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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Doug Bandow |Yascha Mounk |Terry Barnes |Grace Curley
The federal government is not becoming Office Space — yet. The Elon Musk-led effort to require all federal government employees to report back with what exactly they do here was met with pushback from throughout the administration, including from several of President Trump’s new appointees. The Office of Personnel Management’s email, with the subject line, “What did you do last week?” mirrors how Musk has operated companies he owns, like Twitter/X, where he asked similar questions.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Meghan Murphy |Orson Fry |Yascha Mounk |Terry Barnes
You couldn’t have written a better comedy script than the one playing out in the apparently real war that has erupted between America and its usually irrelevant northern cousin. The hockey rink is particularly sacred ground for Canadians, which makes the ego hit doled out by President Donald Trump this week all the more painful.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Derek VanBuskirk |Yascha Mounk |Terry Barnes |Grace Curley
National Harbor, MarylandPresident Donald Trump capstoned a three-day CPAC pep rally with a message of… well, Trump. To be fair, that’s what virtually everybody else at the conference was speaking about too. The ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort was packed. In the build-up members of the Trump administration and world leaders had taken the stage, but make no mistake: the attendees were here to see the president himself. Trump entered to rapturous applause.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Melanie McDonagh |Daniel McCarthy |Ayaan Hirsi Ali |Terry Barnes
The Pope’s autobiography is out and it’s still not entirely clear why. Carlo Musso, the “co-author” of Hope: The Autobiography, says that it was originally intended to be published after his death, but on account of “the new Jubilee of Hope” (the Jubilee Year), and the “circumstances of this moment” (i.e. him not dying), it’s been brought forward.
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Jan 11, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Stewart McDonald |Katja Hoyer |Douglas Murray |Terry Barnes
As the second Trump term looms in the near distance, it’s become a bit of a cliché to say that “a stopped clock is right twice a day.” Pinko liberal Nats like myself have had to get used to the fact that for all our disagreements with the man on policy and style, there are certain areas where we fundamentally agree.
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Jan 9, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Terry Barnes |Katy Balls |Freddy Gray |Charles Lipson
At a time when Donald Trump threatens to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal, China is flexing its military and economic muscles, Britain is in a state of seemingly permanent political crisis, Los Angeles tragically burns, and murderous conflicts still ravage Ukraine and the Middle East, here in Australia just one issue dominates public debate this week: whether a true Australian has the right to reserve beach space by setting up an American-style beach shelter — a cabana — to stake a claim,...
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Dec 24, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Terry Barnes
MelbourneAs Christmas comes around again, we will discover that Australia is no longer a Christian country. According to the most recent census in 2021, Christianity is not a majority faith here and, of its denominations, none has declined more rapidly than Anglicanism — which has lost more than a third of its declared adherents since the turn of this century. Meanwhile, steadily growing non-Christian faiths are headed by Islam, which claimed over 3 percent of Australians in 2021.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Charles Lipson |Philip Patrick |Jim Lawley |Terry Barnes
Vice President Kamala Harris is almost three weeks into her presidential campaign and not only has she failed to hold an unscripted press conference or sit for a media interview, she also has zero policy positions on her campaign website.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Philip Patrick |Jim Lawley |Terry Barnes |Ben Domenech
Nagasaki’s Peace Park held a ceremony today to mark the seventy-ninth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city (which killed 74,000 people). It was a sombre and moving occasion, as it always is, and one usually attended by high level representatives of all nations. This year was different though: the ambassadors of the US, UK and Israel were elsewhere, holding their own memorial at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, 750 miles away.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Jim Lawley |Terry Barnes |Ben Domenech |Rupert Christiansen
Axios announced in an email to staff this week that they are laying off 10 percent of their workforce — and to add insult to injury, the announcement was stylized like one of their editorial products. “Why it matters: We’re eliminating about 50 positions to get ahead of tectonic shifts in the media, technology, and reader needs/habits,” the email read. The canned staffers were also informed via email rather than in an in-person meeting, which Axios claimed was for logistical reasons. It gets worse.
