312 articles
The term "pre-existing conditions" has become a catch-all to describe a certain category of health status, high-cost medical patients, and a popular provision of Obamacare under scrutiny in the health care reform process. It's applicable to all three of these things. But without understanding how,…
This post has been updated for clarity and to reflect that the location of the event was changed from City Centre Doha to Intercontinental Doha. After publication, the event was moved once again, as we reported here.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes talks with host Eric Felten about President Trump's big new tax reform plan, and then senior writer Michael Warren comes by to assess the style and strategy of the Trump presidency, 100 days in.
Lawmakers may be coming to an agreement to fund defense through September after a frenetic week of debate and negotiations, but any deal will only bring them out of the budgetary woods and into the political fire.
He should’ve stuck with "ridiculous." That was the word President Trump used in late April to describe the "first 100 days" standard by which new commanders in chief are judged for their productivity. Trump himself cited the timeline before the election in his Contract with the American Voter, a…
Barack Obama thought a 28 percent corporate tax rate is about right. House Republicans think 20 percent would make America competitive again. Donald Trump thinks a 15 percent rate would Make America Great Again. And for comparison, Britain's prime minister Theresa May thinks 17 percent would make a…
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Ohio governor John Kasich dismissed changes to the American Health Care Act designed to give states flexibility under Obamacare's insurance regulations on Friday, telling reporters that the House amendment process is a "bouncing ball" he hasn't been interested in following.
Today on the Daily Standard podcast, editor-at-large Bill Kristol discusses President Trump's recent revelations that being president isn't as easy as he thought, why Paul Ryan might be thinking the same about being Speaker of the House, and how opportunistic progressives created—then lost control…
What is the most important number in the Trump presidency?
Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
In a digital-age fulfillment of its mission as a land-grant college, Purdue University has acquired the for-profit, mainly online Kaplan University. Purdue’s board of trustees voted Thursday on a deal that would make Kaplan a public university, affiliated with Purdue and dedicated to extending…
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It's almost as if Donald Trump "looked into Xi Jinping's soul" when the Chinese president visited Mar-a-Lago a few weeks ago. What else can explain the U.S. president's bizarre affinity for the repressive Chinese dictator, which he laid out in a disturbing interview with Reuters on Thursday?
President Donald Trump is likely to announce the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem during a coming trip to Israel, a Republican lawmaker close to the issue said Thursday.
"With this president, you never know."
He should’ve stuck with "ridiculous." That was the word President Trump used in late April to describe the "first 100 days" standard by which new commanders in chief are judged for their productivity. Trump himself cited the timeline before the election in his Contract with the American Voter, a…
You could tell the European political establishment had taken a shine to 39-year-old French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron by the number of articles in which he was referred to as both a "centrist" and an "outsider." Angelique Chrisafis, of Britain's Guardian, even called him a "maverick…
California’s quest to tax itself into oblivion looks to be taking another great leap forward, with the state legislature approving a plan that will hike gas taxes by 12 cents a gallon. That will solidify the state's standing as one of the highest gas-taxers in the nation. Add requirements for…
In little more than a half-century, the United States has become a gambling nation. In 1963 a map of the country would have shown one state, Nevada, with legal casino gambling and no states with government-sponsored lotteries. It would have shown racetracks that were merely racetracks, not fronts…
STEPHEN GREENBLATT prefaces Hamlet in Purgatory with an extremely personal anecdote. He tells of his father who, obsessed with death his entire life, feared that his sons would not perform the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayers for the dead, after his death. So, in his will, he set aside a sum…
I was recently reading The Whole Truth and Nothing But, a 1963 memoir by the legendary gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and I came across an interesting passage in which the producer Samuel Goldwyn (né Szmuel Gelbfisz) tells Hopper flatly, "You can't have a Jew playing a Jew. It wouldn't work on the…
Paul Veyne, the great French historian of the ancient world and a professor at the Collège de France since 1975, has declared Palmyra, Pompeii, and Ephesus to be the three most extraordinary archaeological sites in the world. Among the three, though, the prize would probably have to go to Palmyra,…
In the heart of Wall Street, a new statue is causing quite a kerfuffle. Sponsored by State Street Global Advisors, one of the world's largest asset-management firms, the "Fearless Girl" was installed earlier this year to stand in front of the famous "Charging Bull" in Bowling Green Park, just a…
Ever since Donald Trump was elected, we’ve been in the middle of a dystopian fiction craze. The anti-Trumpers have sought to understand (and indulge in self-satisfied frissons of terror at) the rise of the Donald by imagining that the current moment is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four or…
Regrets—we've all had a few. L'esprit de l'escalier—that wonderful line coming to mind a moment too late—is a common annoyance after failed dates and dud job interviews; dented fenders and bum shoulders attest to avoidable failures of depth perception and misjudged forays into backyard football…
This volume includes 566 letters, less than one-fifth of those that have been preserved, but it seems clear that the ones chosen by the editors are representative. This is not a sanitized selection. A number reveal that Willa Cather (1873-1947) was not always able to transcend the prejudices of her…
Standards of men’s dress in America are in a bad state, and the brown suit is just the thing to revive them.
Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign has been all the buzz in Washington. The book, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, is full of stories that probably never would have been told if Hillary had eked out an Electoral College win. Not just because a victorious campaign tends not to air…
On Christmas Day 1780, Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson instructed the head of his state's militia, George Rogers Clark, to fortify Virginia's western frontier against a British-Indian invasion. At the end of his instructions, Jefferson added his hope that the American "Empire of Liberty" would…
Tony Smith, political science professor at Tufts, is a man on a mission. His mission: save Wilsonianism from its perversions by post-Cold War social scientists, military strategists like General David Petraeus, the RAND Corporation—and especially the neocons and neoliberals of the Bush and Obama…
Just whose side is the Washington Post on: that of the little guy or the small plate? The paper approvingly cited an economic study last week that found minimum wage hikes in the San Francisco Bay area were more likely to shutter average restaurants than those favored by foodies. Eateries with…
Whatever being a red-blooded American man means these days (not much, it seems), I like to think I am one. I chop wood. I’ve never had a manicure and refuse to wear skinny jeans. I relieve myself outdoors with great regularity, even when indoor options are available. And though I don't hunt my own…
By most measures, Will Manidis is like many other American high school students. He plays lacrosse for Westtown, his Quaker boarding school outside Philadelphia. He's captain of Westtown's robotics team, which has deepened his interest in math and computer science. Last fall, in the heat of the…
Gerard Reve’s 1947 debut novel, a Dutch classic that is only now being published in English translation, carries a blurb in which Herman Koch, author of the 2009 bestseller The Dinner, calls it the "funniest, most exhilarating novel about boredom ever written."
Details of the United States' 2016 prisoner swap with Iran continue to surface more than a year later, forming a picture much different from the one the Obama administration presented at the time. The latest revelations are the most shocking yet. Under the deal, the United States granted clemency…
President Trump and the boys from Goldman Sachs have put together a dazzling tax reform plan. It has enough pro-growth incentives to energize the economy even after Congress eliminates some of them. But there's a problem: paying for it.
