Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Ian Williams

China’s theft of American AI tech is becoming more brazen

Despite the hype surrounding China’s artificial intelligence capabilities, progress remains heavily dependent on theft and smuggling. The Chinese Communist party (CCP), meanwhile, is determined to maintain tight control. That has become increasingly clear ahead of this week’s Beijing summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader is determined to lead the world in what he terms an “epoch-defining technology.” He appears confident that Trump, preoccupied by his war against Iran, has limited options to counter Beijing’s increasingly brazen activities. Last month, the White House accused Beijing of “industrial-scale” theft of know-how from American AI labs. Meanwhile, US prosecutors claim to have busted an international smuggling ring that funneled

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Alexander Kolyandr

What Putin’s Victory Day says about war-time Russia

For the first time in 18 years, Russia’s Victory Day parade will have no tanks. There will be no missile carriers and no armored columns on Red Square. Several regions have canceled their parades altogether. Muscovites had been told to expect no mobile internet on the day itself or this evening. The Ministry of Defense has declared a unilateral ceasefire for May 8 and 9 and warned, in the same breath, that any Ukrainian attack will be answered by “a massive retaliatory missile strike on the center of Kyiv.” The Russian Foreign Ministry has helpfully advised foreign embassies in the Ukrainian capital to consider evacuating their staff. The official explanation

Ameer Kotecha

The simple truth at the heart of Reform UK’s success

As the scale of Reform’s success in the British local elections became clear, the Reform Member of Parliament Danny Kruger noted, “What is happening is seismic…The public have decided they don’t want the failed consensus of the last 25 years.” What is this “failed consensus”? Here is my take: what the voters have announced this week – in the most unambiguous terms since the Brexit vote – is that they’re calling time on the idea that we have to prioritize other people and other things over what is in the interests of ordinary working British people. The public will no longer allow a discredited, globalist notion of treating national self-interest

Owen Matthews

The Kremlin’s secret plans for post-war Russia

A top-level Kremlin policy document discussing post-war political planning and how to neutralize potential ultranationalist discontent has been leaked to the Russian investigative site Dossier Center. Entitled “Images of Victory,” the paper gives a rare insight into the inner workings of Russia’s political machine. Crucially, it shows that while the Kremlin remains officially indifferent to peace talks, behind the scenes apparatchiks are working hard on selling an inevitable stalemate to the Russian people by dressing it up as a species of victory. The document was leaked before President Trump’s announcement today of a three-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. While the source of the leaked document is unknown, its tone

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Friday

Freddy Gray

All roads lead to Rome for Rubio

“What to get someone who has everything, I thought,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, as he handed Pope Leo a funny little crystal-football present. “Wow, OK,” replied Leo, stiffly. It was a useful reminder that Rubio is not always a smooth operator. For all the articles suggesting he has now overtaken Vice President J.D. Vance as favorite to be the 2028 Republican nominee, for all the media gushing over the “Secretary of Everything” in the White House briefing room, Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage. Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage It

Wednesday

Joanna Williams

The slow death of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

For the past few years, woke has been on life support. Back in 2020, police officers knelt for Black Lives Matter, children were taught that boys could become girls, and the trans-inclusive Pride flag seemed to fly from every building in the country. Since then, there has been something of a retreat. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) industry still has a pulse and is more than capable of reinvention, but it is less confident and more defensive. Human Resource officers were able to rule the roost Why the change? Donald Trump’s second term in office is one reason for the vibe shift. The President punctured all manner of sacred

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Lisa Haseldine

Trump’s missile cut has left Germany exposed

It has been a choppy 12 months for transatlantic relations since Friedrich Merz was sworn in as chancellor of Germany a year ago today. Fittingly, he is marking one year in office by dealing with the fallout of a spat with Donald Trump which has resulted in very real consequences for German – and potentially European – defense. On Friday, the Pentagon announced that 5,000 American troops would be withdrawn from German soil over the coming six to 12 months. Additionally, contrary to an agreement struck between Merz’s predecessor Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden, no new intermediate-range missiles would be stationed in Germany in the immediate future. Germany currently hosts

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Roger Kimball

MAGA isn’t finished. It’s just getting started 

What’s the one thing that every pundit and certified member of the Fourth Estate knows? Why, it’s that MAGA is finished.  How many stories have we been treated to about “the fracturing of MAGA?” NPR knows it, Politico intuited it, Salon bet on it and the New Republic salivated over it. “Trump’s MAGA Base Splits Dramatically,” that anti-Trump orifice recently crowed, “New Poll Shows Donald Trump’s support continues to drop.” Then of course there is the New York Times, which has predicted and rejoiced in the death of MAGA again and again. That is – that was – the narrative. What is the reality? Yesterday’s primaries tell a very different, in fact a contradictory story. MAGA’s vitality was reaffirmed, as was President Trump’s

