Politics Our Political Asylum Lady Liberty bulldozed, Dancing with the Stars in President Trump’s ballroom—how strange might things get? A hearty cheer could be heard from patriotic citizens longing to restore American greatness when Justice Department lawyers argued last week that the administration could, if need be, “bulldoze” the Statue of Liberty. The argument was made in court proceedings to determine the future of President Donald Trump’s big, beautiful ballroom. Nobody actually wants the Statue of Liberty destroyed at this time, of course, though that could change. The New York Harbor colossus has long been a beacon to the world’s tired, poor, huddled masses blah-blah-blah, but this might not be the best time to encourage even more “wretched refuse” to invade our country.  That construction work on Trump’s $50 billion ballroom was allowed to continue is good news, of course, especially to White House lawyers. Now they can focus on negotiating how the ballroom can be used after completion. Why not make it the permanent home to the long-running and wildly successful reality TV series Dancing with the Stars? A parallel reality in which such an outcome occurred is rather easy to imagine, given the absurdities Americans have lately been subjected to in the spectator sport of politics: Thus far, the negotiations have proven fruitful in ways only the man who pushes a button behind the Resolute Desk to order 15 Diet Cokes each morning might have expected. The Justice Department thinks the Constitution clearly empowers the executive branch to host game shows at the White House. Better yet, past contenders on the celebrity dancing show offer a roster of promising potential admin officials. The death three years ago of the notorious broadcaster Jerry Springer—who had appeared in Season 3—now looks even more untimely. During the Biden interregnum, Springer had been seriously considered by Trump’s team for a number of diplomatic posts requiring the ability to pretend to take others’ problems seriously.  Drew Carey of Season 18, meanwhile, is being talked about as a possible successor to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has come under suspicion for having spent most of his adult life as a Democrat. Lutnick, it should be remembered, even donated to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, donations he later blamed on his wife. The man isn’t to be trusted, and might need to hear a classic “You’re fired” from the commander-in-chief. As for Carey’s credentials to lead Commerce, he has been the host of The Price is Right since 2007, which, Trump said, “is nothing to laugh at. Who knows more about what things should cost than the host of The Price is Right?” Bill Nye the Science Guy, who appeared on Season 17, is under consideration to lead the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, while Buzz Aldrin of Season 10 is said to be in line to head NASA. “Besides being an astronaut who has walked on the moon,” a White House source who asked not to be identified explains, “Aldrin is 96 years old, has been married four times, admits he has had a face-lift, and is a teetotaler. He’d be a great fit.”  Women are always considered for top spots in this administration, of course. Kim Kardashian of Season 7, for example, is being looked at for a variety of positions. “She’s a nine,” Trump noted during a recent cabinet meeting. “Imagine a true nine as attorney general.” Whatever decisions are made about the ballroom, a White House source said, “it has been agreed that guests entering it will pass by a colossal replica of the Dancing with the Stars Mirrorball Trophy, preferable in so many ways to Lady Liberty’s grossly overrated “golden door” lamp. One condition imposed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio is that Tucker Carlson of Season 3 will not be considered for an official role.  Ok, back to our strange-enough reality. A former CIA flak who used to sit in top-secret meetings with “spies and analysts” has advice for organizations with no connection whatsoever to the agency. Or at least, no connection that we know of. Writing last week at an outlet called Ragan’s PR Daily, Meredith Cavan—a former CIA deputy director of public affairs and the founder of a consulting firm called Brightchord Strategies—says working for the good people who brought us the Bay of Pigs, MKUltra, and the routine use of torture helped her realize there was more to representing the agency than avoiding reporters “like the plague” and saying “no comment” when cornered. Cavan says she learned that “pro-active” engagement with the media was required if the agency’s mission was to be accomplished.  “Journalists were far more likely to give us the benefit of the doubt or tell our side of the story,” she writes, “if we had a relationship where we were seen as straight shooters—forthcoming and helpful on non-sensitive issues.” (Note: It wasn’t that they were straight shooters, but that they were seen as such.) “It was critical to get our narrative out before the outside world shaped and defined it for us,” Cavan recalls. This sometimes involved being “actively engaged with Hollywood to help shape scripts that authentically told our story.” On a more prosaic level, it meant developing congenial relationships with reporters.  The CIA “has a brand,” after all: For better or worse, those three letters are recognized around the world and carry a level of gravitas and lore. We truly leaned into this. While we couldn’t talk about current operations or often the identities of our officers, there were countless stories to tell from our history—tales of bravery, ingenuity, and sacrifice.  So, what’s the takeaway? There’s nothing earth shaking—or regime changing—in any of this, but Cavan wants to remind us that the appearance of transparency and good will is important, even for spooks and the shadowy government agencies that employ them. But cultivating an aura of transparency is itself just a form of manipulative “narrative” management. “At the CIA,” she recalls, “our officers work in an environment where many don’t have access to the outside world during the day—our cellphones are left in our cars, our computers are on an internal network.” Just think. Your company can be more like the CIA, though requiring coworkers to leave their cell phones in their cars might result in unpleasant push-back. If so, discussions should be handled internally. The post Our Political Asylum appeared first on The American Conservative.

