March 2018

It's the first day of March Madness and I'm at a community center playing volleyball.

The key to reading history of Nazi Germany, a wise professor once explained to me, is to attempt to understand the logic and mentality of those who embraced the Nazi movement without ever losing sight of what an ultimately absurd and fundamentally evil project theirs was. This is the approach…

We don't hear much from Donald Trump about the stock market these days. Odd, that. There was a time when he took credit for its spectacular rise after his election. "The reason our stock market is so successful is because of me. I've always been great with money." Perhaps he has been absorbed with…

How did your team do on opening day? Well, I hope. My Cleveland Indians weren't able to pull out a W in Seattle. But here's a neat story for you I heard yesterday as I was driving home: Michaela Murphy's hilarious tale about her unsupervised childhood trip to the 1981 All Star Game at old Cleveland…

Life has become immeasurably better since one of my very best friends Devon Powley rode into town, ready to bike with me through the toughest section of this whole trip: Big Bend National Park. He flew from Washington, D.C. to El Paso, took a train to the neighboring town of Alpine, and finally a…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Adam Keiper and Stephen White join to discuss his recent article The Pope's Mess, a review of Ross Douthat's book about Pope Francis. Later, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift discuss the battle royale inside the West Wing to replace Hope Hicks, and host Charlie Sykes…

Former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele used to be Mr. Chatty when it came to the allegations of Russia-Trump collusion he had assembled. In the months before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Steele talked with the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Yahoo News,…

The departure of Hope Hicks, the single most trusted aide to President Trump, from the White House Thursday has left two voids in the West Wing. The first is as just about the only person around him who can give an unvarnished opinion to the president—and be heard and taken seriously. This position…

On Thursday, March 29, Ben Carson found himself in the news again. This time the problem wasn't his purchase of an expensive dining hutch (for which the housing secretary received condign criticism, including from this magazine) or his aim of shortening his agency's garbled mission statement (for…

An internal power struggle between two senior administration officials who are competing for the role of White House communications director has led aides involved in the decision-making process to consider a third candidate, National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton, sources told the…

President Trump traveled to Ohio Thursday to give what was supposed to be a speech touting his administration's infrastructure plan, as the White House attempts this week to refocus on infrastructure for the umpteenth time since Trump's inauguration. But that effort ran aground Thursday for the…

How Kirk Gibson inspired a bunch of future Nationals fans. Since it is Opening Day, we're going to have a few baseball stories. This one from 2016 by Rudy Gersten is worth checking out. It's about Kirk Gibson's's famous 1988 World Series home run, a ball that hit Gersten's aunt Pamela, a fact they…

Russia is expelling 60 U.S. diplomats and closing the American consulate in St. Petersburg in what the Kremlin described as a tit-for-tat response to the Trump administration's expulsions of Russian operatives earlier this week.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Charlie Sykes talks to reporter Andrew Egger about the demise of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, President Trump's new-found feud with Amazon, and Egger's recent profile of Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley.

Pope Francis's pontificate did not begin with doctrinal controversy. It began with the appearance of an amiable Argentine on the balcony of St. Peter's and endearing stories about a pope who rides the bus and pays his own hotel bills. His papacy seemed to pre­sent an opportunity to draw together…

The road from Van Horn to Marfa, Texas, is unbelievably boring. I woke up from a night in a highway motel that involved multiple trips to the McDonalds next door and A Perfect World on cable, and went straight back to—you guessed it—McDonalds. Holding my second McGriddle in one hand and my phone in…

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On this latest episode, the Substandard discusses the Tomb Raider reboot and video games that become movies—are they ever any good? Sonny ranks the good ones. JVL gets mistaken for a grandfather and Vic thinks his blood test results are fake news.

President Trump announced on Twitter Wednesday afternoon that he was firing Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin and plans to nominate Admiral Dr. Ronny Jackson to head the department. Shulkin is the third Trump Cabinet official to be fired.

On Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un paid a surprise visit to Beijing. It was his first time out of his country since well before he became Dear Respected Leader in 2011. Kim arrived in an armored train, met with Chinese president Xi Jinping, and the two appeared in a series of photo-ops…

As all doomsday cults eventually learn, you can predict the end of the world only so many times before everybody stops listening to you.

The other day on the Daily Standard Podcast, we mused about whether we could recognize an historic turning point at the time it was happening. Usually, we have to wait for historical perspective to distinguish world-changing moments from the usual alarms and blips of the news cycle.

Is there a hole in our justice system where corruption is allowed to fester? Yes.

Everyone knows that President Trump is historically unpopular and his low approval rating is putting Republicans in real danger of losing at least the House in 2018. At this point, that's old news.

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday on Twitter that he intends to replace Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin, bringing a long-expected end to the embattled secretary's administration post.

How to win a trade war. (Hint: the winning move is not to play, per War Games.) Over at FiveThirtyEight, there is a fun game letting you conduct your own trade war. Enjoy!

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Charlie Sykes talks to John McCormack about the latest cover story in THE WEEKLY STANDARD about the potential of a 2020 independent presidential bid by Ohio governor John Kasich.

As special counsel Robert Mueller prepares for a potential climactic interview with President Trump, his team continues to bore into potential links between Russian intelligence and Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. In new court documents filed Wednesday, Mueller is asserting the…

After a whirlwind visit to Casas Grandes and Colonia Juarez on the Mexican side I crossed back into El Paso late Friday night to pick up my bike from the mechanic. I still had a few hours of daylight, so I set off immediately for Clint, Texas, a small farming town 20 miles outside El Paso. It was…

Mao Zedong characterized the relationship between China and North Korea as that of "lips and teeth." His point was that the lips provide a buffer to the teeth: Without them, China would be dangerously exposed. Despite the occasional toothache, that relationship has endured. China is North Korea's…

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Russia continues to face international backlash following the assassination of a former spy and his daughter in the United Kingdom earlier this month. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that more than 25 countries have now expelled Russian intelligence agents "hiding under diplomatic cover" since…

Berkeley, California, has long occupied a soft spot in the liberal heart. In popular mythology, it's the 1960s birthplace of the free speech movement, in which idealistic young hippies helped push for civil rights and an end to the Vietnam War.

What if there were no polls?

Athens

23 Years Later, Man Returns to Groundskeeping Job With White Sox. This Chicago Tribune story about Nevest Coleman's wrongful conviction is heartbreaking. For a man so wronged, it's heartening to see that the White Sox were eager to offer him his old job back.

The Trump administration’s decision to expel dozens of Russian intelligence officers from the United States earned bipartisan approval this week, with some of the president’s toughest congressional critics praising the move while calling for further action.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Jonathan V. Last and Jim Swift discuss whether it's time to regulate Facebook, and Bill Kristol drops in to discuss the 2020 presidential elections. Will there be a third-party challenge?

"I have come to Albany mad as hell about Republicans, and I have come to Albany mad as hell about Democrats," said Cynthia Nixon in a speech in Albany Monday. Knowingly or not, she was quoting the movie Network, a dark 1976 satire of TV's corrupt command of America.

"Are you a missionary?" one of my fellow passengers asked. It was a pretty smart bet. We were bumping along on a bus ride south from Ciudad Juarez, and I was headed to Nueva Casas Grandes, a tiny town that looks big in comparison to its neighbors Colonia Juarez and Colonia Dublan, the last two…

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The Commerce Department announced Monday night that the administration would reinstate the question of citizenship for the 2020 census, a contentious move President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has urged since the early days of his presidency.

White House chief of staff John Kelly is telling staffers at the National Security Council that their jobs are, for a time, secure as John Bolton transitions into the role as national security adviser. No position is permanently guaranteed, but fears of a purge on the NSC, Kelly has indicated, are…

It’s not often that the head of a federal agency asks Congress for less money than the agency received the year before. So infrequent is it that one might reasonably assume the circumstance would generate some hint of intellectual curiosity on the part of reporters and politicos. If an agency head…

“Believe me,” said—well, not really “said,” but posted—Mark Zuckerberg. Raising Chico Marx’s old question, Who are you going to trust, me or your lying eyes?

