All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
One remarkable thing about Donald Trump’s adventure in Venezuela is just how old-fashioned it is. It is a world away from George W. Bush’s neoconservative efforts at nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is little attempt to justify the arrest of Nicolás Maduro in terms of the human rights of Venezuelan citizens. Little attention appears
Americans hate to love, or love to hate, the country’s First Family, the Trumps, a melodramatic cast of characters that makes the Ewings, the Carringtons, the Bridgertons or the Roys seem small by comparison. But a gee-whiz protagonist for everyone has emerged in the persona of Kai Trump, the President’s granddaughter and the eldest daughter
Donald Trump’s dramatic intervention in Venezuela has achieved much more than to bring a brutal, corrupt dictator and drug trafficker to justice in an American court of law, something which no amount of human rights declarations, international law or indictments in the international criminal court were able to achieve. It took President Trump deciding it
As Donald Trump weighs up taking control of Greenland, Britain and the EU has fallen back on a familiar strategy: talk tough, and do nothing. The UK joined France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark yesterday in making a joint statement affirming that “Greenland belongs to its people.” Arctic security, it said, must respect “sovereignty,
President Trump offered Republican members of Congress a stand-up routine involving an imitation of transgender athletes lifting weights at the House GOP Member retreat earlier today. The President said that his wife “hates” when he does this and considers it “unpresidential.” “She said, ‘darling please, the weightlifting is terrible’,” the President recounts, before launching into his
The US created the O-1B visa system in 1972 after John Lennon was nearly deported, and it became clear that there was no immigration system to attract artists to the country. Lennon couldn’t possibly imagine what the system has become now – nearly half the applicants for the O1-B in the last year are OnlyFans
It was the Viking, Erik the Red who, in AD 986, first saw Greenland’s potential. He wanted to colonize his newly-discovered island, and in a blatant piece of tenth-century spin-doctoring hit on a wizard wheeze to encourage other Norse people to come to this bleak, icy and remote corner of the unknown world: “In the
Freddy Gray speaks to Vanity Fair’s Washington correspondent Aidan McLaughlin about their latest two-part interview with one of Trump’s closest allies Susie Wiles. As chief of staff to the White House, she has given some of the most candid quotes about what really happens inside Trump’s regime.
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Freddy Gray is joined by Joshua S. Trevino, chief transformation officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and senior director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute. They discuss the complex history of so-called “narco-states” and how they came to dominate vast parts of Latin America. Trump’s assault on Venezuela may
What do you think: is it manifest destiny that the United States acquire or at least exercise control over Greenland? That’s pretty much how we got Texas, California, New Mexico, Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa. Then there was the Louisiana purchase. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the United
Finally, the left has found a “kidnap victim” it cares about. Having spent more than two years making excuses for Hamas’s savage seizing of 251 Israelis, having violently torn down posters of those stolen Jews, now the activist class has suddenly decided that abduction is bad after all. Why? Because a dictator they admire, Nicolás
There was no dancing, let alone prancing, in the Manhattan courtroom as former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was arraigned on four charges, including narco-terrorism and weapons trafficking, following his capture by American forces on a military base in Caracas on Saturday. Instead, Maduro, whose terpsichorean moves to a musical remix of his “No War, Yes
Cockburn stumbled into The Spectator’s New York office this morning afflicted with that annual January woe: the post-holiday blues. He was having a serious pout at his desk before he was chastened out of this gloom by his northern colleagues’ new neighbor: Nicolás Maduro. No one had a worse Christmas season than the deposed Venezuelan
On this occasion no one can accuse Donald Trump of hyperbole. The President praised the Delta Force team that seized Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as “incredible.” The operation to capture Maduro – codenamed “Absolute Resolve” – was months in the planning, and Trump watched it unfold in real time. “They broke into places that were
The year just gone has hardly been a banner year for either the Duke or Duchess of Sussex, culminating in the humiliation of yet another publicist departing from their employment at its end. However, all of us hope that 2026 will be an improvement. Last weekend brought the potentially good news for Harry – although, perhaps, less so for the
One of the things I admire about Zohran Mamdani is his candor. You know where you stand with him. Mamdani, who was sworn in a few days ago by Senator Bernie Sanders as New York’s first Muslim mayor and also its first avowedly socialist mayor, makes no bones about his ambitions. He was elected as a “democratic socialist,”