The rise of Donald Trump began a debate about the proper place of nationalism in American politics. A growing chorus on the political right, including even many who opposed his candidacy, has been praising the president’s "America First" agenda as a healthy restoration of nationalism and fleshing…
Last May, I traveled to Rome with a small group of journalists. We met with bishops and cardinals. We toured the Scavi beneath St. Peter's and explored the Vatican Museums with a renowned art historian. We were welcomed onto the terrace atop the papal apartment, giving us an extraordinary view of…
The news that former national security adviser Susan Rice was responsible for "unmasking" the identities of associates of President Trump in government surveillance reports sent shockwaves through Washington. But almost as newsworthy was the identity of the man who got the scoop: vociferous Trump…
Today's Daily Standard podcast is with deputy online editor Chris Deaton, who explains why President Trump should be focused on the days beyond the first 100, and what his presidency will look like when voters return to the polls in 2020.
I wanted to say something almost as soon as I heard that legendary National Review editor Kate O'Beirne had passed, and I regret it's taken a few days. When I heard the shocking news Sunday, I was already scrambling to get to another funeral out of state. It turns out that death is also what…
To restore free expression and the unfettered exchange of ideas to censorious college campuses, the nation's liberal thought leaders will have to admit we have a problem on our hands. Events of this week presented some encouraging signs that they're getting closer. While restless campuses erupted…
California politicians aren't sitting around waiting to see what becomes of Obamacare reform on Capitol Hill; the state Senate Health Committee voted 5-2 in favor of a single-payer bill for Californians on Wednesday.
How to persuade liberal, regulation-crazed California to ease up? Market your libertarian pet project as the ultimate in political correctitude. Also, find some Democrats to sponsor the legislation you need to ditch those irksome regulations and get your project off the ground.
In this week's episode, the Substandard tackles the summer movie lineup—what we're most looking forward to and what we're not. JVL has a very special surprise in store for the guys, and a very special guest comes by the studio—not many people know that! All on this week's episode of the Substandard!
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The Washington Post recently trumpeted an innovative new way that D.C. area residents are getting to work: taking the bus! It's just the contrarian, old-is-the-new-hip take that's bound to make the kids start buying morning newspapers again; never mind the fact that bus trips are down 12 percent in…
The great day has arrived, at last. And how have we ever managed to endure waiting to learn who will be selected in the first round of the National Football League's annual draft of college players? By 7:55 p.m. ET on Thursday, the tension will have become well nigh unbearable. And then, the…
Is the administration preparing for something with North Korea? That was the impression of many in Washington ahead of a Wednesday afternoon White House briefing of nearly all 100 U.S. senators by military and national security officials. Those briefing the senators included Secretary of State Rex…
John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been two of President Trump's loudest critics within the Republican party, but following a private dinner at the White House with the president Monday night, both men expressed confidence in Trump's seriousness about addressing a major foreign policy crisis: the…
The House Freedom Caucus officially backs an updated version of the GOP health care bill that includes a significant amendment co-sponsored by the group's chairman, the conservative bloc's spokeswoman announced early Wednesday afternoon. She did not respond immediately to a Twitter inquiry asking…
Today on the Daily Standard podcast, associate editor Ethan Epstein discusses why President Trump's Korean peninsula problem has become the biggest foreign-policy challenge of his young presidency.
When former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg banned smoking in public parks, it made logical sense from a certain autocratic urban-beautification standpoint. Who wants tobacco smoke stinking up their stroll along the Lilac Walk? I grumbled at the time, but the prohibition, which was followed…
On Monday, the city of New Orleans began the process of removing its four major Confederate monuments:
This week, the State Department released an annual report on compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The most notable findings in the report, which covers Russia, Iran, and Syria, not surprisingly relate to Syria. The report states unequivocally that the "United States assesses that…
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The Trump administration has hit another court challenge to an immigration-related executive order. On Tuesday, a district court judge in California issued a preliminary injunction against last month's order from the White House that so-called sanctuary cities—those localities that choose to harbor…
President Trump cited a conversation he had with Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly when he emphatically stated Tuesday that the United States will build a wall along its border with Mexico “soon."
After the Trump administration announced on Monday it will impose tariffs of up to 24 percent on Canadian lumber, the National Association of Home Builders said it was "deeply disappointed in this short-sighted action." A previous NAHB study suggested such tariffs would raise the price of new homes…
Today on the Daily Standard podcast, literary editor Philip Terzian discusses which presidents had the best and worst first 100 days, and why it rarely mattered.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn likely accepted money from foreign governments without permission or proper disclosure and appears to have broken the law in so doing, top members on the House Oversight Committee said Tuesday.
It's supposed to go like this: Lawmakers make the law, and the president then enforces it. That very obvious function of government might help the Republican party prevent a government shutdown later this week.
Spend enough time inside the Beltway, and it seems as though almost all of the contentious policy debates are just repetitions or slight variations of some issue in the past. For example, debates over issues like taxes, spending, and health care have been eerily similar for decades. They stay…
Today in the New York Times our own Matt Labash joins Gail Collins in a chat about presidential pets, government shutdowns, and fake news.
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren voiced her opinion on the controversy behind conservative pundit Ann Coulter's visit to the University of California, Berkeley.
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Last year Republicans persuaded a majority of Americans that Obamacare should be "repealed and replaced." Even Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton expected that President Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders would promptly offer a viable alternative to Obamacare. The president's…
Last week the Trump administration sent a letter to House speaker Paul Ryan to certify that the Islamic Republic of Iran is in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump had called it the "worst deal…
President Trump has changed his policies in his first 100 days in office more than any president in the post-World War II era—or perhaps any president ever. And for the most part the changes have been for the better.
Does President Trump want border-wall funding in this week's spending bill, or doesn't he? Just over the weekend, top administration officials were suggesting they might push for money to begin construction on a wall along the southern border with Mexico as Congress gets ready to deal with the…
In this mini-episode, the Substandard discusses the passing of Erin Moran—Joanie from Happy Days—and the perils of early Hollywood stardom. Vic admits seeing her on The Maury Povich Show, Sonny reflects on Corey Haim, and JVL remembers when Corey Feldman met his doppelgänger Matt Labash at the…
Anything to lose weight if you're a Cosmo girl!
Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, reporter Jenna Lifhits weighs in on the reports that former President Obama's Iranian appeasement went even further than had been previously reported. The Obama administration released bad actors, pushed the DOJ out of the loop, and did Iran far more favors than…
A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau sheds light on how the continued economic insecurity of many Americans has shaped people's thoughts and behaviors in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The bureau finds that 41 percent of men ages 25 to 34 were poor in 2016, more than one-and-a-half times…
The Obama administration's controversial January 2016 prisoner swap stymied its own counterproliferation efforts against Iran that took years to carefully construct and orchestrate, Politico reports. The move fits into a broader slowdown within the administration, before and during negotiations for…
From the Foundation for Constitutional Govenrment:
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An American was arrested in North Korea this weekend as he attempted to leave the country. He is now the third American to be held prisoner in the totalitarian country.