'Grandma Torino' Pleads Guilty. In Macon, Georgia, a grandmother pled guilty to shooting a teenager in the head. Why? Because he supposedly threw rocks at her house. My old college professor Chris Lawrence has dubbed her "Grandma Torino", after the movie she apparently didn't watch, of course.

Two weeks after Hillary Clinton sparked an uproar by blaming backward-looking voters in middle America for her 2016 election loss, Republicans are already laying plans to turn her remarks into a major campaign talking point. Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley on Monday released two ads tying…

On this latest micro episode, the Substandard celebrates a Duke-less Final Four. JVL and Vic are rooting for the Ramblers and love Sister Jean—Sonny, less so. Vic recounts punishment by the nuns at his grade school.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Jonathan V. Last and Michael Warren discuss the 60 Minutes interview of Stormy Daniels, March Madness and why Duke losing is good for America, the Russia investigation, and JVL's night at the Playboy Mansion.

Kim Jong-un cut a cosmopolitan figure as a youth—Swiss finishing schools, trips abroad with his dictator dad—but he's turned reclusive as he's ruled North Korea. Indeed, he hasn't departed his country once since assuming the throne.

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I hate instant replay. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

The much-hyped 60 Minutes interview with Stormy Daniels aired Sunday, and did not reveal much more than we already know about the alleged brief sexual relationship between the porn actress and Donald Trump a decade before he became president. Daniels, who signed a non-disclosure agreement about the…

This weekend, hundreds of thousands of young people participated in the “March for Our Lives” in Washington, D.C., the culmination of efforts by student activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who had survived the recent shooting that claimed 17 lives.

Final Four

After months of attempted negotiations, the Department of Education has retracted privileges its union employees once enjoyed, saying the union “acted in bad faith” by refusing to broker an agreement with the agency.

When French president (then-candidate) Emmanuel Macron waxed lyrical about his passion for the composer Gioachino Rossini in spring 2017, the transatlantic chattering classes gushed in admiration (and made snide comparisons to Donald Trump). But when British foreign minister Boris Johnson was…

Atlanta

After threatening to veto a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill before a midnight government shutdown deadline Friday morning, President Donald Trump ultimately signed the measure, citing national security concerns.

Citibank has announced a new “U.S. Commercial Firearms Policy” a move it descries as a direct response to recent gun violence. At the same time, Citibank claims this new policy is “not centered on an ideological mission to rid the world of firearms.” The measures that Citibank is instituting are no…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol discusses why he's a little nervous about John Bolton as National Security Advisor, what the next two months will mean for U.S. foreign policy with a new secretary of state and NSA, and his most recent column on why he is still a…

Early in March, the Congressional Progressive Caucus met in Baltimore for its Strategy Summit 2018. Participants came from a wide range of liberal, progressive, and left-leaning groups and included individuals such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Women's March co-founder Linda Sarsour,…

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Arizona senator John McCain is asking the president’s pick for CIA director to expand on her involvement in the agency’s enhanced interrogation program, amid adamant objections to her nomination from one other Republican lawmaker.

I wish Ruth Marcus had come to the birthday party Wednesday night.

President Trump threw a potential wrench into congressional budget discussions Friday morning, threatening to veto the omnibus package that Republican leaders pushed to his desk just hours before to avoid a government shutdown.

We would have more respect for Vladimir Putin if he simply dispensed with his country’s elections and declared himself president-for-life. This would spare us the idiotic burden of discussing the Russian state’s sexennial public-relations stunts. Everybody inside and outside the country knows the…

Long before John Bolton was named Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, the president often trusted the Fox News contributor over his own national security team. On July 17, when President Trump reversed himself at the last minute on his plan to recertify the Iran deal, it was thanks to an…

Chesterfield, Mo.

On March 18, the top-ranked Amazon item was a brand-new children’s book titled A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. The book is credited to the late-night TV host John Oliver’s show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, so we assume Oliver is the author. It’s a “children’s picture book about a Very…

Many young people in the wealthy nations of Europe and North America, having been taught by their elders to equate morality with risk-free virtue-signaling, have plenty of strong opinions about injustice and oppression, but the will to do anything about it often seems lacking.

In 2005, as readers may remember, Democratic senator Barbara Boxer published a novel, A Time to Run. The book was a flop, largely owing to its confusing plot, sick-makingly sentimental prose, and the obviously self-serving tone of the whole story. The story’s protagonist, Ellen Fischer, is an…

The March 7 acquittal by a New Haven jury of a suspended Yale student on charges of raping a classmate has been much lamented on campus and in the national media. But a review of the evidence shows that the trial was fair, the defense was ethical, and there was much more than a reasonable doubt…

American liberals love the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech” clause. They remember their brave forerunners—muckraking journalists, civil rights activists, religious and political dissidents—and venerate the constitutional right that enabled their eventual vindication. Yet it’s striking how…

It’s sad that following the massacre of their classmates, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida should immediately turn to government for action instead of to their own communities. The obvious question suggested by these crimes is: What’s wrong with us? Do I know…

It is a fact of history that we Americans believe all kinds of dumbass things. Different Americans believe different dumbass things at different times, but each of us must sooner or later fall for an urban myth, a lunatic philosophy, an obvious exaggeration, a prophecy of doom, or some other…

I confess to a weakness for the attorney general, Jeff Sessions. I say this despite the fact that I disagree with him on various issues​—​civil-asset forfeiture, for example, and the opioid crisis. But as is often the case in politics, certain whimsical reasons recommend him. To my mind, his very…

The poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with one of the deadly Novichok series of nerve agents has plunged relations between Britain and Russia to their lowest level since Soviet times, sparking tit-for-tat diplomatic moves and a war of words. The crisis has raised…

New York

If you work for the companies that produce standardized tests, as I have done for many years (creating and evaluating exams in the area of English and reading), you will eventually identify a significant flaw in our nation’s meritocratic system of higher education and in the highest-ranked schools…

"While many transgender artists have achieved significant success in music, including Teddy Geiger (who has written for One Direction and James Blunt) and Sophie (a recording artist who has produced songs for Madonna and Vince Staples), Ms. Petras’s character falls closer than any before her to…

The other day I signed an online petition sponsored by Republicans for the Rule of Law. It’s addressed to Donald Trump: “Mr. President: Firing Robert Mueller would gravely damage the Presidency, the GOP and the country. Please don’t do it.” Since this is an effort to rally Republicans behind…

If our scribblings here at The Weekly Standard have, for the last two years, had a jittery, anxious quality, it might be because we haven’t had a minute’s calm. And I don’t mean the mad whirlwind that is the Age of Trump. I refer to the daily slam-bang from the construction site next door.

One of the reasons most art writing is not worth reading—and there are several reasons—is the irritating habit of critics of personalizing their subject and making it all about themselves. It goes without saying that this tendency is to be strenuously resisted, if not punished, but I am about to…

The Death of Stalin is a blacker-than-black comedy about the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and how they jockey for power after the demise of Joseph Vissarionovich in 1953. The movie is sometimes gaspingly hilarious—and at all times audacious and…

The Trump era has been tough on Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and no one has been tougher on her than President Trump himself, with his references to her as “Pocahontas.”

When companies change their names, it often means that the business wants to shed an old, negative image and replace it with something more in tune with modern sensibilities. Hence Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, gave itself the much less tobacco-y name Altria, and Kentucky Fried Chicken’s new,…

Detroit

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will be swapping out national security adviser H.R. McMaster for former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, known Russia hawk, come mid-April.

Long before John Bolton was named Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, the president often trusted the Fox News contributor over his own national security team. On July 17, when President Trump reversed himself at the last minute on his plan to recertify the Iran deal, it was thanks to an…

When is a steel tariff not a steel tariff? How about when it exempts two-thirds of steel imports?

