February 2017

One hundred years ago, a crisis in Mexican-American relations changed the course of history. Front pages blared the news that would precipitate U.S. entry into World War I: the publication of the legendary Zimmermann Telegram. The American people—up to then decidedly isolationist—read the shocking…

On Tuesday's episode of Man, We're Really Going to Spend Time Talking about This, Aren't We, New York representative Eliot Engel announced that he will not position himself along the receiving aisle to shake the president's hand as he enters the House chamber Tuesday night for a speech to Congress.…

The Congressional Review Act of 1996 is a “sleeper statute" (aka, a secret weapon) in that its practical application took 20 years to enter the realm of viable possibility. The CRA allows Congress to overturn executive regulations by a simple majority—and this is the moment it's been waiting for.

Congressional leaders are moving to cut off all taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Authority if it continues monetarily rewarding terrorists for attacks on Israelis and Americans, top Republican lawmakers said Tuesday.

Donald Trump declared in a tweet on February 17 that the mainstream press is "the enemy of the American People." This inflammatory remark was greeted by outrage mixed with anxiety. Chuck Todd of NBC's Meet the Press spoke for many journalists when he responded, "This is not a laughing matter. I'm…

It wasn't Ted Kennedy—not that he'd want it to be—but House speaker Paul Ryan quipped Tuesday morning that his dream of entitlement reform hadn't died.

New York

Reviews and News:

In the final week of the Obama administration, the outgoing president filed a complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO) accusing China of unfair trade practices. This wasn't a big surprise: Obama averaged one complaint against China every six months throughout his presidency. Indeed, Donald…

Gastonia, N.C.

While reports Monday said the Pentagon delivered plans to President Trump with options to ramp up the war against the Islamic State, an escalation of sorts is already in motion during the latter half of February. Information from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) concerning coalition air strikes in…

On Sunday, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin told the Disabled American Veterans conference in Arlington, Virginia that he was thinking about lifting restrictions on veterans who wish to receive private medical care.

We know very little about what to expect in President Trump's address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. That was obvious from the Democratic "prebuttal" that House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer delivered on Monday, which volleyed between standard…

A day before President Trump is slated to address the nation before a joint session of Congress (note: Not a State of the Union), Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi addressed reporters at the National Press Club to offer a prebuttal.

A very special bonus episode of the Substandard, with JVL, Matus, and Bunch discussing last night's wacky Oscars ending.

Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross is set to be confirmed as President Trump's secretary of Commerce on Monday night, as the Senate begins the week advancing two of the several remaining cabinet selections yet to take their posts.

President Nixon's memo to staff after the 1971 White House Correspondents Dinner made the rounds on Twitter this weekend—with Trump's Saturday afternoon announcement that he wouldn't attend the yearly banquet for press, traditionally hosted by the president, inviting an historical comparison.

A House investigation that includes the Trump campaign's alleged contacts with Russian intelligence officials is ongoing, but preliminary inquiries on the matter have not returned incriminating evidence, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said on Monday.

After the shocking denouement of the Oscars telecast, in which La La Land was incorrectly announced as "Best Picture," rumors have been swirling in Hollywood that the Academy Awards results may have been hacked by Russian intelligence. The on-camera snafu Sunday night, it is now believed, may have…

A wonderful movie is a small miracle. So many things have to go right, and they usually don't. What is needed? A good story, and good actors, and a competent cinematographer, and a talented editor, and decent dialogue, and a sensible producer, and a director capable of mixing all the elements…

The head of the Swedish ambulance drivers' union confirmed in a recent interview with journalist Paulina Neuding the existence of "no-go zones" where it is too dangerous to enter without police protection.

From the Foundation for Constitutional Government:

Reviews and News:

Since 2009, each edition of the State Department's annual Country Reports on Terrorism has contained a cheerful fiction: State has given the nation that it insists on calling the "DPRK"—using the anti-democratic, anti-people, and anti-republican Pyongyang government's laughable official…

Playing Beethoven symphonies is what a symphony orchestra really ought to be doing most of the time. The New York Philharmonic performed Beethoven's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies last week under American-born Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt. Blomstedt is an emeritus of the Swedish and Danish…

Auguste Rodin— almost the last great figure sculptor—shares a rare distinction with history's two greatest visual artists, Leonardo and Michelangelo: Like the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo's (first) David, Rodin's "Thinker" is ubiquitous; every person in the western world, no matter how uninterested…

Please see the editor's note at the bottom of this piece.

The fight to repeal Obamacare is ramping up as Congress prepares to return from its recess. Senators and representatives will hear from President Trump on Tuesday during his address to a joint session, and repeal and replace is expected to be among the most important talking points in the speech.

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes talks with host Eric Felten about whether the NRA's political organization and advertisements were what pushed Donald Trump over the top in November. Then Eric talks with Steven Hayward about the divide between conservatives who see the…

Reviews and News:

The American economy has taken the shape of an iceberg. The visible part glistens in the reflected sunlight of Donald Trump. Beneath the surface lurks a structure that might not long be capable of supporting the glistening tip.

Kudos to the Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins for proposing a new corollary to public choice theory: namely, that actions objected to by special interests are motivated by a desire to raise campaign money from special interests.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday, President Donald Trump tied his loosening of energy restrictions with the greater goal of "[putting] the regulation industry… out of business."

As the Trump administration rolled back President Obama's guidelines to public schools regarding transgender students' access to the bathroom of their choice, a new rule from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has taken effect to ensure that transgender individuals have full…

Bill Kristol talks about CPAC—or is it T-PAC—and the embrace of Trump by conservatives and the GOP. Is it his party now? Michael Graham rails against the rise of identity politics. And which one's better: Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World?

I keep hammering this point home, but the media seem obdurately unwilling to come to terms with the fact they have little credibility with the American people, and Trump voters especially. This situation is not helped by the fact they keep blowing stories on President Trump badly and they are…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Michael Warren on Donald Trump, CPAC, and the conservative movement.

David Cannadine dedicates his biography of Margaret Thatcher: "In memory of Mrs T." But that Mrs T is not, as one might suppose, Mrs. Thatcher, the longest-serving prime minister of Great Britain in the 20th century. Instead, the preface informs us, it is a Mrs. Thurman, the headmistress of…

Who knew that in the age of America First, the greatest threat to Hispanic communities in the United States wasn't marauding bands of ICE agents wielding mass deportation orders or the construction of a border wall? No, the scourge is Art.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Is there nothing so louche that Trump supporters won't indulge in it? According to the Washington Post, apparently not. So low have we been brought, the Post suggests, that in Donald Trump's capital there is a fad for that odious cinnamon-flavored sugar gargle that masquerades as whiskey,…

Reviews and News:

The bathroom wars wage on. Repealing the Obama-era edict that hardened the conflict, as President Trump did Wednesday, changes little in practice.

Political correctness holds too strong a grip on too much of American life these days. Religious citizens who politely and conscientiously object to working gay weddings may be crushed by the state and driven into bankruptcy. In academia, the very place where the life of the mind is supposed to…

Donald Trump will make his first address to the Conservative Political Action Conference as president of the United States Friday. It's not Trump's first time speaking at the conservative confab—that would be his 2011 appearance, where the Apprentice star said he would be deciding soon if he would…

Who could be against a rule that requires investment advisers to act in the best interests of their retiree-clients? Donald Trump, the Washington branch of the Goldman Sachs alumni association, the Wall Street Journal, and well-intentioned policy wonks who have never met a regulation they like,…

On March 14, 1976, a writer, academic, and Democratic party operative published a 1,200-word op-ed in the Washington Post called “A Closet Capitalist Confesses," and all hell broke loose. Nearly every intellectual journal in America felt compelled to opine about the absurd­ity of a modern…

Since 2009, each edition of the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism has contained a cheerful fiction: State has given the nation that it insists on calling the "DPRK"—using the anti-democratic, anti-people, and anti-republican Pyongyang government's laughable official…

New York

Last week, the Washington Post unveiled a new slogan displayed just below the paper’s masthead: "Democracy dies in darkness." As Count Floyd might say, "Scary stuff, huh, kids?"

Political correctness holds too strong a grip on too much of American life these days. Religious citizens who politely and conscientiously object to working gay weddings may be crushed by the state and driven into bankruptcy. In academia, the very place where the life of the mind is supposed to…

Early morning on February 17, word was getting around that Michael Novak had passed away in his sleep, and email klatsches were forming. In mine, one of his close friends wrote that “the generosity of Michael's friendship allowed him to obscure the fact that he was among the few truly great men…

Every year, during the bleak months of winter, I try to read some ghost stories. Since mine is a gentle, pacific nature, I prefer classic tales, mainly from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Gruesomeness, in my view, ought to be kept entirely offstage. A reader’s imagination alone, under the…

There are many claimants to the honor of having nudged Donald Trump over the top in the presidential election. But the folks with the best case are the National Rifle Association and the consultants who made their TV ads.

David Cannadine dedicates his biography of Margaret Thatcher: “In memory of Mrs T." But that Mrs T is not, as one might suppose, Mrs. Thatcher, the longest-serving prime minister of Great Britain in the 20th century. Instead, the preface informs us, it is a Mrs. Thurman, the headmistress of…

A wonderful movie is a small miracle. So many things have to go right, and they usually don’t. What is needed? A good story, and good actors, and a competent cinematographer, and a talented editor, and decent dialogue, and a sensible producer, and a director capable of mixing all the elements…

Gastonia, N.C.

