Latest from Coffee House

Thursday

11 Jun 2026

Should Europe shelter Sudan’s refugees?

The Sudanese man who is in custody in Belfast, Northern Ireland, settled in the city after traveling through Paris and Dublin. In 2023, he was given asylum by the British Home Office. That same year, Sudan descended into civil war, a conflict that continues to rage with appalling accounts of barbarity. On the one side are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and on the other the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Caught in the middle are civilians, particularly women and children, who are being abused by both sides. Earlier this year, the UN’s Human Rights Council accused combatants of displaying "utter disregard for human life.

Wednesday

10 Jun 2026

Daniel DePetris

Trump can’t give up on diplomacy with Iran

The New York Knicks may have lost Game 3 of the NBA Finals, but President Trump was still in a somewhat buoyant mood. Negotiations with Iran were going swimmingly, Trump claimed to reporters as he was headed back to Washington, so much so that an agreement could be reached in two or three days. Two days later, though, and a deal remains just as elusive today as it was last week and the week before that. In fact, not only is diplomacy apparently stuck, but the United States and Iran are increasingly taking shots at each other. The April 8 ceasefire is still in effect but resting on weaker foundations.

Damian Reilly

UFC Freedom 250 is straight from the ‘bread-and-circuses’ playbook

What can we expect from this weekend’s UFC event on the White House lawn? There is a more than good chance that this occasion, staged to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence, will climax with American headliner Justin Gaethje being knocked out all too quickly by the terrifying Georgian short-ass Ilia Topuria. Like everything to do with the UFC, the prospect is ludicrously exciting. If you are a sports fan – indeed, if you are merely interested in the colorful business of being alive – and you don’t follow the Ultimate Fighting Championship, you are missing out. With its incredible cast of outsized characters and mesmerizing subplots, it is ceaselessly and wonderfully entertaining.

Sam McPhail

FIFA aren’t the only ones to blame for rip-off World Cup ticket prices

The FIFA World Cup starts tomorrow, and soccer fans and news outlets are complaining that tickets are far too expensive. The England Supporters Travel Club says that following England all the way to the final would cost supporters more than $7,000 in tickets alone. Prices have more than doubled since the last World Cup and the cheapest standard ticket for the final is $4,185. But how much of this is down to FIFA’s greed? This year's World Cup is jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico across 16 cities. The United States is holding 78 of the matches, while Canada and Mexico have 13 each. When bidding for the tournament, the host nations used existing events as pricing benchmarks: boxing matches, hockey tournaments and the Super Bowl.

Edward Howell

Can China keep North Korea in check?

When Xi Jinping visited North Korea in June 2019 for his first state visit, he would not have expected nearly seven years later that the hermit kingdom would be in an alliance with Russia. As Xi concluded his second visit to the country yesterday, the Chinese president’s pledges to "strengthen strategic coordination" and "uphold regional peace and development" with his North Korean counterpart emphasized how Beijing wants to ensure that its northeastern neighbor does not cross any red lines. With Beijing having been Pyongyang’s largest economic partner for nearly two decades, Xi’s visit serves as a clear reminder to North Korea that China wants to maintain close ties and, crucially, ensure stability on the Korean Peninsula.

Brendan O’Neill

Belfast and the truth about ‘alien cultures’

How would you describe a culture where women are flogged in public for "inappropriate dress?" A culture where one woman suffered 40 lashes from a leather whip for the crime of wearing trousers and a T-shirt? A culture where a man who lies with a man risks being whipped a hundred times before being put in a dank cell for five years? A culture where apostasy is considered such an abominable sin that even a heavily pregnant woman could be sentenced to death for supposedly committing it? The good people of Belfast are well within their rights to ask whether men from such a culture should be living on their streets Personally, I would call such a culture "alien.