An American landmark began getting uglier last week, as construction began on a giant suicide net for the Golden Gate Bridge.
The recent campus rioting against unpopular or conservative political views is awful, but I have discovered the solution—by accident.
It’s the beginning of a big week for Washington. Congress returns from recess while the Trump administration prepares for its 100th day on Saturday. The campaign had made much of this initial period of a Trump presidency, releasing a "Contract with the American Voter" before the election that…
I highly recommend the lovely tributes to Kate O'Beirne, who died Sunday after a very private battle with cancer, from her colleagues at National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes joins host Eric Felten to explain how and why Donald Trump has changed his policies more in the first 100 days than any other president. Then Andrew Ferguson comes by to tell us about Philadelphia's new Museum of the American Revolution.
It's a moment that washed-up comedians and humorless TV hosts still use when they're running low on material. On May 20, 2000, Charlton Heston lifted a revolutionary-era style flintlock long rifle over his head at the 129th National Rifle Association convention in Charlotte and announced that if…
The New York Times has a long story about the role FBI chief James Comey played in shaping last year's election. Buried well into the piece is this bombshell:
When the curtain rose on the second act of the Met's new production of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, the audience applauded and cheered for the set. Represented onstage was the circa-1910 palace of a nouveau-riche arms merchant, complete with two giant mortars on wheels, a dozen Josef…
Today in the Daily Standard podcast, editor-at-large Bill Kristol says Berkeley's free-speech failures are giving liberalism a bad name, while Donald Trump's foreign policy is putting many traditional Republicans in a good mood. Kristol also recounts his Coulter-esque experience of getting "pied"…
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The impending end of Donald Trump's break-in period is as good a time as any to see where he will go from here. The first 100 days are typically a honeymoon, during which the political knives remain sheathed. Not this time. Political back-stabbing, intra- and interparty, is rife. Democrats are…
The Trump administration is facing pressure to definitively rule out a longstanding request by Iran to import 950 tons of natural uranium, according to government sources and proliferation experts who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Tehran has signaled it will petition again for the yellowcake next…
The September 2016 article in Politico championing Hillary Clinton’s use of "data analytics" now looks—how shall we put it?—rather premature.
As long-suffering Venezuelans take to the streets and the government itself executes its most audacious seizure of a private business, a General Motors plant, it's worth looking at precisely how we got here.
Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
Environmentalists are not celebrating this Earth Day. Inside the Environmental Protection Agency there is "disgust and frustration." Outside, activists warn that President Trump's proposal to cut the EPA budget by nearly one-third will "Make America Gag Again," the costs of his policies "borne by…
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That heady scent of open-air pot-smoking is just another sign of springtime come to D.C. nowadays. (Move over, cherry blossoms.) Wednesday near dusk I met an otherwise upstanding young guy on the sidewalk in leafy residential Northwest, waiting for a ride with a crackling joint in hand—not an…
Officially, the Trump administration certified this week that Iran has complied in the strictest terms with the requirements of the nuclear deal, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. But as President Donald Trump indicated in a Thursday press conference with Italian prime…
Last year Republicans persuaded a majority of Americans that Obamacare should be “repealed and replaced." Even Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton expected that President Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders would promptly offer a viable alternative to Obamacare. The president's…
There were plenty of worries that President Trump’s "America First" campaigning signaled a further retreat of American power and leadership abroad—a worry not mitigated either by his Inaugural Address or his speech before Congress, in which foreign and defense policy were given short shrift. Those…
A Texas high school junior who’s biologically female takes testosterone to "transition" to the other sex, and wins the state's wrestling championship for girls—even though other female players are not allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs, including testosterone. A secret Facebook group of…
The September 2016 article in Politico championing Hillary Clinton’s use of "data analytics" now looks—how shall we put it?—rather premature.
It is the inarguable scientific consensus that early humans began developing stone tools between two and three million years ago, when the climate was undergoing a period of rapid change. African forests in the area we now know as Kenya were transforming into grasslands: The only way our ancestors…
My wife Cynthia forwarded me two emails in quick succession. The first was from a friend, recruiting volunteers for a cleanup on the Potomac River. It was on a day when I would be out of town. Good luck with that, I thought.
London
The history of the twentieth century is littered with the carcasses of failed revolutions. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, and Hitler all tried to master modernity—to curb or accelerate it—and all failed. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, it appeared the most consequential revolutionary of…
IT’S BEEN THIRTY-FOUR YEARS, and you haven’t changed at all—flattering if exclaimed immediately by a friend one hasn’t seen in all that time, less so if blurted out after fifteen minutes of conversation. It’s true in both senses of Stanley Fish, whose latest book, How Milton Works, contains pages…
How are we to approach the man? No one has ever gotten him quite right. Benjamin Franklin thought him, in a famous remark, “sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses." Thomas Jefferson could never fully figure out what to make of such a witty, learned, emotionally open man. In our…
Philadelphia
Last week the Trump administration sent a letter to House speaker Paul Ryan to certify that the Islamic Republic of Iran is in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump had called it the "worst deal…
If Britain winds up leaving the European Union, it will be the doing of a woman who was not even publicly identified with the cause when voters approved the referendum for “Brexit" 10 months ago. This week Conservative prime minister Theresa May called a general election for June 8. It will…
It’s nearly 24 hours since I saw the new movie Colossal, and I'm not sure what I think of it. I've never seen anything like it, and trust me, neither have you—so for that reason alone Colossal might be worth your time. The question I can't seem to answer yet is whether its originality makes…
As we approach the 100-day mark of the Donald Trump presidency, it is instructive to recall the almost 100 months during which Barack Obama discharged the responsibilities of that high office. While there are reasons to be concerned about President Trump (and reasons to be encouraged, such as the…
In the summer of 1972, two days after the Watergate break-in, Simon & Schuster published Sen. Edward Kennedy's second book, a scathing condemnation of American medicine entitled In Critical Condition: The Crisis in America's Health Care. Composed largely of excerpts from recent testimony before…
Previous American generations might have taken their literary touchstones from writers such as Hemingway, Dreiser, Fitzgerald, London, Twain, and Dickens—or even Shakespeare and Sophocles—but pity the poor millennials, who have nothing to help them understand life's challenges but what Harold Bloom…
The word around Capitol Hill is that Republicans are preparing to revive the dormant American Health Care Act after members return from their Easter break. Lawmakers have tried adding some conservative muscle to the bill in an effort to make weight. But a central reason why the AHCA could be back…
This is a fine book by a distinguished Cambridge historian. And since lives of monarchs, let alone of one who has received as much attention as has Elizabeth I (1533-1603), are not exactly in vogue in today’s academe, it is refreshingly old-fashioned.
