Although this magazine has frequently lamented President Trump's tendency to praise Vladimir Putin and his regime in public, we've also applauded the administration for its punitive actions against the Kremlin's dictator. And we've urged the administration to go further by, for instance, listing…
What has the White House been tellings friendly voices in the media? I explore this in the new issue of the magazine. Here's an excerpt:
Republicans are just over six months away from the 2018 midterm elections, and there's plenty to worry about. Midterms almost always favor the party out of power, and Democratic voters are far more enthused about the election than their Republican correlatives. And although one should never…
President Trump will attend a private dinner Wednesday night in Washington, hosted by America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC. Also attending the dinner, which is listed on the president's official schedule as an event "with supporters," is House majority leader Kevin McCarthy, the White House…
President Trump's use of the presidency to pursue a private vendetta with Amazon is appalling. But that doesn't mean policymakers shouldn't take a close look at the internet giant's power and competitive tactics.
Republicans have been awfully quiet over the last few days, and they probably should have been. The question is why they were so quiet.
President Trump's National Security Council will convene at the White House Tuesday. Among the topics up for discussion: the American military's future in Syria, where around 2,000 troops are stationed as part of a mission to contain the growth and influence of ISIS. Syria has been torn apart for…
For the past week, Trump's approval rating in the RealClearPolitics average has hovered close to 42 percent. That's an improvement from early March, when the average briefly dipped below 40 percent. FiveThirtyEight didn't shift as much in that interval, but its aggregate shows that Trump gained…
Before heading to church on Easter Sunday, President Trump took to Twitter to complain about America's "dumb immigration laws," saying he was no longer interested in making a deal with Democrats to reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and threatening to end the North…
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,…
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…
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.
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.
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…
Russia continues to face international backlash following the attempted 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…
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.
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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.
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.
TWS Fact check is aware that there are few things less funny than explaining a joke, but fact checking one comes close.
(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…
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.
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,…
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.
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.
There are three questions worth considering about the planned meeting:
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…
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.
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.
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…
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.
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…
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.
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.
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?
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 2018 Oscars were always going to be weird, but in a mostly predictable way.
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.
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.
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.
Donald Trump is beating Congressional Republicans in the polls. And that’s not necessarily great news for either of them.
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.
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.”
The Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Californian Adam Schiff, have taken on an awkward, crosswise task with their memo rebutting the majority’s memo, which alleged FBI abuse of the FISA court process. The task is crosswise because it requires the minority to do two…
Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner’s year of security clearance struggles finally caught up with him Tuesday, when White House chief of staff John Kelly officially downgraded his access to classified material from “top secret” to “secret,” barring the president’s son-in-law from accessing…
“Pyongyang is a crucial node in the international network of proliferation that already includes China and Russia as primary providers, Pakistan and North Korea as active disseminators, and Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia among the final consumers. No less unsettling is the prospect that North Korea…
The website “I Love My Freedom” published an article claiming that “millions RUSH to join the NRA after anti-gun lectures by the liberal media.”
To ask coherence of President Trump is to ask too much of a man with the attention span of a tweet, and for whom cognitive dissonance is not something he spends nights losing sleep over. So we have had large tax cuts, putting money into the pockets of consumers, which will enable them to increase…
For recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a sigh of relief: The Supreme Court on Monday effectively upheld a lower court’s ruling that the White House cannot end DACA, which provides legal status to people brought to America illegally as children, until challenges to the…
Hurricanes Irma and Maria strafed much of the island of Puerto Rico and worsened what was already a perilous fiscal problem facing the island’s government. However, a reconstruction program that has finally kicked into high gear helped its surprisingly robust economy bounce back, and the employment…
Donald Trump’s job approval rating may be heading downward.
In Secretary Betsy DeVos’s latest deregulatory step, the Department of Education has said it will not investigate or take action on complaints from transgender students regarding the open use of restrooms in public schools.
“Russia Only Bought Facebook Ads After Trump Won The Election,” a headline from Milo Yiannopoulos’ site Dangerous.com claimed on Monday.
