The Spectator 🇺🇸

US news and opinion from The @Spectator – the finest writing from the world’s oldest English-language magazine.

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

Our July 6 edition commemorating America at 250 has just gone to press. Featuring:

🇺🇸 Christopher Caldwell
🇺🇸 Andrew Cockburn
🇺🇸 @Grimezsz
🇺🇸 @BryanCranston
🇺🇸 Aaron Paul
🇺🇸 @default_friend
🇺🇸 @michaelbd
🇺🇸 Patrick Allitt
🇺🇸 @curtis_yarvin

And many more.

Subscribe: https://t.co/P6pLVvJLGU

[Maud Maron @MaudMaron]

“The Carroll case makes clear to every well-funded political operative in America that the courthouse is a viable arena for political gamesmanship – that even a weak case, pursued with enough money and media support, can deliver a trophy.” My words 👇 https://t.co/qxOFx3iOSO

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

https://t.co/6MqP9G2Nv2

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

Will Vance regret being the face of the Iran deal?

“Trump said this week that, if the deal fails, he will ‘blame J.D.’ He was only half-joking. Certainly, a lot of Republicans will do exactly that. But Vance is betting that, as America’s relationship with Israel sours, being held responsible for the deal now might not necessarily wreck his presidential ambitions later. The next 60 days of ‘technical negotiations’ – and ceasefires starting and ending – should provide some indication as to whether that gamble will pay off,” writes @Freddygray31

Article | https://t.co/oJTU8lDRUn

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

Why is the Italian media spreading fake news about Churchill?

"In the course of that investigation I came across the conspiracy theory that is known in Italy as ‘the Churchill-Mussolini correspondence’. According to this Italian fantasy, Churchill and Mussolini exchanged letters before and during the war in which Churchill offered all sorts of highly embarrassing nonsense to Mussolini," writes Nicholas Farrell.

Article | https://t.co/MDQlXIfpv7

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

As I scribble these words on a train to London, I’m wearing a lightweight Italian wool suit, a shirt from Gieves & Hawkes, a silk spotty tie and a pair of Church’s suede brogues. You might mistake me for a prosperous Neapolitan gentleman of a certain age. But in fact, I’m a charity-shop dandy – my outfit came to less than £60. That’s less than a pair of new trainers for my teenage daughter. I’m particularly pleased with the shoes, which I picked up locally for £30. A new pair would set you back £700.

If you’re not too grand to buy secondhand, it’s actually far easier and cheaper for men to dress smartly than to be slovenly. I learned this important fact in my early twenties. Looking to stand out and hopefully get promoted at my job in publishing, I began wearing a jacket and tie around the office. It worked. People assumed I was more important than I actually was.

✍️ @HenryGJeffreys
Article | https://t.co/kZ81XblYRp

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

Serena Williams is arguably the greatest female tennis player of all time – a seven-time Wimbledon champion and winner of an astonishing 23 Grand Slam titles in all. Even so, should she have been given a wild card to enter this year’s Wimbledon championship? No, not really: a player who has been out of competition for years should not receive a direct entry into a Grand Slam without even playing a proper warm-up tournament. It smacks of a decision based on nostalgia and a desire for cheap headlines on the part of the All England Club.

Wimbledon relies more than ever on marquee names to attract a global TV audience, and they don’t come much bigger than Williams. It is, however, a slap in the face for many younger, and far less famous, tennis players who slog their way through the tennis circuit in the hope of a once-in-a-lifetime wild card for Wimbledon.

✍️ Jawad Iqbal
Article | https://t.co/LcVQjOJDNJ

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

America is to blame for the heatwave that has caused so much misery in France in the last fortnight. Audrey Pulvar, the Socialist deputy mayor of Paris, took to social media at the weekend, addressing a letter to “dear American journalists” who have been making fun of Paris because the city doesn’t have air conditioning. “This is so rich!” exclaimed Pulvar. “You bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing. Your cities, which are 90 percent air conditioned, are not unrelated to this.”

