October 2017

At least eight people are dead and 11 sustained "serious but non-life threatening" injuries after a motorist driving a rented truck veered onto a bicycle path in Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, the NYPD has confirmed.

Arizona senator Jeff Flake issued a sharp rebuke of a Republican Senate candidate’s controversial past remarks and warned about his nomination Tuesday, while many of his GOP colleagues skirted the subject.

Unaccountable judges sometimes mistake their own policy preferences for the proper rule of decision. And that’s no less true for those who purport to judge the judges—namely, the American Bar Association, in passing judgment on a president’s judicial nominations. The ABA’s own version of “judicial…

The Substandard is LIVE. Are you a fan of our pop culture podcast, the Substandard? If so, you might be interested to know that they do a Facebook livestream of their podcast (in part) each week. Here is the latest.

American society expects the president of the United States to be all things to all people. Some roles are related to constitutional or political duty: the country’s chief diplomat, its civilian head of the military, and its primary influence on domestic policy. Others flow from the nation’s…

I guess it’s not altogether surprising, given that the most famous political figure to emerge from Rhode Island in modern political history was the notoriously corrupt (and violent) Buddy Cianci, the long-time mayor of the city that I grew up in. But as a member in good standing of the Rhode Island…

On Saturday morning, ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis speculated about which conferences might not get a team into the College Football Playoff (CFP), saying, “I think the Big Ten is in a little bit of trouble if they don’t have an undefeated champion, or even if Wisconsin is the undefeated…

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told constituents in a Tuesday email that he will not seek re-election in 2018.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about the White House response to the Mueller investigation.

In this latest micro episode, the Substandard talks about Halloween costumes and Halloween movies. Because we just can't get enough of Halloween.

Top Trump administration officials urged lawmakers on Monday not to unduly constrain the executive branch under a potential new authorization for the use of military force (AUMF).

Last week's release of surviving documents on the assassination of John F. Kennedy was not the first time the federal government has made a clean breast of things on the subject, or attempted to do so. There were plenty of leaks when the Warren Commission was deliberating, back in the Bronze Age…

Marvel-ous Creator

On October 31, exactly 500 years will have passed since a German monk named Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. That’s at least the tradition, but certainly Luther circulated his collection of brief contentions. Mainly he intended to provoke a debate…

The United Nations is earmarking millions of dollars for Palestinian efforts to pursue international legal action against Israel over the next four years, triggering outrage on and off Capitol Hill and fueling calls to re-examine U.S. funding of the U.N.

House Republicans are set to release the text of their tax-reform bill on Wednesday, a move that will for the first time provide details of the effort to cut taxes and streamline the tax code.

Reviews and News:

Halloween marks the halfway juncture of the NFL regular season, and is a good time to assess who’s likely still to be suited up in January when most of the league has retired to the couch to drink boysenberry IPA and watch the playoffs. Tuesday Morning Quarterback proposes a new way to make this…

The White House is walking a tightrope in its attempt to distance the president and his campaign from Monday’s big developments in the special counsel investigation into Russian interference. “Today's announcement has nothing to do with the president, has nothing to do with the president's campaign…

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s indictments of Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos turned the news cycle on its head Monday, with some trumpeting the news as the latest smoking gun for Russian collusion and others dismissing the story as the latest media nothing-burger. As the…

It’s not the sort of news President Trump’s Democratic adversaries were hoping for, but it was far from nothing. On Monday we learned of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort’s business partner Rick Gates. We also learned that a foreign…

The news that a former campaign manager of a sitting president has been indicted would seem like a pretty big deal.

The United States has captured a second militant in connection with the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead, the White House said Monday.

President Donald Trump is planning to nominate Jerome Powell to replace Janet Yellen as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, the New York Times reported Monday.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about the special counsel's first indictments and guilty plea.

The Afternoon Links are back! Where have they been, you ask? Regular readers of other TWS newsletters (JVL, Kristol Clear) know: I'm now a proud father of twin girls. They are a handful, but the dog has taken to them! If only he could hold a bottle ... So, fret not, the Afternoon Links are back,…

The indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort reveals, among other things, that the man knew how to spend money. In the five years between 2008 and 2013 he dropped several million dollars—from offshore accounts in Cyprus and the Grenadines—tricking out his houses in Florida and the…

In the Virginia governor’s race, Democrat Ralph Northam is leading Republican Ed Gillespie by 17 points, according to a newly released Quinnipiac poll. The survey shows 53 percent of likely voters backing Northam and only 36 percent supporting Gillespie. But last week, a Hampton poll showed…

When Steve Bannon became CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, Trump was far behind Hillary Clinton, according to Bannon. “We were 16 points down,” he said.

The indictment of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, on charges of conspiracy and fraud was the big news from special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation Monday morning. But court documents also implicate a lower-level aide who could prove an even bigger headache for the…

The operations of the U.S. military depend on space assets. Reconnaissance satellites allow us to find our adversaries; communications satellites allow us to coordinate movements against them; global positioning satellites allow us to direct our weaponry with unprecedented accuracy. In any…

Reviews and News:

The indictment of Paul Manafort and Richard Gates is filled with interesting tidbits about their businesses and lifestyles. Some highlights:

Just when it seemed as if the election of Donald Trump had rendered his supporters incoherent with triumphalism and his detractors incoherent with rage—thereby dumbing-down political conversation for a long time to come—something different and more interesting happened. A genuine debate has sprung…

The New York Times reported Monday morning that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a business associate were ordered to surrender to federal authorities. News broke Friday that special counsel Robert Mueller had filed the first charges in his investigation into Russia’s meddling in…

Update, 8:37 a.m.: We now know the targets of the Mueller indictments. The New York Times reports that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates have been ordered to surrender to authorities in conjunction with the Russia investigation. Manafort served as manager for the Trump campaign during the summer of…

American universities are out of control. Tuition rises even as the quality of teaching sinks and the value of a degree falls into question. Students assault speakers and suffer no punishment. Others are accused of crimes and condemned without evidence or due process. All the while, curriculums are…

Next week, a populous, diverse, and politically interesting state is going to elect a new governor.

This week on the Confab, executive editor Fred Barnes talks with host Eric Felten about the outsized claims of the man who would remake the GOP. Senior writer Michael Warren handicaps Republican chances at passing tax cuts.

Uber comes along and ends the rainy days and nights of waving fruitlessly at cabs with flashing “off duty” signs, and governments respond to pressures from threatened incumbents by making life difficult or impossible for the welfare-enhancing newcomer.

The Trump administration is facing mounting bipartisan calls to redesignate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism ahead of a congressionally mandated deadline.

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has filed the first charges of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, CNN reported Friday.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, Congress’s longest-serving member, is privately planning to retire at the end of his term, according to a report from the Atlantic on Friday.

GOP lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to make good on President Barack Obama’s promise that, because of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, inspectors “will have access where necessary, when necessary.”

This week on the Kristol Clear podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol on the announced retirements of President Trump's Senate antagonists.

Well-known tech companies are surpassing analysts’ expectations in reporting earnings this week, the latest sign that tech companies are increasingly finding ways to take in more money as we live more of our lives online.

I spoke with Peggy Grande about her new book, The President Will See You Now, a look back at her work as Ronald Reagan’s executive assistant.

Hong Jun-pyo may be diminutive in stature, but he visited Washington this week with a tall order. The prominent South Korean politician—he finished in second in this year’s presidential election, and currently leads the conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party—wants U.S. nukes. And he wants them…

Reviews and News:

Bisbee, Arizona, is at the center of a jurisdictional tussle with the state government, a kerfuffle that may prove whether there’s room in a conservative state for local self-determination—even liberal local self-determination.

The Trump administration is finally providing guidance on new Russia sanctions passed by Congress in August, issuing long overdue details on which entities tied to the Russian government will be targeted.

