Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories

Wednesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

The battle for the neoconservative soul

Robert Kagan has long had a knack for capturing public attention with bold pronouncements about American foreign policy. In 1996, together with William Kristol, he published an essay in Foreign Affairs called “Toward A Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy” that chided the Clinton administration for insufficient martial vigor and argued that the Pentagon budget should be doubled. As a charter member of the Project for the New American Century and a regular contributor to the Weekly Standard, Kagan became an eloquent champion of the George W. Bush administration’s Iraq war.

Rober Kagan
France misinformation
Gavin Mortimer

France is throwing a tantrum at Trump

France is intensifying its counter-offensive against what it calls misinformation. Earlier this month, Paris prosecutors confirmed they have opened a criminal investigation into Elon Musk and X. Musk had ignored a summons to appear for a voluntary interview on April 20. The French state requested Musk assist in an investigation into algorithmic manipulation and the spread of AI deepfakes on X. Musk responded to the criminal investigation by labeling the prosecutors “faker than a chocolate euro and queerer than a pink flamingo in a neon tutu!” On the same day, Paris unveiled its “French Response” strategy. The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, posted a video on X (where else?

Lawrence Newport

Britain is sick of the Westminster psychodrama

The British Army has long lived by a simple maxim: “Prior preparation and planning prevents piss poor performance.” It remains as true today as ever. Disasters are rarely unavoidable or destined to occur. Usually, they are the consequence of decisions – or the refusal to make them – over several weeks, months, and even years. Any government would be wise to follow this advice before entering office. Yet Keir Starmer's Government, much like many of those that came before it, will fail because it lacked the prior preparation and planning to prevent the poor performance it subsequently delivered. Each time Westminster convinces itself that the problem was just personnel Living standards in decline. Industries leaving. Jobs going elsewhere. Wages stagnant. Communities fractured.

Tuesday

Noa Hoffman

Keir Starmer has one card left to play

As calls for Sir Keir Starmer’s head grow ever louder among Labour MPs, the British Prime Minister is digging his heels in. He has one more card left to play: divide and conquer. While scores of backbenchers are desperate for change at the top, they are completely split on the question of who should take over. Those on the Labour right who have deserted Sir Keir are rallying behind Wes Streeting. The soft left are desperate for the return of Andy Burnham but, short of that, could support bids from Angela Rayner or Ed Miliband. This lack of any consensus works to Starmer’s advantage.

starmer
Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump is in the mood to do a deal with China

As President Trump travels to China today, his original plans for the visit have been upended. He wanted to arrive as a triumphant conqueror but increasingly resembles a supplicant. Will he strike a "Two T’s" deal – a grand bargain that trades Taipei for Tehran? Trump has periodically voiced his irritation with China, but at bottom he respects – and even admires – President Xi Jinping as the kind of tough guy that he can do business with on a variety of fronts. The most important one has become Iran, which is threatening to increase its nuclear enrichment program and successfully defying Trump’s threats to blow it into oblivion. China is Iran’s biggest backer. It previously pushed Tehran into ceasefire talks with Washington.

Trump China
Trump
Michael Sobolik

America’s Trump card in China

The Trump administration has released a list of CEOs who will be accompanying the president to his meeting in China with Xi Jinping. Foremost among the delegation is Elon Musk, traveling in his capacity as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Another notable inclusion is Tim Cook, in what may be his swan song international trip as Apple CEO. All told, 17 executives will accompany President Trump to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Their companies represent sectors ranging from banking and investment to automobiles and AI. Their asks of Xi will likely range from market access (Coherent) and advertising (Meta) to component orders (Boeing) and soybean purchases (Cargill). On paper, President Trump should take business leaders with him to China.

James Heale

Keir Starmer is done

This morning’s cabinet meeting was one for the ages. At 9.30 a.m., British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was greeted by his senior ministers, almost all of whom think the game is up. Ahead of entering Downing Street today, they will have seen the list of 80 Labour MPs – the magic number needed for a ballot – calling for him to go. Last night, we had junior aides jumping ship; this morning we have the first minister, Miatta Fahnbulleh. She has quit the government and called on Starmer to "do the right thing." When you have David Lammy, Yvette Cooper, John Healey and Shabana Mahmood all telling Downing Street that it is over, you know that the Prime Minister has lost the dressing room.

