Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Release the Gonzales files

We know the terrible details of how congressional staffer Regina Santos-Aviles, 35, died. She poured gasoline on herself and then flicked the flame on a lighter – a mad decision she instantly regretted. “Please send help. It hurts so bad,” she screamed at the 911 dispatcher. “Oh my God, I don’t want to die.” She tried to smother the flames by rolling on the ground of her backyard in Texas and crawling to a faucet to extinguish them with water. But it was too late. A medical examiner found that the only part of her body not scorched by flames were the soles of her feet. Thanks to a police

Charles Lipson

What will Trump say in the State of the Union address?

When President Trump speaks to Congress and the nation Tuesday night he will follow several familiar tropes. Like a long line of presidents before him, Trump will say the state of the union is great and take full credit for it. They all say that, unless we are in a recession or at war. They typically add that everything is getting better, too, thanks to their wise policies. In a nod to the next election, they warn voters that the only thing stopping our country from reaching even greater heights is the mule-headed opposition of the opposing party and a few Supreme Court Justices. What differs each year are the specifics. This time, Trump is likely to focus on three topics that will move voters this November: the economy, including jobs, taxes, and inflation; illegal immigration; and Iran. The economy dominates voters’ choices in

Gavin Mortimer

The killing that has divided Washington and Paris

Washington’s warning last week about the spread of far-left violence in France did not go down well in Paris. In an interview on Sunday, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot accused America of wading into a matter that “concerns only our national community”. This doesn’t surprise conservative commentators in France who have coined the phrase “Red Privilege” The diplomatic spat began at the end of last week when Sarah Rogers, the US State Department under-secretary for public diplomacy, posted on X. Referring to the murder of a young nationalist student, Quentin Deranque, allegedly kicked to death by members of a far-left organization called the Young Guard, Rogers said his death demonstrated why

Christopher Caldwell

The deep state vs Nixon

Americans took a break from their partisan vituperation in February to mull over newly revealed testimony that Richard Nixon gave to grand jury investigators in 1975, a year after the Watergate scandal drove him from power. James Rosen, a veteran Washington journalist and the biographer of Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell, revealed the episode in the New York Times. Nixon had argued that his program of wiretaps had been made necessary by another spying operation that senior American military commanders were carrying out against him and his top aides. The outline of this story has been known to historians since James Hougan laid it out in Secret Agenda (1984): a

Today

February 25, 2026

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s reality-show State of the Union speech

Donald Trump may have celebrated Team USA for winning the gold at the Olympics in hockey, but he was not in a puckish mood during his State of the Union speech. Instead, Trump stuck to his tried-and-true script of denouncing Democrats as “sick,” mocking concerns about affordability and cooing over Melania as a great new movie star. Far from nobody ever seeing anything like it, Trump delivered what everybody has already seen. Ever the salesman, he was not shy with the superlatives, declaring that America is the “hottest” country in the world – “bigger, better, richer, stronger than ever before.” If there was one thing that was longer than ever,

Roger Kimball

Trump’s State of the Union address was pure theater

Watching Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address tonight, I thought of two homely things. One was something that a friend used to say to her young daughter: “Don’t forget to have an attitude of gratitude,” she would remind her preteen when that attitude was absent. The second thing I thought about was a fact I recently learned about Ulysses S. Grant. He was a great general, yes, and he was also a great, if generally under-appreciated, president. One sign of his greatness came posthumously. At his funeral, two of Grant’s pallbearers were Confederate generals. Grant had won the civil war, defeating the Confederacy, saving the Union. But in death he underscored his

Monday

February 23, 2026

Michael Simmons

Former UK ambassador Peter Mandelson arrested

Peter Mandelson, Britain’s short-lived ambassador to the US, has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. In a statement to journalists, London’s Metropolitan Police said: Officers have arrested a 72-year-old man on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was arrested at an address in Camden on Monday, 23 February and has been taken to a London police station for interview. This follows search warrants at two addresses in the Wiltshire and Camden areas. Moments before the Met’s statement, Mandelson was photographed being led out of his house by police. The move comes days after the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, also under suspicion of misconduct in public office. The accusations

Freddy Gray

What fresh hell in Mexico?

34 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Melissa Ford Maldonado, director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute to discuss the explosion of violence in Mexico over the weekend following the killing of ‘El Mencho’ – a cartel kingpin. Melissa explains what led to the killing of El Mencho, how the government and cartels are connected and what this means for America following ‘Operation Absolute Resolve’.