The Facebook Apology Tour. Earlier this morning I joined our managing editor Christine Rosen on the Daily Standard Podcast to discuss the Zuckerberg walk of shame. Do have a listen! Some supplementary reading: Nick Gillespie at Reason makes the same point I do about regulating FB, and over at the…

The House Intelligence Committee voted on party lines Thursday to begin the declassification process for a GOP-led report that Republicans say caps the panel’s yearlong investigation into 2016 Russian election interference.

The March 7 acquittal by a New Haven jury of a suspended Yale student on charges of raping a classmate has been much lamented on campus and in the national media. But a review of the evidence shows that the trial was fair, the defense was ethical, and there was much more than a reasonable doubt…

Lawmakers in the House, racing a government shutdown deadline, voted 256-167 to pass a $1.3-trillion omnibus spending bill on Thursday afternoon, less than 20 hours after its 2,232 pages of legislative text were first released.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, managing editor Christine Rosen and deputy online editor Jim Swift discuss Facebook's apology tour, the coming trade war, and the Trump-Biden boxing match.

There may be no better showcase for the sociopolitical contortions our culture’s made in the last two decades than what the #MeToo ethic makes of the campus novel Blue Angel, by Francine Prose. Recently adapted—honestly but shallowly—into a movie starring Stanley Tucci under a toupee, the limited…

During a televised hearing before the Homeland Security Committee last week on natural disasters in 2017, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama made a joke that thousands of people online perceived as a racist jab.

I am not typically late for things. Except, one morning in March of last year, I was running late to a doctor’s appointment for my wife and me. She was already there, having let me sleep in since I had been up late the night before. Not for work or anything. But to watch Team Israel in the World…

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In this latest episode of the Substandard, Sonny reviews The Death of Stalin, a movie Vic did not see because he refused to pay for parking. The return of Jony Ive is met with skepticism. Recriminations are launched, profanities are hurled. It's the crankiest Substandard yet!

Everyone has heard the story. Early this month, former GRU officer and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England. Twenty-one other people, including police officers who had intervened, received medical treatment and as…

Imagine: A high-level political consultant admits he mined Facebook data to target likely voters in swing states. He says he helped “build this thing called targeted sharing” that “allowed us to use Facebook to persuade people.” Cambridge Analytica? No, that was Democratic strategist Jim Messina,…

The spectacular rise of Jordan Peterson has caught much of the world flat-footed. Discussions of the psychology professor from the University of Toronto tend to focus on the enormous popular movement his lectures have spawned, rather than the actual ideas presented in the lectures themselves. As a…

President Trump is planning to announce a new round of tariffs on Chinese imports Thursday as the White House continues to crack down on what they term unfair Chinese trade practices and intellectual property theft. “Tomorrow the president will announce the actions he has decided to take on USTR’s…

Nebraska Republican Ben Sasse on Wednesday slammed the White House’s refusal to condemn the fraudulence of Russia’s election, describing the dodge as a break “with basic American moral tradition.”

Vice President Mike Pence’s daughter Charlotte wrote—and his wife, Karen, illustrated—a children’s book about the family bunny Marlon Bundo. It’s not Beatrix Potter or Watership Down. But it’s on time for the Easter theme, charmingly illustrated, and needless to say well-intentioned. Who doesn’t…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, staff writer and elections analyst David Byler breaks down the Illinois primary elections, and looks ahead at the primary elections.

On his website, John Laurits (a self-identified communist based in Oregon) claimed that there is “no evidence” that Russia was involved in the poisoning of former Russian spy and double agent, Sergei Skripal.

For decades, Ohio has been a political bellwether—a quadrennial swing state that often voted for the winning presidential candidate. But in 2016, something odd happened—Ohio jerked sharply to the right, giving now President Trump an eigh-point win despite his two-point national popular vote loss.…

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Millennial women are leaving the Republican Party in droves in recent years, with less than a quarter of younger women voters now identifying as Republicans.

On Tuesday, Illinois’ incumbent Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, barely won renomination for his 2018 re-election bid. He defeated Jeanne Ives, a state legislator who was challenging him from the right, by only three points in the state’s primary. That’s not a great showing for Rauner – incumbent…

There are two ways of looking at Brexit. One is confusing, the other is clear, and both are true. Many people in Britain would prefer not to look at all at Brexit. They would prefer to undo it by calling a second referendum, or contriving a slow legislative throttling that, like the assassination…

Congressman Dan Lipinski beat back a primary challenge Tuesday night from liberal activists who targeted the Illinois Democrat mainly because of his anti-abortion views and votes.

Marion Le Pen caused a minor scandal when when she appeared at CPAC last month. Matt Schlapp insisted that she was “a classical liberal.” Others suggested that the Le Pen family and the National Front represented something very different from classical liberalism. At the very least, Marion Le Pen…

Liberals love the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech” clause. They rightly remember their forerunners—liberal journalists, civil rights activists, religious and political dissidents—and venerate the constitutional right that eventually vindicated these brave citizens. Yet it’s striking how often…

The newest member of Donald Trump’s legal team, Joseph diGenova, has lately been appearing on cable news to blast the Mueller investigation as part of a “brazen plot” to “frame” the president—revenge of the Swamp and the Deep State, if you will. But earlier this month diGenova was yukking it up…

After President Donald Trump congratulated Russian leader Vladimir Putin on his re-election during a phone call Tuesday, some Republican senators questioned the wisdom of commending an autocrat whose election they see as fraudulent. Others brushed it off as a diplomatic nicety.

A group of moderate Republicans was pushing this week to include legislation for “stabilizing” Obamacare within a spending bill that funds the government beyond its latest shutdown deadline of Friday night. The lawmakers’ proposal contains new money subject to abortion funding restrictions—a…

"Toys R Us’s baby problem is everybody’s baby problem" Was it really private equity that did in Toys "R" Us? Or was it demographics? That's what Andrew Van Dam argues at the Washington Post:

Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, pinned the blame for his department’s purchase of a $31,000 dining room set for his office on his wife and staff. In testimony before the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday, Carson also said the reason he authorized the purchase of new…

Top lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian election interference on Tuesday marked the end of a critical portion of their probe focused on election security, and offered up a preview of the panel’s recommendations to counter foreign meddling in the midst of the 2018…

At oral arguments Tuesday for the case NIFLA v. Becerra, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed skeptical about the constitutionality of a California law that requires pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise for "free or low-cost" government-funded abortions.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Sonny Bunch discusses his cover story on the end of the golden age of television with host Charlie Sykes and Books & Arts editor Adam Keiper.

By January 2009, nearly a half century had passed since the Soviet Union sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit. In the midst of the handoff from the Bush administration to the Obama administration, a member of the incoming transition team at NASA, frustrated by how static the agency had become,…

Amazon opened its first bookstore in the Washington D.C. area last week, a real brick-and-mortar storefront on ritzy M street in Georgetown, and is attracting the kind of attention you would expect. “An Amazon bookstore? What the hell?” one woman exclaimed to her friend, stopping for a double-take…

An omnibus funding bill is facing delays in Congress ahead of a Friday government shutdown deadline, with lawmakers scrambling to answer a number of open questions in the $1.3 trillion package related to border security, infrastructure projects, and gun violence prevention measures.

Nashville

President Trump on Monday unveiled new plans for programs to combat America’s opioid epidemic, including educational campaigns, an anti-drug advertising blitz, and harsh new penalties for drug dealers. “Defeating this epidemic will require the commitment of every state, local, and federal agency,”…

Public officials tend to spend too much money on themselves and their offices. It’s an unfortunate part of the human condition—by definition public officials spend resources that don’t belong to them, and so they will often spend more than they have to. Media allegations of excessive spending by…

Correction, 3/20/18: The piece originally stated that at the end of the Six-Day War in 1967, "Israel took over the Palestinian territories." During the Six-Day War, the territories in question belonged to Jordan, not "Palestine." The piece has been updated accordingly.

During the Cold War, American intelligence efforts were divided. The NSA, FBI, CIA, and other groups functioned in an atmosphere of both cooperation and competition—“coop-tition”—to keep an eye not just on the Soviets but on each other. We didn’t put our eggs in one basket, to borrow a phrase.