In 1992, the exiled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide spoke to Jewish leaders in New York City. Having studied for three years in Jerusalem, he spoke to them in Hebrew as well as English. Aristide was slightly shocked to discover, after the talk, that he was not understood: Most of the…

Every few weeks, it seems, a new crack appears in the seemingly impenetrable wall of social-science dogma. The latest appeared last month with the publication of a paper by the well-known research psychologist Scott Lilienfeld, a professor at Emory University and coauthor of the indispensable…

This long-awaited critical edition of T. S. Eliot's poems is a scholarly milestone, a watershed in publishing history. The elaborate notes Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue have provided for each line—indeed, each word—of each and every Eliot poem are so informative and the overviews for each stage…

Is there nothing so louche that Trump supporters won’t indulge in it? According to the Washington Post, apparently not. So low have we been brought, the Post suggests, that in Donald Trump's capital there is a fad for that odious cinnamon-flavored sugar gargle that masquerades as whiskey,…

There is nothing more boring than other people’s dreams, so I try to forget most of my own. Life's waking nightmares are vivid enough. But I'm dogged by one I had the other night. I was standing in a favorite fishing hole up to my waist, attempting to release a largemouth bass I'd just caught. Slow…

When your mind runs over the history of the Grand Old Party, you think of the presidents first. You think of Abraham Lincoln and are proud to be in some way associated with a political party whose first president was our greatest. You recall Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin…

Foreign policy, Walter Lippmann wrote, entails “bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation's commitments and the nation's power." If a statesman fails to balance ends and means, he added, "he will follow a course that leads to disaster."

A leading case in constitutional law it ain’t. But we now have a ruling: The Snuggie—"The Blanket That Has Sleeves!"—is indeed a blanket, the sleeves notwithstanding. So says Judge Mark A. Barnett of the United States Court of International Trade. And rightly so, as far as The Scrapbook can tell.

It has been a tumultuous start for President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, to put it gently. General Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser less than a month into the new administration, amid controversy over his contacts with a Russian ambassador. It is clear…

Right after Democrats got routed in the midterm election, the left-wing group MoveOn.org blasted their activists with a message not to panic. Party leaders should, in fact, “double down on progressive policies.”

Democrats were decimated at nearly every level of government over the past six years. Republicans control the House and may well do so for the foreseeable future; the party is looking at a very favorable Senate map in 2018. Democrats control just 31 of the 99 state legislative chambers across the…

Donald Trump declared in a tweet on February 17 that the mainstream press is “the enemy of the American People." This inflammatory remark was greeted by outrage mixed with anxiety. Chuck Todd of NBC's Meet the Press spoke for many journalists when he responded, "This is not a laughing matter. I'm…

Who knew that in the age of America First, the greatest threat to Hispanic communities in the United States wasn’t marauding bands of ICE agents wielding mass deportation orders or the construction of a border wall? No, the scourge is Art.

Okay, the recount didn't work. The "faithless elector" pleas produced exactly two faithless electors to reduce his Electoral College vote total to 302 from 304. There's always the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. That allows the vice president and the cabinet to remove a sitting president if…

The leaks that led to the resignation of former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn were politically motivated, a top Republican senator said Thursday, joining a House Republican who has suggested the same.

Higher education had a very good year. That's the news from the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which reports that "during an election year soaked in populism, some of America's biggest philanthropists bestowed an unusually large chunk of their charity on colleges and universities, including several…

The Obama administration structured the Iran nuclear deal to cover up Iranian violations, which may make it impossible to rigorously enforce the landmark agreement as Trump administration officials have suggested, according to a top Republican senator.

Former House speaker John Boehner, who oversaw multiple attempts to undo Obamacare during his tenure, predicted Thursday that most of President Obama's health care law "is going to stay there," and that previous talk of repealing and replacing the law amounted to "happy talk."

What's the best way to get your message to President Trump? Two groups on opposite sides of the abortion debate seem to agree: Target the TV shows he likes to watch and tweet about like Morning Joe and Fox & Friends.

This week the Substandard tackles the Academy Awards—which films of the past 50 years truly deserved to be Best Picture, which ones didn't, and what movies got snubbed? JVL has the temerity to question American Beauty, Vic only saw part of Blue Lagoon, and Sonny admits he did theater. Please Sonny,…

WEEKLY STANDARD editor-at-large Bill Kristol joined David Axelrod for a podcast discussion. Here is the description:

Reviews and News:

In passing Obamacare, its supporters promised the moon. Obamacare was allegedly going to cost $938 billion over ten years, result in 23 million people getting insurance through its exchanges as of 2017, reduce the typical family's premiums by $2,500 a year, and make sure that if you liked your…

I frequently point you to the writings of Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist and blogger who I think of as the liberal Theodore Dalrymple. His blog is called Slate Star Codex and he's pretty great.

Are you going to watch the Academy Awards this Sunday? Please don't. You'll only drive yourself crazy. If you love Donald Trump, you'll be outraged at all of the idiotic, self-important protests. If you hate Donald Trump you'll be exasperated that the idiots in Hollywood somehow managed to find the…

Airlines are cutting back on their once-vaunted plethora of flights to Cuba because … it turns out that hardly anyone wants to go to Cuba. As Bloomberg News reported in late 2016:

“It's going to be a very busy March and April for us," said White House press secretary Sean Spicer at his Wednesday briefing. That's when the Trump administration expects to start moving forward on its legislative agenda—and at the top of that list is the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Democrats are warming to Arizona senator John McCain, according to a Pew poll released Wednesday, joining Republicans in sharing a favorable view of President Donald Trump's leading GOP critic.

Vice President Mike Pence told a group of Missourians on Wednesday to spread the word about the Trump administration among their townsfolk.

New York

The Trump administration is set to undo federal guidance issued by their predecessors last year that threatened public schools with the loss of federal funding if they didn't allow transgender students to use the school facilities matching their gender identity, according to a report.

President Trump has been a strategic success and a tactical failure. That's the genteel way of putting it. The blunt way is that he's pushed ahead relentlessly on big conservative issues. But more than Democrats or the media, he's been his own worst enemy, a tactical bull in a china shop.

Here's an excerpt from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451:

Twenty-five years ago, I was a scrawny, short, flat-footed child with an irrepressible competitive streak. Sports, obviously, were out of the question. But fortunately for me, my school had a program called Academic Games. We'd play six competitive games against other schools on the local, state,…

An aggressive monopolist doesn't just content itself with monopoly profits in the market it controls; where possible, it leverages that advantage to gain market power in additional markets as well, where regulators may be less vigilant and the players in the target market are vulnerable.

Reviews and News:

Paris

Social science has a way of confirming what we humans already knew about ourselves. Data that validate one's intuitive gleanings about the species make a timeless gift, always in season. "Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements," from sociologists Matthew Feinberg of the…

Rave reviews continue to come in for the new White House national security advisor, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, including from frequent Trump administration critic John McCain (more on him below).

The selection of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to be President Trump's new National Security Advisor has received near universal praise. But understanding why McMaster is highly regarded is another matter altogether. Here's list of illuminating articles on McMaster that helps explain why he's one of the…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with reporter Jenna Lifhits on Trump's National Security Advisor pick, H.R. McMaster.

There's an untold story from the 2016 election that should encourage Democrats and worry Republicans. It happened in Houston, the nation's fourth largest city in population and the hometown of former President George H. W. Bush. To be precise it's Harris County, Texas—which consists mostly of…

The electric power system makes our modern, mobile, information-age economy possible. But it is organized in much the same way it was in 1884, when Thomas Edison created the first system of power plants to light up homes and businesses in lower Manhattan. By way of comparison, the iPhone, which is…

By naming Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his new national security adviser, President Donald Trump has taken a critical first step toward restoring confidence in the White House's ability to meet the challenges of a trying time. Simultaneously the choice raises profound questions about the…

Days before the election, President Donald Trump's newly appointed national security adviser, lieutenant general H. R. McMaster, laid out his vision of the threats facing America and the country's deficiencies in facing them, as well as the value of education to remedy those deficiencies.

Beyond the fuss created by President Donald Trump's social media habit, the new Oval Office occupant is undertaking many of the same policy initiatives a generic Republican administration would have pursued, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told a calm group of his Kentucky constituents on…

Yale University last week announced that it will rechristen Calhoun College, named after alumnus John C. Calhoun (class of 1804), the famous and powerful statesman from the antebellum period. Yale president Peter Salovey stated, “The decision to change a college's name is not one we take lightly,…

Northfield, Il.