Mark Galeotti

No, Zelensky: World War Three hasn’t started

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says that World War Three has already started. Speaking to the BBC on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion, it’s understandable why he would want to take this line, but he’s wrong. What is striking about Putin is the lack of a messianic ideology On an emotional level, Zelensky has seen millions of his citizens flee within and out of his country, its cities and infrastructure shattered and Vladimir Putin’s propagandists denounce him variously as a Nazi apologist, drug addict and western puppet. Of course he will frame this in the most apocalyptic of terms. More to the point, Ukraine is now

Niko Vorobyov

El Mencho’s death plunges Mexico into chaos

Mayhem has erupted across Mexico after security forces eliminated Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the drug lord widely known as El Mencho, in a gun battle in the town of Tapalpa. El Mencho was the head of one of Mexico’s most violent and sadistic organizations, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). Henchmen forced passengers out of their cars before setting the vehicles alight, leaving them as burning roadblocks Their reaction was about as solemn and dignified as you’d expect. Henchmen forced passengers out of their cars before setting the vehicles alight, leaving them as burning roadblocks. Scorched sedans and toasted trucks lined the highway to the World Cup stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico’s

Katarina Szulc

My brush with El Mencho’s sadistic men

In the early hours of Sunday, Mexico’s security forces carried out a daring military operation that ended with the death of El Mencho – the sadistic leader of Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG). Even as the Mexican government hailed the success of the operation, the country erupted into violence. Armed groups loyal to CJNG blocked highways with burning vehicles, attacked an airport, fought gun battles against security forces and turned villages into ghost towns. Proof that while El Mencho may be dead, the cartel he built into the most ferocious and feared crime organization in North America will not die with him I lived in Puerto Vallarta to report

Sunday

February 22, 2026

David Mansdoerfer

Democrats are ill-advised to target MAHA in the midterms

In the unforgiving arena of American politics, few patterns are as reliable as the midterm election bloodbath for the party holding the White House. And this year Democrats are trying to capitalize on the midterm curse by fielding 150 candidates from medical and scientific backgrounds. All have entered the fray since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services and are putting his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) on the ballot. In particular, his vaccine reform program. Yet, a major driver of the rise of MAHA can be directly attributed to the Biden administration’s disastrous handling of Covid, when Democrats in power contorted science to fit

Saturday

February 21, 2026

Nikos Mohammadi

How Tucker beat Huckabee

Earlier this month, when Tucker Carlson was in Jordan interviewing Levantine Christians, the US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called out the pundit with whom he’s been engaged in a public online feud for some time: “Instead of talking ABOUT me, why don’t you come talk TO me? You seem to be generating a lot of heat about the Middle East. Why be afraid of the light?” That, we can now see, was a bad mistake on Huckabee’s part. Carlson took up the offer, and, after some rather fraught back-and-forth about his travel arrangements, interviewed Huckabee at the private terminal at Ben Gurion Airport a few miles outside Tel Aviv. In the podcast Huckabee comes across as much

Friday

February 20, 2026

Jacob Heilbrunn

The Supreme Court is right to reject Trump’s tariffs

At a rally in Georgia on Thursday night, President Trump declared that he couldn’t wait “forever” for the Supreme Court to rule on the legitimacy of his sweeping tariff policy. Whether or not the court was listening to his complaint, forever arrived today as it handed Trump a thumping defeat. It struck a blow not only for fiscal but also political sanity. Government intrusion upon the free enterprise system is bound to prove inimical to prosperity and liberty The language of the ruling was as lapidary as it was persuasive. “President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration and scope,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Donald Trump becoming a globalist?

It was a banner day for Donald Trump. On Thursday, at the Justice Department, a long perpendicular banner with his stern visage was unfurled, proclaiming “Make America Safe Again.” And just across from the State Department, Trump convened his shiny new Board of Peace at the former US Institute of Peace, which has a dove-shaped white roof. It was seized in 2025 by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and renamed after Trump. “I had no idea,” Trump said. But for all his disclaimers, Trump was not shy about expressing his delight at the new name that adorned the building’s entrance. A bevy of strongmen, including Vietnam’s General Secretary To Lam

Neal Pollack

Pam Bondi’s not-so-secret mission

On February 11, the arrow on the Trump administration’s “See ’n Say” pointed in the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who spent four extremely contentious hours arguing with congressional Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, who questioned her about her handling of the Epstein files. “Your theatrics are ridiculous,” she said, in a case of the pot calling the kettle black, to New York’s Jerry Nadler, who asked her if the Epstein files would lead to prosecutions. Bondi called Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, a “washed-up loser lawyer.” She accused Kentucky’s Thomas Massie of having Trump Derangement Syndrome and said Vermont’s Becca Balint, whose grandfather was killed