On November 2, 1917—a hundred years ago this week—the British government sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, declaring its “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” and promising Britain’s support in “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Their story has all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster. Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle were idealistic adventurers, a newlywed couple who loved to explore unusual destinations and travel off the beaten path. The North American pair married in 2011, and after spending a few months in…

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. possessed the most sparkling intelligence of his generation of historians. He may not have had the most subtle or profound mind, but his was the most effervescent disposition, and no one could surpass him in sheer energy, knowledge, and skill as scholar and writer.…

In recent months, Palestinians and several figures on the British left have called on the United Kingdom to apologize formally for its imperialistic audacity in issuing the Balfour Declaration—the November 2, 1917, pronouncement in which Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour stated that “His…

Everyone’s talking about the civil war in the Republican party. It seems more like a surrender to us.

In a speech on the Senate floor on October 24, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) announced his intention not to seek reelection in 2018. We regret his decision and the state of affairs that led him to make it: Flake is a solid conservative and a decent man, an implacable critic of government waste and a…

For the vast edifice of baloney that is social psychology, there’s been good news and bad news lately. The good news is that Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize. Thaler is the foremost evangelist for behavioral economics—the parasitic discipline that uses the findings of social psychology to…

The biggest scandal that nobody is talking about has nothing to do with the Donald Trump White House or the connection between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Russia dossier. It involves New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, who stands accused by the federal government of bribery,…

Bisbee, Arizona, is at the center of a jurisdictional tussle with the state government, a kerfuffle that may prove whether there’s room in a conservative state for local self-determination—even liberal local self-determination.

As I drove across the prairie, I saw the corn fields, tall and ripe. I saw the fabled waves of grain, the endless tides of amber wheat. I saw the plains unfold, down miles and miles of blacktop road. Returning to the landscape of my childhood, I leaned my head out the car window to breathe the…

"Here, you can be the policeman." Jenna (not her real name), a 4-year-old, hands me one of the dozen small figures spread in front of her, a black woman in a police uniform. “I’m going to be the doctor,” she says as she picks up another black woman dressed in a doctor’s coat. For the next few…

Who said there’s a free speech crisis on college campuses? As everyone knows, that’s just a figment of the right-wing imagination.

When Steve Bannon became CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, Trump was far behind Hillary Clinton, according to Bannon. “We were 16 points down,” he said.

ArtPrize is a queer sort of gallery show. There is no gallery, for one thing. Nor is there any particular curator. Instead, there is an urban core with a big pot of prize money in the middle of it.

At this juncture, we can stipulate that President Trump would probably have been well advised to follow Gen. John Kelly’s reported advice and write a letter of condolence to the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson instead of calling her on the telephone. No doubt Trump had reasoned that words of regret,…

Just when it seemed as if the election of Donald Trump had rendered his supporters incoherent with triumphalism and his detractors incoherent with rage—thereby dumbing-down political conversation for a long time to come—something different and more interesting happened. A genuine debate has sprung…

On October 31, exactly 500 years will have passed since a German monk named Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. That’s at least the tradition, but certainly Luther circulated his collection of brief contentions. Mainly he intended to provoke a debate…

For a moment, we were transported back to the 1990s. There was Hillary Clinton being asked about yet another highly suspect circumstance involving gross improprieties and brazen lies and sidestepping the question by blaming that ever-present confederation: her enemies. “I think the real story is…

One of the more surprising revelations about Russia’s reported meddling in the 2016 election is that Moscow supported a raft of objectively anti-Trump, left-wing causes. First we learned that the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked organization, bought social media advertisements that…

There is nothing natural about tolerating the views of others. If someone stands, as today’s righteous say, on “the wrong side of history,” why refrain from shutting him up? Yes, Justice Holmes warned against “attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught…

President Trump declared America’s opioid crisis a public health emergency Thursday, decrying the “scourge of drug addiction” that kills 175 Americans a day and pledging that “we can be the generation that ends the opioid epidemic.”

In mid-October, President Trump was due to make a certification to Congress on four conditions about its nuclear deal. He has repeatedly said this deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), gave the Iranians too much for too little. On October 13, he surprised no one by…

My guess is that up until two weeks ago, the name of Harvey Weinstein meant little if anything to most people, including readers of this magazine.

The American Red Cross was founded in 1881 by Civil War nurse Clara Barton. It was the first U.S. relief organization and established its effectiveness with responses to the Great Thumb Fire of 1881 and the Johnstown Flood in 1889. In the 20th century, the Red Cross became a byword for…

Last week, Monmouth University published a poll showing Republican Ed Gillespie ahead of Democrat Ralph Northam by one point in the race for Virginia’s governorship. This poll shocked some political observers—some had likely looked at Virginia’s recent results on the presidential level and…

The House of Representatives narrowly approved a Senate budget proposal on Thursday, paving the way for the long-anticipated tax reform package Republicans hope to pass by the end of the year.

Have there ever been unlikelier rock stars than Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the duo behind Steely Dan? The unabashedly intellectual Bard College grads—in high school, they were probably the bookish kids dressed in black, smoking cigarettes behind the gym—have certainly never looked the part:…

The Scrapbook has a smartphone, but we are sorely tempted to go back to a flip phone. Or maybe something with a dial. Smartphones were supposed to make everything easier, but we’re not so sure.

The attic where I write is stifling for half of the Washington, D.C., year. But in the autumn, breezes gust through the open windows and so do the sounds of our neighborhood—children chatting on their way to school, a barking dog, the squeak of the mailbox across the street being opened, and the…

With Doctor Who set to welcome the first female incarnation of its eponymous hero, it’s also getting ready to shake up the usual Doctor-companion dynamic. The BBC announced Sunday that the doctor will now have three companions, played by Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill, and game show host, Bradley Walsh.

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On this latest episode, the Substandard takes a break from movies to discuss a deeply personal subject: our favorite Halloween costumes and candies! For the latter we created a candy draft that goes 10 rounds deep. As “Gene” might say, it was Nutrageous! Plus JVL recalls his rowing days, Sonny…

The latest Fox News poll is pretty dismal for President Trump: Just 38 percent of registered voters approve of the job he’s doing, his lowest rating in the poll since Fox began asking the question in February. Trump’s disapproval is at an all-time high, too, with 57 percent of registered voters…

The windows one floor up and diagonal from the living room window were illuminated shortly past midnight. We’ve all been there: A child wails, an animal skedaddles, a stomach growls, a phone rings, a bladder pleads, and suddenly you’re ambulant when the rest of the home is prone, wondering why…

When I first learned the big news this week about Jeff Glor, my mind wandered back three decades, and more, to the mid-1980s. But who is Jeff Glor, you ask? The 42-year-old Glor is lead anchor on the CBS network's 24-hour streaming news service, called CBSN, and he has just been named by the…

The three technology media giants absorbing most of the spotlight for Russian influence in 2016 election on their respective platforms are poised to testify in open hearings next week before Congress.

This micro episode of the Substandard is a bubbly one! The hosts debate the differences between sparkling wine versus champagne. JVL could not care less. Vic explains Benson to Sonny. Plus Facebook Live Q&A!

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, associate editor Ethan Epstein talks about Russian social-media efforts to promote left-wing causes in the U.S.

President Trump said Wednesday that the GOP has "great unity" despite a series of attacks over the past week from Republicans, two of whom are retiring after 2018.

The head of the House’s Ways and Means Committee isn’t disputing that tax reform will be harder now that President Donald Trump is at war with two members of the rickety GOP Senate majority. But he does want you to know that he and Trump are doing just fine.

Two top lawmakers remain frustrated over the Trump administration’s failure to start implementing a set of congressionally mandated Russia sanctions on time, and are considering other avenues to pressure officials to act.

Mark Herring, Virginia’s attorney general, wanted to run for governor this fall. But Terry McAuliffe, the current governor, thought otherwise. And his endorsement of lieutenant governor Ralph Northam for the Democratic nomination for governor sent a blunt message to Herring: forget it.

