American Spectator

President Trump’s launch of Trump Accounts represents a promising forward-thinking pro-family and pro-growth initiative for the American people. These new tax-advantaged investment accounts for children give every eligible American kid a literal stake in the success of our economy from day one. With a government-seeded $1,000 contribution and the ability for families to add more, these accounts are invested in low-cost, broad U.S. stock market ETFs. While the focus on cost is understandabl

Elon Musk has created — and lost — more paper wealth than anyone in history, with most of that loss occurring in just four weeks. His net worth dropped by an amount nearly equal to the combined fortunes of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Though Musk remains the world’s richest person, these wild paper swings expose fundamental truths about risk, entrepreneurship, and how we measure value. The SpaceX IPO shattered records as the largest of all time, raising $75 billion in cash with an initi

While there were many highlights to the FIFA World Cup final between Spain and Argentina, one of the most captivating elements of the game was the presence of Lamine Yamal — Spain’s 19-year-old superstar. He joined the ranks of Barcelona at the age of 15, won a victory for Spain in UEFA Euro 2024 and made a major contribution to Spain in the World Cup.  Yamal is of Moroccan heritage on his father’s side and Equatorial Guinean heritage on his mother’s. Despite being eligible to play for eit

On Monday July 27, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Ontario Premier Doug Ford will cut the ribbon on the Gordie Howe International Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor. As the opening awaits, motorists across the two nations might compare the new span of the Bay Bridge linking San Francisco and Oakland, California. In the spring of 2013, as the opening approached, reports emerged of cracked bolts and rods that could render the bridge vulnerable in an earthquake. Gordie Howe played profession

The actress Jameela Jamil recently said on a podcast that the British were “the most evil people in history.” This is the type of moral judgment that has become popular in an age that is more inclined to study the past using the values of today. Such comments get claps on social media but they do not help much with understanding history. They turn hundreds of years of political, economic, and social events into a simple story of good and evil where Britain is always the bad guy. Hist

The Holy Spirit has taken wing over the American landscape. Hardly a day goes by without another story appearing in the press about reenergized Christianity — conversions, revivals, young people flocking to churches en masse. No less a skeptic — even antagonist — of all things Christian than the New York Times has taken notice. In an April article, the paper declared, “Christianity is in the midst of a nationwide revival, they say.” But the Times then cut down that claim with a thousand qualific

In the first half of the 20th century, Soviet agent Bella Dodd, a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), was tasked with grooming and preparing young homosexual men to infiltrate and subvert Catholic seminaries. After renouncing communism and converting to Catholocism under the guidance of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Dodd lamented that she had been personally responsible for placing hundreds of young homosexuals in seminaries, many of whom were ordained priests and went on to become seminary

Hollywood works itself into a tizzy over a lot of new movies. Its buzz as a rule feels more manufactured than organic — PR types often think that there is no need for steak if they can crank up the volume of the sizzle. But something’s a little different about this one. This new movie has an old name, The Odyssey, and it’s a story that has been told for about 3,000 years. There may be a steak here. We are all letters in the scroll of the greatest of stories, a story that reveals the infinite and

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialists of America member who currently resides in Gracie Mansion as the mayor of New York, seems to be having a summer of love within the Democrat Party. And Mamdani’s DSA allies are feeling their oats generally — releasing a radical platform which calls for things like abolishing or mutilating the presidency, the Supreme Court, the Senate, property ownership, debt, monthly bills, prisons, and other things which thousands of years of civilization would in

When Milton’s Satan is slithering around in the garden of Eden on the fateful morning in search of the human couple, he seeks them both, but he hopes to find Eve alone. There is not much chance of that, he knows, because the two are hardly ever separate, but sure enough, for once, there she is, by herself. Shall Eve’s son, deprived of his father through her fault or the father’s fault or both, “marry” another man? Adam has not recommended it, saying that the two of them would be stronger in meet

AVERY COUNTY, North Carolina — If there is such a thing as the classic Appalachian success story, the rise in popularity of the outside-the-box band Cigarettes @ Sunset would be that story. But nothing comes easy in Appalachia. The five-member band, which includes Garrett Dellinger, Ryland Bagbey, Sarah Vann, Wells Whitman, and Ethan Moore, was born in the winter of 2022, practicing their music in the cold, unheated seats of the EDGE of the WORLD Snowboard Shop in Banner Elk, North Carolina. Fou

Recently in these pages, S. A. McCarthy gave an elegant summary of “The Tragedy of the SSPX,” a tragedy that is about to reach its climax with the Society of Saint Pius X’s consecration of four bishops on 1 July in direct disobedience of the pope. But left unaddressed in McCarthy’s essay was the question I hear most often from the Catholic faithful: Is there an amusing book — a World War II thriller perhaps — that features Marcel Lefebvre, the SSPX founder, as a sympathetic character? I have an

On Thursday, June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in Wolford v. Lopez, a case concerning citizens’ rights to carry firearms in the state of Hawaii. The court struck down a Hawaii law that sought to prohibit people from carrying concealed firearms unless the property owners had clear signage expressly allowing guns on the premises. The court ruled this violates citizens’ Second Amendment rights. Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, noted that all oth

The headline said it all. “Newsom under fire as California gas tax hike sends pump prices even higher.” The Fox News story report said: California motorists are set to pay even more at the pump starting Wednesday as another gas tax increase takes effect, prompting some of the state’s Republican lawmakers to warn that added costs will further squeeze residents already shouldering some of the highest fuel prices in the nation. California’s GOP congressional delegation, led by Rep. David Vala

On June 24, two severe earthquakes within the span of a minute shook northern Venezuela, completely collapsing dozens of buildings and damaging others. Families of residents in the Belo Horizonte apartment complex in the city of La Guaira searched for 41 hours through the rubble without official rescue support. “Honestly, there wasn’t a single Civil Guard officer, rescuer or police officer there,” recounted one citizen in a missing-persons WhatsApp group last Friday morning. Only half an hour la

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the signing of a security framework agreement between Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter and Lebanon’s Ambassador Nada Hamadeh at the State Department in Washington on Friday, June 26. The agreement outlined a preliminary security framework for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to occupy “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon and begin dismantling Hezbollah under the oversight of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The bilateral talks between the two

Last year, I wrote on the “myth of magic soil,” an idea blithely trotted out by anti-American leftists — and even many on the more moderate of the political spectrum’s right wing — and hammered into the minds of citizens ad nauseam. According to the myth of magic soil, anyone can become an American just by coming to America. Doesn’t matter if you come from a high-trust Anglo-Saxon community steeped in Christian morality and born from the profound courage and towering thought of the Western tradi

I know, I know. The first half-dozen comments under this piece will provide the criticism that I shouldn’t use mealy-mouthed words like “almost” in a headline like the above. Which is another way of saying that among the American Spectator’s readership, there isn’t a lot of dissent to the idea that our educational system, from bottom to top, has gone to seed. I will defend the use of “almost” only by noting that there are still educational institutions out there providing quality instructi

Pro-Palestinian doctoral student and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier secured the House seat for New York’s 13th Congressional District with the endorsement of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. Chevalier’s surprising win is making moderate Democrats worry about Mamdani’s influence in electing candidates from the far left and the broader influence of the Democratic Socialists of America within the Democratic Party. Darializa Avila Chevalier says she converted to Islam because of t

“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” editorial cartoon by Tom Stiglich for The American Spectator on Jun 29, 2026.