America

In the coming hours, Nancy Pelosi is expected to arrive in Taiwan. The plane that is thought to be carrying her is approaching the island from the east to avoid the Taiwan Strait and any attempt by the Chinese to fly close to her. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, she will be the most senior US figure to visit Taipei this century. The economic effects of a Taiwan invasion would dwarf those of the Russian invasion of Ukraine Beijing is furious about Pelosi’s decision to go. It has warned that its military ‘won’t sit idly by’ if she does touch down and is planning various displays of military

The 6 January hearings are a bit of a kangaroo court, since no one is trying to poke holes in the witnesses, as a barrister would do. Still, the picture that has emerged of a rage-filled narcissist in the White House is so devastating that it’s made Never Trumpers out of former Trump supporters. That might seem to hurt the Republicans, but it would be to the party’s advantage if it keeps Trump out of a 2024 race that he would probably lose. The hearings might thus end up biting the Democrats. The hearings have also had the unintended effect of making heroes out of the Republicans who’ve stood up

As the Tory leadership candidates tussle over China, it is well worth reading this essay by the US strategist Hal Brands, who says that contrary to the common perception, the first world war did not happen by accident. Rather it was a product of ‘a determined but anxious Germany… willing to take risks to achieve goals it could not attain through peaceful means.’ The obvious parallel today is with China. It is a peaking power and it may well choose to take risks sooner rather than later. The US, at the moment, is in danger of sending the wrong signals. Last week’s suggestion that Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House,

Washington, DC Prince Harry is once again mouthing off about American politics despite a rudimentary understanding – at best – of our founding principles. The pampered Brit delivered a speech at the United Nations on Monday insisting that we are witnessing a ‘rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States’. Prince Harry, who only lives here because his wife dreams of doing animated voiceovers for Netflix, routinely opines on our constitution with all of the British pomposity that led to the Revolutionary War. Newsflash: Americans do not like it when foreigners tell us what to do or how we should feel, and yet Prince Harry (do I even have to

Scandal is such a wonderful driver of human emotions. Just think of the number of things you get to feel in one go: horror, disgust, relief, superiority, guilt and glee, to name just a few. All these flooded through a portion of the American public again this week when a new video emerged of Hunter Biden. Hunter is the sole surviving son of President Joe Biden and it is uncontentious to say that he is a tortured soul. His mother and his one-year-old sister died in a car crash in 1972. Hunter and his older brother Beau were injured but they survived. Beau died of cancer at the age of

I’m going to do something that will likely annoy you, dear reader: I am going to make an argument about a certain class of people without naming names. If I do name names, any response will devolve into a debate over whether I am unfairly tarring the individuals in question. That’s beside the point, because the phenomenon in question is undoubtedly real. That phenomenon is anti-wokeness curdling into reactionary crankery. Don’t get me wrong: as I’ve previously written, I think there’s a moral panic afoot in many liberal institutions. Whether you want to call it ‘wokeness’ or something else, it seems undeniably the case that a culture of illiberalism has corroded

In the week since Roe vs Wade was overturned, you’ve hardly been able to switch on the news or open a paper without hearing British politicians and commentators decrying the decision. Almost every woman I know was furious after hearing the news; I’m sure I wasn’t alone in failing to hold back a few tears of frustration at this eroding of established rights. But while we might feel – deeply, viscerally – for our cousins across the pond, we often forget about the difficulties women in our own country still face. Until October 2019, women in Northern Ireland who needed abortions were either forced to travel outside the province or

If you had to take a guess on which American political party would produce the first Mexican-born Congresswoman, which one would it be? The Democrats? Or the party of Donald Trump? As though to prove that nothing in American politics today is predictable, it is indeed the latter. Two weeks ago Mayra Flores flipped a Democrat-friendly Texas Congressional seat in a special election and became both the first Republican Latina representative from the state of Texas and the first Mexican-born member of the House. She even thanked Trump for her victory. Everything about her win bucks the expectations of the country that now exist outside its borders. For instance, consider

Politicians are lining up to condemn the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Activists are warning us that this is the start of a fresh assault on abortion rights in Britain. What starts in the core spreads to the periphery; a new wave of pro-life policies will soon be here. What’s less clear is where this wave is meant to come from, given that every major British party is opposed to the Supreme Court decision. Once again, Westminster politics has mistaken Britain for America. The Conservative party may be in hoc to a blonde tousle-haired populist, but it isn’t quietly stacking the judiciary with pro-life justices in order

Now that the horror of the Uvalde school shooting in Texas has begun to ebb away, as it always does, it is easy to think that things have returned to normal. And in America, they certainly have returned to normal. That is to say, the mass shootings continue, at the rate of about 11 a week, with a total of around 300 so far this year. As things stand, America is on course for its deadliest year of gun violence ever (equalling last year). Here are a few details of just some of these slayings. At the beginning of this June, an angry patient in Tulsa, Oklahoma shot dead his

Washington, DC Amid the recent orgy of violence across America, it was the carjackings that finally got me. Lost amid all the mass shootings and gang slayings of late has been another wave of crime: vehicle thefts. In Washington DC, carjackings in 2021 were up by a third over 2019, while in nearby Alexandria a motorist made national news after he shot two boys at a gas station who were trying to lift his car. In Chicago, 1,900 vehicles were jacked just last year, which is eye-wateringly high even by that city’s grim standards. There is an inhumanity at work in this country that’s as stark as anything I’ve seen in