One of the more surprising revelations about Russia’s reported meddling in the 2016 election is that its government supported objectively anti-Donald Trump, left wing causes. First we learned that the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked organization, bought social media advertisements that…

Boston

October 31 marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and the occasion brings to mind a joke: A young priest asks a wise older priest, "What's the difference between the Jesuit and Dominican orders?" The older priest says wearily, "Well, actually they have a lot in common. They were both…

Reviews and News:

This week on the Tuesday Morning Quarterback Podcast, Gregg Easterbrook and Stephen F. Hayes discuss the role reversal of teams from '16 to '17 (Rams, Falcons), why the Football Gods are chortling, and lastly, why no London game this year seems to ever be any good.

The upcoming retirements of Bob Corker and now Jeff Flake from the United States Senate will be helpful to President Donald Trump if his supporters get what they hope for: Republican successors in those seats who will be better soldiers for Trump. That’s very likely in Tennessee, where the…

In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) announced his intention not to seek reelection in 2018. We regret his decision and the state of affairs that led him to make it: Flake is a solid conservative and is a decent man, an implacable critic of government waste and a…

I am an admirer of Larry Summers. And of Kevin Hassett. Which is why I mourn Larry’s descent from civility into dismissive name-calling, and Kevin’s ill-considered attack on the Tax Policy Center, an organization with which I often disagree but is staffed by what Larry calls “highly respected…

Arizona senator Jeff Flake announced Tuesday that he would not seek re-election to the Senate in 2018. When an incumbent senator decides not to run again, it’s usually easy to gauge the electoral consequences—sitting senators usually perform better than non-incumbents, so if a senator retires in a…

Scottsdale, Ariz.

Arizona senator Jeff Flake announced Tuesday that he will not seek reelection in 2018, saying he could not secure victory without sacrificing his core principles.

Signs of China’s economic strength abound: from the increasing number of Hollywood movies that are designed to pander to Chinese tastes to the political class’s silence in the face of Chinese cyber-aggression. Consider the non-reaction to Beijing’s stunning plundering of OPM personnel data compared…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren discusses the Trump/Corker spat and what it means for tax reform.

Abingdon, Va.

The House Intelligence and Oversight Committees are investigating Russia’s involvement in a controversial Obama-era uranium deal, the panel’s chairman announced Tuesday.

Can there be such a thing as a “pro-life feminist”? The question gained new currency just as the Trump presidency began, when Women’s March organizers dropped the New Wave Feminists, a Texas-based group led by libertarian-leaning pro-lifer Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, as partners—because the…

Potential Senate candidate Kid Rock, a term that never becomes any less weird each time you write it, said Tuesday that he will not challenge Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow in next year’s election.

"Do we want Iran to have a nuclear weapon or not?" asks Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a video making its way around the Internet. “The answer? No. So why is President Trump trying to make it easier for Iran to get a nuclear weapon?”

In a speech on October 11 promoting his tax-reform plan, Donald Trump spoke rosily of America’s economic revival, crediting himself for having cleared the way for growth. “Since January of this year, we have slashed job-killing red tape all across our economy,” the president said. “We have stopped…

Tom Watson is going on a hunger strike. Writing in the Guardian, the deputy leader of the Labour Party announced that he was taking the action “in solidarity” with two hunger-striking detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Watson claims that they “are being slowly starved to death by President Trump.”

Of all the professional sports, Major League baseball has the broadest range of players from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds: In 2015, more than 230 foreign-born players from 17 countries played the game at its highest level.

After two weeks of dormancy, President Donald Trump’s ugly spat with Tennessee senator Bob Corker flared up again Tuesday after Corker insulted the president on the morning news, saying Trump was “unable to rise to the occasion” of his office and that he should “step aside” on tax reform and…

Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffp. That’s the sound of the air rushing out of the Falcons’ balloon. Atlanta’s NFL team has not merely staged an epic fail. The Falcons are, in every way, the Epic Fails.

It was just last September, in rural Pennsylvania, that Ivanka Trump first introduced supporters to her father’s promises of six weeks’ paid maternity leave and tax relief for child-care costs. These were policies she hoped to shepherd. A year later and an hour away in Bucks County, she held a town…

Two days after an uneventful and friendly conference call with the Republican House conference, Donald Trump will attend the Senate GOP’s weekly policy lunch meeting. Will the president get so amicable a greeting? Despite Trump’s on-again friendship with the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and…

Richard Rushfield is a maverick.

Lawmakers will vote this week on strengthening sanctions against the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah and punishing Iran for its ballistic missile development, amid pressure from the Trump administration to come to a legislative solution related to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

By his own admission, former White House strategist Steve Bannon doesn’t know much about foreign policy. But he knows one thing for sure: Every foreign headache for President Donald Trump’s administration is somebody else’s fault.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, national correspondent Peter Boyer assesses whether Trump is living up to his claim to be the most deregulating president.

An attack on October 4 by suspected Islamic State-affiliated militants that left four American soldiers dead has unexpectedly pushed the landlocked, sparsely inhabited African nation of Niger into the limelight. While most Americans seem less interested in the attack itself than in the ensuing…

Reviews and News:

There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:

As the major league playoffs continue on into the World Series, there is lots of talk—complaining, really—about the lengthening time it takes to play, and therefore watch, a baseball game. The average time of a baseball game is now three hours and five minutes. I don’t know if the average time of a…

There's a new episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol up and it is, typically, intensely interesting.

With the Senate passing a revised budget resolution last week, President Trump and his administration are kicking off this week with a renewed pitch for tax reform. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence joined the GOP House conference call Sunday, and the president encouraged House Republicans to…

This week on the Confab, executive editor Fred Barnes and senior writer John McCormack talk about Republican primaries where Steve Bannon is fielding, or hopes to field, true-to-Trump challengers.

Leave Trump country, fly about 2,000 miles east to Washington, D.C., and you enter a different world. In Trump country 88 percent of Trump voters approve of the job he is doing as president according to a poll by the Democracy Fund.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Friday that U.S. global counter-terrorism operations are set to expand and become more aggressive following a meeting with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis about troop deaths in Niger.

A top Trump White House official ripped Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a “terrorist enabler” on Thursday and warned businesses against engaging with the freshly designated organization.

This week on the Kristol Clear Podcast, editor at large William Kristol discusses the GOP's tax reform plan, and whether it'll fare better than GOP efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Axios has put together this nifty series of charts detailing the timeline of sexual assault charges against Harvey Weinstein, Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby. The charts track the dates of when the various incidents allegedly occurred relative to the years they were first…

The Sacramento statehouse, according to conventional wisdom, is a bellwether for social policies that soon sweep the nation. This week, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the legislature's attempt to give Obama-era Title IX guidance the force of law that it never had nationally.

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The truth about what President Trump really wants on the cost-sharing reimbursements of Obamacare remains, well, confusing. It’s been a back-and-forth from the president since it was first learned this week that Lamar Alexander, a Republican, and Patty Murray, a Democrat, were working on a deal for…

As bids pour in from more than 100 locations clamoring to become Amazon’s second headquarters, we need to address a question nobody is asking: Why isn’t Amazon televising this spectacle?

Boston

Mark Herring, Virginia’s attorney general, wanted to run for governor this fall. But Terry McAuliffe, the current governor, thought otherwise. And his endorsement of lieutenant governor Ralph Northam for the Democratic nomination for governor sent a blunt message to Herring: forget it.

The attic where I write is stifling for half of the Washington, D.C., year. But in the autumn, breezes gust through the open windows and so do the sounds of our neighborhood—children chatting on their way to school, a barking dog, the squeak of the mailbox across the street being opened, and the…

As the major league playoffs continue on into the World Series, there is lots of talk—complaining, really—about the lengthening time it takes to play, and therefore watch, a baseball game. The average time of a baseball game is now three hours and five minutes. I don’t know if the average time of a…

In a speech on October 11 promoting his tax-reform plan, Donald Trump spoke rosily of America’s economic revival, crediting himself for having cleared the way for growth. “Since January of this year, we have slashed job-killing red tape all across our economy,” the president said. “We have stopped…

There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:

In the world of art, Johannes Vermeer is a name to conjure with, and any exhibition of his work qualifies as a blockbuster. For the first time since 1996, a major exhibition of Vermeer and his contemporaries is coming to the National Gallery of Art. Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting debuted…

Whenever the vanguard of the Race’n’Gender Left™ meets the avant-garde of post-postmodern art, hilarity ensues. So it is with Omer Fast’s August, a recent installation in Manhattan’s Chinatown. If you’re wondering why an art show called August opened in September and will close in October, trust…

Attention all history buffs and antiquarian booksellers: The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, a recently founded center at Arizona State University, is in the market for great books relevant to American political philosophy and civics. They’ve already acquired a first collected…

Abingdon, Va.