As Congress faces another deadline to pass a spending bill or risk the third government shutdown in three months, lawmakers see an opportunity to advance gun violence prevention measures that have previously stalled in Congress.

What's in the most recent issue? Editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes is here to show you what is in this week's issue.

In this latest micro episode, the Substandard recaps the NCAA history-making defeat of 1-seed UVA at the hands of 16-seed UMBC. Sonny remains stoic, unfazed, and indifferent, despite being a UVA alumnus. (It helps that he really is not a fan of college basketball.) JVL asks Vic how Georgetown did.

Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe—sacked on the eve of his retirement after allegedly leaking information to a reporter and then misleading investigators about it—has acquired a pair of wildly divergent reputations. In Trumpworld, McCabe is a hack whose partisan actions during the Clinton…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren discusses President Trump's tumultuous weekend: from the firing of Andy McCabe to his resulting tweets.

Only tennis die-hards pay attention to “Next Gen” tournaments—ATP events specifically for under-21 players—but if you had been at the Next Gen finals in Milan last November, you might have noticed something unusual: There was no one making line calls during points; the only official on court was…

"What would a Das Kapital look like if written today?" may sound like a query that is more than a tad contrived, but in the hands of Rupert Younger and Frank Portnoy, who posed the question in a remarkable piece in the Financial Times recently, the conceit actually works quite well.

The result of the Russian election was no surprise, and neither is the list of foreign leaders who lined up to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his victory.

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Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker said on Sunday that he expects President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in May if progress is not made to fix it by then.

Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, was fired on Friday by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions had received a report from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General following a probe into McCabe’s conduct while he served in the FBI. McCabe, who took over as…

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,” wrote Shakespeare. Although the odds that President Trump was reminded of that observation when re-reading The Tempest must be regarded as low, they are somewhat higher that he might at one time have stumbled across the modern variant, about…

Over at the Washington Post, opinion columnist Ruth Marcus reports something remarkable: Early in the Trump administration “senior White House staff members were asked to, and did, sign nondisclosure agreements vowing not to reveal confidential information and exposing them to damages for any…

Upsets Are Great

Happy Friday! We have a lovely new issue out, with the cover story by former TWSer, current Free Beacon bigwig, and Weekly Substandard podcast co-host Sonny Bunch. It’s about the abundance of television #content available to people in the present day. Will any/much of this content endure, or is…

Until the 19th century, the relationship between the function and the physiology of the nervous system was largely a mystery. Physicians believed in the vital importance of the brain but knew little about its structure and purpose. For hundreds of years, conventional wisdom in medicine followed the…

Talk about a Friday news dump: Chopsticks III, the “How Can Be Lounge,” a Portland, Oregon, karaoke institution will close this weekend, it was announced on Friday. (“How can be” was not a Mickey Rooneyism circa Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but a phrase uttered by proprietor David Chow.) It’s another…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren discusses the recent tumult and turnover in the Trump administration: From the end of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's tenure, to the Pompeo shuffle, and importation of CNBC's Larry Kudlow to replace Gary Cohn.

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The opening shots in the battle over Gina Haspel's nomination to lead the CIA badly missed their target Thursday, when ProPublica corrected a report that featured a number of false allegations about Haspel's involvement in the CIA's enhanced interrogation program. Senator Rand Paul, who repeatedly…

Republicans in Congress appeared open to President Donald Trump’s proposal to use the death penalty to crack down on drug dealers on Thursday night before the expected release of the president’s long-awaited opioid plan.

It's been a while since we talked; have you caught up yet? The second season of Jessica Jones was bonkers; did you manage to make it through The Punisher and The Defenders? What about the new season of Black Mirror—that one episode where they warned against the dangers of technology outpacing our…

The school walkout—or to speak correctly, the Enough! National School Walkout—took place on March 14. The point of the event was to call attention to the need for gun-control legislation. Students were to walk out of their classrooms at 10:00 a.m. for 17 minutes to remember the 17 people killed at…

The conventional wisdom on the firing of Rex Tillerson congealed quickly: He was an ineffective secretary of state who played a crucial role in constraining the president’s reckless foreign policy instincts.

On March 13, President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—via Twitter—and replaced him with the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo. The choice of Pompeo to lead the State Department is an excellent one. At Langley, he earned the respect of a bureaucracy deeply…

President Trump is moving closer toward shaking up his administration in a big way, according to sources familiar with his thinking. The Washington Post reported Thursday night that Trump had decided to fire H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser. Shortly after the story broke, White House…

I don’t know the book acquisition budget of the public library in the town of St. Michaels, a quaint little tourist trap on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I hope it’s large enough to buy several copies of Ryan T. Anderson’s new book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.…

Rejected by more than two dozen publishers in the early 1960s, A Wrinkle in Time was itself a work of its own time and entirely out of time—a sophisticated and original intellectual coming-of-age story featuring speculative science fiction, anti-Communist dystopia, and Christian hermeneutics. There…

It is a matter of public record that in 2007 Max Mosley, the son of the British fascist Oswald Mosley and his posh, Hitler-loving wife Diana, did not enjoy what the News of the World called a “sick Nazi orgy with five hookers.” As the ruling in Mosley v. News Group Newspapers Ltd. (2008) confirms,…

In the course of a week in early March, one of President Trump’s longest-serving aides, Hope Hicks, resigned. One of the president’s most capable economics advisers, Gary Cohn, threatened to resign—and soon did. Son-in-law/presidential adviser Jared Kushner had his security clearance downgraded,…

Ever since Michel de Montaigne noted that he couldn’t be sure whether he was playing with his cat or his cat was playing with him, an essayist without a cat has seemed like a Hasid without a hat. Or so I came to conclude a month or so after our charming calico cat Hermione died one sad evening in…

It is highly likely that on March 4 Russia used a military-grade nerve agent in an attempt to kill one of its former spies in the United Kingdom. On March 14, British prime minister Theresa May retaliated by banishing 23 Russian diplomats “who have been identified as undeclared intelligence…

What is it about former Democratic presidents that they can’t leave the arena? They leave, then come back, then go quiet for a while, and just when you think you’ve gotten rid of them they spring back into the headlines again. Jimmy Carter set the example here. For nearly four decades the man’s…

New from the publishing industry: Crimson Romance, Simon & Schuster’s “diverse romance” imprint, recently announced on Twitter that it will close. The Book Riot blog reports: “The Ripped Bodice, a Los Angeles romance bookstore whose owners recently published a report on the state of diversity in…

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Temple University professor of psychology Laurence Steinberg argues that “the federal voting age in the United States should be lowered from 18 to 16.” The bulk of Steinberg’s piece is devoted to explaining why teenagers aren’t the empty-headed narcissistic…

Much as the name Tiger Woods is familiar to people who do not follow golf, so the name Stephen Hawking will be familiar even to people who care little about physics. His death on March 14 provoked an outpouring of eulogies of the kind usually reserved for rock stars and former presidents. His…

"It's easy to look at what’s happening in Washington DC and despair. That’s why I carry a little plastic Obama doll in my purse. I pull him out every now and then to remind myself that the United States had a progressive, African American president until very recently. Some people find this…

If someone invented a television “raver filter” there would no doubt be national jubilation—until we realized that blocking the ravers would leave very little to watch. Everyone raves these days: sports announcers, politicians, airline executives, celebrities, cartoon characters, weather…

From Bryan Curtis, editor-at-large of the sports website The Ringer, The Scrapbook learned of an unusual passage in the acknowledgments section of William Vollmann’s 2009 book Imperial. In addition to the litany of people who were helpful came this: “The San Diego County Water Authority was rudely…

Glenn Sherrill’s company buys steel. Tons and tons of steel. So much steel that his grandfather put the word in the company’s name when he started it. In the last 60 years, family-owned SteelFab has grown from a small maker of ornamental handrails in Charlotte, N.C., to a large metal fabricator. It…

This is Peter Navarro’s moment. The gadfly economist, whose idée fixe is America’s capitulation to China on trade, joined the Trump administration on Day One, heading up the National Trade Council, a new office created by the new president. But for the first 13 months, Trump did little to advance…

Larry Kudlow got blindsided in 2017 when President Trump was putting together his White House staff. He was a Trump loyalist, having announced his support at approximately the moment Trump announced his candidacy. And he and his partner Stephen Moore—both longtime advocates of supply-side, or…

Suppose, for a moment, that you are a young person with no more knowledge of what the world was like before you were born than most young people nowadays. And suppose, further, that out of idle curiosity you took it into your head to read a really old book like, say, Edith Wharton’s The Age of…

Nowadays the term “fake news” is usually associated with politics, but it’s worth remembering that no field is immune to the spread of misinformation. And pop-science journalism is at least as prone to distortion as political coverage, especially when simplistic headlines are exaggerated on social…

In the “fake news” business nothing spreads misinformation quite as well as a ridiculous headline. They’re perfect for ginning up inquisitive clicks with the almost-money-back guarantee that the reader won’t get past the lede.