Keith Kellogg

Trump’s ballroom drone port is no joke

When Donald Trump unveiled plans for a counter-drone installation on the roof of the new White House ballroom, critics called it theater. They may be right about the installation. But they are wrong about the threat. I have watched the character of warfare change faster in the past four years than in the previous forty. In Ukraine, a one-way attack drone that costs a few hundred dollars routinely destroys Russian armored vehicles worth millions. Both sides now field these systems by the hundreds of thousands. Entire stretches of the front are governed not by artillery or air superiority in the traditional sense, but by small, expendable aircraft that soldiers can carry in rucksacks and launch from tree lines.

Tuesday

9 Jun 2026

Cockburn

HelloFresh’s stomach-churning Pride ad

HelloFresh is a popular food-delivery service that has simplified home cooking with its pre-prepared ingredients. Yet this month, Pride Month, the company ignited a mixture of reactions by posting the following statement on its Instagram: We know eating isn’t always a top priority this month. We respect that. But for those of you who are... prepping... we have an extensive lineup of high-fiber recipes available. Happy Pride. Since posting the gratuitously sexual advertisement on June 5, the company has elicited over 4,500 comments. Some have doubled down on their support, writing comments such as, “I wHOLE thank you for your support and service,” “This is iconic” and “This is the most supportive pride post from a brand I can think of.

John Fund

The urgent case for fixing California’s broken elections

When late arriving ballots in the race for Los Angeles mayor turned dramatically against conservative Spencer Pratt last week, Donald Trump reacted with his usual subtlety. “They’re cheating on the election,” said the President, as it became clear Pratt would be knocked out of the runoff for the November general election. Democrats were quick to respond. California Attorney General Rob Bonta dismissed claims of vote fraud as “a figment of the imagination of Trump and others involved in that conspiracy theory.” Bonta is right there’s no direct evidence that fraud swayed the LA mayor’s race. But California’s notorious tardiness in counting votes has been almost universally ridiculed and has undermined public trust in elections.

Monday

8 Jun 2026

John Power

Sixteen times that Trump nearly ended the Iran war

Today marks a hundred days since America and Israel began launching strikes on Iran on February 28. The very next day, Donald Trump told the Atlantic that Iran’s leaders "want to talk," saying they should have made a deal sooner and that "they played too cute." Three days after Trump said this, Iran announced that the Strait of Hormuz was closed. Since then, we have been told dozens of times that we are on the brink of a lasting deal between Iran and America, often in the President’s statements on Truth Social. At the end of last month, Axios reported that US and Iranian negotiators had reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum which would reopen the Strait, which simply needed Trump’s sign off.

Sam Leith

Who really owns your iPhone?

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Rent the man a spot on the river, and make him tick a box on a multi-thousand-word end-user license agreement meaning that any fish he catches, ultimately, still belongs to you, and you stand to get very, very rich indeed. We live in an age where stuff we think we own is, really, stuff to which we subscribe This is the business model that now dominates the digital age.

Mark Brolin

Denmark and the myth of centrism’s reinvention

The European center’s favorite trick, when losing voters, is to explain that democracy is under grave threat and that power must therefore remain inside the circle of “sensible” centrists who know why voters are wrong. Starmer embodies the British variant of centrism: despite promises of real change, only managerial declinism has emerged Denmark has now provided the latest demonstration. Almost ten weeks after the election, Mette Frederiksen has secured another government. Her Social Democrats suffered their worst result since 1903, falling to 38 seats in a parliament of 179.

Jacob Heilbrunn

MAGA is doubling down

Over the past several months, various news outlets have been prognosticating the flight of young conservative women from the Republican Party. In March, New York magazine focused on what it called “the young women leaving the new right.” Now Politico has suggested that a Turning Point USA conference in San Antonio, Texas this past weekend shows that “bubbling under the surface are divisions within the GOP that have enveloped the online voices of the young right and a budding disillusionment among young women with the second Trump administration. It’s all part of a growing divide between being “MAGA” in 2026 and being “America First.” But that’s not what I saw at the very same conference.

Ben Clerkin

Is the US-Israel alliance breaking down?