It wouldn’t be a week at the Trump White House if there weren’t talk of a staff shakeup, and that’s how this week appears to be closing. First, CNN reported Thursday the Pentagon was “considering options” for moving national security adviser H.R. McMaster into a four-star general role back at the…
Just a few days before America’s Pastor, Billy Graham, succumbed to Parkinson’s or cancer or pneumonia (when you’re 99-years-young, ailments tend to arrive in multiple choice fashion), I was walking through Washington’s new Museum of the Bible with my family. As local museums go, the Bible museum…
In a crowded nine-way Republican congressional primary in Texas, former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw has decided that the best way to break out of the pack in his run for Congress is to run for Congress—literally. February 20 marked the first day of Crenshaw’s 5-day, 100-mile run through a congressional…
On Tuesday, Walmart’s value, as reflected in its stock price, dropped by more than 10 percent. That’s nearly $31 billion. It had a bad quarter and in no small part suffered as a result of complications with its online inventory restocking system—it ran out of some items in demand and so couldn’t…
Promising to “do something about this horrible situation,” President Trump on Wednesday met with survivors of last week’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, to listen to their accounts of the tragedy. Among those who joined the president were Vice President Mike Pence and Education Secretary…
Trump-supporting Twitter users the world over logged on Wednesday morning to find their follower counts diminished. Appearances suggest the targets of this so-called Twitter "purge" were suspected bot accounts, and unverified users whose tweeting patterns reflect those of Russian bots: Locked out…
Is the Trump administration doing anything about an Iranian airline violating U.S. sanctions? The White House so far hasn’t commented on Mahan Air, which the Wall Street Journal reported Monday has been buying “U.S.-made jet engines and parts through Turkish front companies over the past several…
When is Texas going to turn blue?
“The U.S. district attorney has announced that he will be pursuing charges of treason against the former President Barack Obama,” a false headline from Averific ran over the weekend.
Arizona senator Jeff Flake plans to introduce a proposal offering temporary protection for “Dreamers” in exchange for funding for the construction of President Donald Trump’s border wall when the Senate returns next week.
In a short, powerful piece in National Review, Rick Brookhiser concludes that "the conservative movement is no more. Its destroyers are Donald Trump and his admirers."
In less than a month, voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th District will head to the ballot box for one of the most interesting special elections of the year. Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone will be vying to fill the seat vacated by resigning Republican Rep. Tim Murphy. (The pro-life…
The Russia-probe indictments announced Friday certainly sound quite ominous. The Russia-based Internet Research Agency “had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Derogatory information was posted online against various…
What did we learn from infrastructure week about the Republican party’s priorities on spending and deficits during the Trump administration? In the new issue of the magazine, my colleague Haley Byrd and I write on this question. Here’s an excerpt:
In 2015, Arizona became one of the first states to adopt an intrastate equity crowdfunding policy, which permits state residents to buy stock in a startup. Arizona State Representative Jeff Weninger, a small business owner who knew firsthand the need for new ways to raise capital, authored a…
Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday expressed confidence in John Kelly and the “remarkable job” the retired Marine general is doing. The embattled White House chief of staff came under fire last week for his handling of domestic abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter.
Renowned professor of psychology at Harvard and a prolific writer, Steven Pinker is the author of several prize-winning books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and The Better Angels of Our Nature. This week Pinker releases a new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case…
California congressman Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that the panel is negotiating with the FBI about narrowly redacting sensitive information contained in a memo intended to counter a Republican document alleging surveillance abuses.
On Tuesday, Politico and Morning Consult published a poll showing Republicans ahead of Democrats by one point in the generic ballot. This is an improvement for the GOP—Morning Consult put Democrats ahead by four in its last two polls and had them up by 10 in December. The poll also shows Trump with…
Update, 2/15/18: On Wednesday evening the Bruin Republicans announced on their Facebook page that they had decided that internal disagreement among their board was too great to continue hosting the Yiannopoulos event. That the university respects free speech rights and that it was the club’s…
Happy Valentine’s Day. Before you celebrate by heading out and swiping right, let’s have a talk about marriage.
The freewheeling, open process that was expected to define this week’s high stakes immigration debate in the Senate is off to a slow start. On Tuesday morning, the chamber did what it does best—that is, not much.
For more than 20 years, Saeb Erekat has been the main Palestinian negotiator in the “peace process” with Israel. This week (writing in the New York Times) he attacked the ability of the United States to be the “sole broker” or even an “honest broker” in peace talks between Israel and the…
The Trump administration’s top spy chief quietly criticized the White House in written testimony Tuesday, warning lawmakers that U.S. allies are questioning America’s ability to keep its international commitments amid looming threats from China and Russia.
If there was any enthusiasm for President Trump’s infrastructure proposal on Capitol Hill on Monday, it was hard to find. Republican Bill Shuster, the chairman of the House Transportation committee, gave a perfunctory statement noting the White House’s framework while hardly endorsing it.