Journalists these days are regularly being beheaded. The two most recent cases were the work of the Islamic State, which this past summer, as shown to the world on slickly produced videos, dispatched freelancers Steven Sotloff and James Foley. Such atrocities at the hands of Islamic fanatics are…
When Kentucky governor Matt Bevin warmed up the crowd in Louisville ahead of Donald Trump’s speech in March, he seemed to share the president's taste for superlatives:
It’s a moment that washed-up comedians and humorless TV hosts still use when they're running low on material. On May 20, 2000, Charlton Heston lifted a revolutionary-era style flintlock long rifle over his head at the 129th National Rifle Association convention in Charlotte and announced that if…
Whether it happens before or after health care reform—the White House has been sending mixed signals—President Trump has consist-ently promised "massive" tax cuts for the middle class and businesses. He told an interviewer a few weeks ago, "It will be the biggest tax cut since Reagan, and probably…
The sonnet is an architectural fixture as germane to Western thought as the flying buttress, and one nearly as old. Poems of 14 lines, metered and rhymed, came into vogue in 13th-century Tuscany and never quite left the scene. Indeed, sonnets and flowing robes are about the only things in common…
"Three days after the 2016 election, I sat at my writing desk overwhelmed by grief. I was not alone. Like many people (like you, perhaps), I’d had trouble sleeping, and had already engaged in many conversations—with friends and family, students and colleagues, in person and on social media—about…
President Trump has changed his policies in his first 100 days in office more than any president in the post-World War II era—or perhaps any president ever. And for the most part the changes have been for the better.
Weekly Standard editor-in-chief Steve Hayes talks about Republican politicians struggling to craft a "Trump Strategy" for the 2018 cycle. Are the tight special-election races a bellwether for the mid-terms? And how should traditional conservatives campaign for an electorate that seems more loyal to…
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson slammed the Iran nuclear deal for its limited scope and eventual sunset date Wednesday, and said the Trump administration is conducting an exhaustive review of its Iran policy.
"The odds are good, but the goods are odd," an embarrassed daughter's dad noted of Harvey Mudd as the Claremont tour guide walked us past the science-and-engineering-focused campus of the five-college consortium. Harvey Mudd, in those days, was still mostly male. Single ladies at Scripps,…
In this latest episode, the Substandard discusses The Fate of the Furious and the ever-expanding franchise. JVL delivers a Fast and Furious exegesis and rankings. Sonny says to "just look at the pictures like a child." Vic compares it to the Emmanuelle series. Plus the Best and Worst of the…
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Like a bachelor before a date, the Obama administration rushed around during the transition hiding dirty laundry for the incoming administration. And now, almost 100 days in, the Trump team is still working to find and undo a handful of underreported bureaucratic messes left behind.
Social media seethed with outrage earlier this week after the American president made a phone call to congratulate the head of a NATO member on an important vote. On Monday Donald Trump reached out to speak with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the referendum that exchanges Turkey's…
I draw your attention to the New York Times, which earlier this week ran…wait for it…a devastating attack on the students and faculty at Middlebury.
The five undergraduate Claremont Colleges, located about 35 miles east of Los Angeles, are famous for their elite U.S. News rankings, their exclusive admissions policies, their sky-high tuition sticker prices, and their gorgeous campuses in the bucolic college town of Claremont adjacent to Southern…
Will the Trump administration scrap the Iran nuclear deal, or is the basic framework of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action here to stay? On Thursday, the deputies of the National Security Council will hold their first meeting to discuss the Trump administration's review of Iran's compliance…
Since the repeal of Prohibition, most regulations pertaining to the sale and distribution of alcohol has been left to the states under the "three tier" system of distribution, in which manufacturers sell to distributors and control boards, who sell to retailers, who sell to the public according to…
After President Donald Trump spoke to workers in Wisconsin on Tuesday, he signed an executive order calling on the government to fully review its H-1B visa program for temporary workers and to prioritize American firms when working with contractors.
Senior writer Michael Warren walks through the results of the special election in former GOP Congressman Tom Price's district and sees 2018 trouble for the GOP. There was also another race going on under the radar: Paul Ryan vs President Trump. Who did more to drive turnout on Tuesday? Find out in…
Judge Richard A. Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made legal-outrage history a few days ago with a concurring opinion he wrote in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College. The Chicago-based appellate court ruled in the case that Title VII of the federal 1964 Civil Rights Act, which…
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J. M. Coetzee is a singular case. Born in South Africa, he grew up there and has dilated on his childhood near Cape Town and on his uncle's farm in several autobiographical works. He won expansive praise for his early novels philosophizing on racial intolerance in his native country, then got the…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Late Tuesday night, the Associated Press first reported that the Trump administration had certified that Iran has so far been compliant in the nuclear deal forged by the Obama administration. The deal had been sharply criticized by Republicans and even a few Democrats, and its undoing was one of…
The Republican Party avoided a demoralizing upset Tuesday when it forced Democrat Jon Ossoff into a special election runoff to fill a vacant conservative Georgia House district.
Today on the Daily Standard podcast, frequent contributor and Hoover Institution scholar Adam J. White discusses Justice Gorsuch's relatively aggressive start to his term on the court, as well as a key religious liberty case coming this week.
Top Iranian officials are boasting that the nuclear deal enabled the country to make progress in developing advanced centrifuges, and broad production of some advanced models has already begun in the year since the deal was implemented, per Iranian media.
This morning’s calling of a snap election in Britain on June 8 strengthens Prime Minister Theresa May's position as Brexit negotiator—and not only in her negotiations with Brussels. "At this moment of enormous national significance, there should be unity here in Westminster," she announced on the…
The notices are in, and they're brutal. Donald Trump's nascent North Korea policy—announcing the end of "strategic patience" (Barack Obama's code for sitting around and doing nothing about the North's pursuit of nuclear weapons), leaning on China to rein in Pyongyang, strengthening sanctions, and…
I had an economics teacher who liked telling his classes he had a deal with the local grocery store: He doesn’t produce his own food and it doesn't teach economics.
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On Christmas Day 1937, a famous national leader, then 54 years old, wrote his mistress the following billet-doux:
California tries diligently to be an environmental leader. From spending billions of dollars building a high-speed rail system to nowhere to forking over tens of millions each year on urban forestry—code for planting trees in cities—the state has not shied away from spending big on green goals.
Tuesday's special House election in Georgia carries with it an inordinate degree of focus on Donald Trump. The president created the House vacancy in the suburban district north of Atlanta after picking Representative Tom Price to be the secretary of Health and Human Services. Price had won the…
In this bonus episode, the Substandard analyzes the new teaser trailer for The Last Jedi. You won't believe the things they discovered!
There's a tragic irony at the heart of American criminal-justice policy. While we invest billions of dollars each year to house inmates in state and federal correctional facilities, our collective willingness to invest falters when it comes to ensuring the formerly incarcerated don't reoffend.
On today's Daily Standard Podcast, associate editor Ethan Epstein discusses the saber rattling in North Korea, Vice President Mike Pence's visit, and what to expect from the reclusive dictatorship.