This morning at 5.53am, air raid sirens sounded across Tel Aviv. War-weary locals largely went about their business as usual unfazed by the eerie wail, while out of towners headed at speed to the nearest bomb shelter. The ballistic missile was fired from Yemen and intercepted by the IDF. At 7.02am, again, mobile phones buzzed with warnings to take shelter. Iran had fired a barrage of ballistic missiles. The beach volleyball game being played outside my hotel didn’t stop. The missiles "disintegrated” or fell harmlessly. Israelis hardly batted an eyelid, yet regional experts say that this could be the start of a new war between Israel and Iran, the third of the year. While Iran claimed it had ended its military operations against Israel.

Saturday

6 Jun 2026

Freddy Gray

Why is Cenk Uygur banned from Britain, really?

50 min listen

Freddy is joined by Cenk Uygur after he and Hasan Piker were banned from entering Britain. They discuss free speech, debate Cenk's position on criticizing Israel, Britain’s censorious turn and what the Henry Nowak case reveals about policing and anti-racism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Why is Cenk Uygur banned from Britain, really?

Matthew Fraser

What will become of Paris’s ugliest building?

Parisians were recently treated to the impromptu spectacle of a shirtless 26-year-old man scaling bare-handed the 59-story Montparnasse office tower. For many in the French capital, news reports of the vertiginous feat were another reminder – if they needed one – of how much they loathed the chocolate-brown skyscraper looming incongruously over the burnished boulevards of the Left Bank. The spiderman exploit was not witnessed by anyone inside the 210-meter skyscraper. The Montparnasse tower was empty. The city’s most unloved building has been vacant since March. More than a half-century after its inauguration, it’s awaiting a long-overdue facelift. The wait may be long. The Montparnasse is despised by Parisians as an eyesore, but it has also failed functionally.

Friday

5 Jun 2026

Alexander Larman

Did former prince Andrew need to charge his tenants full rent?

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was photographed driving yesterday with a large bruise on his face. Whichever unfortunate "well-placed source" that has the responsibility for reassuring the public about the disgraced former royal’s wellbeing insisted that the injury was not down to some outraged former lover or member of the public attacking him. Nevertheless, they said, it could not be revealed for "medical confidentiality." However disfiguring the injury, however, it seems insignificant when compared to the even more bruising round of revelations that have emerged about Andrew’s financial situation – this time involving his former home of Royal Lodge.

Freddy Gray

Will Graham Platner’s colorful past bring him down?

In recent months, America’s political rumor mills have been grinding out whispers about Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Maine. Platner, the military veteran turned oyster catcher turned left-wing populist, has somehow survived the story about having a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest – although he says he was unaware of its meaning and has since had it covered up. And he is still on course to beat Susan Collins, the long-serving Republican, in November. His is thought to be the most obvious – yet vital – win for the Democrats as they seek to win back the Senate. But Platner has a colorful past – to put it mildly.

Jawad Iqbal

Why can’t Elon Musk leave Britain alone?

Why is Elon Musk so obsessed with what’s going on in Britain? The billionaire owner of Tesla and X has been busy posting on his social media platform about the murder of Henry Nowak and what it says about the state of British policing. What does Musk actually know about policing in this country? What the tech mogul definitely does know about is how to stir the pot. According to a report in the Financial Times, Musk has written more than 110 posts, retweets and replies about British politics since last Wednesday on X. This is almost three times the share devoted to his company SpaceX, which is valued at $1.8 trillion ahead of its highly anticipated IPO next week.

Thursday

4 Jun 2026

Cockburn

PETA wants to replace K-9 units with tactical robots

Picture this: you’re walking down the sidewalk on a bright summer’s day. A K-9 patrol vehicle parks nearby – but instead of a dog getting out of the backseat, a tactical robot emerges. This is the future that PETA has imagined for us all, judging by a letter from the animal rights group in response to a K-9 injury in Michigan last week. Digo, a canine with the Grand Rapids Police Department, was nonfatally stabbed three times, once in the head, while working to help police apprehend a violent suspect. In response, PETA wants robots and drones to replace the animals entirely. "Unlike their human counterparts, K-9s do not sign up to risk their lives," PETA manager of special projects Allison Fandl wrote in a June 2 letter to interim chief Joseph Trigg.