Biden
Alexander Larman

Joe Biden’s memoir will humiliate him

Just before writing this piece, I saw Gary Oldman in a London production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. For those unfamiliar, the play revolves around an old man listening to a series of tapes recorded by himself when he was younger, musing pompously on his hopes and dreams for the future. In his present, desiccated state, he can only scoff at his middle-aged self, before being overcome by the pathetic realization that it is all up for him and that he is doomed to a miserable, unhappy future. It is hard to think of ten people who will want to read the book, let alone ten million I suspect that much the same has been going on in Joe Biden’s household of late. If, of course he still knows what day of the week it is, or what his name is.

Monday

Chris Smith

How dangerous is the cruise ship hantavirus?

Virologists, the imaginative bunch that we are, often name new viruses after the places they were first found. Zika virus was initially described in Uganda’s Zika forest, while the Ebola river, flowing through what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, needs no explanation for the dread disease documented there. There are existing case reports of human outbreaks in South America stemming from gatherings and parties. That said, the documented efficiency of the transmission under these circumstances is extremely low Hantaviruses are chips off the same block.

Sam Leith

TV doesn’t ruin childhood, but phones might

When I was a nipper, a staple of children’s television was a show called Why Don’t You? The full title, as the theme song made clear, was: “Why don’t you just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead?" Very “meta”, as we didn’t then say. And, of course, generations of children sat on the sofa gormlessly drinking Um Bongo while we watched the show’s cast demonstrate all the wholesome arts-and-crafts activities we could have been doing instead of watching TV. This was a few years before our parents discovered the joys of eating microwave TV dinners while watching Master Chef. A previous generation feared that the rise of television would put an end to children reading. It didn’t I start with this to give a bit of context.

Sunday

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.

china

Saturday

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 for the missing weaponry is the threat from Ukrainian FPV drones.

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 as a second-order priority – which has found its most devoted proponent in Keir Starmer – to be foisted upon them.

Friday

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.

Putin
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 was Rubio, after all, who was the first cabinet official to suggest in public that Israel had strong-armed America into attacking Iran.

Thursday

Matt Ridley

How dangerous is the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak?

Here we go again, or maybe not. The World Health Organization is reassuring us that the public health risk from hantavirus is low, after the outbreak on a cruise ship. Hantaviruses are a classic zoonosis: caught from animals. You have to inhale dust containing infected rodent droppings or – in the case of this Andean variant, which has shown limited human-to-human transmission before – to have close and prolonged contact with somebody who has already caught the virus. That means being coughed on, not just sharing the same air in a room. Zoonotic agents are often very good at killing people – Ebola, Marburg, Nipah, Hendra, SARS and Hanta have high fatality rates – but are not so good at infecting people Trouble is, of course, WHO said the same about Covid.

hantavirus
John Power

Hantavirus doesn’t look like the next Covid

Over the past few days, more parts of the press have been reporting that the hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius has spread beyond the boat, and that health authorities are "racing" to track people who have been on board. "Why rat virus patients could become super-spreaders" is the headline of one Telegraph article. "Superspreader fears" is the caption of one image in the Sun. The Daily Express is even running a poll asking its readers "are you worried about the hantavirus cruise outbreak?" – a vote which they may have somewhat prejudiced by dubbing MV Hondius the "Horror Hantavirus cruise" in another article published just yesterday. The Daily Mail has gone one further, alternatively calling MV Hondius the "Death Cruise" and the "Doomed cruise.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump is clinging to a mirage in the Middle East

Well, well, well. For all the head-scratching that it initially occasioned, President Trump’s hasty abandonment of "Project Freedom" – his grandly titled plan to open the Strait of Hormuz – turns out not to be so mysterious after all. Trump’s reversal, NBC News revealed late yesterday, came at the behest of America’s Gulf allies, foremost among them Riyadh which told Washington that it would suspend the US military’s right to use its airspace. Now Trump, who has described his current exchanges with Iran as "very good," is breathing optimism about a one-page peace memorandum that he claims will be completed by the end of the week. Iran, by contrast, merely says that Trump’s proposal is “under review.