UK Special Coverage The Big Problem With Britain’s ‘Anti-Racist’ Policing Left-wing academic phraseology has corrupted the UK’s justice system. UK Special Coverage If police in the UK are told they must believe any racial minority who claims to have been racially abused, what are they supposed to do when they come across an incident where claims of racism are made? Obviously they will be inclined to see the person claiming racial abuse as the “victim,” and the accused as the “criminal.” How can they do otherwise? This is what happened when the police arrived on the scene of the stabbing murder of the white student Henry Nowak by Vickrum Singh Digwa, a 23-year-old British Sikh in Southampton in December 2025. Digwa had accused Nowak—falsely—of having racially assaulted him. The police believed him. Henry died in handcuffs under arrest despite repeatedly pleading that he had been stabbed. This episode has become a cause célèbre, a cross-racial version of George Floyd. Nowak even said, repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.” It is becoming very clear that something has gone very wrong with the way the UK police regard race. Certain tendentious and wrong-headed “anti-racist” doctrines and dogmas have been introduced into the theory and practice of law enforcement. Now, it is quite possible to agree, as I do, that there is or has been racism against minorities in British policing, and also to believe that at the point of engagement the police should not be prejudiced against (or in favor of) certain skin colours. Yet the push for “anti-racism” has long since transformed into a form of anti-white racism, as police constables are told that they must believe every claim of racism, regardless of evidence, and record it as a hate incident. This is how the Metropolitan Police define this category of racial “non-crime”: A non-crime hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender. Evidence of the hate element is not a requirement. Just consider that for a moment. Why would the police record someone for perpetrating a non-criminal act? And why should the person claiming to be the “victim” be believed on grounds of perception alone and with no supporting evidence? This surely violates the foundation of an impartial justice system. Thousands of these hate incidents have been recorded by police every year and, contrary to some reports, the police still record the name of the person involved in the “non-crime” incident if they “suspect” a crime might happen in future. This is dystopian pre-crime in practice. The UK police really is “institutionally racist,” but not as left-wingers understand that phrase. Where did this racialization of policing come from? Largely from the legacy of the Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence nearly 30 years ago. That was the first major outing for the claim that British policing was racist at its core. Cowed by this accusation, chief constables have enlisted activist consultants and “community leaders” to fill in the gaps and to reframe operational policing as non-racist or anti-racist. These predominantly left-wing activists and human rights lawyers often represent no one but themselves and have highly prejudiced attitudes. Yet they are invited to lay down the law on anti-racism, as though police constables need outside agitators to tell them what to do. Take the Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board, which oversees the National Police Race Action Plan. This is led by Abimbola Johnson, a barrister who has not only said she has a “hatred” for the Conservative Party (OK, so do many people) but more significantly has supported the policy of defunding the police. As she put it in a lecture last year: Defunding or perhaps more precisely re-imagining can simply mean investing in what actually makes communities safe. It means moving money from punishment towards prevention. The very person who is telling them how to do their job on race actually thinks the police should have their finances cut and the resources moved to “community resources” such as mental health, housing, social work, and early legal advice. The vast majority of British voters want the government to spend more on policing, not less. They want more police on the streets, not more social workers and community activists. That this highly political and partisan lawyer could have been given this role is the most obvious sign that the leadership of the British police has simply lost the plot. It would be naïve and dishonest to ignore racial data in policing. It is true that black and some other ethnic minorities are more often stopped and searched than white people, and this is regarded as the key metric of institutional racism. But this needn’t be a consequence of individual police officers’ prejudices against minorities. It could equally be because more of them carry knives—as we have seen in the Nowak case. Members of ethnic minorities are more likely to be prosecuted for crimes than white people and it is claimed they receive harsher sentences. This may be evidence of racism in the prosecution service, but then again it may not. After 30 years of being accused