Iraqi prime minister Haider Al-Abadi took to Twitter on October 13 to dispute rumors that his forces were mobilizing to take over areas under the control of Iraqi Kurds, particularly the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. “The fake news being spread has a deplorable agenda behind it,” he wrote. As with most…

Scottsdale, Ariz.

In 1637, René Descartes recounted a “fable” of how he came to think well. From his youth, he had read the books of the ancients, exercised his rhetorical skills, and observed the debates of philosophers and theologians. But in all this learning he found no rest or certainty, only endless disputes…

The American Red Cross was founded in 1881 by Civil War nurse Clara Barton. It was the first U.S. relief organization and established its effectiveness with responses to the Great Thumb Fire of 1881 and the Johnstown Flood in 1889. In the 20th century, the Red Cross became a byword for…

"Do we want Iran to have a nuclear weapon or not?" asks Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a video making its way around the Internet. “The answer? No. So why is President Trump trying to make it easier for Iran to get a nuclear weapon?”

The Scrapbook has a smartphone, but we are sorely tempted to go back to a flip phone. Or maybe something with a dial. Smartphones were supposed to make everything easier, but we’re not so sure.

My guess is that up until two weeks ago, the name of Harvey Weinstein meant little if anything to most people, including readers of this magazine.

Until his death on October 14, Richard Wilbur had spent nearly half a century as America’s greatest living poet. A writer of opulent forms and playful wit, whose rhymed and measured stanzas combined the intellectual complexities of modernist verse with the familiar pleasures of an older tradition,…

In August, your humble Scrapbook noted an alarming New York magazine article about how the world of teenage novels is now rife with “culture cops, monitoring their peers across multiple platforms for violations.”

Hollywood casting has been much in the news, what with the revelation that Harvey Weinstein has for decades been making the most of the old casting couch—and the fact that Weinstein is hardly the only predator demanding sexual favors for the chance at movie roles. Which made it a good time for the…

In mid-October, President Trump was due to make a certification to Congress on four conditions about its nuclear deal. He has repeatedly said this deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), gave the Iranians too much for too little. On October 13, he surprised no one by…

Half a century ago, fashionable young moviemakers looking for new ways to separate themselves from old Hollywood fuddy-duddies—and to épater la bourgeoisie even though it was that very bourgeoisie they needed to become rich and powerful—sank their teeth into the notions that America and capitalism…

Reduced for the time being to pruning Obamacare, Sen. Lamar Alexander announced 11 Republican cosponsors Thursday afternoon to a health insurer subsidy bill the president may or may not like, conservatives detest, Senate Democrats embrace, and the House speaker has all but dismissed.

CIA director Mike Pompeo described the connection between Iran and al-Qaeda as an “open secret” Thursday, a relationship that he and others criticized the Obama White House for downplaying.

Over at Commentary, our own Andrew Ferguson has a review of the “spiritual memoir” by Washington doyenne Sally Quinn, Finding Magic. Hoo boy, is it a doozy. “The book or the review?” you ask. Both. Read for yourself:

Justice Scalia was a terrific writer. And he thought about the craft, and what it requires. A short speech titled “Writing Well,” given to a group of legal writers who were giving him a lifetime achievement award, is fantastic.

The latest episode of the Substandard is a meaty one—we go on at length about sandwich joints and sandwich meats. Sonny discovers a steakhouse, JVL discovers Arby’s, but Vic discovers a woodshop class. We also discuss aging action stars—Sonny reviews The Foreigner. Plus Vic sounds like Edward…

Reviews and News:

Oakland, Calif.

Obamacare “repeal and replace” may have failed this year, but that doesn’t mean the Affordable Care Act can’t be significantly defanged. For example, there is still time to excise the Independent Payment Advisory Board from the law before it is up and running.

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

There’s no good, clean way out of the latest controversy to hit the Trump White House. Amid a days-long discussion about his willingness to call the families of armed service members killed in the line of duty, President Trump called the family of one Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the Green Berets…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, frequent contributor Gordon Chang talks with host Eric Felten about Xi Jinping's opening speech at China's 19th Communist Party Congress.

What will become of the Packers now that Aaron Rodgers is injured? And why does Congress allow donations to college football programs to be tax deductible? Join Gregg Easterbrook and Stephen F. Hayes, as they discuss these and other questions on the latest episode of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback…

James O’Keefe’s undercover investigations of various liberal institutions have resulted in everything from congressional action to criminal charges filed against the conservative provocateur. His latest exposé reveals an important truth, but maybe not the one he intended.

Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray reached a bipartisan deal on Tuesday to reinstate subsidies paid to insurers for lowering costs on certain low-income insurance enrollees. This “cost-sharing” process is a one-two step: One, a carrier reduces the amount of health expenses a particular…

The hardest thing about teaching, and teaching middle school especially, is all the stuff you can’t cover with students on the fragile border between childhood and young adulthood. You can’t do it all, and you shouldn’t try. The mark of a good teacher is that she cuts the right amount of difficult…

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The late North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il had thousands of Hollywood movies in his personal collection, furnishing him with what he thought was a deep knowledge of a country he would never see. He was particularly fond, reportedly, of The Godfather—so much so that he ran his country like a Mafioso.…

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a case in which University of Wisconsin professor William Whitford and a group of plaintiffs (all Democratic voters in the state) contend that the drawing up of Wisconsin’s state legislative districts was an…

If there’s a legislative fix on the way for the scrapped cost-sharing payments to insurance companies under Obamacare, President Trump seems to be behind it. Trump last week announced he would end reimbursements to insurers selling discounted policies to low-income customers, which the…

Celebrities are mostly left-wingers. The statement is boringly obvious to any mildly intelligent person. But we still have to say it because the celebrities themselves don’t seem to know it. Indeed, the high-profile personalities of our entertainment industry seem to think of themselves as…

Meet Scott Yenor.

The race for the Virginia’s governor’s mansion is tightening with three weeks to go. A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday shows Republican Ed Gillespie with a razor-thin lead over Virginia’s Democratic lieutenant governor Ralph Northam, 48 percent to 47 percent, Politico reports:

On Tuesday morning, Patrick S. Tomlinson, an author of science fiction and fantasy novels and contributor to the New York Times, tweeted out a challenge to the “pro-life crowd,” a challenge that, to Tomlinson’s satisfaction, demonstrates that these people pay mere lip-service to the idea that life…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about the friendly truce between the president and the Senate majority leader.

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate’s health committee have struck a deal to fund reimbursements to insurers that discount prices for low-income individuals, just days after the Trump administration determined the payments were illegal without an appropriation from Congress.

Donald Trump may have played golf with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe earlier this year, but when Chinese president Xi Jinping made his own visit to Mar-a-Lago, a visit to the links was decidedly not on the agenda.

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“Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country?” Donald Trump tweeted last week, using German-style capitalization. Trump may have been thinking of the NFL’s headquarters tax exemption which, applying to the league’s New York City…

We call it the Nobel prize in economics, but the Nobel that Richard Thaler won last week is technically a prize in “economic sciences,” and that bit of self-puffery (Oh, we’re scientists now, are we?) is fitting. Thaler is a pioneer of behavioral economics, the latest craze to sweep a trade not…

Jennifer MacMillan is a tax preparer. Her business ebbs and flows with the season. In the months before April 15, she talks with clients and pores over the records of their financial lives. She deciphers statements from their brokerages, determines how much they can claim for their home offices,…

Kicking off his surprise press conference with Mitch McConnell at the White House Monday afternoon, Donald Trump made the message of the day perfectly clear: “Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell . . . has been a friend of mine for a long time.”