Ruaridh Nicoll

Cuba is next on Trump’s hit list

It’s hot in Havana. The summer’s electrical storms have arrived, lighting up the sky, while down on the ground we’ve been without power for 16 hours, meaning no sleep. The four-month-old US oil blockade is biting, but Cuba’s government still refuses to bend the knee to Washington, so surveillance aircraft are circling. An aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, has arrived in the neighborhood. We expect an attack at any moment. Donald Trump has made it clear that after Venezuela and Iran, Cuba is next on his list for decapitation. His administration wants a change of government and the economy opened up. Cuba’s 95-year-old ex-president Raúl Castro has been indicted for murder, opening the way for an abduction like the one in Caracas in January. "I do believe I’ll be...

Tim Shipman

Revealed: the missing Mandelson messages

Darren Jones has become the UK government’s Walter Model, the general known during World War Two as "the Führer’s fireman" for his deployment to shore up any position which appeared lost. In that capacity, Britain’s first Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister had the thankless task of presenting the government’s case to the House of Commons on Monday following the publication of 1,500 pages of documents relating to Peter Mandelson. Jones himself was spared direct embarrassment because none of his exchanges with the disgraced peer came to light in the trawl of memos, emails and WhatsApp exchanges.

John Fund

60 Minutes has been tarnished for years

Almost every mainstream media figure had the same take on this week’s CBS News staff revolt against the new management named to run 60 Minutes. Correspondent Scott Pelley was cheered for telling his new bosses, in a meeting that was then leaked to the media, that they had “murdered” the show and not stood up for “real journalists.” A day after Pelley’s ambush, CBS fired him thus allowing him to take up a new role as a free-speech martyr. Former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens quickly jumped into the controversy by telling the New York Press Club that CBS and 60 Minutes are “institutions, not places where partisans and ideologues should be employed…. I can tell you there’s a rigor in how 60 Minutes approaches every story.

Lisa Haseldine

Russia is relying on drones to bring it victory in Ukraine

Earlier this week, Ukraine was subjected to one of the largest aerial assaults by Russia since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion over four years ago. Overnight from Monday into Tuesday, Russia sent 73 missiles and 656 drones into Ukraine, killing at least 21 and injuring dozens across the country. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, this strike was retaliation for a Ukrainian attack on a vocational school in the occupied region of Luhansk on May 22. But, as the Kremlin’s war grinds on well into its fifth year, it also appears to signal a step change in how the Russian armed forces are choosing to fight.

Midterms, immigration & the Democrats – a look at the polls

Freddy Gray

Midterms, immigration and the Democrats – a look at the polls

Freddy Gray is joined by JL Partners pollster James Johnson to discuss the current state of the polls: what recent election results mean, why the Republicans have become a victim of their own immigration success, Trump's popularity with Latinos and why Kamala Harris could still be the Democratic nominee in 2028.

Wednesday

3 Jun 2026

Cockburn

Andy Ogles goes both ways: congressman flip-flops on ‘homosexuality’ post

Andy Ogles, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, chose an unorthodox way to mark Pride month yesterday: by tweeting, “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.” The backlash was swift and came from all quarters, even Ogles’s fellow Republicans. "The behavior of consenting adults is their business," Senator Ted Cruz said. "Andy, you have family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and constituents who are gay and lesbian," tweeted Representative Mike Lawler. "What an absolutely idiotic statement to make.” Some of those colleagues include Trump appointees such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg, as well as the President's top pollster Tony Fabrizio. Then came the climbdown.

Sabrina Philip

The madcap effort to ban farming, fishing and hunting in Oregon

What happens when something you do every day becomes illegal? If animal rights activists in Oregon have their way, the state’s hunters, fishers and farmers may be about to find out. A sweeping new initiative potentially headed for the November ballot targets the legality of farming, hunting, fishing, ranching, animal sciences, or even killing a mouse that has scurried in your house. Initiative Petition 28 (IP28) would make Oregon the first state in the US to ban such practices. Initiative Petition 28 proposes the enforcement of the PEACE Act, or the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions. The act states animals should be cared for “in ways that minimize their pain, stress, fear, and suffering.