Reviews and News:

In November 2016, incoming National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster addressed the Virginia Military Institute. The video is worth watching. Here it is:

During a recent break home from school, a friend and I biked the east coast of Florida. Leaving our car in a Wendy's parking lot, we began in St. Mary's, a town straddling the Georgia border, and in eight days traveled 650 miles to reach Key West, the end of the panhandle and the southernmost point…

Graduate magna cum laude from Dear Old Alma Mater, donate $50,000 to help keep its ivied halls open because you want to be true to your school—and get slammed in public from here to Sunday by the college president because you don't happen to be in accord with her anti-Trump,…

A week after Donald Trump asked Mike Flynn to resign from his post as national security advisor, the president has announced another Army general, H.R. McMaster, as Flynn’s replacement. If there are any worthwhile objections to McMaster's appointment among the broad national security, military, and…

President Donald Trump has named U.S. Army lieutenant general H.R. McMaster to be his new national security advisor. The Monday afternoon announcement comes nearly one week after Mike Flynn was asked to resign from the job following revelations he had misled the White House on his conversations…

Republican William Howell is retiring after 15 years as Speaker of the Virginia House, having thwarted much of the agenda of Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe.

"I don't believe in ghosts that come rattling to your bedside," says the Canadian photojournalist Paul Watson in this haunting new book. "Because truth is I live with one."

Small-scale demonstrations continued at the Dakota Access Pipeline protest camp in Cannon Ball, N.D., on Monday, with holdouts facing a Wednesday deadline to vacate the area and allow the Army Corps of Engineers to help expedite cleanup of what North Dakota's governor called "five or six months of…

Up to now, The Scrapbook has looked skeptically at rankings of presidents by historians. They tend to be biased, trendy, superficial, and based on no little myth. The only thing worse than getting historians—liberals, for the most part—to do the ordering would be to ask sociologists. Yet we…

Reviews and News:

Russian-American conductor Semyon Bychkov was supposed to be conducting Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony last week with the New York Philharmonic. Instead he got the flu—presumably as a warning to all those New Yorkers who haven't listened to their mothers about getting a flu shot—and his concerts were…

Michael Flynn's resignation as President Donald Trump's first national security adviser won't end the controversy surrounding the new administration's purported ties to Russia. Depending on which sources you consult, Flynn was either one of Vladimir Putin's stooges or a martyr to the "swamp"—the…

In the months following John F. Kennedy's 1961 pledge to put men on the moon, NASA conceived a plan wherein an Apollo capsule and its three crewmen would descend to the lunar surface atop a giant, multi-stage rocket; when it was time to go home, the rocket would be powerful enough to blast the…

Last Monday's dismissal of national security advisor Mike Flynn seems to have only raised more questions, and scant answers, in the ensuing week. For starters, who will replace Flynn? Nearly a week later, the Trump administration has yet to find a candidate who will take the job, although the…

On September 30, Donald Trump tweeted in his inimitable style, “Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying 'sources said,' DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!"

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes and Michael Warren talk with host Eric Felten about the fine-tuned chaos of the new administration's first month in business.

Reviews and News:

Donald Trump says he is for free trade. But it has to be fair trade. He sees himself not as a protectionist but as a protector of American workers from the ravages of unfair competition, somehow defined. In 1964 Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said when he was asked to define pornography, "I…

In the latest issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, I have a piece on the problems of a media almost totally reliant on anonymous leaks to cover the Trump administration. This is obviously a huge part of the scandal surrounding Michael Flynn's resignation. As I note in the piece, "it's remarkable to…

Bob Michel, the former Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives, passed away February 17, a few days short of his 94th birthday.

No, Chelsea Clinton's latest book is not a flop!

On the day before Lincoln left Springfield on his way to assume the presidency of a nation on the brink of civil war, he walked for the last time down the stairs from his office, paused on the boardwalk, and looked up at the battered shingle that advertised his law firm: LINCOLN & HERNDON. "Let it…

Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, wher he discusses Donald Trump's stand-up-comic-as-POTUS performance, and answers the question for the GOP: "He's President—What do we do now?"

A bipartisan congressional delegation is expected to visit emerging democracies near Russia's borders this week in an effort to assure allies that the United States won't stand for Russian aggression, according to a release first obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

With Obamacare unraveling in almost all ways, it's time to unravel the phony accounting practices that have allowed it to hide some $104 billion in federal spending. Under Obamacare, this money has been paid directly to insurance companies as outlays, yet it has gone into the books as "tax cuts."…

President Donald Trump's Israel envoy will get at least some Democratic backing in the committee set to vote on his nomination, according to a top lawmaker who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, though several Democrats say they are still troubled by many of his past remarks and positions.

The politics of Democratic opposition to Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito were twofold. One, 2006 was an election year, and senators in the minority were hearing about it from their base. Two, partisanship, a vessel for the Senate filibuster, had dropped anchor inside the confirmation process.…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

North Korea's apparent assassination of Kim Jong-un's exiled half-brother Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur's airport was many things: A hideously cruel act; a brazen act of international terrorism; and another sign of the paranoia of the young North Korean dictator.

Reviews and News:

In the wake of national security adviser Michael Flynn's resignation Monday night, lawmakers from both parties are calling for an investigation into his and other Trump aides' possible ties to Russia. Flynn famously, and foolishly, accepted a paid trip to Moscow in 2015 to speak at a banquet for…

New York governor Andrew Cuomo pulled together a Spotify playlist, apparently following the lofty two-year tradition of President Barack Obama's summer playlists. But Cuomo, a likely 2020 presidential hopeful, might have put more thought into his. Obama's lists, tapestries of hidden meaning and…

What a difference an election makes. Benjamin Net­­an­yahu, for eight years scorned and insulted by the Obama administration, found himself warmly embraced in the Trump White House last week. No more name-calling, no more deliberate "daylight" between Israeli and American positions, no more…

Writing good policy is very much like seeing a skilled intern­ist. First, the doctor decides that you really are sick. Next, he determines exactly what's wrong. Only then does he choose an appropriate prescription. Too much of policymaking ignores these steps, opting instead to focus on what the…

It was one hour and 17 minutes of—well, I'm not sure quite what. Donald Trump's first official presidential press conference Thursday afternoon was at various times shocking, confusing, funny, frustrating. He harangued the gathered reporters his White House had asked to attend the event. He…

What a difference an election makes. Benjamin Net­­an­yahu, for eight years scorned and insulted by the Obama administration, found himself warmly embraced in the Trump White House last week. No more name-calling, no more deliberate "daylight" between Israeli and American positions, no more…

"The winner,” ABBA advised in 1980, “takes it all. The loser has to fall.” But not in Swedish politics, where proportional representation has created a smorgasbord of parties and has now contributed to a crisis of democracy.

"I don't believe in ghosts that come rattling to your bedside," says the Canadian photojournalist Paul Watson in this haunting new book. "Because truth is I live with one."

Paris

Berets—it's been some time since they were just for baguette-toting Frenchmen and elite members of the Army's Special Forces. In the summer of 2001, the Army changed longstanding policy and began to put berets on every head. The logic was simple—everyone should be made to feel special, not just…

President Trump has been a strategic success and a tactical failure. That’s the genteel way of putting it. The blunt way is that he's pushed ahead relentlessly on big conservative issues. But more than Democrats or the media, he's been his own worst enemy, a tactical bull in a china shop.

On September 30, Donald Trump tweeted in his inimitable style, “Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying 'sources said,' DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!"

Five hundred years ago, an obscure German churchman named Martin Luther issued a call for debate on an abstruse aspect of late medieval theology. From that mundane event followed a sequence of cascading consequences that would divide the Western Catholic tradition and leave a legacy, Protestantism,…

At times, the dispute between the Trump administration and the federal courts over the president’s executive order on immigration feels more like a WWE SmackDown than a considered statutory and constitutional dispute. Partisan critics of both branches leave one to imagine a sign over the entrance…

Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a hotbed of genius, and the arch-journalist, poet, and playwright Karl Kraus (1874-1936) presided over this efflorescence of art and thought, knowing everything and everybody, making all the right friends and all the right enemies. From 1899…

Yale University last week announced that it will rechristen Calhoun College, named after alumnus John C. Calhoun (class of 1804), the famous and powerful statesman from the antebellum period. Yale president Peter Salovey stated, “The decision to change a college's name is not one we take lightly,…

Washington Post “media columnist" Margaret Sullivan has lately discovered that when political types respond to media inquiries, they "answer" only those questions they choose to answer and smother the rest with verbiage. Being rather new to the capital city, she seems to believe this is a uniquely…

Every now and then a movie comes out of nowhere to surprise you. It’s usually a small-scale piece of genre work whose own producers are likely so relieved just to have it done and get it released that they don't really know they might have something special on their hands. Last year's big surprise…

Higher education had a very good year. That’s the news from the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which reports that "during an election year soaked in populism, some of America's biggest philanthropists bestowed an unusually large chunk of their charity on colleges and universities, including several…

Twenty-five years ago, I was a scrawny, short, flat-footed child with an irrepressible competitive streak. Sports, obviously, were out of the question. But fortunately for me, my school had a program called Academic Games. We’d play six competitive games against other schools on the local, state,…

Up to now, The Scrapbook has looked skeptically at rankings of presidents by historians. They tend to be biased, trendy, superficial, and based on no little myth. The only thing worse than getting historians—liberals, for the most part—to do the ordering would be to ask sociologists. Yet we…

Donald Trump has promised a foreign policy of muscular retrenchment, in which a better-resourced U.S. military intimidates our enemies without serving as a global cop. More than any president since Richard Nixon, our new commander in chief sees virtue in brutal authoritarians, especially if they…

Michael Flynn’s resignation as President Donald Trump's first national security adviser won't end the controversy surrounding the new administration's purported ties to Russia. Depending on which sources you consult, Flynn was either one of Vladimir Putin's stooges or a martyr to the "swamp"—the…

It was late and it had been a long day and lots of miles. It was a relief to pull up at the little Nebraska motel where I had a reservation. They were, however, expecting only one. I hadn’t said anything about the dog.

