The Spectator World

09/10/2026

Kushner bought the land for $120 million from a suspected Albanian drug trafficker, Artur Shehu, who fled to Miami after a gunfight in his uncle’s bar. It is alleged that Shehu used fraudulent Ottoman-era land records to claim great swaths of coastal property for himself, though Shehu’s lawyer has insisted that he is neither a drug dealer nor a land thief.

✍️ Ian Thomson

Article | https://spectator.com/article/inside-jared-kushners-albanian-adventure/?edition=us

09/10/2026

“Last night, at the glitzy Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, he introduced the “Trump Dividend” – a $5,000 reward for every adult US citizen on the condition that his party keeps the House and Senate in November.”

Politicians are often accused of bribing voters, but none has ever pitched such a nakedly obvious cash-for-votes offer as Donald Trump did

09/10/2026

A year ago, on the afternoon of September 10, 2025, I was 20 feet away when my friend Charlie Kirk was murdered, shot dead for holding a public debate on whatever topics the students of Utah Valley University wanted to talk about. I spent the rest of the day in the waiting room of Timpanogos Hospital, first hoping for a miracle and then coming to grips with the miracle that did not come. I had little to do except reply to the dozens of messages pouring in, asking how I was holding up.

✍️ Blake Neff

Article | https://spectator.com/article/my-friend-charlie-and-the-line-between-good-and-evil/

09/10/2026

“One year after Charlie’s murder, it is clearer than ever that his death was calamitous not merely for his particular political or religious faction, but for the nation.”

A year ago, on the afternoon of September 10, 2025, I was 20 feet away when my friend Charlie Kirk was murdered

09/09/2026

“More than one in 20 students in Britain are Chinese. They contribute billions to the UK economy annually and without them several universities would go bankrupt and most would struggle.”

Shanghaiing, the practice of drugging and kidnapping men on the US West Coast for service on ships bound for China, was made a federal offense in 1915, but every summer the university where I teach draws reverse inspiration from it when the dean flies to China to round up students. Though it’s unl...

09/09/2026

“Trump and his Energy Secretary Chris Wright are correct that oil is going to be around for a long, long time yet. Which makes it all the more odd that the President launched an attack on Iran without considering the consequences on global oil supplies and in turn on the global economy. Trump has often been claimed to be following a clever strategy of subduing America’s enemies by posing as a madman. But at the moment his strategy simply looks mad.”

Oil was flowing freely through Hormuz until the end of February; for all Iranian belligerence, it was not attacking tankers

09/09/2026

The historian Niall Ferguson, sometimes of this parish, said: “The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.” The new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government is getting a lesson in that with its new sanctions on goods from Israeli settlements. The sanctions are meant to help the cause of a Palestinian state but may have the opposite effect. As an added bonus, they could hit British exports to the US.

The ‘comprehensive reset’ of British policy towards Israel comes in the middle of a rancorous Israeli general election campaign

09/09/2026

“We grow up with American TV shows and movies and are marinated from a young age in the Top Gun mentality. The NFL is a window into that culture and we peer through it with fascination and envy. The jets (not the hopeless New York NFL franchise) that fly above the games, leaving streams of red, white and blue in their wake, and the national anthem being belted out by tens of thousands of red-blooded Americans – this is what British fans love about the sport, mainly because it’s so exotic and alien to us. We are too easily embarrassed to celebrate ourselves so overtly. But we enjoy vicariously experiencing American chauvinism.”

London games are now consistently sold out. That's because we Brits want a taste of Americana in all its vulgar glory

09/09/2026

“Oil at $100 a barrel marks a disaster for Trump. Yet the crisis is in some ways a defeat for Trump’s greatest critics, too. According to some, the fossil fuel age should be well over by now.”

Oil was flowing freely through Hormuz until the end of February; for all Iranian belligerence, it was not attacking tankers

09/09/2026

“September has become a murderous month. This year it marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. And as this month began, the trial of Lindsay Clancy was under way in Massachusetts, a trial notable not only for the appalling character of the crime – Clancy strangled each of her three children – but for the appalling degree of sympathy some women have expressed for the defendant.”

September has become a murderous month. This year it marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. And as this month began, the trial of Lindsay Clancy was under way in Massachusetts, a trial notable not only for the appalling characte...