Pepsi's unintentionally brilliant marketing campaign with Kendall Jenner was derided by leftists as a for-profit appropriation, namely of #Resist and #BlackLivesMatter.
President Trump has provided his opponents abundant material with which to criticize him. His Twitter feed as commander in chief is similar to what it was when he was a candidate: an early-morning soapbox about cable news and what bothers him. It often gets him into trouble. So do his policy planks…
The April 6 missile strike on the Shayrat Airbase in Homs, Syria, has provoked a week of debate on everything from its legality to its political significance. The only thing about which everyone agrees is that as a tactical matter, it did very little. The 59 Tomahawk missiles were dropped on the…
Sometimes you hear that thriving businesses are capitalist enterprises that relish competing and winning.
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It was the teensy Planned Parenthood cactus plants that grabbed my attention. Washingtonian magazine, catering to an upmarket and overwhelmingly liberal D.C.-area readership, recently ran a fawning article about Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington’s six-month-old $20 million headquarters…
The latest Conversation with Bill Kristol has been released by the Foundation for Constitutional Government:
Something very peculiar has gone on in the comic book world over the last two weeks.
Tensions are rising as North Korea continues its attempted shows of provocation and the United States ramps up its effort to deal with Pyongyang. The White House, including the president himself, is sending public signals that stopping North Korea from having a deliverable nuclear weapon is a top…
Editor's note: This month marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of Chicago newspaper and syndicated columnist Mike Royko, a fixture of the Windy City's media for more than three decades. The Chicago Tribune, Royko's final professional stop, called him the "voice" of the city in its obituary;…
In an 1852 letter, Gustave Flaubert announced his ambition to write “a book about nothing, a book with no external attachments." He added: "The most beautiful books are those with the least matter."
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, the Trump Administration has spent a week in flux. Michael Warren joins host Eric Felten to talk about President Trump's capacity for change.
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I’m riveted by the case of the Coastal Carolina cheerleaders.
In two weeks Donald Trump will serve his one-hundredth day as President of the United States of America. He approaches that milestone with an approval rating of 40 percent, the lowest of any modern-day president at this stage of his tenure. The man who made his reputation, and part of any fortune…
Three weeks after a coalition of professors publicly defended their right to censor Title IX naysayer and feminist intellectual Laura Kipnis, a Wellesley News editorial has caught viral flak from civil libertarians, conservatives, copy editors, and other sensible sorts for its clumsy defense of…
Editor at large William Kristol's weekly podcast, where Bill analyzes President Trump's recent policy conversions.
After World War II, the United States created an international system aimed at preventing the kinds of catastrophic conflicts that consumed the first half of the 20th century. This system was underwritten by hard power such as the American nuclear arsenal and the NATO alliance. Yet, underneath…
Up until opening day, I was wondering what to do with all the extra time that Major League Baseball’s new "Pace of Play" rules were supposed to free up. The commissioner's office and the rules committee wanted to move the game along faster, presumably to appeal to baseball fans with lots of other…
In the aftermath of the chemical weapons attacks in Idlib province and the subsequent response of cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airbase authorized by President Trump, both National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have asserted that the Syrian government has…
Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
Wall Street's three-and-half-ton bronze Charging Bull has stood frozen in mid-charge, to meet oncoming traffic just above the bottom of Broadway for nearly 30 years. It's a symbol, the artist Arturo Di Modica would say, of achievement and optimism—of the American capitalist's unbridled bravado.…
On March 28 California attorney general Xavier Becerra threw the book at anti-abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. The penal code book, that is. Becerra's office charged the pair, famous for their undercover Planned Parenthood recordings, with 14 felony violations of California…
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Amateur psychology is best avoided in a biography, but in a life of Richard Nixon, an author probably cannot help but indulge in it. In his new book, Richard Nixon: The Life, author John A. Farrell employs armchair diagnosis just enough to capture the flavor of one of the most bizarre men to ever…
Today on the Daily Standard podcast, senior editor Mark Hemingway on his story taking apart historian Rick Perlstein's shoddy attack on conservatism, and offers his take on the Sean Spicer "Holocaust Centers" controversy: You don't have to be a Holocaust denier to say something really, really dumb.
The fallout from allegations by Devin Nunes of potential surveillance abuses by the Obama White House has a top former intelligence official warning that such claims threaten to undermine the intelligence community's credibility.
It must have seemed like a problem from hell: When Samantha Power served as Barack Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, she tirelessly highlighted the depredations of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, publicizing his various barbarities—his indiscriminate killing of civilians, his use of…
The Substandard blows the bloody doors off this episode with tributes to Fox's Red Eye and Michael Caine. Vic reviews Going In Style and gets graded by Sonny. JVL finally finds a whiskey he likes! Plus our favorite cable classics and a bonus discussion of the new trailer for Thor: Ragnarok, all on…
The campus novel is overripe for a renaissance. Because it will take a satirical rendering à la Lucky Jim—or perhaps dozens of them—to expose the painfully silly social politics of campus protest culture to the clarifying light of enough readers' wry, self-aware laughter. Unsurprisingly, few have…
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Oh, what Bridget O'Brien Wood could do if the government allowed her just a little more salt. She could serve potato salad that isn't bland. She could experiment with curry sauces. And O'Brien Wood, food service director with Buffalo Public Schools, could finally tell parents that the French fries…
The Trump White House is taking stock of what it sees as a solid seven days for its national security and geopolitical policies. “It's difficult to portray this as anything but a really great week," said one senior administration official on Wednesday.
Relations between the United States and Russia have hit a low point and should be improved, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during a trip to Moscow Wednesday. Tillerson spoke after meeting with Vladimir Putin, a meeting that occurred only after much uncertainty as to whether the Russian…
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has been in the news recently because a source in the intelligence community informed him that Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice was behind the "unmasking" of Trump campaign associates in intelligence reports, which may have led to other…
Speaker Paul Ryan will take advantage of the House recess to lead a bipartisan delegation to the United Kingdom and three other European countries next week to discuss economic and security matters facing NATO member countries, his office announced Wednesday.
Today on the Daily Standard podcast, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams says the future of Syria likely involves "zones of influence," a soft partition of Syria with a weak central government. He also says that one of those zones may be an Alawite zone with "significant Russian…
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The innocuous-sounding Global Times is basically the id of the Chinese Communist party. A stridently nationalist tabloid newspaper with a flair for Breitbartian excess, the CCP-owned Times has, in recent weeks alone, referred to Australia as an "offshore prison," warned of a "large-sale war" should…
The grievance-industry racket is as old as the culture war itself. But rarely has it been practiced as transparently as it was this past week by the Human Rights Campaign.
In the Kansas special election on Tuesday to replace former congressman (and current CIA director) Mike Pompeo, the Republican candidate won by seven percentage points (52.5 percent to 45.7 percent, with almost all precincts reporting).
Last week's strike on the Syrian airfield from which Bashar al-Assad launched his latest chemical-weapons attack on his own people has somewhat overshadowed President Trump's meeting with Xi Jinping, the president of China. The summit at Mar-a-Lago last Thursday and Friday was the first chance for…
The latest episode of the Daily Standard podcast features Andy Smarick, a Morgridge fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, on his recent cover story "A Trump in a China Shop?", a look at the response of America's institutions to the new administration?
