamala Harris just delivered her first public remarks since the Democratic ticket fell apart over the weekend. But this was not the moment to address the mess, or indeed her own candidacy for president – two subjects she avoided. Filling in for Joe Biden at a ceremony honouring the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship teams, Harris kept her remarks short. Standing outside the White House, she used her comments to lavish praise upon her boss, calling Biden’s record ‘unmatched in modern history’. (‘Yes, you may clap’ she encouraged, which led to a rather soft round of applause). It was quite the statement, which was as long (perhaps slightly longer) than

Joe Biden has bowed to the inevitable in withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing his Vice President, Kamala Harris. Only now has the presidential race become interesting as the 59-year-old Harris, who is more than likely to receive the Democratic nomination, prepares to face off against Donald Trump. Suddenly the Republican candidate has become the old codger while the probable Democratic one represents generational change. Trump, you could even say, has become yesterday’s news. This is why Republicans would be wise not to underestimate Harris, a former federal prosecutor and California senator whose early years as Vice President were marked, among other things, by public scrutiny of her staff