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Andrea Miotti

We are closer to AI extinction than we think

A specter is hanging over humanity: the specter of superintelligent AI. While governments busy themselves with the mundane work of politics and putting out the fire of the day, the most consequential technological development since the splitting of the atom is accelerating beyond anyone’s ability to control it. We are entering an era where the AI systems themselves are threats, not just humans Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI companies, recently announced a new AI system, Claude Mythos. The model can autonomously find and exploit critical security vulnerabilities in every major operating system and internet browser underpinning our digital infrastructure, including flaws that survived decades of human review. Anthropic

Tuesday

Corey DeAngelis

Why is the teachers’ union targeting ICE, not education?

Randi Weingarten is using mafia tactics to bully Target into denouncing immigration enforcement by ICE. As president of the American Federation of Teachers – which holds at least 7 percent of Target stock through teacher pension funds – Weingarten sent a letter to Target’s CEO explicitly threatening the company’s relationship with her union’s massive pension holdings unless it publicly opposes ICE operations in Minnesota. This move was not subtle. Weingarten made clear that the AFT viewed the retailer’s refusal to denounce federal law enforcement as a threat to “shareholder value.” She followed up with additional pressure, leading her union to pass a resolution directing its 1.8 million members to boycott

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John Fund

It’s the corruption, stupid!

There’s been a change of mood across the country – and not one that is favorable to the GOP. Last November, the prediction markets gave Republicans a 70 percent chance of keeping control of the Senate. Now their odds have deteriorated. It looks likely that the Democrats will win both the chambers – so what’s happened? The latest polls all tell the same story. The economy is no longer Trump’s superpower. Of those polled by Fox News, three- quarters rate the economy negatively, with 70 percent feeling it’s getting worse. Voters now trust Democrats on the economy more than Republicans for the first time since May 2010. Trump’s weakness on

Monday

Alexander Kolyandr

Russia is running out of workers

Vladimir Putin likes good statistics. At a government meeting on April 15, even as he acknowledged that growth was slowing, he pointed proudly to Russia’s unemployment rate: 2.1 percent, a record low. Proof, he suggested, that the economy remains fundamentally sound despite everything the West has thrown at it. The Russian President would do better to worry. A record low unemployment rate is not, in normal circumstances, cause for alarm. In Russia’s case it signals something closer to a slow-motion emergency. For the first time in its post-Soviet history, Russia has run out of workers. The governor of Russia’s Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina said as much the day after Putin’s

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RFK
David Mansdoerfer

MAHA must resist purity tests to survive

The Make America Healthy Again movement has already accomplished more in its first year than many reformers dared to hope. Major food companies are starting to phase out those artificial dyes. States are testing ways to remove junk food from SNAP benefits. The MAHA Commission delivered a refreshingly honest assessment of the childhood chronic-disease crisis. Vaccine schedules have been thoughtfully adjusted toward the shots with the broadest consensus, and federal attention is finally turning to ultra-processed foods, seed oils and environmental toxins. These are real, tangible wins we can build on. Yet there’s a quiet risk brewing within the movement: the temptation to slide into puritanism. If MAHA hardens into

Saturday

Patrick West

Mental health is an inauthentic crisis

When it reaches the stage when everyone in the entire country is diagnosed as having mental health problems, will we have to accept that being mentally ill represents mankind’s new norm, thus rendering the whole concept meaningless? This is not some idle philosophical hypothesis. This is a question we will one day have to ask ourselves if matters continue on their current path. According to new research from Zurich Insurance, 51 percent of people aged between 15 and 19 now have a mental or behavioral disorder such as anxiety, depression or ADHD, and if present trends continue as they have, by 2030 this figure will hit 64 percent. We have

Mamdani
Ben Clerkin

Zohran Mamdani’s toxic social media socialism

Zohran Mamdani is discovering how much more difficult seizing the means of production is than posting about seizing it on social media. To date he has delivered just one of the many radical campaign promises he algorithmized to become New York City mayor. And when he took to social media to crow about that partial win on taxing the rich, he may have inadvertently ripped a new financial blackhole in the city’s budget. Nevertheless, the Democratic party establishment, that pointedly refused to back the radical’s mayoral bid, is being seduced by his social media socialism. Barack Obama recently visited New York to be photographed with him, and Governor Kathy Hochul

Friday

Charles Moore

Olly Robbins’s next move

This session of parliament is due to end between April 29 and May 6. Now the government is desperate for an Order in Council to kill it off by 9 a.m. on the 29th to avoid another painful Prime Minister’s Questions. The parliament that reassembles for the King’s Speech on May 13 could hardly, in theory, look more like what Sir Keir Starmer wants. His party has the largest overall majority since 2001. He will have jettisoned all hereditary peers. He has created 65 new Labour peers, thus dramatically altering the party balance in the Lords in favor of himself (although four of them have already, after creation, left the

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Tim Shipman

Is Britain ready for Chancellor Ed Miliband?