Andrew Doyle

Henry Nowak and the politics of deflection

While Britain is still reeling from the horrific murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, an astonishing article has appeared in El País, Spain’s largest national newspaper. Rather than focus on the failures of the police officers, or the institutional bias within the force, the headline steers its readers away from the case and towards the outlet’s own obsessions. The headline translates as "Farage’s far right stirs up hatred in the UK after a young man is stabbed to death by a Sikh man." As Alejo Schapire (an Argentine journalist based in France) has pointed out, this is the first and only article produced by El País on the subject of the Nowak killing. Instead of an image of the victim, the newspaper has opted for a photograph of Nigel Farage.

Charles Lipson

California’s Democratic establishment battles insurgents

It takes a lot to ruin a state as lovely as California, and just as much to ruin the state’s largest city, Los Angeles. But left-wing Democrats have been up to that important task, backed by voters who have willingly endorsed their own downfall. Those voters and their contemporaries in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Boston are like the fraternity pledges who bend over for a spanking during “initiation week.” The voters, like the fraternity pledges, have consistently responded: “Yes, sir! May I have another?” It hasn’t been hard to find left-wing candidates, many of them openly socialist, who are more than willing to administer the punishment. What about citizens who are tired of being whacked?

Charles Cornish-Dale

France’s hidden immigration reality

A people was there, stable, occupying the same territory for fifteen or twenty centuries. And suddenly, very quickly, in one or two generations, one or more other peoples substitute themselves for it. It is replaced, it is no longer itself. Those are the words of Renaud Camus, France’s most controversial living intellectual. They describe a process he’s called “the Great Replacement.” He coined the term in 2010. Since then, the term has been bitterly disputed. Now, though, it’s becoming harder and harder to deny.

Tuesday

2 Jun 2026

Lois McLatchie Miller

Bonnie Blue and the truth about Britain’s pro-life movement

Bonnie Blue has achieved something nigh impossible in today’s political landscape – she has united Britain under one singular opinion: unilateral disgust. After faking a pregnancy, the "adult content star" is now, apparently, genuinely expecting a baby due in November. Far from halting her explicit internet sex stunts to prepare for motherhood, Bonnie Blue has doubled down – announcing her intent to host an X-rated "golden baby shower," featuring all manner of bodily fluids. The unborn baby carried in her belly is seemingly to become a fetish prop for a porn party. He’s being exploited for profit within the sex industry before he’s even been born.

Mark Galeotti

Has America been hacking the phones of Kremlin officials?

In 2014, Vladimir Putin notoriously described the internet as originally a "special project of the CIA" that "is still developing as such." He is also averse to mobile phones, not using or owning one himself and banning them from his offices. These two concerns have come together in today’s announcement by the Federal Security Service (FSB) that it had uncovered a massive "multi-level operation" to hack the smartphones of Russian officials. The FSB’s official announcement states that: Using the technical capabilities of large international IT corporations and mobile communications, representatives of foreign intelligence agencies carried out the covert, unauthorized collection of various types of information from the devices of cyberattack targets.

Freddy Gray

Who is Usha Vance?

Freddy is joined by Sarah Beth Spraggins to discuss her piece on Usha Vance, the wife of J.D. Vance who could be in line to be the next first lady.

Gus Carter

The treatment of Henry Nowak’s killer was all about race

"How can you say they’re not racist?" a young Asian woman shouted from the public gallery. Vickrum Digwa had just been led down to the cells to serve a life sentence and an elderly man in a turban was calling his lawyer "a fucking bean head." The tatty pinewood interior of the courtroom in Southampton, England, was descending, once again, into allegations of racism. Vickrum Digwa will serve at least 21 years in prison for the murder of Henry Nowak. Last December, Digwa repeatedly stabbed the 18-year-old student with a ceremonial Sikh dagger. He then filmed Henry as he bled out, goading him. When police arrived, Digwa claimed that Henry had been racially abusive and had knocked his turban off.