New York

I like to think of myself as a writer-editor on call. If a metaphor needs rewiring or a talking-point has lost its pointiness, I am on it like butter on toast. But when a friend asked me to write an obituary for her mother, I wondered if I was really the man for the job. I didn’t know her mother…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on Trump's 2-hour long marathon press conference.

Ralph Lerner is a man of rare learning, biting wit, and deep thought. His virtues are well known to generations of students and colleagues at the University of Chicago, although he is not as prominent in the wider world as he deserves to be. The publication of this book should induce many more…

President Donald Trump's nominee for ambassador to Israel took a sober tone Thursday, as David Friedman, labeled a firebrand in the run-up to his confirmation hearing, moderated his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and repeatedly expressed regret over inflammatory comments he made in the…

In 2014, a little-known nutritionist in Milwaukee, one of the more portly cities in America, developed an ingenious system to get his clients to lose weight and keep it off for good. He told his morbidly obese clients to pair each pound with a descriptive adjective, noun, or euphemism they hated,…

In the latest Substandard, we celebrate 30 years of Keanu Reeves. Sonny reviews John Wick 2. JVL battles Captain Trips. And Vic makes a run for the border. Plus time travel movies—and a Pizza Hut Platinum Card? All on this week's Substandard!

President Donald Trump's nomination of Neil Gorsuch to fill the late Antonin Scalia's Supreme Court seat is bound to provoke yet another political brawl. The conventional wisdom is that this is a bad thing. The increasingly bitter fights over the High Court are a sign that our system of government…

For months now, there's been a major environmental protest over the Dakota Access pipeline. From the beginning the protest was based on questionable environmental and legal justifications. Pipelines are a safer mode of energy transport relative to other methods currently being used, and over 99…

South Carolina representative Mick Mulvaney was confirmed to lead the Office of Management and Budget on Thursday morning by a razor-thin 51-49 vote, overcoming the opposition of fellow Republican John McCain.

Stephen K. Bannon, chief strategist and senior counselor to President Donald Trump, is accusing Breitbart News Network of printing a false story about an alleged rift between him and chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Upon hearing that Congress would attempt to overturn a regulation restricting the use of drug tests for unemployment benefits, several Republican governors sent a letter on Tuesday in support of the resolution.

Reviews and News:

I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of laughs watching people on the left trying to climb the pyramid of grievances.

Like duck targets at a carnival game, the next round of presidential candidates is already lining up. And, maybe because of Donald Trump's success, they are all playing a risky game of over-the-top, leftist one-upmanship. The show is fun to watch, but the unbearable threat of their taxes,…

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather took to his Facebook page Tuesday to deliver a unique Valentine's Day message to his 1.8 million followers. Rather framed his post within the context of Richard Nixon and Watergate saying the story "is cascading in intensity" and in the end may be "at least as big"…

Researching the record of a Supreme Court nominee—for, say, a WEEKLY STANDARD essay—is always a daunting task, because the nominees tend to be federal judges with long paper trails. But the lift seems much lighter when the nominee is a felicitous writer. And Judge Neil Gorsuch certainly qualifies.

President Trump has lost two important figures in his administration within 48 hours. His national security advisor, Mike Flynn, resigned Monday night, while Trump's nominee for Labor secretary, Andy Puzder, withdrew on Wednesday, the day before his Senate hearing. So, Washington wants to know, who…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Michael Warren on the first big cabinet pick setback: Andrew Puzder.

Lawmakers are cautious but open to the release of the transcripts of phone calls between former national security advisor Mike Flynn and the Russian ambassador, as long as they do not contain sensitive information.

On February 7, a giant hole opened up in the main spillway of Northern Calfornia's Oroville Dam, leading to a possible chain of events that could burst the dam's reservoir with billions of gallons of floodwater crashing into the towns below. The next day, the office of California's Democratic…

Skeptical conservatives who remain wary of "America First" populism might want to listen closely to Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a constitutional conservative and a strong critic of Trump's candidacy who not that long ago wondered whether the party was done for. Now, he has a plan to deliver…

To hear New York Times correspondent Eric Schmitt tell it, his FBI sources are dishing confidential information from their investigations of Donald Trump's team out of selfless concern for the country. "Many of them are taking risks in order to confirm information that they feel is important for…

Update: Several news outlets are reporting that Andy Puzder has withdrawn his nomination for Secretary of Labor.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says President Trump's approval rating would be "10 to 15 points higher if he allowed himself to stay on message."

The Senate voted 57-43 on Wednesday morning to block an Obama-era regulation that would have affected the gun rights of federal disability recipients whose benefits are managed by a third party due to a mental impairment. The rule, proposed last May, would have required the Social Security…

Commentary editor John Podhoretz has a column in the New York Post on the wider implications—and brushed-over dangers—of the leaked information that felled former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

The Obama administration set up the play pretty perfectly for Team Trump. Student loan policies that disproportionately diminished historically black colleges and universities’ funding and enrollment, and an arrogant posture toward these institutions evident in Obama's public remarks, disappointed…

It was North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un who ordered the killing of his half-brother Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur's airport earlier this week. That's according to South Korea's intelligence chief, who also said that the assassination had been a "standing order" for some five years. Malaysian…

Reviews and News:

There has been a lot of speculation about what will happen to various people if Obamacare is repealed and replaced with a conservative alternative. Would millions lose coverage, as some have claimed, because they couldn't keep their plan and couldn't afford a new plan? Or would people be freed up…

We have not yet reached the end of the Mike Flynn story. The former national security advisor’s abrupt resignation on Monday night might have been the end of his story, as far as the American people are concerned, had his downfall been personal or isolated. But the factors that cut Flynn's White…

It’s a website: "Help us elect Elizabeth Warren for president in 2020."

Since President Trump's election, American allies and other foreign policy observers have been curious to know how the new White House intends to resolve an apparent contradiction. How is it possible that Trump seems keen to make some sort of deal with Vladimir Putin while expressing belligerent…

A congressional oversight panel is seeking details from the White House about President Donald Trump's discussion of a North Korean missile test in the presence of dinner guests at his Mar-a-Lago resort last weekend.

Amid mixed messaging from the Trump administration, House speaker Paul Ryan was the first major Washington official on Tuesday to announce that the president had asked former national security advisor Michael Flynn for his resignation. Ryan's take, which contradicted White House counselor Kellyanne…

A good many books are interesting, but far fewer are charming. That, however, is what Wear and Tear is. Tracy Tynan is the only child of the celebrated British drama critic Kenneth Tynan, the wittiest 20th-century critic in any genre, and his American wife Elaine Dundy, author of the novel The Dud…

If some sort of fundamental tax reform does occur this year—and the odds of its happening are looking good—the politicians, economists, tax lawyers, congressional staffers, trade associations, think tanks, academics, corporations, and others claiming credit for having influenced the legislation…

Reviews and News:

Sometimes, if you are quiet enough in Washington, D.C., you can hear the distinct sound of supple Gucci leather creaking its way around town. And with the Trump administration now in office, and tax reform again on the horizon, the quiet sound has become a roar. The shoe polish smell alone can be…

At one point, Kim Jong-nam was slated to succeed his father Kim Jong-il as North Korea's leader. Then there was that unfortunate incident at Narita Airport outside Tokyo—Kim was detained there in 2001 for travelling with a fake Dominican passport.

Contrary to recent mythology, there has never been a Senate tradition of filibustering nominees to the Supreme Court. Only once in history has there been a clear attempt to filibuster a first-time nominee to the Supreme Court, as in the case of the 2006 Samuel Alito confirmation. This recent, and…

Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.

It took only three weeks for the Trump administration to experience its first scandal and senior-level resignation. Mike Flynn, the retired lieutenant general and a trusted national security aide to Donald Trump, resigned his post as national security advisor late Monday night. The administration…

Since we now live in a world where Democrats have a "new standard" for Supreme Court nominees, it's worth gaming out what to expect from Dems at Neil Gorsuch's confirmation hearing. Will they pull some sort of unprecedented stunt? Perhaps by staging a walkout? Or a performance of "La Resistance"?…

Republicans in the Senate have been privately concerned about Andy Puzder, Donald Trump's choice for Labor secretary, and the fast-food CEO could be in real trouble if more than two GOP senators vote against him. Now the Washington Post reports that four Republican senators are "on the fence" about…

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld a nationwide temporary injunction on President Trump's executive order relating to refugees and visas from seven Muslim-majority countries. The White House says it will not take the case to the Supreme Court, but is rather drafting a…

Back in October, congressman Devin Nunes met with a group of executives from major corporations to talk business. "I was trying to sell them on" the House GOP's tax plan, Nunes says, "explain how it would work and how the economy would grow." There was only one problem: None of the business…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor at large William Kristol on the Trump era, not even a month in.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said President Donald Trump's behavior in the first few weeks of the new administration necessitates a "new standard" for Supreme Court nominees, including a unique a demonstration of judicial independence.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) may be the most misunderstood British thinker of the last 500 years—misunderstood not by intellectual historians but by journalists and the educated public. A case in point: Steven Pearlstein, a well-regarded business journalist, asserts that Smith argued that the…

Not a new idea, this. Dropping off the District of Columbia's residential neighborhoods into Maryland, whence they came, has come up before—usually as a counter proposal to D.C. statehood, that political pipe dream Democrats can't let go.