Rick Perlstein is a respected historian, and not without reason. Though he is an outspoken man of the left, his first book, Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, earned praise from the right for being a well-researched and relatively nuanced account of a…
Former President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are scheduled to appear together on a panel in Germany next month "to discuss civic engagement locally and globally," Obama's foundation and the German Protestant Kirchentag announced Tuesday.
The Russian government has been spreading "disinformation" about last week's chemical-weapons attack, according to senior White House officials.
In hindsight, much of the coverage of Donald Trump’s candidacy could have run under the same headline: "Unexpected bull poised to enter china shop." But commentators spent virtually all of their energy expounding on the first half of that metaphor. Our campaign ethologists incessantly analyzed the…
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Never again will a non-holiday pass without some sort of public #Resistance exertion. While anti-Trump emotions run high, festivals of malcontent give the aggrieved opportunities to vent in vague opposition to the administration. International Women's Day, that Soviet feast day sanitized and…
I recently regaled WEEKLY STANDARD readers with tales from my Florida biking adventure—eight days, 650 miles, and two college friends pedaling the east coast of the state to reach Key West—but I haven't yet told you how we got back home. The return trip was an adventure in its own right, best…
While the Trump administration's second attempt at repealing Obamacare sits in a holding pattern as Congress is in recess, attention has turned to the other major legislative goal for Republicans in Washington: tax reform. Except, the Associated Press reported Monday, Trump has "scrapped" his tax…
On this latest mini-episode, the Substandard tackles the Wendy's Nuggets Guy—you know, the one who asked for the free "nuggs" and was told by Wendy's that he'll need 18 million retweets. He's not even close, and that's a good thing.
The DAILY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on his recent story "How Mitch McConnell Won the Battle to Confirm Gorsuch."
A senior U.S. official says the United States has concluded that Russia knew in advance of Syria's chemical weapons attack last week.
Congress should as soon as possible consider a bill that slaps sanctions on Iran over its illicit non-nuclear activities, Democratic lawmakers who supported the 2015 Iran nuclear deal told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Syria is a bloody mess. Its cities lie in ruins. Its antiquities have been destroyed. And the Syrian leader continues to kill his own people. The death toll may be as high as a half million people. Some 10 million Syrians have been displaced. Reporters working there have described it as "hell on…
Despite repeated public pronouncements from President Obama, Susan Rice, and others in the Obama administration that a 2013 deal with Russia and Syria had "eliminated Syria's declared chemical weapons program," the evidence from continued attacks increasingly and overwhelmingly contradicts this…
During the Bush administration, the popular protest refrain was “Bush lied, people died." It's true that a major justification for the Iraq war was eliminating Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of so-called weapons of mass destruction, a catch-all phrase for biological and chemical weapons, as well as…
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Partly because France surrendered to the Nazis before any harm could be done to Paris, Paris is the art capital of the world. Consequently, it has an impractically large number of great museums. Tourists can't reasonably be expected to visit all of them—Paris has a dozen or so museums dedicated…
Connoisseurs of Jew-hatred may differ over whether the world's most influential anti-Semitic institution is the government of Saudi Arabia, the government of Iran, or the websites of al Qaeda and ISIS. It is easier, however, to identify the world's most respectable anti-Semitic institution. That…
One of the most tedious aspects of our politics is partisan battles over legislative procedure. To hear each side tell it, the opposition never hesitates to employ unprecedented tactics to further narrow political goals at great cost to the republic. Such arguments are almost always disingenuous.…
Last week’s successful strike on a Syrian airfield has been followed up by important questions for the Trump administration: What happens to Bashar al-Assad now? Will U.S. policy toward the Assad regime change? Will Trump call for regime change through force? What will the United States do if Assad…
Fred Barnes talks with host Eric Felten about the renewed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. Michael Warren discusses Donald Trump's evolving hawkishness. And Andrew Ferguson explains a singular pronoun problem.
It's the Kristol Clear edition of The Daily Standard podcast. Every week Bill Kristol brings his insights and expertise to the biggest stories. This week it's all about Syria: What President Trump has learned from handling his first foreign-policy challenge, and what we've learned about him.
After the Trump administration's strike on the Shayrat airfield Thursday, lawmakers, analysts, and the press are asking if the White House has a next move. Certainly it was important to signal that the use of chemical weapons is something the United States could not tolerate. As President Trump…
The American economy added a mere 98,000 jobs last month, less than half the number expected. Not good enough for President Trump, who not only wants more jobs: He wants them for coal miners and those horny handed sons of toil who once were the backbone of the American manufacturing work force. To…
Neil Gorsuch's confirmation as a Supreme Court justice appeared all but certain after his smooth and appealing testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He came across as "almost too good," one of his backers said. He was the beneficiary of a well-financed effort by outside groups. And…
Ever since the American Health Care Act stalled out, Republicans have been trying to kick start the reform again. On Thursday, Speaker Ryan backed a proposal to create a $15 billion federal high-risk pool for people with pre-existing conditions.
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster delivered remarks in Florida today to give some background on the strikes against Syria Thursday. He made one curious comment that raises a lot of troubling questions:
While some members of Congress, like Kentucky senator Rand Paul, are questioning President Trump's legal authority for launching a military strike Thursday night against the Syrian regime, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says Trump was acting well within his inherent…
Time will tell whether the American cruise missile strike against the Syrian air base will deter future Syrian government use of chemical weapons or even whether it was sufficient punishment for Assad's gross and continuing violation of international norms against their use. But it's clear that…
On Thursday night, the U.S. opened a third air campaign in Syria, targeting Bashar al-Assad's air force. The U.S. has been bombing the Islamic State and select al Qaeda targets in Syria since 2014. But the Syrian regime, which is responsible for most of the civilian casualties in the country, was…
With President Donald Trump having ordered pinpoint attacks on President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons infrastructure overnight, finally someone is enforcing President Obama's 2013 red line and possibly reversing the course of decades of Western appeasement of the regime of Bashar Assad—and…
What are we to make of the cruise missile barrage that targeted a Syrian air base in retaliation for Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons in the province of Idlib? Was Donald Trump's first serious action as commander-in-chief a one-off expression of moral outrage lacking any larger purpose? Or…
Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
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The Trump administration has had a rocky start. There was the defeat on Obamacare, staffing the departments has been far too slow, the National Security Advisor lasted only three weeks, there has clearly been infighting in the White House staff, and there have certainly been too many tweets.