Thursday

February 19, 2026

Spectator Editorial

Trump’s worrying appetite for war

As The Spectator goes to press, a great fleet of American war machines is whirring through the skies toward the Middle East. More than 50 fighter jets, plus stealth bombers and support aircraft, are joining what Donald Trump called an “armada” of US naval forces in the Arabian seas. The White House continues to say that it is pursuing a diplomatic solution with Iran. It’s possible that this latest military escalation is another of President Trump’s elaborate bluffs, designed to pressure the Iranian regime into accepting American and Israeli demands. But the President has been unusually mute about the situation on Truth Social. It’s fair to assume that the movement

Ben Clerkin

Is James Fishback the right’s answer to Zohran Mamdani?

“First and foremost, I think Zohran and I are two good-looking guys in our thirties.” James Fishback, the controversial Republican running for governor of Florida, tells me that it is “not politically wise” to acknowledge his similarities with New York’s new mayor – but he can’t help himself. Both he and Zohran Mamdani are from privileged families, have taken on their own parties, have harnessed youth activism, are big on social media and have courted the same voters on the same issue: the rising cost of living. And, like 34-year-old Mamdani, at this stage of his campaign, Fishback, 31, needs a boost in the polls. Currently he is polling between

Conrad Black

The redemption of Richard Nixon

In the last five years of his life, when I knew Richard Nixon, nothing described him better than Milton’s “calm of mind, all passion spent.” During the most tumultuous political career in American history he had come back many times, but the greatest comeback of all was in full swing. His enemies had seized control of the puritanical conscience of America to slay him, unjustly, and he was manipulating the same national conscience, which was founded on Plymouth Rock and has survived all the corruption and hypocrisy and violence of American public life, and when aroused, is insuperable. Since his political fall, and later his death, polls increasingly indicate public

Ben Clerkin

Mamdani’s People’s Republic of New York

Proudly displayed in the window of my local Barnes and Noble are copies of a children’s book called Zohran Walks New York. It’s a graphic novel that shows our city’s new perma-grinning mayor meeting residents who are overwhelmingly happy to see him. A more instructive text for the children of Park Slope was tucked away in the corner of the basement: Animal Farm. I bought it for my 11-year-old daughter at the weekend. She’s into dystopian novels. More people will become hooked on state benefits and more staff will be needed to shove piles of cash towards them I thought of Orwell’s allegory of the Russian revolution this week when our mayor

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

America’s future looks vulgar

The latest Super Bowl offers the most recent opportunity to reflect on the terminal state of our national culture, held together chiefly by a distractive and unhealthy mania for commercial sports and perfectly exemplified by the infantile yet aggressively transgressive nihilism of a brainless showoff calling himself Bad Bunny and dressed all in white, suggestive perhaps of an anti-Easter Bunny. Why, one wonders, has no political theorist from Hobbes forward posited the ideal human community as one which would combine political democracy with cultural and intellectual aristocracy – as, indeed, America at the time of her founding and for several generations thereafter did? Such an arrangement might satisfy critics of

Charlie Gammell

Iran cannot afford to call Trump’s bluff

The talks are still alive. Just. Iranian and US diplomats, engaging indirectly through Omani intermediaries, have yet to make any substantive progress toward a framework of understanding that governs further talks – as Kafkaesque as that might sound – but they are talking, and that is the best that the diplomats can hope for right now. What separates Iran and America is a vast chasm between their respective red lines, and beyond that, the very substance of the talks themselves. The US is not willing to countenance an Iran that enriches uranium, has a ballistic missile program and arms proxies throughout the region. Iran, for its part, perhaps unwisely – as

Wednesday

February 18, 2026

Drew Pavlou

Did Billie Eilish get me deported?

For someone who believes that “no one is illegal on stolen land,” it’s a surprise that Billie Eilish’s legal team may have blocked my entry to the US. My plan was to test her theory of land ownership, which she stated at the Grammys to great applause, and take over her LA mansion with the help of Native Americans. But, sadly, I was turned back at the border last weekend – my sacred and inalienable right to freedom of movement curtailed by border guards who were, I suspect, briefed about my arrival by Eilish’s team. I’m an Australian political activist, more usually focused on exposing the influence of the Chinese

Freddy Gray

Why do men in dresses keep killing people?

20 min listen

Kellie-Jay Keen joins Americano to discuss the disturbing rise of trans killers. Freddy Gray and Kellie discuss why she doesn’t like to call them “trans,” what role the internet and hormone medication have played in their violent outbreaks, and why the left holds some responsibility for encouraging violence.