of institutional racism, prosecutors and judges now bend over backwards not to show prejudice in prosecution or sentencing. If black people commit more crimes, then they will show up more often in court. Their arrest rate is currently 20 per 1,000 in the UK against 9 per 1,000 for non-black residents, according to government figures. There may be social factors that create fertile ground for crime, but that doesn’t excuse it. Again, police racism may not be the determining factor when it comes to differential rates of arrest. Members of ethnic minorities also tend to live in higher-crime neighborhoods—communities marked by poverty, deprivation and family instability which many academics believe predispose some people to breaking the law irrespective of color. The police, moreover, tend to concentrate activities in these neighborhoods and are more likely to conduct arrests there. That is not about racism but allocation of resources. The idea that police shouldn’t concentrate their work in areas of high crime would of course be ludicrous—yet that is precisely what the “defunders” like the head of the National Police Race Action Plan actually propose. This problem arises when academic phraseology related to structural inequalities is taken literally and applied to practical policing on the street. There is unfairness in society; that is undoubtedly true. But disadvantage is not an excuse in the eyes of the law. A crime is a crime, irrespective of social background. The whole point about justice is that it has to be blind to command broad public respect. Even if we accept that in a certain sense “the system is to blame,” the solution to institutional racism cannot be to treat criminals differently because of their skin color. That way madness lies. The post The Big Problem With Britain’s ‘Anti-Racist’ Policing appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs How Germany’s Historic Responsibility Led to a UN Humiliation Unconditional support for Israel now comes with a diplomatic cost. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP via Getty Images) Germany threw everything it had behind its campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council, but the campaign failed: The UN General Assembly decided that Germany has no place there. This year, two rotating seats allocated to the Western European group were up for election. Portugal received 134 votes. Austria received 131. They took the two seats. Germany secured 104 votes, falling 23 short of the required two-thirds majority. For Berlin, this is not a minor diplomatic setback, but a historic humiliation. Since reunification, Germany has served four times as a non-permanent member of the Security Council, winning the seat every time it ran. Indeed, going back to the 1970s, even West Germany secured the position every time it made a bid. To those paying attention to Berlin’s recent foreign policy, the outcome was hardly surprising. And for those who take seriously international law, and Israel’s routine violations of it, it was justice. Let’s name the elephant in the chamber: Germany’s unconditional support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Hamas’s October 7 atrocities were appalling crimes, but Israel’s subsequent campaign, according to international law experts, UN rapporteurs, and the International Court of Justice, could plausibly constitute genocide. Even many critics who shy away from the “g” word can’t deny that Israel is waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Yet Berlin continues to adhere to a twisted logic: that the memory and shame of the Holocaust require unconditional backing for the current Israeli government, even as it starves, bombs, and displaces millions. Even after the UN humiliation, German officials don’t seem to have learned the correct lesson. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul conceded that “historical responsibility” to Israel cost Germany votes, yet he blames Russia for organizing the opposition and ignores his own nation’s glaring hypocrisy: Berlin arms Ukraine to defend the UN Charter, yet shields Israel as it tears that same charter apart. And Wadephul’s boss, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has been no better. In June 2025, Merz cheered on the American-Israeli war against Iran, claiming that Israel was doing “our dirty job.” This February, when the U.S. and Israel renewed the war against Iran, he bluntly said that “this is not the moment to lecture our allies” on international law. He also confidently predicted that “we are witnessing the final days and weeks” of the Iranian regime. The current, conservative-led coalition in Berlin, however, is not solely responsible for this failure. The Greens, now safely in opposition, criticize the government for squandering German influence—as if their own stint in power between 2021 and 2025 had nothing to do with it. But Annalena Baerbock, the current president of the UN General Assembly, served as German foreign minister in that period, and her tenure was a masterclass in moralistic posturing divorced from strategic reality. For all her lecturing about a “feminist foreign policy,” where was Baerbock’s feminism when Israeli bombs flattened Gaza’s maternity wards and, according to UN figures, killed over 10,000 women and children? Apparently, feminism means arming the side that does the bombing, not protecting the women being bombed. Baerbock’s self-congratulatory virtue-signaling was always more about German moral vanity than about actual justice. As coarchitects of this fiasco, the Greens do not get to lecture others about it now. Their “feminist foreign policy” died in Gaza. As for Russia’s alleged role in fomenting opposition to Germany because of its support for Ukraine, that is no more than an unconvincing excuse: Portugal and