The Senate is unique among American political bodies in that its very rules and traditions have often been the basis for consequential oratory. Such was the case on Thursday, when South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham delivered a 3,000-word speech on the chamber's elimination of the 60-vote…
President Donald Trump appears to have been mugged by reality this week following Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad's chemical-weapons attack on his own people. The result? Assad's regime—and in particular, the airbase in central Syria where his attack was launched—got a swift dose of reality in the…
"Massive Eisenhower Memorial Could Break Ground as Early as September.” This alarming headline appeared the other day in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. The news is alarming because after years, and many, many millions of dollars, spent tinkering with "starchitect" Frank Gehry's ludicrous…
In hindsight, much of the coverage of Donald Trump’s candidacy could have run under the same headline: "Unexpected bull poised to enter china shop." But commentators spent virtually all of their energy expounding on the first half of that metaphor. Our campaign ethologists incessantly analyzed the…
One day soon I will presumably receive a notice from the D.C. health exchange informing me how much my family’s health insurance will cost for 2015. That I’ve not yet been made privy to this salient bit of information mere weeks before I have to decide whether to change providers is a function both…
On Christmas Day 1937, a famous national leader, then 54 years old, wrote his mistress the following billet-doux:
One of the most tedious aspects of our politics is partisan battles over legislative procedure. To hear each side tell it, the opposition never hesitates to employ unprecedented tactics to further narrow political goals at great cost to the republic. Such arguments are almost always disingenuous.…
Jonathan Swift was a man of contradictions. He was born in Ireland yet was embarrassed by the fact and maintained that he was English. As a clergyman he held in contempt anyone who threatened the dogma and sanctity of his church, but as one of the sharpest satirists of his day he railed against…
On March 28 California attorney general Xavier Becerra threw the book at anti-abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. The penal code book, that is. Becerra’s office charged the pair, famous for their undercover Planned Parenthood recordings, with 14 felony violations of California…
These are fraught days for the superhero business. Consider the rebooted Wonder Woman franchise. Feminists saw the movie trailer and promptly decried not the sexist notion that a Hun-killing demigoddess would cavort in a strapless bustier but that the actress playing the Amazonian princess had…
If there were ever any doubt that Hamlet is the greatest of all Shakespeare plays—even perhaps the greatest play ever written—then Dominic Dromgoole's newest book puts any discussion to rest. In 2014, to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, Dromgoole, then artistic director of…
Up until opening day, I was wondering what to do with all the extra time that Major League Baseball’s new "Pace of Play" rules were supposed to free up. The commissioner's office and the rules committee wanted to move the game along faster, presumably to appeal to baseball fans with lots of other…
When Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation since 2013, called for a “reimagining of philanthropy's first principles and its relationship to our market system," few people thought this meant that he would join the board of directors of PepsiCo. But that's exactly what he did last fall.…
At 39, Tom Cotton is the youngest member of the Senate. He was elected from Arkansas in 2014 after two years in the House. And having served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan as an infantry captain, he quickly emerged as an influential senator on military and foreign affairs.
In an 1852 letter, Gustave Flaubert announced his ambition to write “a book about nothing, a book with no external attachments." He added: "The most beautiful books are those with the least matter."
Oh, what Bridget O’Brien Wood could do if the government allowed her just a little more salt. She could serve potato salad that isn't bland. She could experiment with curry sauces. And O'Brien Wood, food service director with Buffalo Public Schools, could finally tell parents that the French fries…
Detroit
President Donald Trump certainly did his part in setting the table for the current state of public discourse. Make what you will of his agenda: His successful campaign has transformed the substance of political speech. This is an era when offhand vulgarity counts as straight talk; when “bomb the s—…
As dean of an arts school, I’m often asked where the arts stand at a time when so much attention has been focused on the value of the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Not too long ago, in a full-page ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Santa Clara University, a…
"Just who does they think they is?” That's the question that raced through the language snob community late last month. Maybe not phrased in those exact words.
Is religion a natural instinct that, when kicked out the door, comes back (as Groucho Marx would say) innuendo? Are even cocksure secularists furtively religious and superstitious in spite of themselves, primed by evolutionary imperatives to pay unwitting tribute to spirits and gods?
J. M. Coetzee is a singular case. Born in South Africa, he grew up there and has dilated on his childhood near Cape Town and on his uncle’s farm in several autobiographical works. He won expansive praise for his early novels philosophizing on racial intolerance in his native country, then got the…
IN LATE JULY, Bill Bennett, the former education secretary and drug czar, got a telephone call from the White House. Would he be interested in serving as special presidential envoy on Sudan, where Christians are persecuted and slavery thrives? The caller wasn’t Clay Johnson, President Bush’s…
It might come as news to the millions of pink-hatted anti-Trump marchers, the marauding rioters at Berkeley and Middlebury, and the anti-pipeline hippies in North Dakota, but apparently Americans’ right to protest is under threat. We know that because two "special rapporteurs on freedom of…
The left has had a narrative, going back to the beginning of Donald Trump’s campaign, that has only intensified in the months since his election. The theory goes like this: The current president is a force so pestilential that he brings out the hate in otherwise decent people. And now they claim to…
The grievance-industry racket is as old as the culture war itself. But rarely has it been practiced as transparently as it was this past week by the Human Rights Campaign.
The Weekly Standard has two full-time positions available: online editor and social media director. The online editor will be a senior position for a talented individual with proven experience, reporting to the editor in chief. The duties of the social media director will include maximizing the…
On Wednesday afternoon, the National Security Council convened in the White House, with President Donald Trump in the chair, to discuss how the United States would respond to Bashar al-Assad. Just a couple of hours earlier, in a press conference in the Rose Garden, Trump had denounced in strong…
The Republican chairmen of foreign relations panels in the House and Senate on Thursday advised the Trump administration to work with Congress on its Syria strategy going forward, after the administration launched a military strike on a Syrian airfield.
The Trump administration hit a Syrian airbase with over 50 cruise missiles Thursday, according to multiple reports. The strike came days after the Bashar al-Assad regime waged a horrific chemical attack against its own people Tuesday that left at least 80 dead.
According to a recent headline from Reuters, "U.S. intelligence agencies suspect Assad did not turn over all chemical weapons stockpile." The evidence of the recent chemical attack in Syria makes that declaration little more than stating the obvious. However, back in January in an in interview with…
The Trump administration is giving serious thought to providing Ukraine with lethal defensive aid, Arizona senator John McCain told THE WEEKLY STANDARD, a move that is likely to rile the Kremlin if realized.
The DAILY STANDARD Podcast with legal expert and Hoover Institution research fellow Adam J. White on the end of of the judicial filibuster.
Florida senator Marco Rubio told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Thursday that he was heartened by President Donald Trump's changing tone on Syria.
First of the Month, a leftist website, has a provocative column up titled, "Trumpism on the Left: Stephen F. Cohen and The Nation Magazine." Author Eugene Goodheart serves up a really interesting reminder that The Nation, which is nominally opposed to Trump and everything he stands for, has been…
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was asked at his weekly press conference on Tuesday if he was confident Republicans had the votes necessary to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court by eliminating the Senate minority's ability to filibuster Supreme Court nominees.