I don't want to grow up... But poor Geoffrey the Giraffe will have to, as Toys "R" Us bids adieu after a 61-year run. (Bankruptcy is causing them to close all of their stores.) I loved TRU as a kid, and my first and only magazine casual has a tie-in. Alas, all good brands eventually die. Something…

It's been a tumultuous year for the digital currency markets. Now that we're a few weeks away from tax day, a friendly reminder: Don't forget your digital currency trades!

The United States does not have a "bloody nose strategy" for a limited preemptive strike against North Korea, the top commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific said Thursday.

Speaking at a Republican fundraiser Wednesday in Missouri, President Donald Trump criticized Japan for unfair trade practices, and offered this example:

California senator Dianne Feinstein is calling on the CIA to release documents detailing the involvement of Trump’s pick for CIA director, Gina Haspel, in the agency’s detention and interrogation program.

One of the great legislative challenges of history, from the Hittite abominations to the regulation of internet porn, has been anticipating the latent evils unleashed by man’s ingenuity. Now, child sex dolls—robots engineered to warm to the human touch and disturbingly lifelike in their…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Jonathan V. Last and Christine Rosen discuss the recent uproar over a dog who died on a plane, the natural end of Theranos, and the PA-18 special election.

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Who poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia?

In this deadly serious episode, the Substandard discusses Death Wish, the original versus the reboot—Sonny gives the latter a million stars (another reviewer liked it too). JVL reminds us of the general awfulness of the 1970s, but at least there was Charles Bronson. Plus Vic weighs the sin of…

Rejected by more than two dozen publishers in the early 1960s, A Wrinkle in Time was itself a work of its own time and entirely out of time—a sophisticated and original intellectual coming-of-age story featuring speculative science fiction, anti-Communist dystopia, and Christian hermeneutics. There…

Last week, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran announced that he was resigning due to health issues, triggering a November special election for the open Senate seat. Mississippi isn’t usually a problematic state for Republicans. It’s a strongly red, highly inelastic state—meaning that it usually votes…

More than a year after getting shut out of a White House job, economic commentator and CNBC host Larry Kudlow will succeed Gary Cohn as the chairman of the National Economic Council, the White House confirmed Wednesday. Kudlow and his fellow supply-side writer Stephen Moore were top economic…

United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley on Wednesday blamed Russia for using chemical weapons to poison an ex-spy in the United Kingdom.

Farewell, Mostly Weekly! My good friend Andrew Heaton’s web show at Reason comes to an end, like all good things do. In the final episode, Heaton takes on creative destruction, and then destroys his own show. Creative!

When I first wandered into The Weekly Standard I worked at the front desk and answered the phones. It gave me a window into who was genuinely kind (they do not make human beings nicer than Gary Bauer) and who was not (no reason to name names). Because I'd grown up as a political junkie, I…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Jonathan V. Last and Michael Warren talk about the Pennsylvania special election, the Blue Wave, political happy talk, and the wisdom of children.

British Prime Minister Theresa May took action against the Kremlin on Wednesday when she banished 23 Russian diplomats “who have been identified as foreign intelligence officers” from her nation’s shores. The expulsion was in direct response to the alleged—but “highly likely”—Russian use of an…

In this latest micro episode of the Substandard, sponsored by Casper Mattresses, JVL announces a life-altering event. Sonny and Vic want to get to the meat of the matter. The steaks couldn’t be higher!

Kentucky senator Rand Paul said he would oppose the president’s picks for secretary of state and CIA director, criticizing one over what he described as support for regime change and both for their links to torture.

Republicans may have just lost a district that went for President Donald Trump by 20 points in 2016 and has been reliably red for nearly two decades, but GOP lawmakers on Wednesday downplayed the blow.

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

The House Intelligence Committee majority announced Monday that, having found no evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians, they are wrapping up the information-gathering part of their Russia probe. “We will now be moving into the next phases of this investigation,” said Rep. Mike…

TWS Fact check is aware that there are few things less funny than explaining a joke, but fact checking one comes close.

Press coverage of the acquittal of former Yale student Saifullah Khan on sexual assault charges has distorted the facts of case, jurors say. Khan’s case—an alleged campus sexaul assault that triggered a police investigation and worked its way to criminal court—concerns an encounter between the now…

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(Updated: 8:00 a.m.) The firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was a textbook example of Donald Trump’s approach to personnel decisions: abrupt, humiliating, and executed from a safe distance. The White House maintains that Tillerson was encouraged to resign twice last week and warned that…

Theoretical physicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking is dead at age 76. The revered scientist overcame living with paralysis from Lou Gehrig’s disease to become one of the world’s leading minds on gravity and black holes.

In a normal year, a special congressional election in Pennsylvania’s 18th District (a highly red area that includes the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh and surrounding rural areas) wouldn’t be a huge deal. Trump carried the district by about 20 points in 2016, so Republicans should have been able to…

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that he would be disappointed if Democrats raised fresh objections to the nomination of Gina Haspel as CIA director.

There is an argument, based on both stats and results, that the 10 best programs in Division I men’s basketball the last half decade are Arizona, Duke, Gonzaga, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State, North Carolina, Villanova, Virginia—and Wichita State.

Hours after throwing Washington into a frenzy with his surprise decision to fire Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, President Trump skipped town Tuesday, traveling to San Diego to examine prototypes for his signature border wall that have been constructed at the U.S.-Mexico border.

What's in this week's issue? Editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes has a breakdown of what is in this week's issue:

Outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson apparently became the first American Cabinet secretary to be fired over Twitter on Tuesday, when President Donald Trump announced the former ExxonMobil CEO’s impending departure at 8:44 a.m. Tillerson later said during a press conference that he received a…

The Senate’s top Iran hawks heaped praise on the president’s nomination of CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Tuesday, and critics of the deal on and off Capitol Hill expressed confidence that Pompeo’s presence would place renewed pressure on negotiations to fix…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes discusses the sudden ouster of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the ascendance of CIA director Mike Pompeo.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is considering a plan to integrate drones across U.S. national airspace. Several large corporations have proposed a low-altitude control grid, which they would operate, to manage these unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), popularly referred to as drones. For…

The Hillary Unplugged tour made it to India this week, where the former presidential candidate modified her theory as to why she lost the 2016 election. This time, it wasn’t James Comey, or even “the Russians" that did her in. In fact, it was the Americans. Here is what she said:

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This story is developing and will be updated as necessary.

On March 18, the popular leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, will be reelected to another six-year term as president. This is both a plain statement of fact and a complete falsehood. In American political parlance, this statement can be taken literally, but not seriously.

We’re aware that some elected officials—perhaps more than a few—regard the average voter with contempt. Such politicians may succeed for a time, but contempt is hard to hide, and they soon find themselves giving talks at ritzy confabs about their regrettably brief time in public life.