From the Foundation for Constitutional Government:

Reviews and News:

Is there really a Beijing Model of governance: authoritarian politics steering economic growth, diluting the appeal of the West's democracy and freedom? The ruler of China thinks so. He's focused on sticking around and seeing it triumph.

This week, Israel's prime minister will visit Washington and meet with our new president. They will have a complex agenda.

A few years ago I moved from New York City to a forest in New England. It's very peaceful here, and very bucolic, and very spread-out: Every trip now requires a car. Which is fine—in fact, it's great; I love driving. But I can't stand the god-forsaken infernal traffic. I could have written this…

The political world is abuzz about the possibility Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, is on the outs with Donald Trump. That’s due to a not-so-deep reading of some comments by Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax Media and a donor and friend to Trump, on CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday.

The Month of February

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes joins host Eric Felten to tell why Republicans should take up tax reform first, before getting bogged down in Obamacare; Michael Warren reports on how the White House agenda got slowed down this week; and Ethan Epstein peers behind the mask…

Reviews and News:

Donald Trump spoke on the phone Thursday night with his counterpart in China for the first time since being inaugurated—and for the first time since Trump accepted a phone call from the president of Taiwan late last year. The Taiwan call, which took place in early December when Trump was still the…

A spectre is haunting America, the spectre of TDS. That is the acronym for the plague that is afflicting half of our adult population, more than half if truth be told, and many youngsters whose parents have exposed them to the disease. According to Bernard Goldberg, writing in his column, some…

A single anti-Semitic valentine attributed to a College Republicans group has been found to be the work of a non-student, Central Michigan University concluded on Friday.

The United States might waver on Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia but Europe will not, the European Union's foreign policy chief said Friday, so long as a standing agreement to stop the fighting in Ukraine is not fully implemented.

'Beauty," Camille Paglia once wrote, "is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature." But as today's high-culture world descends into the morass of identity politics, beauty itself has surrendered to…

Donald Trump was flayed Friday morning for allegedly misreading a New York Times article. Trump tweeted that the "failing" NYT published "fake news" when it wrote that Chinese president Xi Jinping "has not spoken to Mr. Trump since November 14." Yet, as the president pointed out, this isn't true:…

In his excellent rundown of yesterday's ruling by the Ninth Circuit refusing to reinstate President Trump's immigration executive order, National Review's David French noted something rather curious about the court's rationale. In essence, the court said that Trump's campaign rhetoric was an issue…

Days after the Super Bowl in Houston, the NFL is warning Texas that legislation requiring individuals to use public bathrooms in accordance with their biological sex could cost the state future opportunities to host the big game.

Elliott Abrams, CNN reports, will not be nominated as deputy secretary of state. A veteran diplomat and foreign policy expert with experience in both the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, Abrams was Secretary Rex Tillerson's choice for the number-two position at the State Department. He…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

George Kennan concluded his famous 1947 article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which laid the groundwork for the doctrine of containment at the beginning of the Cold War, with this peroration:

Reviews and News:

Let's celebrate a small victory for economic freedom, which, as the great Milton Friedman was wont to point out, is essential to political freedom. It is now legal in Arizona to get paid to give a horse a massage without having, first, acquired a license to practice veterinary medicine.

After masked marauders invaded the campus breaking and burning things, rioting to shut down a speech by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a question for the University of California, Berkeley, was whether the miscreants were students or (in the immortal words of The Graduate's Berkeley…

The Scrapbook is always flattered when the conventional wisdom catches up with our own prejudices. Case in point: There seems to be a gathering consensus that the White House Correspondents' Association dinner—that annual televised schmoozefest where journalists and politicians mix in ways that…

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has spoken and…it will not lift the temporary restraining order on President Trump's travel restriction executive order. The three-judge panel ruled unanimously Thursday evening that the federal government did not present a compelling case in its effort to receive…

Is there really a Beijing Model of governance: authoritarian politics steering economic growth, diluting the appeal of the West’s democracy and freedom? The ruler of China thinks so. He's focused on sticking around and seeing it triumph.

In 2014, a little-known nutritionist in Milwaukee, one of the more portly cities in America, developed an ingenious system to get his clients to lose weight and keep it off for good. He told his morbidly obese clients to pair each pound with a descriptive adjective, noun, or euphemism they hated,…

A good many books are interesting, but far fewer are charming. That, however, is what Wear and Tear is. Tracy Tynan is the only child of the celebrated British drama critic Kenneth Tynan, the wittiest 20th-century critic in any genre, and his American wife Elaine Dundy, author of the novel The Dud…

‘Beauty," Camille Paglia once wrote, "is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature." But as today's high-culture world descends into the morass of identity politics, beauty itself has surrendered to…

We regret to inform you that Katie Couric has a new documentary.

Why do orchids have such a fascinating grip on the popular imagination? There are poems, songs, and perfumes dedicated to roses, and famous paintings showcase sunflowers and water lilies. But no other flower has inspired the range of myth and symbolism as the orchid. According to Jim Endersby, the…

THE GUIDEBOOK IS A FLOURISHING GENRE. You could start with Maimonides’s twelfth-century Guide of the Perplexed and end with the 32,000 books the keyword "guide" brings up on Amazon.com. To seek a guidebook, whether on the mystery of the divine or the mystery of the carburetor, requires awareness of…

In nominating Neil Gorsuch to be the next Supreme Court justice, President Trump could not have found a judge who more starkly dramatizes the constitutional crossroads at which the nation now finds itself. For eight years, the Obama administration and its proponents pressed their progressive…

After masked marauders invaded the campus breaking and burning things, rioting to shut down a speech by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a question for the University of California, Berkeley, was whether the miscreants were students or (in the immortal words of The Graduate’s Berkeley…

Since President Trump’s election, American allies and other foreign policy observers have been curious to know how the new White House intends to resolve an apparent contradiction. How is it possible that Trump seems keen to make some sort of deal with Vladimir Putin while expressing belligerent…

Adam Smith (1723-1790) may be the most misunderstood British thinker of the last 500 years—misunderstood not by intellectual historians but by journalists and the educated public. A case in point: Steven Pearlstein, a well-regarded business journalist, asserts that Smith argued that the…

The first words I learned in Italian were gamba di legno, or wooden leg, for which Benito Mussolini and Walt Disney are to blame: After the war, my mother, who was fluent in Italian, had been involved with a charity that provided artificial limbs for Italian amputees. And for decades thereafter,…

Let’s celebrate a small victory for economic freedom, which, as the great Milton Friedman was wont to point out, is essential to political freedom. It is now legal in Arizona to get paid to give a horse a massage without having, first, acquired a license to practice veterinary medicine.

The author of this volume—a professor of Spanish and Portuguese studies at Northwestern—wrote it with provocative intent. But whether The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise will stimulate the academic and media debate he desires cannot be predicted. Darío Fernández-Morera's arguments are undermined by…

President Donald Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to fill the late Antonin Scalia's Supreme Court seat is bound to provoke yet another political brawl. The conventional wisdom is that this is a bad thing. The increasingly bitter fights over the High Court are a sign that our system of government…

If some sort of fundamental tax reform does occur this year—and the odds of its happening are looking good—the politicians, economists, tax lawyers, congressional staffers, trade associations, think tanks, academics, corporations, and others claiming credit for having influenced the legislation…

In my ongoing effort to perform the duties assigned to me as this magazine’s movie critic, I suffer for you. I see things you would not wish to see and tell you not to see them. Don't bother to thank me, even though you should. It's all part of the deal, the compact between us, forged over many…

Ralph Lerner is a man of rare learning, biting wit, and deep thought. His virtues are well known to generations of students and colleagues at the University of Chicago, although he is not as prominent in the wider world as he deserves to be. The publication of this book should induce many more…

In 1993, the vast health care plan of the Clinton administration died without a vote being taken in Congress. Known as Hillarycare after its champion, the president’s wife, it left its mark on the new administration. In the midterm election of 1994, Democrats lost control of the House for the first…

The Scrapbook is always flattered when the conventional wisdom catches up with our own prejudices. Case in point: There seems to be a gathering consensus that the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner—that annual televised schmoozefest where journalists and politicians mix in ways that…

George Kennan concluded his famous 1947 article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which laid the groundwork for the doctrine of containment at the beginning of the Cold War, with this peroration:

Writing good policy is very much like seeing a skilled intern­ist. First, the doctor decides that you really are sick. Next, he determines exactly what's wrong. Only then does he choose an appropriate prescription. Too much of policymaking ignores these steps, opting instead to focus on what the…

Back in October, congressman Devin Nunes met with a group of executives from major corporations to talk business. “I was trying to sell them on" the House GOP's tax plan, Nunes says, "explain how it would work and how the economy would grow." There was only one problem: None of the business…

Dan Mogulof, a vice chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, must boast X-ray vision. After about 150 people rampaged through his picturesque campus in early February, setting fires, smashing windows, and launching fireworks at the police—all ostensibly to protest an appearance by an…

The Trump administration's early responses to illicit Iranian activities signal to Tehran that the nuclear deal is on life support, a former top diplomat said Thursday.