The recent clash between Iran and Israel is the latest indication that there’s some unfinished business to attend to in Syria even with the decline of the civil war and the territorial defeat of ISIS. In the skirmish over the weekend Iranian troops launched an Iranian-made attack drone against…
“Anthropology 212: Cultural Freedoms: Hate Speech, Blasphemy, and Pornography,” a course on freedom of expression at Princeton University has been “reluctantly” cancelled, Professor Lawrence Rosen informed his students in an email obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Rosen’s email, sent at 2:07 p.m. on…
Lawmakers in the Senate voted overwhelmingly Monday night to move forward with a contentious immigration debate this week. Let the race to 60 votes begin.
Jeff, who died suddenly at age 74 on Saturday evening, was primed to be on the vanguard. Starting in the mid-1970s, he turbocharged the policy agenda that culminated with Reagan’s landslide election and a mandate for massive tax cuts. But Reagan (“The only great man I ever worked for, though I…
The bipartisan budget deal sealed by Congress in the early hours of February 9 was a win for the Pentagon—but not as big a win as it might initially appear. Having jacked up the defense top-line for this fiscal year and next, defense hawks in Congress will be tempted to congratulate themselves for…
It’s finally infrastructure week at the White House. The administration plans to release its legislative proposal on infrastructure Monday morning, including $200 billion in federal spending over the next 10 years.
Senator Rand Paul was not happy. A 652-page budget and appropriations deal, worked out by congressional leadership, was unveiled at midnight Wednesday, a mere 24 hours before the shutdown deadline.
Rob Porter, the now-former staff secretary at the White House, was given the benefit of the doubt when credible allegations he had physically abused his ex-wives emerged this week. That’s how deputy press secretary Raj Shah put it in his briefing to the press Thursday, a day after Porter tendered…
The resignation of a quiet but powerful West Wing aide is raising all sorts of questions. Rob Porter, who issued a statement Wednesday saying he would be leaving his position as staff secretary to President Trump, has been credibly accused by both of his ex-wives of abusive behavior. It’s not clear…
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon did not appear Tuesday to deliver planned testimony before the House Intelligence committee. Ranking member Adam Schiff said in a statement that Bannon’s lawyers “informed the Committee that the White House continues to prohibit Mr. Bannon from…
During the trophy presentation after the Super Bowl, Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson, tight end Zach Ertz, and MVP Nick Foles each began their interviews with mentions of their faith.
State Dept. Official Reportedly Passed On Second Trump ‘Dossier’ Written by One of Clinton’s Most Discreditable Supporters
George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and son of the former Florida governor and Donald Trump rival Jeb Bush, tweeted his unmistakable support for the president’s agenda on Tuesday, in response to an endorsement from Donald Trump, Jr. of his reelection campaign.
Dick Durbin would like to have a word with the professoriate. It seems that the phrase “chain migration”—a technical term used for decades by university-based demographers to describe family-based migration patterns—is in fact racist. The Illinois senator suggested as much last month, after…
“Today is the end of [liberal education at Kenyon College],” Fred Baumann, a professor of political science at Kenyon, proclaimed last week to a panel and its audience. The panel had been convened to discuss the retraction of professor and playwright Wendy MacLeod’s latest play, The Good Samaritan.
Will there be another government shutdown this week? “I sure hope not,” said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley on Fox News Monday. But it doesn’t sound like there’s much hope for finding a deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and border wall funding, which held up a budget…
Ryan T. Anderson is the Heritage Foundation’s William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow and one of my favorite writers in Washington. He’s got an uncanny ability to combine razor-sharp arguments with kindness and good faith. He’s the best kind of public intellectual: One who tries to clarify ideas…
Senator Susan Collins is currently championing a bill that will hike the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) levied by airports on ticket prices. Supposedly the move would fund improvements to their infrastructure.
