The Spectator World • 21st April 2025

Trump takes a hammer to the universities

Some threatened sanctions are readily defensible, such as demanding better protection for Jewish students and eliminating discrimination in admissions, hiring and promotion. Some are not, such as demanding intrusive…President Trump has already dropped the first hammer on Harvard. He’s ready to drop the whole tool chest on a whole slew of universities – and it won’t be pretty.

The Spectator World • 14th April 2025

How to deal with the student mob

The line between free speech and violence is clear. Too few university leaders and public officials are trying to uphold it. We can see the results in vile, anti-Semitic riots on campuses. This kind of violence, intimidation, harassment, and disruption of education is unacceptable in our democracy. Only serious punishment will deter it.

The Spectator World • 10th April 2025

Trump’s ‘on-again, off-again’ presidency

Threatening higher tariffs is a bold political move, characteristic of the Trump presidency. The question now is whether the threat will pay off with lots of good bilateral trade deals (with nearly all countries) and isolate China, which chose to retaliate.

The Spectator World • 31st March 2025

Trump only harms himself by floating the idea of a third term

It's unconstitutional. And it's politically dumb even to suggest yet another race.

The Spectator World • 27th March 2025

PBS and NPR should never have received public funding

The debate about partisan bias at PBS and NPR is important – the bias itself is obvious – but that’s not the most important point. What matters most is that democratic governments have no business funding or controlling news channels directed at their own citizens. Those channels should be privately owned…There is no way a Republican-controlled House and Senate will keep pouring money into networks they believe hate them. They know that hatred is warmly reciprocated.Congress has been mulling the...

Wall Street Journal • 18th March 2025

What's New about Trump's Political Communications

What's New about Trump Adminstration's Communications?
1. Top officials on TV and social media constantly
2. They are doing live spots and social media, bypassing all the usual media filters
3. Their presentations are as blunt as their policies
They are the first administration to grasp the new technology of communication.

The Spectator World • 14th March 2025

Will Putin give peace a chance?

The front lines are frozen but the killing continues. Pres. Trump campaigned by promising to end the slaughter and is trying to mediate. Zelensky's initially balked at the US ceasefire proposal but then caved under US Pressure. Putin is still saying “no” and issuing maximalist demands. Now comes Trump’s pressure on him. (To receive these columns free, drop me at note at charles.lipson AT Gmail)

The Spectator World • 10th March 2025

Columbia exemplifies the failure of universities

At our universities, the barbarians are inside the gates. Their disruptions and suppression of alternative views are antithetical to the very purpose of higher education. The problem extends well beyond Columbia, well beyond the hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, the worst actors have plenty of support from faculty and silence from administrators who should know better.

The Spectator World • 5th March 2025

Donald Trump calls for a renewal of American patriotism

Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was the most powerful, rousing and pointed of any presidential address in decades. “America is back… and we are just getting started,” it began, capturing the theme of the night. The address ended with a peroration that his administration would “take up the righteous cause of American liberty” and “fight, fight, fight for a country our citizens’ believe in and deserve.” Our country’s “Golden Age,” he said, ”has just begun.”Don...

The Spectator World • 25th February 2025

What’s behind the vicious attacks on Elon Musk?

Attacking Musk is an indirect way to attack a popular president and, by blasting his wealth, buff up the Democrats' populist credentials The more Musk and Trump succeed, the worse for Democrats.

The Telegraph • 20th February 2025

Democrats built America’s over-mighty presidency. Now Trump is bending it to his will

The best way to understand president Trump’s ambitious goals is to understand how they alter the massive changes made to America’s government over the past century – and how they also leave many of those profound changes untouched.Trump’s policy goals are obvious. He campaigned and won on promises to reduce the government’s bloat, cost, and regulatory burdens. He promised to root out fraud and corruption, and he’s doing it with Elon Musk and Doge. His Cabinet Secretaries will implement those pla...

The Spectator World • 17th February 2025

Trump’s presidency is an ink-blot test for America

Americans are being given a national ink-blot test about our politics. Their answers tell us how a divided country sees that landscape and what they think of Pres. Trump’s bold efforts to reshape it. Trump has reshaped his party, and what those Republicans now see is a strong leaders fulfilling his campaign promises. Democrats see a dictator dismantling the administrative state they built and staffed. Those are the ink blots on the walls of our politics today. It’s a Rorschach test, and Americans will take it the next time they go to the polls.