When Morgan McSweeney concluded his evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about the Peter Mandelson affair, a senior Labour figure remarked: “What really did we learn from all this? That Keir made a bad decision, wants someone else to blame and didn’t really know what was going on in his own government. Fancy that!” The fact that 14 Labour MPs voted to refer the Prime Minister to the Privileges Committee (the body which forced Boris Johnson from the political stage) – and a total of 53 recorded no vote in his defense – is far from a ringing endorsement of his leadership. But the significance of the Mandelson hearings

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SPLC
Blake Neff

The powerful incentives for vilifying white Americans

The Southern Poverty Law Center may not, we hope, be long for this world. The Trump administration’s new indictment has exposed the organization’s practice of funneling millions of dollars through fake bank accounts to “informants” sitting in senior positions at the very “hate groups” it claimed to monitor. Even if the SPLC survives, the criminal proceedings may leave it so damaged and exhausted that it sheds most of its influence. Others have charted out the potential financial incentives behind the SPLC’s alleged misconduct: the demand for “hate” in America exceeds the supply, so to create sufficient far-right activity to keep donations flowing, the SPLC was perhaps ready to pay off

Sarah Beth Spraggins

Is Usha Vance the mastermind behind J.D. Vance?

In 2006, when Usha Vance was still a college junior called Usha Chilukuri, she appeared in the “50 most beautiful people list” of the Yale student magazine, Rumpus. “The charming Chilukuri says that she doesn’t have particular preferences as far as the less fair sex is concerned,” said the article, “though she does like a man who has a lot to say for himself.” “In the past, her liaisons have been tall, handsome, and conservative (though she herself is of the leftish political persuasion). However, she says that the future doesn’t necessarily have to imitate the past. So stay hopeful.” Today, Brittany Hugoboom, the editor-in- chief of conservative women’s magazine

Trump Iran
Spectator Editorial

How will Trump solve the Iran problem?

Has President Trump discovered his “off-ramp” from the war in Iran? His administration insists that Iran’s military power has been crushed, that its already broken economy is now all but dead, and that the Islamic Republic is on its last legs, desperate to make a deal. Yet Tehran, or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard deep state that effectively calls the shots, still shows little willingness to accept defeat. Indeed, if anything, the official noises and propaganda emanating from Iranian channels suggest a regime that feels Trump has committed a huge strategic blunder. Trump has, on Truth Social at least, extended his ceasefire “indefinitely” while negotiations continue. But the Iranian peace talks

Thursday

Jawad Iqbal

Why does Zohran Mamdani want Charles III to return the Koh-i-Noor?

Even those who don’t think much of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s politics might grudgingly concede he has a knack for jumping on causes that resonate with his achingly progressive voter base. The idea of righting the wrongs of imperial history – anywhere, even thousands of miles away – is high on the tick list. Hence Mamdani’s call for King Charles to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of the world’s largest and most controversial jewels, to India. The 105-carat diamond, part of the Crown Jewels, is the subject of a fierce historical dispute, with India claiming that it was stolen during British colonial rule. Leaving aside Mamdani’s political opportunism, what is it

koh-i-noor
Daniel McCarthy

The Democrats’ race-based regime is collapsing

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Louisiana v. Callais et al has inevitably drawn strong criticism. In ruling that electoral districts cannot be redefined along racial lines, the Court stands accused of “gutting” the Voting Rights Act, crippling civil-rights law and effectively disenfranchising minority voters.  What the Supreme Court has “gutted” is not the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but a nakedly racial form of gerrymandering But the Court’s decision was correct on the merits. It also represents a great retrenchment that’s taking place in American politics.  The rules by which our political system operates have been overdue a revision – not the rules codified in the Constitution but the thicker web of precedents and

Jacob Heilbrunn

For Trump, it’s lonely at the top

King Charles III and Queen Camilla were at their most emollient in Washington, where they exchanged a flurry of presents with Donald and Melania Trump. The King’s gifts to President Trump included a framed copy of the design plans for the Resolute Desk, which was originally given to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. Trump appeared to shelve his hostility toward the United Kingdom for declining to participate in the Iran war, but he quickly made up for his forbearance by pummeling another NATO ally. Like Emperor Augustus who boasted ‘I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble,’ Trump is seeking