The American Humane Association (AHA) awarded its K-9 Medal of Courage to five dogs this past week for their exceptional service in the U.S. military. After multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, spent searching for explosives and chewing up insurgents who regard them as unclean (dogs: 1,…

Reasons for an institution like the Boy Scouts of America to go coed fall into roughly two camps. First, there’s the stark reality of dwindling membership: The Scouts are down to a mere third of their 6.5-million-member peak reached in the early 1970s. (Admitting girls, theoretically, doubles their…

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order that, among other things, stops cost-sharing payments to insurance companies. The purpose of these payments is to lower the deductibles and co-pays for lower- and middle-income Americans purchasing health plans on the Obamacare insurance…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Tony Mecia talks with host Eric Felten about President Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell making peace with each other to work on tax reform.

A Republican lawmaker is urging the president to block a multibillion-dollar deal between Boeing and Iran Air, “the terror-supporting transport-arm” of a network that is now facing steep sanctions from the Trump administration.

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The “failing” New York Times continues to be President Donald Trump’s favorite newspaper, even if he would never admit it. In a pair of Sunday morning tweets, the president blasted the paper and its chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, for failing to list in a recent article all the…

The Soviet Union took an intensely discriminatory attitude to its history. What the regime wanted remembered, it magnified beyond all recognition; what it wanted forgotten, it erased. The Battle of Stalingrad, for instance, was endlessly propagandized by the Soviets; whereas the First World War, a…

This week on the Confab, executive editor Fred Barnes talks with host Eric Felten about the large and unnecessary gap between Trump Republicans and Establishment Republicans.

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So that’s what it’s come to: Dueling IQs on the White House lawn.

This week on the Kristol Clear Podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol talks with host Eric Felten about the president's action on the Iran nuclear deal.

President Donald Trump refused to certify the Iran nuclear deal Friday, a move that has been described as one piece of a larger strategy to toughen U.S. policy toward Iran.

Trump administration officials announced late Thursday they will end reimbursements to insurers for lowering costs on individuals “immediately,” potentially destabilizing premiums on the exchange unless Congress reacts with legislation to continue the payments.

President Donald Trump will announce Friday he is decertifying the Iran deal is in the national security interests of the United States. In a speech outlining the administration’s new policy on Iran, the president will call on Congress to amend its Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act to insist on…

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The Boy Scouts of America announced Wednesday that they would admit girls into the organization for the first time ever. From now on, Cub Scout dens (usually around 6 to 12 kids) will be single gender—either male or female. Cub Scout packs (comprised of multiple dens) will have the option of being…

With the U.S. Supreme Court case, Gill vs. Whitford now concluded, we wished to look at how the Badger State found itself at the center of the judicial fight over partisan gerrymander. The following is Part 2 in a series relaying Wisconsin’s recent history in drawing its legislative district lines.

This piece has been updated with new information.

On Tuesday night in the fifth and final round of World Cup Qualifiers, Omar Gonzalez, the U.S. Men’s center-back, scored an own-goal just 17 minutes into the match. Demoralizing as own-goals can be, his team’s response made it even worse: With the exception of 19-year old Christian Pulisic, the…

It’s Friday the thirteenth, and it’s also the day President Trump will announce his administration’s new Iran policy. That will come in a speech from the White House at 12:45 p.m., and Trump is expected to announce he will decertify that the sanctions relief afford to Iran under the nuclear deal.…

“The best defense is a good offense,” as the old saw goes. The nature of that “good offense” matters, though. Too often, American officials mistake “any offense” for a “good offense.” As tensions between North Korea and the United States continue to escalate, it is apparent that American…

American liberals dominate this country’s cultural life. Universities, the news media, the entertainment industry, our cultural institutions—these are populated and run mainly, and in many cases exclusively, by liberals. What liberals, the vast majority of whom identify as Democrats, don’t dominate…

In March, a New York hedge fund installed a bronze Fearless Girl statue facing down Wall Street’s famous statue of a charging bull. It was an instant sensation.

On October 1, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) announced that it would accept girls into membership. Beginning next year, Cub Scout programs will admit girls, with the ultimate goal of allowing girls to progress to the rank of Eagle Scout.

The late North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il had thousands of Hollywood movies in his personal collection, furnishing him with what he thought was a deep knowledge of a country he would never see. He was particularly fond, reportedly, of The Godfather—so much so that he ran his country like a Mafioso.…

Obamacare “repeal and replace” may have failed this year, but that doesn’t mean the Affordable Care Act can’t be significantly defanged. For example, there is still time to excise the Independent Payment Advisory Board from the law before it is up and running.

By the time you read this, it is entirely possible that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will have resigned his office in despair and frustration. He finds himself, after all, at “the breaking point” (New Yorker) in relations with his mercurial boss, President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, over at PBS…

Jennifer MacMillan is a tax preparer. Her business ebbs and flows with the season. In the months before April 15, she talks with clients and pores over the records of their financial lives. She deciphers statements from their brokerages, determines how much they can claim for their home offices,…

Austria is the latest of several European countries to ban the burka, the full covering worn by some Muslim women in public. Except that Austria didn’t ban the burka per se—that would be religiously discriminatory. Instead, they simply made it against the law to wear anything in public that covers…

Most of us think of jazz as a genre predicated on extemporization—the horn man breaking into an inspired chorus set apart from the rhythmic structure of the song, the pianist using an established chord progression for extended flights of improvisatory fancy.

Oakland, Calif.

Samuel Johnson, about to tuck into a pork roast, is supposed to have said that the only thing that would make the food before him better is if he were a Jew. Stendhal, I years ago heard, said that the only thing wrong with ice cream was that it wasn’t illegal. The question both these men raise is…

For their latest collaboration, a 10-part documentary that premiered last month on PBS, filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick have chosen a subject from living memory. The Vietnam war was a defining event for a generation of Americans. It was also one of the most politically divisive wars in U.S.…

The Republican party is divided into two groups these days. There’s the Trump faction and its rival, the elected leaders, GOP officials, and rank-and-file antagonists of Trump. The split is not ideological. For the most part, the two sides agree on cutting taxes, killing Obamacare, and building up…

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a case in which University of Wisconsin professor William Whitford and a group of plaintiffs (all Democratic voters in the state) contend that the drawing up of Wisconsin’s state legislative districts was an…

We call it the Nobel prize in economics, but the Nobel that Richard Thaler won last week is technically a prize in “economic sciences,” and that bit of self-puffery (Oh, we’re scientists now, are we?) is fitting. Thaler is a pioneer of behavioral economics, the latest craze to sweep a trade not…

It was just a few weeks ago that The Scrapbook was goggling over new policies at Middlebury College regarding speakers appearing on the campus. Under the “Interim Procedures for Scheduling Events and Invited Speakers,” potentially controversial invitees have to be cleared by the school’s Threat…

The Scrapbook was dismayed but not surprised when, in the waning days of his presidency, Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning. We have been equally dismayed and unsurprised at the desire of left-leaning institutions to treat Manning as some sort of folk hero. It is cold comfort…

Say what you will about her husband the president, The Scrapbook believes that First Lady Melania Trump is just fine. Gracious, charming, conscientious, and decorative, she has carried out her public duties with conspicuous aplomb.

We Wisconsin political watchers are used to having the Badger State’s redistricting fights end up in court. So used to it, in fact, that some form of court has played a role in the matter since 1931.

With police intensifying their long-running corruption probes, Israel is awash with speculation that Benjamin Netanyahu’s days as prime minister may be numbered. Opponents—both within the Likud party and without—have been organizing. Sensing the danger, Netanyahu and his allies have fought back,…

Earlier today, The Weekly Standard published a piece that fell short of our editorial standards. I take full responsibility for our editorial process. We’ve pulled the piece.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at expanding Americans’ access to health insurance choices, the first official step of his pledge to tackle health-care reform solo after repeated congressional failures to pass legislation repealing Obamacare.

Lawyers want Boeing to reveal the secret details of its multibillion dollar deal with Iran Air to an Illinois federal court, a disclosure that hinges on the approval of the Trump administration.

