Starmer Ascends: Britain Hands the Keys to a Human Lawyer, Earth Scarcely Notices By Our Correspondent, still recovering from the last five UK Prime Ministers in as many fiscal quarters LONDON—In the early hours of 5 July, Sir Keir Starmer walked into Downing Street looking like a man who had remembered to bring the correct…
Chequers: The Buckinghamshire Bungalow Where Empires Go to Die Quietly By the time any international correspondent has filed copy from Chequers, the 16th-century manor house in the Chilterns looks less like a weekend retreat and more like a hospice ward for British political ambition. The wood-panelled drawing rooms, the manicured lawns, the air thick with…
The Cartographer’s Revenge: How Gerrymandering Went Global and Why Your Vote Is Now a Möbius Strip By the time a ballot box closes in Tallinn, a map has already been redrawn in Lagos. By the time a recount finishes in Jakarta, a district in Warsaw has sprouted new limbs like a municipal octopus. Gerrymandering—once the…
The World’s Favorite Reality Show: Why Trump’s Poll Numbers Still Matter (Even If You’d Rather They Didn’t) While Americans obsess over their former president’s approval ratings with the fervor of teenagers checking Instagram likes, the rest of us watch from the cheap seats of this tragicomedy, popcorn in hand, wondering when the intermission might finally…
From Bangkok to Berlin, the name Tammy Duckworth is spoken with the hushed reverence usually reserved for ex-Special Forces operatives or people who’ve successfully returned IKEA furniture. A U.S. senator from Illinois, Iraq War helicopter pilot, double amputee, Purple-Heart recipient, and the first sitting senator to give birth while in office, Duckworth has become a…
Penny Mordaunt and the Global Art of Falling on One’s Ceremonial Sword By Our Special Correspondent, still jet-lagged from watching Britannia rearrange the deckchairs LONDON—When Penny Mordaunt strode into Westminster last week clutching a 17th-century sword the size of a small flagpole, half the planet wondered if the British had finally decided to auction off…
The Marco Rubio Traveling Circus: A Floridian in the Global Funhouse By Diego “Weathered Passport” Valdez, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Miami — The first thing you notice when you land at MIA is that even the palm trees seem faintly embarrassed. They know they’re props in a stage set that doubles as the seventh-largest economy…
Eric Swalwell, the Californian congressman who once ran for president on a platform of “ban the guns, baby,” has become something of an international Rorschach test. From Brussels to Beijing, observers peer at him and see whatever they most fear or covet: an avatar of American overreach, a walking data-breach cautionary tale, or simply the…
Rand Paul’s Lonely Filibuster: One Kentucky Ophthalmologist vs. the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Entire Planet’s Attention Span By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic WASHINGTON—While the rest of the world was busy pricing eggs, dodging hypersonic missiles, or wondering whether its currency would still exist by Thursday, Senator Rand Paul…
Senator Bill Cassidy and the Theater of American Healthcare By C. L. Marlowe, International Affairs Desk, Dave’s Locker PARIS—From a café terrace overlooking the Seine, where the house red is cheaper than a Band-Aid in Cleveland, Senator William “Bill” Cassidy looks less like a healer and more like an understudy who keeps forgetting his lines….
The Septuagenarian Elephant in Every Room: How One Man’s Birth Certificate Became a Global Geopolitical Flashpoint While most 77-year-olds argue with pigeons in the park about breadcrumb subsidies, Donald J. Trump has transformed his golden years into what international observers diplomatically call “a fascinating case study in geriatric geopolitics.” From Tokyo trading floors to Berlin…
Washington, D.C. – In a city that excels at turning oxygen into gridlock, the United States Congress has once again pulled the emergency brake on its own government, shuttering offices and sending federal employees home with nothing but a curt “we’ll call you.” The immediate trigger this time—Democrats balking at the House Republican budget ransom…