Republicans in Washington—including President Donald Trump—are preparing for their possible defeat in today’s special election for a southwestern Pennsylvania House seat. The district leans heavily Republican, with Trump winning its voters by double digits in 2016, but Democrat Conor Lamb has…

Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake introduced legislation Monday to nullify President Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, calling on his colleagues to rally behind the bill.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee said Monday that they did not find any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Kremlin in a more than yearlong probe of 2016 Russian election interference.

“Having a liberal fantasy is complicated.” The New York Times interviewed an Ohio man who, after President Trump was elected, opted to take extreme measures to stay up on precisely none of the news. (Well, except Cleveland Cavaliers basketball.) Lots of folks have thinkpieces out on this…

On Saturday mornings, I make eggs and bacon for my four children and wife—usually a dozen eggs and most of the package of bacon—before shoveling the kids into the car, hopping into the driver’s seat, and pretending my minivan is a Mustang so that we get to catechism class on time. By the time I…

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Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Mike Warren and host Charlie Sykes discuss President Trump's wild weekend, the PA-18 special election, and Betsy DeVos's painful '60 Minutes' interview.

Perhaps it’s no longer shocking or surprising when Donald Trump is “unleashed” as he was over the weekend—but it’s still notable, and may tell us something about his state of mind at a difficult moment for his White House. Key staffers have left in recent weeks, including communications director…

President Donald Trump’s decision last week to impose stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum—25 percent and 10 percent, respectively—rivals in sheer unpopularity the president’s early-2017 travel ban. Many of this nation’s chief trading partners lobbied against the tariffs—Canada, South Korea, Japan,…

Moving forward while backing down is no small feat. But the president managed it last week. On live TV.

We are coming down to the wire in Pennsylvania’s 18th District, where Republican Rick Saccone will face Democrat Conor Lamb in a special election, for a term of just seven months. Here are four questions (and answers) to clarify what’s at stake, how close the contest is, and what it means for 2018…

Is the Labor Department scheming to take away restaurant servers' tips? That's the message some labor advocates are sending in response to a proposed rule-making by the Trump administration that would permit kitchen staff in certain states to receive a portion of servers' tips.

Being a writer-editor-pundit in Donald Trump’s Washington is a 24/7 job. In the last year, I’ve had countless nights of missed dinners and lost sleep, along with a few canceled concerts and ruined respites. But there was one mission from which not even a Trump tweet starting a nuclear war could…

This is a developing story and has been updated with new information.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, associate editor Ethan Epstein and reporter Jenna Lifhits join digital editor / guest host Jonathan V. Last to discuss Thursday's late night announcement that President Trump intends to meet with the North Koreans by May of this year.

The website POTUS WDC posted a false story with the bogus headline, “Catholic Archbishop Says Pedophilia Is ‘Spiritual Encounter With God.’”

What do a priest, a politician, and T. Boone Pickens have in common? You would think this is me talking about a weird thing I saw in a bar in Oklahoma once but it isn’t. (I’ve never been to Oklahoma nor would the good citizens of The Sooner State want me there.) The answer is they all have a profit…

It is possible that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is suddenly “committed to denuclearization,” as South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong claimed in comments to the press at the White House Thursday evening.

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Republican lawmakers greeted with cautious openness the announcement that President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet, reminding the president of years of failed talks with Pyongyang and urging him not to ease economic pressure just yet.

Everyone is focused on North Korea today and I would point you to Ethan Epstein's "Three Questions" piece about the upcoming (possibly?) meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un and Steve Hayes' piece on the dangers of such a meeting.

Tracking the rise and fall of Rose McGowan’s sheroism (and I have for months) certainly adds color to anyone’s comprehensive reading of the modern women’s movement. But now, in a recent podcast, McGowan has opened up about being a movement outsider and revealed herself to be genderqueer. “I don't…

Since the birth of the modern age, conservatives of various stripes have lamented—often with good reason—the cultural decline of post-Enlightenment society. Such critiques have emphasized different defects: the shrinking of human beings to mere seekers of comfort; the loss of reverence for…

David Hollinger’s new book, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America, is a comedy of unintended consequences, the thesis of which is a joke—a serious joke, a very intellectual joke, but funny, with a sting. It goes like this: “The Protestant foreign…

The so-called “Trump dossier” continues to be the most important—and contested—document in the many probes of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. Since its publication by BuzzFeed on January 10, 2017—bearing the remarkable disclaimer that “the allegations are unverified, and the…

There are three questions worth considering about the planned meeting:

Could we be on the brink of a thaw in U.S. relations with North Korea? The Trump administration is hoping so in the wake of a shocking message South Korean officials brought from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un on Thursday: that Kim is “committed to denuclearization,” that the North will refrain…

El Paso, Texas

Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. And believe me, right now dealing with Congress—believe me—believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. . . . But that’s not how—that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy…

The Scrapbook has plenty of prejudices but no official position, pro or con, on tattoos. We sometimes wonder if their explosive popularity over the last two decades evinces the angst of a declining middle class, but the appearance of tattoos on one’s skin doesn’t signify the quality of one’s…

When I heard the news of Roger Bannister’s death last week at the age of 88, I recalled the first time I ever heard of Bannister, in the spring of 1963.

State legislative elections are easily overlooked, but they can carry enormous consequences for policy and politics, even on the national level. Democrats were reminded of this truth the hard way in 2010, when Republicans took control of state governments across the country amid the Tea Party wave.…

The United States welcomes foreign investment. When companies from overseas buy into American firms, they provide a source of money that creates jobs and boosts innovation. But if the investor is Chinese, there is a wrinkle—increasingly, the wary eyes of regulators and intelligence officials want…

The Herbert Hoover of historical memory is a distant person, mostly recalled as the president who presided ineffectually over the early years of the Great Depression. Kenneth Whyte’s fine full-life biography reminds us that Hoover was himself a man of action and a remarkable American success story.…

Last September, the big hats in the political hierarchy of New York and New Jersey spent an hour at the White House with President Trump. They were seeking a pile of money to pay for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River connecting northern New Jersey and Manhattan.

Maybe not since the proto-Protestant radical Girolamo Savonarola was hanged and set on fire with two of his clerical accomplices in 1498 has Florence seen a weekend so filled with terrifying surprises and reversals of fortune. On Sunday morning, March 4, the city awoke to discover that Davide…

Like most American cities, Washington has been grappling lately with the issue of historic monuments and statuary, public and private, and whether they ought to be displaced and discarded. The good news this past week is that, in a departure from recent custom, a new statue—eight feet high, encased…

The question of who deserves an obituary has long vexed editors at newspapers and magazines. Should they limit themselves to the most well-known public figures or dig deep into the less well-known but often fascinating lives of the hoi polloi? Do you cover the lives of the notoriously awful as well…

"I don’t agree with him on that one," my stepmother said. “It was wrong, and I don’t think he should have done it.” Usually she took my father’s side in these discussions. Not this time.

The Washington Post recently reported a “sharp reversal” in the expected graduation rates for Washington, D.C., public schools after heading upwards in recent years. Only “42 percent of seniors attending traditional public schools are on track to graduate.” What happened? Mainly, it seems,…

Is there anything left to be learned about the mating habits of college students? For years, we have been subjected to a barrage of books about the rituals of drunken sex. In addition to Hooking Up and American Hook-up, there’s the recent Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus…

"The powerful Jews are my enemy," remarked Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan at his organization’s annual “Saviours’ Day” celebration in Chicago on February 25. That was just one of several of his choice anti-Semitic tropes. Another one, oddly stated in the third person: “The FBI has been the…

The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have sparked a major reconsideration of appropriate behavior between the sexes, both inside the workplace and outside of it. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before tech entrepreneurs, the geniuses who brought you Soylent food substitute and the Yelp-for-people…

President Donald Trump will meet with Kim Jong-un by May amid a commitment from the North to denuclearization, South Korea’s national security adviser said Thursday.