It sounds like Madame Pulvar is a little hot and bothered, which isn’t surprising given the furnace that France has become. In Chablis, a little south of where I live in Burgundy, the temperature hit 41.6°C (107°F) on Saturday, a regional record for June. The vines, according to one wine-grower, are “starting to show signs of stress.”

✍️ Gavin Mortimer
Article | https://t.co/HdxI4QJ9Wq

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

In January 2027, Benjamin Netanyahu could leave office for the final time. In the middle of a corruption trial at home and facing arrest in many countries due to an International Criminal Court warrant, Netanyahu can’t spend his retirement traveling the world or relaxing at home.

Some have speculated that Bibi, who’s grown to enjoy the finer things in life, might follow in the footsteps of the two Yairs – his younger son Yair and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro – and head off to a luxurious exile in Florida, sheltered by the Trump administration from his worries at home and abroad.

Of course, this all depends on whether he loses the election. Israel likely goes to the polls in October, after a rare full parliamentary term, and Netanyahu is doing everything he can to make sure the vote doesn’t happen even a few weeks sooner, making very unpopular deals just to buy a few more days in power.

✍️ Arieh Kovler
Article | https://t.co/brjJ5tQCOo

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

A force of 10,000 inspectors is being recruited to weed out foreigners: door-to-door across the nation, they will check mines, factories and shops, rounding up those without papers for deportation. Oh, and the target will be black people!

Trump madness? Marine le Pen? No, this is South Africa and a project launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa to expel millions of black migrants from across the rest of Africa who have jumped the border or overstayed their visa.

It’s Africa’s answer to ICE, though you won’t find many people protesting: quite the opposite.

✍️ Geoff Hill
Article | https://t.co/qVtQnm5end

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

In a recent conversation with Interview magazine, Madonna said that “I was supposed to make a movie about my life. I worked on my script for two years and spent two years at Universal Studios with the line producers doing budgeting and casting. We had a falling out, me and Universal, regarding budget because I needed – I’ve had an extraordinary life. I’ve had a huge life, so I needed a big budget.” The film has been rumored for a considerable time, with Garner going through a grueling ‘Madonna boot camp’ at which she sang and danced and struck poses to get the role. But since then, tumbleweed.

✍️ @alexlarman
Article | https://t.co/BCj5yzwGTu

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

"They’re taking that down,” says Keith Krach when I ask if the White House’s UFC stage will still be up on July 4, as Donald Trump had suggested. “I think they’re disassembling it right now.” Krach is chief executive of Freedom 250 and responsible for planning events to mark America’s 250th birthday.

Well, partially responsible. The story of America’s birthday party is a complicated one, involving multiple “bipartisan” planning organizations with similar names, canceled acts and branding disputes.

✍️ @mattjpfmcdonald
Article | https://t.co/U0S17KU4tC

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

The Spectator was there at the founding of America. George Washington had six copies of the original 18th-century Spectator at his Mount Vernon estate and read them often. He shared with Joseph Addison, The Spectator’s co-publisher, an interest in how to educate ideal citizens: men and women with wit and grit.

Young Washington read The Spectator in the hope of bettering himself, too. Both of his older half-brothers had been educated in England and he wished also for the manners and polish of an English gentleman. For the pioneering, self-improving men who would go on to create an independent America, the 18th-century Spectator was both an education and a guide. “I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography. ‘I thought the Writing excellent, and wish’d if possible to imitate it.’

That’s quite an understatement. Franklin would copy out Spectator articles, memorize them, even put them into verse. In his curriculum for the Philadelphia Academy, “Sketch of an English School,” he stated that younger boys ought to read “some of the easier Spectators,” while the older students were to learn the “sentiments of a Spectator” and be able to write in its style.

✍️@GusCarter
Article | https://t.co/pIsoAZFUFd

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

A few years ago, when ChatGPT and Claude were beginning to take off, some tech leaders seemed to develop a curious interest in oceanography. Consider, for instance, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s suggestion in 2023 that AI ought to be compared to a “tidal wave”; or Mustafa Suleyman’s book on AI, The Coming Wave (2024), in which the DeepMind cofounder talks urgently about an “impending deluge” (while repeatedly warning us that the “wave is coming,” and, even more alarmingly, “the coming wave really is coming.”)