Austria, after all, are both staunch Ukraine supporters too—and they won the Security Council seats. Gaza does seem to have made the real difference. To be fair, Austria is equally pro-Israel. But what grated most in the case of Germany were its efforts to cloak its policies in moralistic language—as well as the fact that, unlike Austria, it is arguably Europe’s most powerful country, which is why its actions always carry more weight and attract more scrutiny. But the defeat does not seem to be changing Berlin’s policies. As the EU member states’ ambassadors to the EU have moved, at long last, to debate individual sanctions against extremist Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, Germany reportedly insisted that even this symbolic measure be further diluted by targeting only the former. According to the Germans, Smotrich should be let off the hook—despite declaring openly that his goal is to “kill the idea of a Palestinian state” by inciting Israelis to illegally settle in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. And what is that double standard if not a betrayal of the actual lesson of the Holocaust? That catastrophe taught a universal truth: Justice must apply equally to all peoples, or it means nothing. Yet Berlin’s elite has twisted that memory into a license for exceptionalism. Unsurprisingly, the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is capitalizing on the establishment’s missteps. Party leader Tino Chrupalla mocked the recent diplomatic failure, and he even correctly and candidly identified why it happened: “Anyone who arbitrarily formulates double standards in foreign policy won’t be elected to the UN Security Council either—good so!” The AfD, at 29 percent, now convincingly leads in the polls. To be clear, the AfD’s rise in Germany is overwhelmingly due to domestic issues—the economy, immigration, and a deep distrust of the political establishment. But on foreign policy, the party has managed to outsmart the mainstream by adopting positions that are genuinely popular. The AfD opposed the war with Iran—a conflict that 88 percent of Germans also oppose—while pushing for peaceful relations with Russia and normal trade with China. On Israel, the mainstream’s blind spot is even more glaring. According to a recent Pew Research poll, 73 percent of Germans hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up 9 percentage points compared to the same period a year ago. The German public is moving away from Israel’s government, and doing so fast. Yet Berlin’s elites are still running in the opposite direction. With the UN vote, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Germany has reached a diplomatic nadir. President Donald Trump openly looks down on Merz and treats him with contempt. Moscow shows no interest in dealing with Berlin’s current leaders. Beijing increasingly treats Germany not as a strategic equal, but as a second- or third-tier player. Even within Europe, Merz appears weak. His personal relationships with key leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni are evidently strained, as both played a key role in defeating Berlin’s push to seize the frozen Russian assets and use them to aid Ukraine in December 2025 (eventually, the EU agreed to keep helping Ukraine from its own funds, an outcome Berlin opposed). The domestic picture is just as brutal. According to a recent survey, only 11 percent of Germans are satisfied with the Merz coalition’s performance—a catastrophic collapse. Merz’s Christian Democrats are polling at just 21 percent, while his coalition partners from the Social Democratic Party have fallen to 12 percent, historic lows for both. Many challenges and failures account for these poor ratings and Germany’s diminished standing on the world stage, but one major problem is a political class that confuses moral posturing with strategy, ideology with realism, and self-importance with influence. Back in 2003, Germany passed its greatest geopolitical test, opposing the Iraq War as a violation of the UN Charter. Today’s Germany has betrayed its commitments to international law, and its UN defeat is the first real price. If it takes losing a Security Council seat for Berlin’s elites to remember what kind of state Germany was and could be again, then maybe the UN just did them—and the world—a favor. The post How Germany’s Historic Responsibility Led to a UN Humiliation appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Why Britain Banned Hasan Piker The UK is using its borders to create a nation-sized “safe space.” UK Special Coverage What connects the rapper Kanye West, pick-up artist Julien Blanc, and left-wing broadcaster Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks YouTube channel? All three are Americans who have been banned from visiting the UK, as their presence has been deemed “not conducive to the public good”—which is essentially British bureaucrat-speak for “they have expressed views that some might find offensive.” The UK has a notoriously lax approach to illegal migrants who traverse the English Channel on small boats. On arrival, even hardened criminals are regularly offered free accommodation, access to public services, and “human rights” protections that ensure they won’t be deported. Expressing controversial opinions, in contrast, may be the one thing that spurs the British government to pull up the drawbridge. Uygur and his nephew, the livestreaming mega-star Hasan Piker, are among the latest alleged troublemakers to be blocked from entering Britain. The Home Office confirmed in early June that both have had their electronic travel authorization revoked, scuppering their plans to speak at the London arm of the SXSW arts and technology festival. Uygur had also been due to appear in person on Piers Morgan: Uncensored and Piker at the Oxford Union, a