President Trump signed a controversial order implementing heavy tariffs on imported steel and aluminum Thursday, calling the action “a matter of necessity for our security” and saying it would help to revitalize fading American industry.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, reporter Andrew Egger and deputy online editor Jim Swift talk with host Charlie Sykes about why the Stormy Daniels story hasn’t gone away, President Trump’s upcoming tariff announcement, the left’s troubling association with Louis Farrakhan, and whether new…

Nickolas Meyer spent his early adulthood trying to hide the fact that he hails from Findlay, Ohio. But a return to his hometown is probably the best he can hope for after being arrested for allegedly stealing and selling $1.2 million worth of wine that belonged to his former boss, Goldman Sachs…

For anyone counting #MeToo casualties with a wary eye, one of 2018’s first will have stood out. On January 13, in a lengthy exposé published on a website for college-age women, a 23-year-old photographer charged comic Aziz Ansari with the crime of being a bad date. The pseudonymous “Grace”…

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It might come to the surprise of the average woman who has been bombarded with inspirational corporate hashtags and ads for #girlpower T-shirts that what we now know as “International Women’s Day,” started as an anti-capitalist protest: The first National Women’s Day took place February 28, 1908,…

Thousands upon thousands of Puerto Ricans have landed in Florida in the months since Hurricane Maria battered their island. They have simple priorities, but complicated needs.

President Trump’s controversial plan to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum is about to become a reality, as Trump reportedly wants to sign the order establishing the new policy as early as Thursday afternoon.

“The powerful Jews are my enemy,” remarked Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan at his organization’s annual “Saviours’ Day” celebration in Chicago in late February. That was just one of several choice anti-semitic tropes. Another one, oddly stated in the third person: “The FBI has been the worst…

Drunk Area Man Struck By His Own Car. In my neck of the woods in Fairfax County, Virginia, a drunk driver tried escaping from his car on foot to thwart the police . . . only to be struck by his own car.

President Donald Trump’s chief economist was grilled by lawmakers on the administration’s trade policy on Wednesday amid rising concern on Capitol Hill about the potential negative impacts of new steel and aluminum tariffs which have been put forward by the White House.

Top lawmakers are pushing to expand sanctions targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), amid a declaration from a senior IRGC official that Iran’s missile production has tripled.

“Seattle Police Begin Taking Citizens Guns Away, No Warrants or Charges,” a headline from the website Neon Nettle claimed early Wednesday. Multiple blog sites reported the same.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, John McCormack and Grant Wishard discuss Gary Cohn’s departure, tariffs and crony capitalism, and Grant’s bike trip along the Mexican border.

Radley Balko is a writer at the Washington Post, and the author of The Rise of the Warrior Cop. He recently published a new book with Tucker Carrington, The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist. This week we spoke about his book, policing, and guns in schools.

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Another day, another high-profile White House departure. Gary Cohn, President Trump’s chief economic adviser, is leaving the Trump administration—a serious shakeup in a White House where protectionist economics are suddenly on the rise.

President Trump’s recent decision to slap huge new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum is certain to wreak havoc on the American economy. So we argued last week when the decision was announced: Tariffs often make plenty of political sense but penalize domestic industries no less than foreign…

Nino would not approve.

Donald Trump is historically unpopular, and Republicans are underperforming his margins in special elections across the country. Some might be tempted to look at these numbers and conclude that Trumps’ re-election effort (which is already underway) is doomed.

President Trump recently announced he would impose a new across-the-board tariff on all steel and aluminum imports into the United States. That was the harshest of three tariff options outlined by the Department of Commerce in a trade investigation report presented to the president.

What’s the latest in this week’s issue? Here’s our editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes on what is in the latest edition of this week's magazine:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD had the chance to talk to South Carolina Republican Mark Sanford about President Donald Trump’s proposed steel and aluminum tariffs, which would tax imports at 25 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Sanford, who has represented the state’s 1st District since 2013, ardently…

An article published by CNS News alleged that the Bernie Sanders campaign was fined $14,500 by the Federal Election Commission for “accepting illegal in-kind contributions during [the] 2016 campaign.” Facebook users questioned the article and flagged it for third-party fact checkers.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, editor at large Stephen F. Hayes discusses former Trump aide Sam Nunberg's cable TV circus, the coming showdown on tariffs between President Trump and Speaker Ryan, and whether Pennsylvania's Conor Lamb will take a House seat away from Republicans.

Two top intelligence chiefs appeared wary Tuesday about North Korea’s apparent willingness to engage in talks related to its nuclear program and to halt weapons testing while doing so.

Republicans in Congress are desperately trying to talk President Donald Trump down from his proposed tariffs, lest they have to consider a legislative check on the White House instead—a move that some lawmakers say isn’t feasible.

The 6-year-old child who cried in front of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become a global sensation. Erdogan spotted the weeping girl wearing a military uniform during an address at his party’s congress last week, brought her onto the stage, and told her that if she died as a martyr,…

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There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that could make a primary election for Texas land commissioner interesting. Not if Kinky Friedman were running. Not if Milton Friedman were running. Not if an underwater city of gold and vibranium and sweet crude oil were discovered on election eve 10 miles off…

Despite opposition mounting in his own party, President Trump seems determined to stay the course on trade, saying Monday he’s “not backing down” on last week’s decision to implement new tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.

After President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy accordingly, western politicos and commentators heaped contempt on the move and predicted violence and bloodshed in Israel and in the Arab street. Hamas, the Islamic terror…

Mississippi senator Thad Cochran announced Monday that he would be retiring as of April 1 due to health issues. Cochran’s retirement will trigger a special election for November 2018—a nonpartisan primary that, if no candidate gets above 50 percent, will go to a runoff.

Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide recently subpoenaed by the Mueller probe, said Monday he would refuse to testify before the special counsel’s grand jury or turn over requested communications with other members of the Trump campaign.

Most every day I walk by the Granary Burying Ground in Boston, past the graves of the “victims of the Boston Massacre” and find myself musing on the events of March 5, 1770. On that cold, otherwise calm moonlit night, musket fire erupted in King Street. Three men were killed immediately. Two died…

ProPublica has uncovered what appears to be an unethical—and likely—illegal act performed by an employee of the president's privately held golf course empire.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan is pushing back on President Donald Trump’s announcement that he will impose hefty tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, his spokeswoman said on Monday.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, reporter Andrew Egger and staff writer Alice Lloyd discuss whether President Trump will follow through on his proposed tariff plan and how the Oscars fit fish people into intersectional feminism.

“Michelle Obama Just Received LIFE-SHATTERING News From The Doctor,” or so the website “nyfoxnews.co” (a domain extension widely used in Columbia) would have you believe.

Legislation that would pressure the Palestinian Authority to stop monetarily rewarding acts of terror is moving toward final passage, according to one of the bill’s top backers.

At last night’s Academy Awards, Frances McDormand used her time on-stage accepting the Best Actress award to issue a call for more actors to demand “inclusion riders” in their contracts. As #InclusionRider began trending on Twitter, Phillip Atiba Goff of John Jay College of Criminal Justice…

"Forcing a pro-life group to advertise for abortion has to be unconstitutional.” That’s the beginning (emphasis added) of the opening brief in NIFLA v. Becerra, now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. Thirty strong amicus briefs have been filed—by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the…

Sunday’s Oscar telecast was a little bit like a State of the Union address given by a president in the final year of a failing administration.

When it comes to prizes and awards, it is entirely possible that our European friends are making gentle fun of us Americans. How else to explain, for example, the Nobel Prize in Literature for Bob Dylan? Or the Charlemagne Prize awarded to Bill Clinton a few years ago?

Sunday morning on ABC News’ This Week, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made two basic errors discussing Donald Trump's new trade proposals: He understated both the immediate harm of President Trump’s steel and aluminum import tariffs and the future harm from possible retaliatory actions by America’s…

Jay Powell and Donald Trump combined last week to shake investors to their core.

Michael Warren is on vacation this week, and Andrew Egger is filling in for him on White House Watch. Michael will be back in the saddle on March 12.

The Oscars couldn’t stray far from politically tense themes; in fact, the ceremony strained to fit in almost all of them.