On this latest episode of the Substandard, we break down Blade Runner 2049. Sonny and JVL go deep on the movie’s true meaning. JVL and Vic share thoughts on My Little Pony. A discussion of Harvey Weinstein gets meta. Plus the return of “Gene” and a fan-service outtake!

In a Columbus Day scandal for the ages, a measured but provocative essay reconsidering the evils of colonialism got the axe a month after its publication. First, critics of Portland State University political science professor Bruce Gilley’s “The Case for Colonialism” launched a 10,000-signature…

Two top lawmakers slammed the Trump administration Wednesday for failing to “get their act together” and meet an October deadline to start implementing Russia sanctions.

For several months, the worst-kept secret in Washington has been that Richard Cordray, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s first director, will resign and enter the 2018 Ohio governor’s race. The best-kept secret may be that Cordray decided not to resign the day Donald Trump was elected, and…

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In a speech championing Republican tax reform efforts on Wednesday, President Donald Trump attempted to deflect criticism that the GOP tax plan disproportionately favors the wealthy with a novel argument: The rich don’t even want a tax cut.

I was recently in San Francisco on business. I was there on business because, well, I would never go there for pleasure.

After a short stint at the White House, principal deputy chief of staff Kirstjen Nielsen is likely headed back to the Department of Homeland Security. President Donald Trump nominated Nielsen for the top DHS job Wednesday, which has been vacant since July. The previous DHS secretary was John Kelly,…

Perhaps more than any other major sport, college football revels in predictions. The sport’s preseason polls get a lot of attention, and the expectations they set continue to influence the rankings for much of the season. But at some point—like about now, with the season’s midpoint nearly upon…

When George Will was being packed off to graduate school, his father, a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois, asked him what, or who, he wanted to be in life: Ted Sorensen, Isaiah Berlin, or Murray Kempton? All three men were closely identified with a public trade. Sorensen, as…

The pro-Trump super PAC Great America Alliance on Wednesday released its first slate of Senate endorsements for the 2018 election season, endorsing three conservative challengers who are attempting to flip blue seats next year.

This week on the Tuesday Morning Quarterback Podcast, Gregg Easterbrook argues in his column that, while we need more research of CTE, the relationship between brain injury risk and contact football before age 12 is clear. And that's why he thinks legislatures should ban youth tackle football.…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, associate editor Ethan Epstein talks with host Eric Felten about all the things the Obama administration could have done, but didn't, to discourage North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

Retired Lt. Col. Robert M. Heffington, who recently quit teaching at West Point, has penned an open letter about a series of disturbing developments that have taken place at the U.S. Military Academy, starting with the revelation that West Point graduate Spenser Rapone is an avowed Communist who…

Presidential candidate Donald Trump disparaged the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran in characteristically superlative terms: “My number-one priority,” he said to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March 2016, “is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in…

On October 3, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, spoke to a group of Republican donors at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. Unbeknownst to Ayers, his remarks were recorded, and the audio was subsequently obtained by Politico.

In the 1970s, about 10 percent of American workers required licenses to perform their jobs legally. By 2015, that proportion had more than doubled to 22 percent. There is widespread agreement among economists and an increasing awareness among politicians that there is no public-interest…

The upcoming Supreme Court case most threatening to the Democratic establishment will revisit the 40-year-old ruling that created public-sector unions as we know them today.

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In examining the GOP tax plan in this space, we noted that the provision eliminating the estate tax looked a lot like a bargaining chip “to be negotiated away to placate deficit hawks.”

The Republican drive to confirm federal judges has gained momentum from a series of actions by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. They seem modest but are likely to speed up the confirmation of both appeals and district court judges—conservatives, for the most part.

What is President Donald Trump willing to negotiate over when it comes to immigration? In her briefing Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeated what the administration has said since Sunday, when it released its list of legislative priorities on immigration: the…

In examining the GOP tax plan in this space, we noted that the provision eliminating the estate tax looked a lot like a bargaining chip “to be negotiated away to placate deficit hawks.”

Andrew Ferguson talks with host Eric Felten about the problems with Richard Thaler's Nobel-winning Behavioral Economics.

In this latest micro episode, the Substandard searches for meaning in the newest trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The music still soars, says Sonny. Who’s the adorable little furball next to the CGI’d Chewbacca, asks Vic? When will we stop paying money for this dross, asks JVL?

A key Democrat said Tuesday that he would support supplemental agreements to the Iran nuclear deal, but urged the administration in the interim to certify Iranian implementation of the deal ahead of an upcoming deadline.

President Donald Trump has made accusations of “fake news” a regular tactic in his administration’s war against the media in general and CNN in particular. Now, the president’s allies are leaning into that assault with polling indicating popular distrust for CNN.

In the past 100 years, no visual artist has contributed more to the sum total of human happiness than Alexander Calder. If you think about it, this generating of happiness, to the extent to which it retains any cultural prestige these days, is seen as the domain of musicians and writers far more…

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went into full damage-control mode last week after NBC News reported he had called President Donald Trump a “f—-ing moron,” denying the allegation and insisting the president was “smart.” But Trump never forgets a slight—and sooner or later, he always hits back. In…

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The Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, who in the 1970s won the Panama Canal back for his country, used to tell less successful Latin American leaders that the United States is like a monkey on a chain. You can play with the chain all you like—but if you play with the monkey, you’ll get badly hurt.…

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley announced Monday evening that he is running for Senate in 2018. The young Republican may prove the most formidable challenger yet to Claire McCaskill, who is widely seen as one of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats.

Note to readers: Last weekend I attended a ceremonial event, and paid no attention to sports. But how can you miss me when I won’t go away? Please note that I wrote today’s column in advance, not knowing what happened last weekend in sports or current events.

President Donald Trump spent part of his Columbus Day on the golf course at Trump National in Virginia with sometime-rival Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina senator later said on Twitter that he “really enjoyed a round of golf” with Trump, praising the president for shooting a “73 in windy and wet…

From almost the moment Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency in June 2015, the term “Republican establishment” has been ubiquitous. Sometimes it means Republican moderates, sometimes it means GOP officeholders generally, and sometimes it just means any Republican not named Donald…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about the spat between President Trump and Senator Corker.

North Korea’s inexorable march toward nuclear weapons has been treated as something akin to a malign meteorological phenomenon. Sure, it’s bad. But there’s also nothing we can do to stop it, the standard line has gone. After all, by the time Barack Obama took office, the “heavily isolated” country…

By October 15, Donald Trump must decide what to do with his predecessor’s nuclear agreement with Iran. He has felt obliged, against his instincts, to recertify the deal every 90 days, per the requirements of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, Congress’s attempt to supervise Barack Obama’s…

Published last week, Scalia Speaks is a collection of the justice’s speeches edited by his son Christopher and the lawyer Ed Whelan. The book has six parts, the first of which is “On the American People and Ethnicity.”

You don't have to be a liberal or conservative, woman or man, to find Harvey Weinstein's conduct repulsive. Weinstein, co-founder of Miramax Films and the eponymous Weinstein Company, producer of dozens of well-known, well-regarded, and multiple-Oscar-winning movies over the past three decades,…

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The Red Sox and Yankees survived on Sunday, setting up a Columbus Day quadruple-header. Were they lucky or just timely? And what’s in store now?

Before Jack Henry Abbott, there was Edgar Smith.

As I was leaving the theater after a screening of Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, the friend I watched it with turned to me and observed, “For a documentary about a library, that movie didn’t have a whole lot to say about books.”

The Trump administration has released its list of “legislative priorities” on immigration to the leadership and relevant committee chairs on Capitol Hill. Citing a review process that involved several departments and agencies, White House legislative director Marc Short told reporters Sunday…

The New York Times last week broke the story of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s long record of sexual harassment. Actresses including Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd came forward to detail Weinstein’s depredations, and so did former employees of the man who founded one of the most important…

Vice President Mike Pence departed an NFL game Sunday afternoon in response to several players who knelt during the playing of the National Anthem, he said in a statement.