The Spectator World • 12th February 2025

DoGE will only work when government agencies compete

The sluggishness and dysfunction across our government is unmistakable. One proposed solution is to eliminate the duplication of functions. We have a better idea. Make agencies compete for customers, just like private firms do.

The Telegraph • 11th February 2025

Democrats loved ‘unelected power’ until Trump turned their own weapons against them

Trump and his team can only act so aggressively, across so much of American government and American life, because they have grasped the tools created by Democrats and progressive advocates over the past century. Of course, Trump is using those tools in ways their architects never anticipated, branding them with irony.

The Spectator World • 9th February 2025

The deeper meaning behind Trump’s blizzard of actions

Here is a summary in case you are keeping score. Trump has done more in a few weeks than any president in history. He is acting swiftly before his political capital dissipates. He has two overriding goals: to build a lasting MAGA movement and to roll back the bureaucratic state.

The Telegraph • 29th January 2025

Trump’s first 10 days have overwhelmed the Democrats – and the liberal media

Trump is moving so fast on so many issues at once, it’s hard to single out what matters most. Here are four of the new administration’s most important initiatives, and why Trump is able to move on them so swiftly.

The Spectator World • 24th January 2025

When government officials are threatened, they deserve protection

If public officials (today's or yesterday's) are threatened because of what they did in office, they deserve protection. They may not deserve our gratitude. They may not deserve our thanks and appreciation. That depends on…When US officials and former officials face lethal dangers for the work they did in office, they deserve protection from the country they served. That’s true whether they served the country well or poorly, whether they can pay fo...

The Spectator World • 21st January 2025

President Trump’s ‘First Hundred Hours’

The media has focused on the substance of Trump's Exeecutive Orders, and understandably so. But their substantive content is only half the story. The other half is the swift, decisive process.

The Spectator World • 17th January 2025

Biden opens the jailhouse door

Joe Biden is not going gently into that dark night, politically or cognitively. He is going down with large, bold actions. The latest is a mass commutation for some 2,500 “nonviolent drug offenders.” Biden’s justification is that they were sentenced under laws that have now been overturned as the country has moved to more lenient treatment of all drug of...

The Telegraph • 15th January 2025

Joe Biden’s reputation is already in tatters. History’s judgment will be even harsher

As memories of American presidents fade, only a few salient thoughts linger about each one. Voters are too busy complaining about the next president to remember much more.Richard Nixon is remembered for Watergate, and Gerald Ford for pardoning him. Lyndon Johnson is remembered for the Civil Rights laws of the mid-1960s, the Vietnam War, and the “Great Society” welfare programmes.Jimmy Carter will be remembered, after the encomiums for his recent death fade away, for the gas crisis, Iranian hosta...

The Spectator World • 13th January 2025

When is a fire an earthquake?

The fire now engulfing L.A. will soon engulf the politicians who failed to protect them. Voters will hold Newsom and Bass responsible for failed leadership, misplaced priorities, the misuse of high tax revenues (no one can say Californians are undertaxed), and policy choices that failed.

The Spectator World • 5th January 2025

What is DoGE’s hardest task?

DOGE’s hardest task is not cutting the excess federal payroll but cutting excess federal regulations. To succeed, DOGE needs to focus on four overriding goals:
(1) Reducing the dead-weight drag of regulations on the economy without removing essential safeguards; (2) Making significant changes, not minor ones; (3) Ensuring those changes have an enduring impact by making them difficult to reverse; and (4) Increasing democratic oversight of future rule-making, a legislative responsibility that Congress has wrongfully (and perhaps unconstitutionally) abdicated.

The Spectator World • 30th December 2024

The legacy of Jimmy Carter

His president was a corrective from the Nixon years but failure in its own right. He was remarkable in forging a productive life after leaving office. Instead of grifting and selling access to policymakers, like so many former politicians do today, he had a distinguished second career promoting and monitoring democratic elections around the world.

The Spectator World • 23rd December 2024

The winners and losers in the fight to keep the government open

The first two Continuing Resolutions failed because they contained a trainload of pork, a steaming pile of non-essential provisions that rank-and-file Republicans refused to support. They learned about the bill’s hidden provisions thanks to a new media landscape, which featured blogs and podcasts with huge audiences, free speech on “X,” and the use of AI (specifically Elon Musk’s Grok) to undercover what was in the bill. The problems will come in a couple of months when the short-term measure ends.