The school choice movement finally has the federal platform it never really needed. Donald Trump, in campaign mode, pledged to invest $20 billion in private school vouchers for poor children—an epic sum that will likely fund a federal version of the tuition tax credit scholarships 17 states already…
On this week's episode, the Substandard is turning Japanese, we think they're turning Japanese, we really think so. Actually they're discussing Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell. Sonny rates ScarJo—in multiple categories. JVL and Vic get deep into Star Blazers while Sonny tweets at them in…
So we're in the strange place where Paul Ryan—globalist, RINO, scourge of tru-cons everywhere—is now wholly aligned with Donald Trump—populist avenger, conqueror, and the truest of true-conservatives. They became teamed up in pursuit of a healthcare reform package that exactly no one really liked.…
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Comprehensive tax reform, done right, would accomplish many things: It should boost investment, productivity, and employment, and along with these economic growth. That is the intent, anyway.
The azaleas will not be in bloom for the Masters this year, spring having come early to Georgia. Nor will Arnold Palmer will be there on the first tee for the official opening of the tournament. Palmer, a presence at the Masters every year since 1955, died last September at the age of 87. He had…
Republican lawmakers are waiting for the Trump administration to shift its stance on the removal of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in the wake of a deadly chemical attack there on Tuesday that killed dozens of civilians.
President Trump will meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping Thursday in what will be his most important and consequential meeting with a foreign leader so far. Not only does Xi lead a major regional and world power, with a population of nearly 1.4 billion and an economic output that competes with…
Senior writer Michael Warren reports on the Daily Standard Podcast that White House sources suggest "something is changing" when it comes to U.S. policy toward Syria. Will it be regime change, or targeted attacks in response to the recent chemical weapons attack? And how much of the decision will…
Oregon senator Jeff Merkley, who spoke on the Senate floor for 15 hours Tuesday night and Wednesday morning in opposition to the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, said in an interview three years ago that he supported eliminating the 60-vote procedural threshold for High Court…
Two weeks ago, Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot took the unusual step of confirming claims in the media about the May 13, 2016, killing of Hezbollah military commander, Mustafa Badreddine. A video report last month on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya network had claimed that Badreddine’s…
For a whole host of reasons explained in my story in the current issue of the THE WEEKLY STANDARD, South Korea is likely to elect a left-wing president on May 9. This near certainty, however, has had the benefit of clarifying things: The race's most conservative candidate, Hong Jun-pyo, has just…
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My attitude towards the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has always been one of casual indifference, but this year's enshrinement of the band Yes has changed my perspective.
How does the Trump administration’s Syria policy differ from the Obama administration's? It's not evident there's much practical distance between the two, despite a prepared statement from President Trump Tuesday afternoon blasting "the past administration's weakness and irresolution."
President Trump may address Chinese sanctions against South Korea in his meetings this week with China President Xi Jinping, according to a senior White House official. The installation of the United States's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in South Korea has…
With government funding set to expire April 28, the nation's military chiefs are warning that even a basic extension of government funding at last year's levels would be detrimental to the Armed Forces' capabilities.
The ACLU, the nation's preeminent civil liberties organization, isn't loudly denouncing the Obama administration's apparent "unmasking" of Trump associates in intelligence intercepts.
Literary editor Philip Terzian recounts the modern history of SCOTUS fights and concludes that, while it may be Republicans who finally end the filibuster tradition for Supreme Court nominees, the end was engineered by the Democrats.
Bloomberg's Eli Lake dropped a bombshell on Monday: Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice was responsible for "unmasking" the identities of Trump officials in intelligence intercepts, and spreading this information around the government.
Former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Tuesday denied abusing intelligence for political reasons during her time in the White House, after a report revealed that she requested the identities of Trump transition team members in intelligence documents on numerous occasions.
A few days ago, Sen. Tim Kaine tweeted the following about Judge Neil Gorsuch:
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Less than two weeks before the 2016 elections, Virginia senator and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine said that he would support eliminating the 60-vote hurdle to confirm Supreme Court nominees in order to get Judge Merrick Garland on the court.
Read history: so learn your place in Time; / And go to sleep: all this was done before.
There are two big, outstanding questions surrounding Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Russia: Did associates of the Trump campaign and transition have improper or illicit contact with Russian officials? Did the Obama administration improperly monitor and leak identifying details about those Trump…
Delaware's Chris Coons became the forty-first senator to pledge a no vote on ending debate of Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court later this week, giving Democrats the minimum number needed to filibuster his confirmation.
On this mini episode, the Substandard talks college hoops, NCAA bracketology, and Fred Barnes's curious winning streak, plus the latest on Vic's alma mater, Georgetown (and why it's not JVL's alma mater).
Editor-in-Chief Stephen F. Hayes kicks off the new Daily Standard podcast with a conversation about how he first wrangled his way into THE WEEKLY STANDARD, how his experiences at Ground Zero affected his worldview, and what he believes is the role of conservative journalism in the era of Trump.
I had to use my DVR to catch it: the first instance of Major League Baseball's new no-pitch intentional walk.
London
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Fidelio was the first opera performed after the Second World War in Berlin and Vienna respectively. It was chosen to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was also the first opera Toscanini broadcast with the NBC Symphony. The Met has been producing it since…
After the failure of the American Health Care Act (AHCA)—the House Republican alternative to Obamacare—there was plenty of blame to go around. President Donald Trump pointed his finger at the House Freedom Caucus (HFC), the group of 30 or so conservatives who largely opposed the bill, tweeting,…
President Donald Trump has three big meetings this week with important world leaders. The first two come from the Middle East. On Monday, Trump will meet for several hours with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at the White House, followed by a Wednesday meeting with King Abdullah II of…
The House Intelligence committee's top Democrat said Sunday that it is too early to say whether there was collusion between the Trump team and Russia, in an apparent moderation of his past claims on the subject.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes tells host Eric Felten why President Trump and Congressional Republicans need to focus on a simplified tax-cutting agenda after the fiasco of an over-complicated health care attempt. With a scandal-ridden president out of office, shaky…
Until its final scene, there isn't a moment in the new live-action version of Beauty and the Beast that wasn't done better in the 1991 animated film from which it derives.
Jim Webb, the decorated Vietnam war veteran and former U.S. senator and secretary of the Navy, has declined to accept an award at his alma mater the Naval Academy because some alumni were threatening to disrupt the ceremony. Aaron MacLean writes at the Washington Free Beacon:
No politician is bigger than the game. This is not a lesson unique to President Donald Trump, though he doubtless has a new appreciation for how entrenched Washington is in its ways. But it may be a revelation to some of the millions who voted for him, energized by a pledge that this would finally…
It now appears increasingly likely that 41 or more Democratic senators will take the unprecedented step this week of filibustering a qualified Supreme Court nominee. As William Kristol wrote in the following WEEKLY STANDARD editorial, Senate Republicans shouldn't hesitate to defend the Constitution…
Nothing erodes the power of a bully as much as a victory by those he threatens. Nothing erodes the reputation of a negotiator as much as a failure to succeed in cutting a deal he dearly wants to complete. Which is why President Trump enters negotiations over tax reform in a seriously weakened…
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