Wednesday

Nicholas Farrell

Meloni is being haunted by the ghost of Berlusconi

The late Silvio Berlusconi has come back from the dead –  momentarily, it is hoped – to torment Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the guise of the old rogue’s "bunga bunga" woman-in-chief. As a result, Meloni’s opponents and their many friends in the media are baying for the blood of her justice minister Carlo Nordio in a bid to cause her fatal damage. Normal people cannot help but wonder why on earth an Italian president is granting a pardon to someone like her, who has not spent even one single day in prison Italy’s 69 governments since the foundation of the Republic of Italy in 1946 have lasted on average little more than a year.

meloni
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 convictions as he signed executive orders to keep DEI out of education and men out of women’s sports.

equity
germany
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.

MAGA
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.

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.

Andrew Cockburn

What today’s Iran headlines don’t reveal about ‘Project Freedom’

"Operation Epic Fury is concluded," declared Marco Rubio, holding his first White House press conference yesterday. The Secretary of State explained that the new mission – reopening the Strait of Hormuz – would essentially be a humanitarian operation, resulting in military exchanges only if US ships came under fire while clearing the passage of mines and other obstacles. Later, President Trump went further, saying that "Project Freedom" (the Hormuz operation) had been paused "to see whether or not" a "Complete and Final Agreement can be finalized and signed." “Project Freedom” is unworkable because the Navy cannot complete the de-mining operation Today, the markets have rebounded on news that US and Iranian officials are discussing "a memorandum of understanding.

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 Target for back-to-school shopping.

Randi Weingarten teachers union
iran ceasefire
Jawad Iqbal

Is the Iran ceasefire crumbling?

Is the fragile Iran war ceasefire over? It would appear so, with American and Iranian forces exchanging fire in the Strait of Hormuz. The renewed clashes follow President Trump’s launch of "Project Freedom," which aims to use the US military to escort stranded ships out of the critical waterway. Trump said American forces had hit seven Iranian small boats, with the US military claiming to have intercepted cruise missiles and drones launched by Tehran. Trump earlier warned that Iranian forces would be "blown off the face of the Earth" if they targeted US ships in the strait or the Persian Gulf. Tehran says it fired "warning shots" at US warships, and said it would attack any foreign force that tried to enter the strait.

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.

workers
Niko Vorobyov

Venezuela has become another American puppet state

Venezuela’s deposed president, Nicolás Maduro, never enjoyed the charisma or genuine popularity of his predecessor, "El Comandante" Hugo Chávez. So all the murals, billboards and installations dotted around Caracas urging the release of the 63-year-old statesman – along with his wife Cilia Flores – from American captivity, don’t exactly feel like a grassroots effort. "Bring them home!" reads one mural, evoking the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas. Meanwhile, a stopwatch installed in Caracas’s Bolivar Square counts how long it has been since the presidential couple were abducted by the US army in early January.

venezuela
islamist
Simon Diggins

Britain is facing an Islamist insurgency

The recent horrific attack in Golders Green has generated much anger and despair at this latest in a series of concerted, violent assaults currently aimed primarily at the Jewish community, but with a clear lineage to earlier Islamist outrages such as the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby and the London Bridge attacks of 2017 and 2019. The UK terrorism threat level was raised to "severe" following the attack on Thursday. But terrorism, "an action or threat designed to influence the government or intimidate the public," is an inadequate descriptor of what we face in Britain. Instead, I believe we face a different problem: a full-blown insurgency.

coup
Mark Galeotti

No, Russia is not on the verge of a coup

However much Western leaders inveigh against Russian disinformation (which, yes, is a real issue), we should never pretend this is not a two-way street. The sudden spate of news stories reporting that a conveniently anonymous "European intelligence agency" claims that the Kremlin fears a coup looks suspiciously more like a psy-op meant to generate paranoia in the Russian elite than a serious assessment. The claim is that Putin’s personal security has been dramatically stepped up, not simply to protect him from increasingly frequent and far-ranging Ukrainian drone strikes but, in particular, because since the beginning of March, the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin himself have been concerned about the risk of a plot or coup attempt targeting the Russian President.

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.

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 indeed crossed a momentous boundary.