President Trump’s first two months back in the Oval Office have been a whirlwind of unprecedented executive action. This has predictably ignited forceful reactions from Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media, attacks which nevertheless have yet to significantly …
Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ will fail
President Trump has dubbed 2 April, when his new tariffs go into effect, “Liberation Day”. While many investors, financial analysts, and consumers are in panic mode, Trump’s pitch to the industrial working class remains blunt: over the last half century, …
How Elon Musk lost the plot
I once believed that the rise of the Tech Right was going to make conservatism smarter, orienting the Right toward a future of innovation and free-market dynamism. The movement wields great influence on the second Trump administration, most notably in …
Will New York abandon the Democrats?
If the Trumpian message of decay and decline has any resonance, it’s in places like Hunts Point. Emerging from the subway here in the South Bronx, I see a man on a payphone pleading to speak with a psychotherapist. Another …
Donald Trump’s strange sincerity
The faster American culture spreads, the less foreigners seem to understand it. In October, the Irish novelist Anne Enright shared a few thoughts about the US elections. “[T]hese politics are playing out in some secret part of the American psyche,” …
Can Trump flip the unions?
The thick-necked union boss, who’s short on manners and long on tough talk and machismo, is in many ways an endangered American archetype. Amid rampant political correctness and professionalisation, they seem like anachronisms from a lost age; Sean O’Brien, president …
The new Donald Trump didn’t last long
“I’m not supposed to be here.” “Yes you are!” the crowd chanted back.
Six days before last night’s speech, Republican National Convention volunteers were in the middle of receiving training when news landed of the assassination attempt and they hit …
Car dealers will decide America’s future
Ohio Republicans have a new candidate for US Senator: Bernie Moreno, who was endorsed by Donald Trump over establishment-backed Matt Dolan. With Moreno’s victory in last week’s hotly contested primary, the party’s MAGA faction has further entrenched its hold on …
Women are losing the abortion election
Ever since the Dobbs decision redefined the reproductive rights of American women, the issue of choice has started to resemble a frantic game of ping-pong. In red states, Republican-controlled senates immediately got busy passing abortion bans, sometimes in direct opposition …
Is Iowa the next step to civil war?
In the silence of the Civil War’s Antietam battlefield on a winter day, bucolic hills give way to rows of small, white gravestones in the nearby cemetery. Wandering over the deadliest ground in American history, a melancholy visitor may be …
Immigration is religion’s only hope
When my father was going through the process of becoming an Elder in the United Methodist Church, he was required to take courses on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. One course involved a presentation on how white people needed to make …
Why women and minorities are buying guns
Guns have been tied to American identity ever since the nation declared independence. But from Buffalo Bill to Rambo, the rugged, gun-toting individual has been mythologised by the gun lobby almost exclusively as a white male. And this myth was …
Manchin’s No Labels party could backfire
Third-party candidates in America don’t make history. But last week the senior senator for West Virginia made headlines, at least. Joe Manchin is hinting that he might run for the presidency in 2024, representing a new “No Labels” party advocating …
Is Casey DeSantis the next Jackie Kennedy?
The critics of Casey DeSantis, wife to Republican presidential hopeful, Ron, can’t decide which derogatory stereotype they think best describes her. She’s been everything from a conniving Lady Macbeth in the carapace of a Disney princess, to a wannabe glamour …
The fantasy of dating a Republican
More than 20 years before the advent of Tinder, an MTV show called Singled Out offered an unwittingly prescient insight into the dangers of algorithmic dating. The premise was simple: a dating pool of 50 potential suitors milled around in …