The Vietnam war was the first Americans watched on their nightly TV news, the Gulf War the first that could be followed live on CNN, and the Global War on Terror the first documented online through the work of bloggers, citizen journalists and video-sharing sites like LiveLeak. Meme warfare is being used not only to
When the earthquake is big, the porcelain rattles far and wide. And that’s exactly what’s happening now… in Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and even Greenland. The plates are rattling after the Trump Administration’s swift, successful mission to capture Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who was allegedly a major figure in the country’s
The US military operation to track down, capture and fly Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro back to the United States for prosecution on drug trafficking charges went flawlessly. It was well-coordinated, meticulously planned and executed to a tee. Nearly two days after Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken into U.S. custody, details of the
One of the few benefits of being an anthropologist is the uncanny exhilaration one feels watching novel current events as re-runs from previous episodes in the history of mankind. Donald Trump’s capture of Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela, is no exception. Kidnapping Latin American emperors is a continental tradition. It’s simply the most practical method
The US launched a military operation in Venezuela, targeting the regime in Caracas and detaining President Nicolás Maduro, who has been transferred to New York where he faces charges of narcoterrorism. Donald Trump has described the move as a decisive defense of American interests, but critics point point to the double standards when it come
During the early hours of Saturday January 3, an official statement from the White House, signed by President Trump, confirmed that the US had captured both President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and taken them out of Venezuela. At 2 a.m. sharp, thunderous sounds echoed through the capital city, part of what Trump
And just like that, the left loses interest in the Middle East. In 2025, they spoke of little else. They culturally appropriated Arab headwear, poncing about in China-made keffiyehs. They wrapped themselves in the Palestine colors. They frothed day and night about a “murderous regime” – you know who. And yet now, as a Middle
On the afternoon of December 28 in a Tehran electronics bazaar, shopkeepers (known as bazaaris) shuttered their shops and walked out, outraged at a planned gas price rise and crippled at the continuing slide in the value of the Iranian currency and the government’s powerlessness to shepherd Iran’s economy toward something better than corruption, unemployment
Donald Trump likes to start the new year with a bang – or better yet a series of loud bangs. On January 3, 2020, his first administration ordered the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Exactly six years later, his second administration has carried out a
Donald Trump’s undeclared war in Venezuela against the Marxist regime of President Nicolas Maduro has erupted into the open. Trump says the US has captured Venezuela’s leader and his wife. In a statement on Truth Social, Trump wrote: The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President
For years, Joe Biden’s handlers did their best to hide the fact from us that their boss was a senile, cancer-ridden mummy. This isn’t the case with Donald Trump, an equally aged President. We know everything, within reason, about Trump’s every bodily function. As a New Year’s gift to us, the Wall Street Journal called
Trump should stop all federal welfare funds to offending venues, and much of the “Somali community" should be repatriated
It was a performance worthy of an Oscar or maybe a Tony. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s address at his swearing in ceremony on New Year’s Day electrified the freezing crowd every bit as much as it shocked the Democratic establishment, and perhaps even the 50 percent of New Yorkers who didn’t vote for him. The newly-minted
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Father Robert Sirico joins Freddy to discuss the imprisonment of Jimmy Lai – the British passport holder and Hong Kong media tycoon facing life in jail for opposing the Chinese Communist party. Sirico reflects on Lai’s rise from poverty, his Catholic faith, the collapse of freedoms in Hong Kong, and why the West has failed
It used to be said that you could walk from the west of Ireland to Nantucket on the backs of the cod, so thick was the Atlantic with the fish. But as readers of a certain age will remember, by the last decade of the last century, it was looking doubtful that the cod population
France seems to be witnessing more gratuitous attacks and stabbings. On the day after Christmas, in the middle of central Paris, a man went on a knife rampage through the metro. He struck out at random, stabbing women on station platforms at République, Arts et Métiers and Opéra. There was screaming. There was blood. One
Lucky subscribers to “As Ever,” Meghan Markle’s Pravda-esque newsletter, were given an exclusive insight this festive season into how the Duchess of Sussex would be spending the Christmas period. She wrote that “Last night, I was nibbling the remnants of our Christmas Eve feast (dim sum this year), wrapping a few last-minute gifts, and tiptoeing
The Bondi murders painted a picture constituted out of the contrast between shade and light. This was the chiaroscuro massacre. But, perhaps because we have become desensitized by endless dark descriptions of mass killings over the years, our attention was as much on the moments of brightness on that Sydney beach: the onlookers who grappled