President Donald Trump and outgoing senator Bob Corker of Tennessee got into an unexpected and personal Twitter fight Sunday morning, the nastiest public conflict yet between the White House and Senate Republicans.

This week on the Confab, executive editor Fred Barnes talks with host Eric Felten about how and why Republicans got themselves in such a mess.

Eating disorders are not unknown in the land of foie gras (and we’re not talking about the force-feeding of geese), and authorities there blame the fashion industry’s unhealthy fondness for starvation-chic. Thus the French law that recently went into effect decreeing that fashion photos be honest…

This summer, the Cleveland Indians won 22 consecutive baseball games—a seemingly impossible streak that elated fans of the team and captivated non-fans. The Indians won large and they won small. They won the 22nd game in a comeback, getting a hit with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the…

"I want them to hate him," a federal prosecutor said quietly on the evening of October 2 as his colleagues packed up. It had been a long first day in the trial of Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the man charged with instigating the tragic 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

American trade policy is focused on steel, gasoline-powered cars, and coal; China’s is focused on robots, electric vehicles, and solar panels.

In 1894 San Francisco dedicated an elaborate monument to the history of California, a vast pile of granite and bronze paid for by the estate of philanthropist James Lick. Last week San Francisco took a step toward getting rid of it.

New rules issued Friday by the Trump administration—effective immediately—will allow conscientious objectors to opt out of Obamacare's contraception and abortion-pill mandate for religious or moral reasons.

This week on the Kristol Clear Podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol talks with Eric Felten about the prospects President Trump chooses not to certify Iran in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Recent reports suggest that the contest for the next chair of the Federal Reserve is down to Jay Powell, a current member of the Federal Reserve board, and Kevin Warsh, a member of the board from 2006 to 2011. And the rumor mill suggests that it is Warsh—a former Wall Street denizen whose…

Jose Altuve went yard thrice, and Trevor Bauer was not so nice to the Yankees in a dominant Game 1 performance on Thursday. The first day of the MLB Divisional Series round now gives way to a full slate of games Friday—here’s TWS’s Lee Smith and Chris Deaton to break it down.

If you can find the bootleg-Substandard from this week, good for you. Some endnotes and digressions from the show that wasn't:

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Manchester, England

There has been national attention to a local squabble in Minnesota over the appointment of state supreme court associate justice David Stras to a federal appeals court by President Donald Trump.

Just occasionally, the United Nations gets things exactly right. A fine example of that is the recent release of a report from its special investigative mission on human-rights abuses in Crimea. The U.N. verdict? There have been “multiple and grave” violations—up to and including illegal detentions…

Donald Trump was frustrated. Five days earlier, on July 12, 2017, the president had decided for the second time in his young administration that he would certify to Congress Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal he’d promised as a candidate to dismantle. He wasn’t happy with the decision he’d…

Can there be such a thing as a great movie that is also unsatisfying? It would seem like a contradiction in terms. After all, how can something work when it doesn’t work? And yet it does happen. The early Marx Brothers and Woody Allen pictures are disastrous pieces of storytelling, but who cares…

Donald Trump is expected to decertify the Iran nuclear deal ahead of this month’s deadline. What that means, and how the president came to this decision, is the subject of a story in the brand-new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The story, which I co-wrote with editor-in-chief Steve Hayes pulls back…

On October 3, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, spoke to a group of Republican donors at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. Unbeknownst to Ayers, his remarks were recorded, and the audio was subsequently obtained by Politico.

With police intensifying their long-running corruption probes, Israel is awash with speculation that Benjamin Netanyahu’s days as prime minister may be numbered. Opponents—both within the Likud party and without—have been organizing. Sensing the danger, Netanyahu and his allies have fought back,…

I was recently in San Francisco on business. I was there on business because, well, I would never go there for pleasure.

"I want them to hate him," a federal prosecutor said quietly on the evening of October 2 as his colleagues packed up. It had been a long first day in the trial of Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the man charged with instigating the tragic 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

We take a backseat to no one in deploring the effects that social media have on our culture. However, sometimes they provide people platforms to announce to the world that they possess dangerous and/or idiotic beliefs. This can be useful.

Sherman, Conn.

In the past 100 years, no visual artist has contributed more to the sum total of human happiness than Alexander Calder. If you think about it, this generating of happiness, to the extent to which it retains any cultural prestige these days, is seen as the domain of musicians and writers far more…

Donald Trump was frustrated. Five days earlier, on July 12, 2017, the president had decided for the second time in his young administration that he would certify to Congress Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal he’d promised as a candidate to dismantle. He wasn’t happy with the decision he’d…

Presidential candidate Donald Trump disparaged the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran in characteristically superlative terms: “My number-one priority,” he said to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March 2016, “is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in…

Before Jack Henry Abbott, there was Edgar Smith.

“Over the years,” wrote the editors of the New York Times, “the gun lobby, claiming to defend the convenience of hunters and other gun owners, has so bullied Washington that . . . sensible proposals seem beyond reach. But as gun mayhem continues to mount, the political roadblock looks less and less…

The Scrapbook enjoys opera. We admit it. And although we believe the Metropolitan Opera in New York to be grossly overpriced, it’s still the best opera house in the world, and so we make our way there at least once a year.

Eating disorders are not unknown in the land of foie gras (and we’re not talking about the force-feeding of geese), and authorities there blame the fashion industry’s unhealthy fondness for starvation-chic. Thus the French law that recently went into effect decreeing that fashion photos be honest…

By October 15, Donald Trump must decide what to do with his predecessor’s nuclear agreement with Iran. He has felt obliged, against his instincts, to recertify the deal every 90 days, per the requirements of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, Congress’s attempt to supervise Barack Obama’s…

What does it do to casually assumed theories of cultural equality if a civilization is founded on the idea that the gods require the ritualized butchering of human beings? When Mel Gibson released his twilight-of-the-Maya epic Apocalypto in 2006, some scholars of Mayan culture felt that the film’s…

Can there be such a thing as a great movie that is also unsatisfying? It would seem like a contradiction in terms. After all, how can something work when it doesn’t work? And yet it does happen. The early Marx Brothers and Woody Allen pictures are disastrous pieces of storytelling, but who cares…

In the 1970s, about 10 percent of American workers required licenses to perform their jobs legally. By 2015, that proportion had more than doubled to 22 percent. There is widespread agreement among economists and an increasing awareness among politicians that there is no public-interest…

In recent years, John McPhee’s writing has become more retrospective, a natural sensibility for a man now 86 years old. A case in point was his 2010 book Silk Parachute, a collection of essays and reportage that also stood out for its uncharacteristically personal tone. From the title essay, a…

When George Will was being packed off to graduate school, his father, a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois, asked him what, or who, he wanted to be in life: Ted Sorensen, Isaiah Berlin, or Murray Kempton? All three men were closely identified with a public trade. Sorensen, as…

In 1894 San Francisco dedicated an elaborate monument to the history of California, a vast pile of granite and bronze paid for by the estate of philanthropist James Lick. Last week San Francisco took a step toward getting rid of it.

As I was leaving the theater after a screening of Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, the friend I watched it with turned to me and observed, “For a documentary about a library, that movie didn’t have a whole lot to say about books.”

This summer, the Cleveland Indians won 22 consecutive baseball games—a seemingly impossible streak that elated fans of the team and captivated non-fans. The Indians won large and they won small. They won the 22nd game in a comeback, getting a hit with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the…

The Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, who in the 1970s won the Panama Canal back for his country, used to tell less successful Latin American leaders that the United States is like a monkey on a chain. You can play with the chain all you like—but if you play with the monkey, you’ll get badly hurt.…

California representative Linda Sanchez, a member of the House minority leadership, says in an interview set to air Sunday on C-SPAN’s Newsmakers that it’s time for a new generation of Democrats to replace Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Jim Clyburn.

Lawmakers are proposing reforms to a key foreign surveillance program used to monitor terrorists and disrupt their plots ahead of its December expiration.

Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn announced Thursday that she would run for the Senate seat that retiring senator Bob Corker is vacating in 2018.