The press' credibility problem took a turn for the worse this year.

Is the United States "bogged down" in military conflict? That's the phrase President Donald Trump used in a series of tweets Thursday morning responding to a Republican senator who was critical of a recent U.S. military raid in Yemen.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Jay Cost on the fight over Neil Gorsuch.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch has been defending the integrity of his branch of government and not attacking the president during his private meetings on Capitol Hill, Nebraska senator Ben Sasse said during a speech on Thursday afternoon.

Readers of the Washington Post op-ed page might be forgiven for believing that they're under assault—from adjectives, lots of adjectives. Consider, for example, these opening sentences from the three separate pieces spread across the top of the page this past Monday.

On this week's episode, the Substandard tackles sports movies. Vic goes to Hogwarts. JVL drinks something pink. Hey Sonny, wanna have a catch? Plus a Super Bowl recap and thoughts on Missy Peregrym—stick it!

Hidden Figures is a nice movie with a great subject that makes you feel good about America, reminds you how far we've come since the segregated and male-dominated days of the 1950s, and even reminds us that once we dreamed big about exploring the stars and going to the moon and all that kind of…

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan sat with Judy Woodruff on PBS News Hour for a wide-ranging interview Wednesday evening that touched on various points of disagreement between the Wisconsin Republican and President Donald Trump.

General John Nicholson, the top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, said Thursday that he is short "a few thousand" troops to assist and train Afghan forces in their war against the Taliban.

I've known David Frum almost since I first came to Washington. A mutual friend of ours once described him thusly: "David is one of the handful of people in this town whose intellect is genuinely intimidating." That appraisal always struck me as pretty much correct.

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan said he is a few thousand NATO troops short to meet his mission to train, advise and assist local forces.

Reviews and News

WEEKLY STANDARD contributor and American Enterprise Institute scholar Andy Smarick, along with collaborator Kelsey Hamilton, has released a new paper that "[compares] the combined government experience of President Donald Trump's initial domestic policy cabinet appointees to that of the first…

It is the exorbitant privilege of the United States that it can conjure the world's primary reserve currency, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, then French finance minister and later president, remarked half a century ago. This privilege, maintained as the dollar took the place of gold, allows the United…

To hear governor Jerry Brown tell it, California is all that stands between Washington and the ruin of the nation. In his recent "State of the State" address, Brown promised to defy Donald Trump, fashioning it as a great patriotic quest: "When we defend California," Brown said, "we defend America."

I don't know about you, but I'm still recovering from Sunday night.

At 10:30 Thursday morning, Jeff Sessions will officially be sworn in as attorney general of the United States. On a near party-line vote, 52 to 47, the Senate confirmed one of its own Wednesday night for the job of the nation's top law enforcement officer. Sessions was one of Donald Trump's…

Alabama's Jeff Sessions was confirmed by the Senate as President Trump's attorney general Wednesday night by a 52 to 47 vote.

Freshly-confirmed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos greeted an anxious-seeming assembly of her staff at the Education Department headquarters with reassuring remarks Wednesday afternoon. On an unseasonably warm day in Washington, the assembly hall was hot and stuffy, only more uncomfortable as…

The Standing Rock protest may be over, but here's one thing that won't be over for quite some time: the standing mountain of trash that the ever-so-environmentally concerned protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline left behind when they abandoned their makeshift camp on the Standing Rock Indian…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy online editor Chris Deaton on why Republicans are speaking out when they don't need to.

Democratic antagonism toward attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions continued Wednesday ahead of a confirmation vote, with former presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders following Elizabeth Warren's lead from the night before.

The Telegraph recently reported the horrifying news that a doctor in Holland had been cleared of charges after she drugged an elderly woman suffering from dementia, had her family hold her down, and killed her. The laws in Holland are such that what occurred falls under the rubric of “euthanasia."…

We are two Americans with different family histories whose paths converged when we got involved with one of the nation's largest Hispanic charter school operators. At the peak of our efforts a couple of years ago, the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) Charter School Network enrolled more than…

If this was 1920, and Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge had disciplined his fellow Bay Stater for impugning the integrity of a colleague, we might have fairly said Elizabeth Warren was silenced on Tuesday night. Lacking an instantaneously publishing Internet and 'round-the-clock cable news, she would have…

A new poll shows that President Trump's controversial executive order on immigration is not unpopular:

Reviews and News:

Nearly every household in the country spends a sizable proportion of its income on housing. The median household allots over one-third of its income to keeping a roof over its head, and the annual expenditure of the median earner's income on housing has increased by 35 percent since 2000.

The Women's March on Washington has decided to become a permanent fixture on the political scene, not just a pink hat-wearing one-off. But that means it's gotta do something, so it's come up with something to do: a "general strike" with the catchy title "A Day Without a Woman."

Almost fifty years ago a professor at the University of Geneva formed a group that would become the World Economic Forum (WEF). You probably know it as "Davos," named after the Swiss city that hosts its invitation-only annual meeting that draws 2,500 of the famous that want to be leaders like…

Donald Trump's most contentious cabinet appointee (so far), Betsy DeVos, is now the Secretary of Education. Her nomination cleared the Senate Tuesday afternoon after all 48 Democrats voted unanimously against her (along with 2 Republicans), resulting in a 50-50 tie that Vice President Mike Pence…

For the remainder of Tuesday night and for most of Wednesday, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren is prohibited from debating on the floor of the Senate. That's because her Senate colleagues found her guilty of impugning another senator, Jeff Sessions, whose nomination for attorney general is…

Arizona senator John McCain strongly condemned any attempt to draw a moral equivalence between the United States and Vladimir Putin's Russia Tuesday, after President Donald Trump appeared to suggest such an equivalence over the weekend.

President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, won Senate confirmation Tuesday afternoon, but just barely. She lost two of the Republican majority's 52 votes, with Senate education committee members Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska having announced they would…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD editor at large Bill Kristol joined The Lead with Jake Tapper on Tuesday afternoon to discuss President Donald Trump, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, and the administration's relationship with the truth.

Singles Awareness Day is fast approaching, which will probably be news to those of you who are already dragging the old ball and chain. On February 14—though some authorities cite February 15—single people across the globe will pause to contemplate their sorry, pathetic lives or to celebrate their…

Last week, the House and Senate voted to repeal one of the last regulations the Obama administration enacted on its way out the door. The regulation, known as the Stream Protection Rule, required coal companies to more aggressively test and monitor waterways. President Trump is expected to finalize…

Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly took partial blame Tuesday for the confusion that ensued after President Donald Trump issued an executive order temporarily barring travel from seven countries as well as the inflow of refugees.

When I say that Portraits of Shakespeare is the definitive history of visual depictions of William Shakespeare, it should not be taken as too high praise: There are only three images of the man that are likely contemporaneous with him. But Katherine Duncan-Jones, emerita fellow at Somerville…

The NCAA says it has not ruled out venues in North Carolina as possible sites for championship events between 2018 and 2022, after a letter from a local marketing agency addressed to lawmakers said all the Tar Heel state's bids to host post-season competitions in that time frame would be rejected…

I was at the gym yesterday catching up on the latest Hardcore History podcast—seriously, Dan Carlin is national treasure—and I noticed something. According to the iTunes charts, one of the ten most popular podcasts in the country right now is produced by the Washington Post. It's about Donald…

Amid concerns of cold feet in the congressional GOP and noncommittal comments from President Donald Trump, House speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday the House and Senate would conclude their role in repealing and replacing Obamacare by the end of 2017, but cautioned that implementing a new regime will…

The speaker of the House of Commons has indicated that President Trump may not be welcome to address the British Parliament during an anticipated state visit later this year. John Bercow signaled his resistance to having the American president address the lower chamber in remarks to members of…

Activists on the left have opposed the confirmation of education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos for a host of reasons, some more poorly considered than others. DeVos has spent decades as an activist and philanthropist for school choice, and with the Democratic establishment's love for teachers…

Reviews and News:

On the day of Donald Trump's inauguration as president, a well-known neo-Nazi named Richard Spencer gave an interview to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was on a street corner in Washington, near an anti-Trump protest. During the interview, one of the protesters punched Spencer in the…

Conventional wisdom has been bullish regarding the potential profits from investing in commercial marijuana businesses, now considered legal in several states but not under federal law. There have even been glossy brochures from consulting firms, offering the lure of potential billions in sales for…

President Trump's January 30 phone call to South Korean prime minister (and acting president as of December 9) Hwang Kyo-ahn, reportedly spelling out the U.S. "ironclad" commitment to South Korea, came at a particularly opportune moment. Likewise can be said for the decision of Secretary of Defense…

It’s the first full week of February, and Donald Trump has been president for nearly two and a half weeks. So why, besides the executive orders, do things seem to be moving so slowly for the Trump administration?

Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, a leading congressional hawk on U.S.-Russia relations, broke with President Donald Trump in his characterization of Vladimir Putin on Monday, but contextualized the commander in chief's defense of the Kremlin last weekend as just one comment amid a broader approach to…

A small story from a small town grew legs and got around last week. A local essay contest prompting high school students in and around Westport, Connecticut to consider the role "white privilege" has played in their lives didn't sit right with a handful of parents and a mob of Internet hecklers,…

Now that a Republican is back in the presidency, the "theocracy" machine is cranking up again.

Sanctions the Trump administration imposed on Iran after the country conducted another ballistic missile launch are more symbolic than punitive, a former Obama administration Treasury Department official said Monday.

Like a reflex hammer to a knee, it's now obligatory that any comment a celebrity makes in opposition to Donald Trump gets retweeted 10,000 times. As of early Monday afternoon, New England Patriots tight end Martellus Bennett was more than 99 percent of the way there.

Philosophers once preached what they practiced. Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, Epicurus, and the Stoics not only devoted themselves to living simple, abstemious lives; it was the essence of their philosophy. Some of the most important modern philosophers—Spinoza, Kant, Thoreau, Kierkegaard,…

Missouri governor Eric Greitens signed legislation Monday making his state the twenty-eighth to pass a right to work measure into law.

In June 2013, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old National Security Agency contract employee, surfaced in Hong Kong with the sensational announcement that he was the source of top-secret American intelligence documents already being published in the Guardian and the Washington Post. The information he…

Reviews and News:

In Shakespeare's plays, the forest is always a magical place, where identity itself becomes more fluid. The idea of casting off one's clothes to don an altogether new identity is a theme in several of the comedies, but perhaps never to the same degree as in As You Like It, which is currently…

For starters, he wants to cut taxes—"big league." The Tax Foundation estimates that the Trump plan would reduce federal revenues by $4.4 to $5.9 trillion over the course of a decade. Under dynamic scoring, whereby the growth of the economy is factored into the analysis, that number drops to…

What if, instead of a wall, we were to build, along the southern border, a cargo shipping canal?

Obviously, the come-from-behind overtime win by the Patriots over (my beloved) Falcons was the biggest news from Super Bowl Sunday. But in Washington the talk this past weekend was consumed by the president's latest controversial remarks about Vladimir Putin and a judicial fight over his travel…

The Super Bowl--OMG!

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes comes by to tell us how Donald Trump came to choose Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the High Court seat left vacant by the death last year of Justice Antonin Scalia. Then, Michael Warren joins host Eric Felten to talk about another whirlwind…

Executive editor Fred Barnes joins the Washington Examiner's Byron York and host, editor Hugo Gurdon, to discuss how the Supreme Court vacancy and administrative control of executive branch agencies benefitted Donald Trump in his electoral college upset.

Anheuser-Busch's beer ad for the 2017 Super Bowl looks more like a protest film against President Trump's immigration policies than an actual pitch for brew. The 1-minute commercial tells the tale of the German-born Adolphus Busch, co-founder of the St. Louis-based suds empire, as he survives…

The Trump administration's emercency motion requesting an immediate stay of a Washington federal court's restraining order of President Trump's immigration executive order has been denied.

Editor at large William Kristol's weekly Kristol Clear podcast, where Bill debates whether history demands a Pats win in the first Super Bowl of the Trump Era; Why Democrats are trapped between their dyspeptic base and distrustful voters; And Gorsuch proves NeverTrumpers wrong.

Reviews and News:

I don't know whether it's "fake news," but it's almost certainly fake concern: all the solicitude in the mainstream media over First Lady Melania Trump's supposed sham marriage with her extremely famous husband.

Most presidential honeymoons are characterized by congressional and presidential vows of everlasting cooperation, but the policy cohabitations are soon torn asunder by the healthy re-emergence of political differences. President Trump's honeymoon period was different. He chose to abuse his…

A federal judge in Seattle has issued a temporary ruling which halts Donald Trump's recent travel ban executive order.

You might imagine, consulting some eminent minds, that the whole point of imagination is happiness. "Imagination cannot make fools wise," wrote Pascal, "but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable." Samuel Johnson took the point but drew a different…

Senate Judiciary Commitee chairman Chuck Grassley, who will play the key role in overseeing Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch's confirmation process, talked up his relationship with ranking member Dianne Feinstein in an interview with Roll Call's Niels Lesniewski.

Top Republican lawmakers are praising the Trump administration for levying a crop of sanctions on Iran after the country conducted a ballistic missile test Sunday, hailing the move as the beginning of a tougher posture toward the Islamic Republic.

A government lawyer said in federal court Friday morning that more than 100,000 visas have been revoked as a result of President Donald Trump's executive order on refugees and immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. But a State Department official later placed the estimate at almost half…

The seal of the president of the United States features an eagle clutching the arrows of war in its left talon and the olive branch of peace in its right, a fitting symbol of the expansive powers of the American executive. But one might just as well have substituted a pen and a telephone to…

For years, the left has denounced Republicans as the villainous "party of the rich" while they've been the virtuous champions of the working class. But somewhere along the way—it may have been to that second viewing of Hamilton or coming home from Whole Foods, but regardless it was in a hybrid…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

President Trump will "halt implementation of a rule that requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients," NPR reports. Ike Brannon wrote on that proposed regulation for THE WEEKLY STANDARD back in 2015:

When Donald Trump released his first list of potential Supreme Court nominees last May, Neil Gorsuch's name was not on it. The inner circle of Trump's advisers were aware of Gorsuch's lofty reputation as a judge. Still, they kept him off the list because they hadn't fully studied his judicial…

A procedural vote along party lines early Friday morning decided to close contentious debate in the Senate over the confirmation of Betsy DeVos, which is now expected to fall to a 50-50 tie broken by Vice President Pence.

Reviews and News:

The new administration's uncertain higher education policy took two strides into the light this week. First came the announcement of Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr.'s appointment to lead Trump's White House task force on higher education reform. And then, responding to fiery, riotous…

Those looking to study Korean in its native land suffer from no dearth of options: Seoul is chock-full of fine universities offering to teach the notoriously difficult tongue to foreigners. But for those seeking an experience a little more, well, what's the word—Stalinist?—there is Tongil Tours.…

The Ahabs at the Washington Post continue their obsessive pursuit of the Great Orange Whale. And if that means harpooning the inoffensive spouse of their prey, so be it. Witness an extended Post article last week, "The AWOL first lady," which takes Melania Trump to task for being "barely visible."…

COULD THERE BE a more persistent biographer than Nancy Milford? It has been nearly thirty years since she first approached the dragon who stands guard over the memory of Edna St. Vincent Millay—that is, the poet’s younger sister Norma—and asked her to hand over the treasure left in her keeping: the…

In nominating federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, President Trump has made an excellent choice. Assuming there is nothing in Gorsuch’s record that is disqualifying, the Senate should confirm him posthaste.

When Donald Trump released his first list of potential Supreme Court nominees last May, Neil Gorsuch’s name was not on it. The inner circle of Trump's advisers were aware of Gorsuch's lofty reputation as a judge. Still, they kept him off the list because they hadn't fully studied his judicial…

On a late January afternoon, as press secretary Sean Spicer walked into the White House media briefing room, a tall, thin, bespectacled man poked his head in the doorway for a moment before turning around and heading back into the West Wing. Later that week, at another briefing, the man stayed…

As a candidate for president, Donald Trump did not offer much in the way of specific policies. Still, based on the handful of details he did present, it is pretty clear he wants to spend money, a lot of money.

No journalist really understood the forces that over the past year made Donald Trump president, with the possible exception of the former newspaper publisher Conrad Black. In early 2016, with the primary season barely underway, Black wrote a column in Canada’s National Post entitled "Don't…

When I say that Portraits of Shakespeare is the definitive history of visual depictions of William Shakespeare, it should not be taken as too high praise: There are only three images of the man that are likely contemporaneous with him. But Katherine Duncan-Jones, emerita fellow at Somerville…

Nearly every household in the country spends a sizable proportion of its income on housing. The median household allots over one-third of its income to keeping a roof over its head, and the annual expenditure of the median earner’s income on housing has increased by 35 percent since 2000.

J. L. Penfold died early on the morning of January 10. He was 71 years old. He was at home. And he was surrounded by his family. All of which are blessings.

Eligible is one of more than a hundred reworkings of Pride and Prejudice listed on Goodreads and it’s part of a recent publishing enterprise, The Austen Project, which has paired six Austen novels with six contemporary novelists. (None of the four released so far has been a critical success.) When…

Hidden Figures is a nice movie with a great subject that makes you feel good about America, reminds you how far we've come since the segregated and male-dominated days of the 1950s, and even reminds us that once we dreamed big about exploring the stars and going to the moon and all that kind of…

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer isn’t a happy warrior. He loves the spotlight, but everyone's paying more attention to his colleagues Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. He hoped to be majority leader, but Republicans surprised most observers by holding the Senate on Election Day. He…

We are two Americans with different family histories whose paths converged when we got involved with one of the nation’s largest Hispanic charter school operators. At the peak of our efforts a couple of years ago, the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) Charter School Network enrolled more than…

You might imagine, consulting some eminent minds, that the whole point of imagination is happiness. "Imagination cannot make fools wise," wrote Pascal, "but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable." Samuel Johnson took the point but drew a different…

The Wall Street Journal last week ran a piece on an interior design trend not for the faint of heart—maximalism: "The Lush New Décor Look That's Vanquishing Minimalism."