The 2018 Oscars were always going to be weird, but in a mostly predictable way.

Guatemala will relocate its embassy to Jerusalem in May, two days after the United States is slated to make the same move, the country’s president said Sunday.

Playing in Peoria?

President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on the European Union, in what would be an economic counter-strike to Europe’s expected response to impending steel tariffs.

Quinn Norton is an engaging, funny, and stylish writer on technology and the odd communities that inhabit our digital world and make it so scary. She is also, to quote her own description, “a bisexual anarchist pacifist, prison abolitionist, & vegetarian. Currently I’m fretting about fair trade…

What would Leonardo have done with radiography? What might Michelangelo have accomplished had 3-D modeling been available? What heights of the mind would a neo-Platonist like Piero della Francesca have witnessed if he had lived long enough to see calculus?

Next year will be the centenary of one of the most famous poems of the 20th century, W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming.” I presume there’ll be suitable acknowledgment of this in literary circles, and even an occasional nod from those of us who labor in less rarefied intellectual climes. But if…

It’s a blustery day in Washington. My neighbors have had their siding blown off, and our dog has determined he is aerodynamic. The federal government shut down, schools are closed, and a large swath of flights to and from the swamp are being canceled. Therefore, I will try and make today’s links a…

Judge Frederic Block, meet Judge H. Lee Sarokin.

After the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, CNN hosted a town hall discussion on Wednesday, February 21, which included politicians, an NRA representative, and several students of the school who posed questions to panel members.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol discusses the wild week at the White House: the announced departure of Hope Hicks, President Trump's gun control gaffe, and the coming trade war.

The State Department signed off on a potential $47 million sale of 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 launch units to Ukraine Thursday, moving the planned purchase one step closer to completion.

In August, Oliver Schmidt pled guilty to helping Volkswagen evade clean air laws with special software that tricked emissions tests. The software worked even with cars whose emissions were 30 times higher than normally allowed.

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The numbers are staggering: CBS and Time Warner together pay close to $1 billion a year for the broadcast rights to March Madness. ESPN pays $470 million a year to air the College Football Playoffs and related bowls. Nick Saban will make $11 million to coach the Alabama football team next year—and…

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were a husband-and-wife televangelist team who rose to prominence in the 1970s and ’80s before their ministry was brought down by scandal, trickery, and bankruptcy. They lived extravagant lives in front of the camera, inviting viewers into their beautiful homes for…

We live in an era of gesture politics: walkouts, die-ins, marches, boycotts, hashtags, retweets. Our most strident political debates often aren’t debates at all but volleys of symbolic or metaphorical gestures. The point of these national pantomimes is not to make a rational case but to proclaim…

The renewed push for an assault weapons ban got a boost this week when President Trump seemed to endorse it at a White House meeting with members of Congress. After the bill’s sponsor, California senator Dianne Feinstein, touted the measure, the president encouraged her to “add what you have” to an…

Michael Warren is on vacation this week, and Andrew Egger is filling in for him on White House Watch. Michael will be back in the saddle on March 12.

Hours after the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, Zeynep Tufekci spent part of her evening calling out major media that aired video of students trembling while the noise of gunshots ruptured the air. “This is a snuff film,” she said of one such clip, which was embedded atop a New York Times story.…

Donald Trump is beating Congressional Republicans in the polls. And that’s not necessarily great news for either of them.

It shouldn’t be either newsworthy or controversial to discover that college students are learning about the work of Aristophanes, studying the Peloponnesian War, or analyzing Aristotelian notions of happiness. But this is 2018, when college administrators often seem more focused on the subtle…

Tomorrow some people from Catholic Charities are coming to tow away the beautiful BMW 740iL that my father bought in Germany at the turn of the century. Like the vast majority of American males he was until then a car enthusiast who had never owned a nice car. He didn’t suffer from that​—​fancy…

It's rare—vanishingly rare—to get the feeling in a movie theater that the people who made the film you’re seeing know exactly what they’re doing, know exactly what they’re trying to achieve scene by scene, know exactly what plot they’re telling, know exactly the characters they’re putting on…

A court in Ontario, Canada, has ruled that a patient’s desire to be euthanized trumps a doctor’s conscientious objection. Doctors there now face the cruel choice between complicity in what they consider a grievous wrong—killing a sick or disabled patient—and the very real prospect of legal or…

Washington, D.C., should have listened to Marion Barry. The late four-time mayor of the nation’s capital may have made problematic lifestyle choices—even if the you-know-what did set him up—but give him this: He was 100 percent correct about the city’s streetcar boondoggle.

Publishers have long supported specialty imprints that feature particular kinds of books: There are imprints that promote conservative books, such as Sentinel at Penguin Random House and Threshold at Simon & Schuster, and imprints that promote genres like romance (Flirt at Random House) and cooking…

If a congressional campaign won’t tell you the candidate’s schedule two weeks out from a tight special election, it’s a safe bet to go to an American Legion post (it doesn’t matter which one, any post will do) and simply wait. This is how I found myself at a Friday night fish fry at American Legion…

On March 1, President Donald Trump was widely expected to announce a new round of trade restrictions on steel and aluminum. But that morning word leaked out that the announcement had been postponed—maybe permanently canceled. Then we heard the president had called industry leaders to the White…

No president has been so consistently unpopular so early in his term as Donald Trump. Though there are three years left to improve them, these weak numbers are a bad sign for his reelection prospects. The political betting marketplace PredictIt gives him just 1-in-3 odds of winning in 2020.

In February 14, South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma resigned amid widespread corruption allegations, ceding power to his newly elected deputy, the business tycoon and onetime anti-apartheid activist Cyril Ramaphosa. Less than 24 hours later, Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigned,…

A revisionist account of the great wit’s post-prison life.

Ben Carson’s new silverware. Ironically, Ben Carson might not get to enjoy his newly refurbished office at HUD for very long, if recent history is our guide. This from CNN:

Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, first learned of the sudden announcement of far-reaching tariffs by President Donald Trump on Thursday during an informal hallway conversation with reporters.

Senators on both sides of the aisle shot back at Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday after he boasted in an annual state-of-the-union address that Russia possesses nuclear weapons capable of bypassing missile defense systems.

Say what you will about Paul Manafort (and you can say a lot): He’s no quitter. Pundits proclaimed Manafort’s goose cooked last week after his former business partner and co-defendant Richard Gates fessed up to the battery of crimes of which special counsel Robert Mueller has accused them,…

Roberta Jacobson, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico announced Thursday that she will resign from her position sometime in May, according to the New York Times.

Dr. Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, is the author of the best-selling title, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. He’s very active in public life: He lectures frequently, engages in televised debates, and produces YouTube videos on a range of political and…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes talks with host Charlie Sykes about Jared Kushner's rocky week, the end of the Hope Hicks era, and the potential for a trade war.

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In this latest episode, the Substandard discusses Annihilation and the Natalie Portman oeuvre. Vic suffers Xbox nausea. Sonny and JVL weight the future (or lack thereof) of Batgirl. Plus Oscar predictions!

There’s something wrong with politics when it becomes personal—especially when we’re wrong about the person.

Michael Warren is on vacation this week, and Andrew Egger is filling in for him on White House Watch. Michael will be back in the saddle on March 12.

The club’s transgression? The Crimson reports that the school’s Office of Student Life placed the group Harvard College Faith and Action on “administrative probation” because the group “pressured a female member . . . to resign in September following her decision to date a woman.”

Gubernatorial elections are high maintenance.

Last week’s latest indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller added dozens of new counts to the charges already leveled against former Trump campaign manager, lobbyist Paul Manafort and his disloyal deputy Rick Gates, who pleaded guilty late last week. Manafort, arraigned Wednesday morning,…

During a televised bipartisan meeting to discuss gun control proposals with members of Congress on Wednesday, President Donald Trump split with conventional Republican wisdom and suggested that guns be confiscated from individuals who could pose safety threats before due process is carried out…