Theresa May’s speech at this week’s Conservative Party conference in Manchester, England, was meant to be the high point of the three-day event. Instead, her speech Wednesday morning became an extended and excruciating fiasco. None of this was May’s fault. It was just her bad luck. But luck is the…

The New York Times has a report about an internal struggle at the ACLU. The organization helped sue to for the right of assembly for the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August that resulted in the death of a young woman, after a car driven by one of the white supremacists plowed into…

The Yankees won—and Gary Sanchez survived! The Diamondbacks outlasted the Rockies—thanks to a pitcher . . . hitting? Two wacky wild card games are in the books, and the 2017 MLB playoffs are set: It’s the Dodgers vs. Diamondbacks and Nationals vs. Cubs in the National League, and the Indians vs.…

The cry has gone out: If only Las Vegas murderer Stephen Paddock—instead of being a nihilistic scumbag who wasted his golden years in windowless casinos—had been an Islamic extremist, even the most intransigent of Republicans would be backing gun control measures now. Piers Morgan said as such;…

A few years ago, some friends of mine, weekend musicians, started jamming together and formed a cover band called the Porch Lights. To be honest, their big world tour is a bit slow in developing. Conquering the globe one backyard at a time, they haven’t quite made it outside of our neighborhood,…

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For three joyous seconds last November, I believed the Cleveland Indians were World Series champions.

As with most people, my experiences with the Transportation Security Administration have not been universally wonderful. At the airports in New York, where I live, travelers seem to be treated like inmates arriving at the penitentiary, but perhaps that’s because agents often reflect the personality…

The most revealing moment in Rex Tillerson’s hastily convened press conference Wednesday came when he was asked about the most explosive element of the NBC News story published Wednesday morning: that in July Donald Trump’s secretary of State had called the president of the United States a “moron.”…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Tony Mecia talks with host Eric Felten about how Congress abuses its hearings power to spank private citizens.

With the Oct. 15 deadline for certifying to Congress that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Donald Trump is set to deliver a speech next week regarding his intentions. According to a report this afternoon from Adam Kredo at the…

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russian election interference has expanded since January, with hundreds of additional information requests, new leads, and questions about fresh Russia-related events, the leaders of the panel said Wednesday.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Wednesday denied an NBC report that claimed he angrily considered quitting the administration in July before being dissuaded by Vice President Mike Pence.

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Its public approval at record lows, Congress this week returned to popular and comfortable territory: flogging CEOs.

“When I was in law teaching,” recalled Antonin Scalia in a speech just days before his 1986 nomination to the Supreme Court, “I was fond of doing what is called ‘teaching against the class’—that is, taking positions that the students were almost certain to disagree with, in order to generate some…

Our tax code is screwed up in a thousand ways and there’s scarcely a cohort in America that isn’t hurt by this mess.

The stock market rockets ever-upward, as well it should, what with the president’s tax package destined to make corporate America great again. Sure thing.

More bad news for congressional Republicans coming out of the White House Tuesday: Politico reports that Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff is whipping up donors to “purge” GOP lawmakers who don’t rally behind the president’s legislative agenda.

On this day, six decades ago, the old Space Age began with the launch of the first orbital satellite. Partly because it wasn’t delivered to orbit by Americans, it got the era off on entirely the wrong foot.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 237 to 189 on Tuesday to ban most abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy, when infants are old enough to feel pain and survive if born prematurely. Only three Democrats supported the bill, while just two Republicans voted against it.

The Capital Bikeshare killer is here. Bike sharing programs are increasingly popular in big cities, and Washington was an early adopter with its Capital Bikeshare program. (The keys even look like little communist flags!) The program got started with millions in subsidies from the government, and…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, deputy managing editor Kelly Jane Torrance talks with host Eric Felten about Defense Secretary Jim Mattis's testimony on the Iran nuclear deal and whether the president will decertify the deal.

The United States has expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the country's embassy, less than a week after pulling its own embassy workers from Cuba in response to a series of apparent sonic attacks on American personnel.

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With the norm-demolishing, nationalist-establishment civil war in America’s Republican party, we sometimes lose sight of what the other great disruptor is doing over in Europe.

When the rise of Donald J. Trump obliterated the norms of American politics, the norms of American journalism were demolished, as well.

Thousands of people work on National Football League coaching staffs and in front offices. Millions of Americans pretend to do these roles in fantasy leagues, or simply fantasize about running an NFL team. Everyone wonders: What is the secret to NFL success?

Abu Khatallah is facing 18 counts related to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, including murder and providing material support to terrorists. His long-awaited trial began Monday in Washington, D.C.

C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley both died on the same day as the JFK assassination. It's an odd bit of historical trivia that often gets cited to show how even important markers can get lost amid earth shattering news. It might be as stretch to compare Tom Petty to those intellectual titans, but it…

As Kim Jong-un’s cavalcade of menace has proceeded across the 2017 calendar, revealing a North Korean arsenal that now includes a hydrogen bomb and missiles capable of reaching New York City and Washington, D.C., America’s strategic posture has been old and familiar (if now more colorfully…

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on September 22 formally rescinded the Obama administration’s commands that universities use unfair rules in sexual-misconduct investigations—rules that had the effect of finding more students guilty of sexual assault. And she appears also to be preparing for far…

It was a somber President Trump who addressed the nation Monday morning from the White House. Several hours earlier, hundreds of people had been shot while attending a country music concert in Las Vegas. The gunman had fired down at the outdoor concert from a corner suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel.

Responding to tragedy is never easy, but the best response is often the one involving the fewest words. That’s true when a friend receives terrible news—nothing’s worse than the loudmouth uncle trying to be “helpful”—and it’s true in moments of national grief like the present one.

President Donald Trump’s judicial nomination of Amy Barrett has become a religious-liberty flashpoint in recent weeks, with Democratic senators arguing that her conservative Catholicism would interfere with her ability to uphold the law. Sen. Jeff Flake defended Barrett on the Senate floor Monday…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about the President's remarks about the mass murder in Las Vegas.

Massacre in Vegas. When tragedy strikes, there's a lot of misinformation out there. It's always best to sit back and wait (usually not very long) until the truth is reported. Here are three things to read today (if you're up to it) about the mass shooting in Las Vegas:

The victory of Roy Moore, a populist and religious fundamentalist, in the Alabama Senate primary last week can be seen in two different ways: continuity with the recent past of GOP politics and a radical break from it.

As new information continues to emerge from the horrific shooting in Las Vegas that reportedly killed 58 and wounded more than 500, one aspect of the crime seems clear.

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A week before Kenya’s August 8 presidential election, the mutilated body of Chris Msando, head of software for the country’s chief electoral body, was found in a ditch outside Nairobi. His autopsy revealed that he had been tortured before dying of strangulation. That the man who held the passwords…

Last week, President Donald Trump picked a fight with the NFL, arguing that players like Colin Kaepernick who take a knee during the national anthem should be fired. As he has done so many times before, the president kicked up a hornet’s nest of controversy. Maybe the commotion will work to his…

“To preserve our civil liberties,” Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch remarked in an address last week, “we have to constantly work on being civil with one another. . . . In a very real way, self-governance turns on our ability to try to treat—to try at least to treat—others as our equals, as…

I used to have this annual argument at Christmas with my brother-in-law, a well-regarded film editor in Hollywood. I would arrive brimming with complaints about a movie like Argo, said to be “based on actual events” but with an entirely fictitious Keystone Kops-like airport chase scene. I would…

The death toll from the horrific shooting in Las Vegas has reached 58. The gunman firing from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd at a country music festival across the street from the casino, also left more than 500 people wounded or injured.

As Puerto Rico still reels in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the mayor of San Juan has found herself the latest target of President Trump’s Twitter feed. It began on Friday when Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of Puerto Rico’s capital and largest city, criticized the self-congratulatory tone the…

Since Donald Trump took office, the growth of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and the increasing capability and diversity of its ballistic missile force have made that country the most urgent threat to U.S. national security. Observers as diverse as Mark Bowden in the Atlantic, Michael Auslin of the…