Those looking to study Korean in its native land suffer from no dearth of options: Seoul is chock-full of fine universities offering to teach the notoriously difficult tongue to foreigners. But for those seeking an experience a little more, well, what’s the word—Stalinist?—there is Tongil Tours.…

It is the exorbitant privilege of the United States that it can conjure the world’s primary reserve currency, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, then French finance minister and later president, remarked half a century ago. This privilege, maintained as the dollar took the place of gold, allows the United…

On the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, a well-known neo-Nazi named Richard Spencer gave an interview to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was on a street corner in Washington, near an anti-Trump protest. During the interview, one of the protesters punched Spencer in the…

The Ahabs at the Washington Post continue their obsessive pursuit of the Great Orange Whale. And if that means harpooning the inoffensive spouse of their prey, so be it. Witness an extended Post article last week, “The AWOL first lady," which takes Melania Trump to task for being "barely visible."…

In June 2013, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old National Security Agency contract employee, surfaced in Hong Kong with the sensational announcement that he was the source of top-secret American intelligence documents already being published in the Guardian and the Washington Post. The information he…

The university is often said to be the first place in our society to look for the truth. Unfortunately, it is now one of the last places to find it.

The election of 2016 was terrible because it wasn’t an election, it was a rebellion. America is having a civil war, or, to be more accurate, a War of Incivility. The war is not between Republicans and Democrats or between conservatives and progressives. The war is between the frightened and what…

Philosophers once preached what they practiced. Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, Epicurus, and the Stoics not only devoted themselves to living simple, abstemious lives; it was the essence of their philosophy. Some of the most important modern philosophers—Spinoza, Kant, Thoreau, Kierkegaard,…

The Telegraph recently reported the horrifying news that a doctor in Holland had been cleared of charges after she drugged an elderly woman suffering from dementia, had her family hold her down, and killed her. The laws in Holland are such that what occurred falls under the rubric of “euthanasia."…

To hear governor Jerry Brown tell it, California is all that stands between Washington and the ruin of the nation. In his recent “State of the State" address, Brown promised to defy Donald Trump, fashioning it as a great patriotic quest: "When we defend California," Brown said, "we defend America."

The seal of the president of the United States features an eagle clutching the arrows of war in its left talon and the olive branch of peace in its right, a fitting symbol of the expansive powers of the American executive. But one might just as well have substituted a pen and a telephone to…

Dozens of pro-life leaders sent a letter to Congress Thursday afternoon urging Republican senators and representatives to honor their commitment to prohibit taxpayer-funding of elective abortion coverage under any health-care bill to replace Obamacare.

Republicans rode their near-unanimous support for repealing Obamacare to big wins in the elections of 2010, 2014, and 2016. Now, having won control of the House, Senate, and White House largely on the strength of that clear and courageous commitment, some Republican officeholders are thinking that…

Narsarsuaq, Greenland

Should you find yourself strolling along Colorado’s Boulder Creek, be careful where you step. It seems that no small number of homeless have taken up residence there, and not only are they are in the habit of leaving trash hither and yon, so too waste of a more personal nature. "The…

We've all heard the claim that sexism holds women back. But what if there is a deeper, more insidious force preventing women from reaching high levels of office? Is it possible that you could be a sexist—without even knowing it?

Vladimir Kara-Murza, 35, Russian political activist and journalist, has been hospitalized in Moscow "with symptoms similar to those he had two years ago," sudden kidney failure and related problems, said his wife Evgenia Kara-Murza on Thursday.

At his cabin near Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau famously kept three chairs: "one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society." Even when he sat alone, Thoreau contained multitudes. We know him best as the man who lived for two years in a hut in the woods, recording his experiment in…

A top Republican senator is urging President Donald Trump to provide Ukraine with lethal defensive aid as the fight there against Russian-backed rebels has again intensified in recent days.

A relative told me this story: She had gone to a neighbor's party, only to have the neighbor announce her arrival by saying something like, "You don't have to worry, everyone. She didn't bring the conservative with her." And then, after telling me the story, my relative began to weep—not because of…

The opponents of Donald Trump's pick to be secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, are animated in large part by anger at her support for school voucher programs. And in their efforts to undermine vouchers, they've gone far afield—to Chile, to be exact, where an expansive school choice system was…

On this week's episode, the Substandard pays tribute to their favorite character actors. Vic and Sonny drink martinis and Jonathan drinks ... a beer! Why on earth would anyone actually go to an NFL game? Plus Val Kilmer's Greatest Hits—all on this week's Substandard!

A non-veteran, senior-level Obama appointee to Veterans Affairs (VA) is President Trump's appointee to be the next VA secretary. If confirmed by Congress, current VA Under Secretary of Health David Shulkin will be the first non-veteran to lead the department since President Reagan elevated VA to…

The liberal media's coverage of the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21 was generally one long ecstatic swoon. Even some 10 days later, the Washington Post is slapping the Vaseline over its lenses in a loving soft-edged gaze at march founder Teresa Shook:

It might be surprising to learn that Stalinist North Korea actually has a private university. But it's true: Since 2010, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), which is funded largely by western donors, has been educating many sons of the country's political elite.

Reviews and News:

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with associate editor Ethan Epstein on his recent article about Mexico's own wall, on its southern border. And how the U.S. might help pay for it.

A homeless man, woman, or child needs a bed, a roof, a meal—and typically a lot besides. Just as home means something greater than the presence of these three, homelessness is much more than their absence.

There's a lot of important Trump news this week—the SCOTUS pick, his executive order on visas and refugees—but I'm going to deliberately ignore it because these are fast-moving stories.

On a late January afternoon, as press secretary Sean Spicer walked into the White House media briefing room, a tall, thin, bespectacled man poked his head in the doorway for a moment before turning around and heading back into the West Wing. Later that week, at another briefing, the man stayed…

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, an early skeptic of President Donald Trump's pick for secretary of state, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that his concerns over whether the nominee would be cozy with the Kremlin and weak on sanctions against Russia have been allayed.

During a White House briefing Wednesday afternoon, spokesman Sean Spicer brought National Security Adviser Mike Flynn to the podium to deliver a prepared statement offering more detail on Iran's recent "destabilizing behavior" in the region.

Among Frederick Douglass's many indispensable roles in American society—that of abolitionist, reformer, and statesman—was educator. Learning was his hope and inspiration, opposite qualities of what made a "contented slave". To make one, he wrote, "It is necessary to darken his moral and mental…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy online editor Chris Deaton on President Trump's new SCOTUS pick and his story on the Senate prospects for Neil Gorsuch's nomination.

The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson 56 to 43 Wednesday, with every Republican and three Democrats voting in support. The former Exxon Mobil CEO managed to quell doubts from top Republicans, but is sure to face scrutiny from still-skeptical…

Two GOP senators said Wednesday they would vote no on the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be secretary of education, potentially dragging the vice president into a tie-break scenario to push through one of President Donald Trump's most controversial cabinet selections.

President Donald Trump continued encouraging his party's Senate leader Wednesday to waive a 60-vote threshold to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, if necessary, the morning after the upper chamber's top Democrat suggested a nomination fight was coming.

Eight hundred people showed up for the meeting. So many that it was necessary to use the school gymnasium instead of the more intimate and comfortable auditorium, as planned.

Reuters commissioned a poll about President Trump's executive order that caused so much controversy over the weekend. Here are the results:

This evening, the Washington policy debate over radical Islam is promised a fresh interfaith effort. In the Dirksen Senate Office Building, beginning at 6 p.m., Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ben Cardin (D-Md) will cohost a reception honoring a new "Muslim Jewish Advisory Council" (MJAC). The…

Democratic Senate whip Dick Durbin has told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that he is formulating an amendment that will criticize the Trump administration for failing to mention Jews in a recent statement marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Durbin plans to add the language to a Senate measure aimed at…

Reviews and News:

Earlier this season the National Football League announced a $100 million initiative to do more to study and reduce the effects of concussions and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) on its players—an apparently sizeable figure for which it took a number of bows. While this appears at first…

It's always fun to watch one segment of socially conscious progressivism light into another segment of socially conscious progressivism. Especially when the socially progressive target is Mark Zuckerberg, the $55 billion net-worth founder and CEO of Facebook who enjoys lecturing his fellow…

Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday night he has "very serious doubts" whether Judge Neil Gorsuch will meet his standard for winning confirmation to the Supreme Court. "The burden is on … Gorsuch to prove himself to be within the legal mainstream and, in this new era, willing to…

Conservatives and Republicans appear to be in nearly universal agreement: In nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump has hit a home run. Immediately after Trump made the announcement Tuesday night from the White House, my email inbox was flooded with statements of…

After the successful effort last year by Senate Republicans to deny Merrick Garland, Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, a confirmation vote, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told Americans "...we're not playing tit for tat here. We want a mainstream nominee because that's the right thing…

The nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court has thrilled conservatives, but it's also earning praise from some prominent liberal legal scholars.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with frequent contributor and Hoover Institution scholar Adam J. White on why Neil Gorsuch, Trump's pick for the vacant Supreme Court seat, is the best Trump could make.

President Trump announced Tuesday night his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.