✍️Christopher Webb

Article: https://t.co/D0Wpp0LmIg

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

Freedom 250's "Great American State Fair" opened on the National Mall yesterday – just not with a concert, as initially planned. Instead, Donald Trump gave a half-hour speech, telling the crowd, "We have the greatest people on earth," as fighter jets and B-2 bombers flew overhead.

There was a lot of talk of "the greatest" from the President's warm-up acts. The greatest firework celebration, the greatest state fair, the greatest kickoff, the greatest president, the greatest country. Speaker after speaker drummed that word into the heads of the few thousand-strong crowd.

✍️ Sabrina Philip

Article: https://t.co/CDf4IG4O47

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

Iran is looking increasingly Danish, which sounds like a strange thing to say. What could Iran (a theological dictatorship which massacred 30,000 of its citizens earlier this year) and Denmark (a social democracy which is one of the world’s most generous foreign aid donors) possibly have in common?

But Iran’s theologians like to keep themselves half a millennium back from contemporary mores. It’s not today’s hygge-loving Denmark which Iran resembles, but a previous incarnation: the Denmark which for centuries operated a highly profitable toll booth across the two-and-a-half mile wide Danish Straits, payable at the customs house at Hamlet’s castle, Kronborg, at Elsinore.

✍️James Lewisohn

Article: https://t.co/gaXxdxVDAR

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

Jack Schlossberg was, until yesterday, a high-profile candidate in New York’s 12th congressional district who seemingly had everything you might need for a modern political career: a winning smile, a Kennedy connection, an engaging social media presence.

The only thing he was missing? Actual policies on which to predicate his campaign.

✍️ @AnastasiaHopeB
Article | https://t.co/HSOmiZqCtQ

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

Britain and France have rewritten the “one in, one out” migrant deal nearly a year after it came into effect. The treaty, described as “groundbreaking” by both countries last summer, has struggled to stem the numbers of migrants heading from France to England in small boats.

It soon became apparent that the deal contained a loophole that enabled a handful of deported migrants to return to Britain in the back of a lorry. Britain’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has agreed with her French counterpart, Laurent Nuñez, to close this loophole by tweaking the treaty to stipulate that its terms apply to any returning migrant regardless of whether they enter a second time by boat or by vehicle.

✍️Gavin Mortimer

Article: https://t.co/uXsBuSiA6g

[The Spectator @spectator]

The President ordered that a new blue coating be applied to the pool's base, which has already started flaking. In a testy exchange with CBS's Ed O'Keefe yesterday, Trump said that the contractors who installed the new surface were not to blame. "We had vandalism," he said. "Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind.".

"Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?" he wondered aloud. Quite. The President also said that someone had put "fertilizer in the water" which attracted the algae that turned the pool green.

"Six people have been arrested, and seven people have been cited, for the damage they did to our Country's now beautiful Reflecting Pool," Trump wrote on Truth Social this morning.

"The 350 foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors, is actually numerous slashes over a very long 350 foot length. " He then shared some images of the pool appearing clear again.

✍️ Cockburn

Article | https://t.co/dPfwDaLslL

[The Spectator 🇺🇸 @TheSpectator]

In recent months, members of the Democratic Socialists of America have been elected as mayors in New York City and Seattle, and won the Democratic primary for mayor of Washington, DC last week. DSA member Nithya Raman is leading in polls against incumbent Karen Bass in the November race for mayor of Los Angeles.

Emboldened by its victories this week, you can now expect its army of foot soldiers will be one of the most powerful forces in Democratic primaries, capable of intimidating Democratic officeholders into backing many of the DSA’s radical views.

Earlier this month, the DSA’s leadership issued an updated platform that calls for abolishing the US Senate, defunding the Pentagon, offering universal amnesty to illegal immigrants, transferring the ownership of major corporations to the public and replacing “the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” It also includes a demand that police budgets be cut “annually to zero.”

✍️ @johnfund
Article | https://t.co/v7OnJ8ykBi