debating society founded in 1823. Of course, like any sovereign country, the UK has every right to decide who it lets in and who it turns away at the border. Yet these powers are clearly being used in a way that is both needlessly illiberal and ultimately irrational. Home Office policies that were developed with criminals and terrorists in mind seem to increasingly be applied to activists, artists, and public figures deemed merely to be irritating to the government. Legally, the power to revoke or refuse a UK visa, beyond rules barring entry for serious criminal conduct, rests with the UK Home Secretary—currently Labour’s Shabana Mahmood. She need only decide that a person’s presence in the UK is “not conducive to the public good because of their conduct, character, associations or other reasons”—a deliberately vague condition, granting her broad powers and a great deal of personal discretion. There is no right to appeal a visa revocation (although it is possible to reapply for a visa or an electronic travel authorization for a future visit). In fact, there is no legal obligation at all for Mahmood to set out her reasons for blocking a visa, either publicly or privately, to those affected.  In Piker and Uygur’s case, Mahmood has let it be known to journalists that she fears they could stir up antisemitism, and such fears are not baseless. Of course, both insist they are merely critics of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. Yet, as even the left-wing, zealously anti-Israel Guardian concedes, Piker has referred to Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and said he would support “Hamas over Israel,” while Uygur is accused of “propagating antisemitic tropes in his criticism of Israel.”  Still, if the aim of the visa ban were to deny oxygen to such views, then this has backfired spectacularly. For one thing, in our age of online live-streaming, opinions and beliefs are not bound by national borders. All Mahmood has really succeeded in doing is generating publicity for her targets. Piker and Uygur were set to address a narrow crowd of media elites—a “festival pass” to SXSW London costs a staggering £1,200. Yet now they have become the talk of the town, and their bans have been covered in every major British newspaper and on every news channel.  Worse, Piker and Uygur have managed to exploit the Home Office’s lack of explanation to advance their conspiratorial brand of so-called anti-Zionism. “I didn’t get banned for criticising the UK, but for criticising Israel,” Uygur has since claimed. “They broke the irony record by saying it was because I said Israel might control other governments.” Piker was here claiming to see the hidden hand of the Jewish State behind Mahmood’s decision. He added, with no ambiguity, that she had acted at “the behest of Israel.” Anyone who follows British politics will understand why this claim is manifestly ludicrous. Mahmood herself is a pro-Palestine Muslim, and the Labour government she serves in has been at loggerheads with Israel for some time now. It has suspended arms exports to Israel and recognised a Palestinian state. Downing Street has even hinted that it would be willing to have Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested on behalf of the International Criminal Court. These are not the actions of a government under “Zionist occupation,” as a Hamas fanboy might put it. The truth is that the UK does not need Israel’s influence or insistence—or that of any other nation, for that matter—to behave in such a censorious manner. Britain’s universities “no platform” people for offensive speech. The police arrest people for offensive speech. And the government bans people from the country for offensive speech, too. Effectively, the whole UK is being turned into a nation-sized “safe space.” What is undoubtedly unusual about Uygur and Piker’s bans is that they are men of the left. The majority of visa bans (at least those that the UK government chooses to publicize) are directed either at Islamists or the hard right. Among those banned in the past decade or so include the Stormfront founder Don Black, the Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Moussawi, and the Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who infamously argued that “every Muslim should be a terrorist.” In fact, only a few weeks before Uygur and Piker were banned from Britain, the Home Office revoked the visas of 11 figures who were due to attend the right-wing activist Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London. It is hard not to suspect that this played a role in Mahmood’s decision. The UK government is currently under enormous pressure over accusations of “two-tier policing” (that is, cracking down disproportionately on right-wing speech and white working-class protesters). It is also widely seen as insufficiently robust in dealing with antisemitic threats. Banning two left-wing Israelophobes must have felt like an easy way for the home secretary to deflect some of these criticisms.  The upshot of all this is that Britain’s border policies now seem to be based entirely around virtue-signalling and gesture politics. We welcome tens of thousands of illegal migrants to exploit our generosity and kindness. At the same time, we ban American livestreamers to show we have zero tolerance for anyone who might disturb the peace in our multicultural utopia.  Enough. Britain’s borders should be used to protect the British people from genuine harm—from criminality, the undercutting of wages, extreme competition for housing and resources, and other genuine ills—not to save us from naughty words or to be used as a tool for political grandstanding. Maybe following those priorities might be more “conducive to the public good”? The post Why Britain Banned Hasan Piker appeared first on The American Conservative.