The current scandal between Google and James Damore presents our culture with a choice: Should we safeguard opportunity for individuals simply because they are individuals, or limit individual opportunity in order to pursue the advancement of groups? It's a question as old as liberal democracy…
Rarely have both exuberance and anxiety run simultaneously at the high pitch evident these days at gatherings of investors. The exuberants are the noisiest right now. Trump tax cuts have produced a surge in business after-tax profits—which even before the tax cuts were up double digits compared…
We’re likely to see the Memo—that’s the House Intelligence committee’s memo, written by GOP chairman Devin Nunes, alleging wrongdoing on the part of the FBI’s initial investigation into Russian meddling by Trump campaign associates—sometime on Friday. Whatever Nunes’s summary of the FBI’s FISA…
When Twitter removed verified status from some controversial conservative accounts in November, alt-right provocateur Laura Loomer was undeterred. “I could be sad about this and let it ruin my night, or I could view it as a compliment,” Loomer tweeted. “I'll take this as a sign that I'm really…
A recent study of abuses in for-profit post-secondary education highlights a reputational disparity within American higher education. For-profit programs and colleges are distrusted and maligned. Their proven value to populations for whom traditional college is out of reach and various good-faith…
President Trump has until Friday to decide what to do with the so-called Nunes memo, the document alleging widespread misbehavior at the FBI that the House Intelligence Committee voted along partisan lines to release to the public on Monday. Committee rules provide the White House a five-day window…
For decades, the public schools of Edina, Minnesota, were the gold standard among the state’s school districts. Edina is an upscale suburb of Minneapolis, but virtually overnight, its reputation has changed. Academic rigor is unraveling, high school reading and math test scores are sliding, and…
Texas is the Democratic white whale. Every election cycle, some enterprising statewide (or national) Democratic candidate tries to flip the state by winning the governorship, a senate seat, or the state’s electoral college votes. And recently, they haven’t had much success. Texas has elected…
Lawmakers and experts are hoping for the best after the Treasury Department released what was seen as an underwhelming, congressionally-required public report on Russian oligarchs and senior political figures late Monday night.
Eleven months ago—before Donald Trump had to accept any of the disappointments of lawmaking—the new president stood before a joint session of Congress and called for, among other things, the passage of a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan.
The State of the Union address is perfect for President Donald Trump. His showmanship and sense of dramatic timing; the endless applause and moving stories, lovingly told; the pleasure he takes in enunciating truths no one could disagree with—it’s almost as if the whole cockamamie tradition were…
President Trump delivered a relatively straightforward State of the Union address with few surprises and almost none of the glibness he often exhibits in public appearances. Trump began with an optimistic tone to tout the recently passed tax cuts, offered platitudes on trade and infrastructure, and…
I was flying cross-country Tuesday night and didn’t see Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address. The instant reviews were predictably mixed. Trump supporters, even reluctant ones, seemed to like it. His critics hated it.
It’s time for the January 2018 Hypocrite of the Month awards. The nominees are . . .
Last night we slept in the desert. We dug a pit in the sand for a fire, and desecrated the surrounding brush for wood. This was probably against the rules, it being a national park and all, and we each feel terribly guilty. But the hot dogs were delicious, wrapped in tortillas with refried beans…
The Word of God Online has some fake news it would like to share.
In this week’s magazine’s editorial, “Night Falls on Venezuela,” we took 1,200 words or so to describe the desperate state into which the country has fallen. To sum up: The people of Venezuela are starving to death. Bands of hungry looters roam the streets of its cities, the currency is worthless,…
Blow out the candles and cut the cake! On February 4 Jerome Powell will turn 65. The day before, he’ll replace Janet Yellen as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the first non-economist to hold the title in 40 years.
Tuesday night is Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, the annual event where the president speaks to a joint session of Congress with lofty rhetoric about where the country is and where he wants it to go. The Constitution doesn’t require the chief executive to deliver the State of the…
The state of our union is divided and anxious.
Steve Bannon, the nationalist agitator who served as Donald Trump’s chief political strategist for most of 2017, invited observers last year to compare Trump’s inaugural address with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos a few days earlier.…
Years ago, during the long-forgotten administration of George H.W. Bush, I looked in on a friend of mine who had been “tasked”— the military jargon was just then creeping into civilian life – with writing the president’s State of the Union address.
The House Intelligence Committee on Monday voted along party lines to publicly release a secret GOP-drafted memo on alleged surveillance abuses targeting the Trump campaign, according to the panel’s top Democrat.
If there were ever an occasion for President Trump to create some buzz for his health care agenda in 2018, it was on Monday morning, in a case of man-meets-moment. Trump introduced new Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar before the Cabinet official’s swearing-in ceremony, one day before…
Amid the flurry of rumors stemming from Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury, U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley has faced accusations that she had an affair with Donald Trump, accusations which she has denied.
The plan was to leave Puerto Penasco today and bike to Sonoyta, a border town 60 miles north. The road in between is smooth, lightly traveled, and has a generous shoulder on both sides. The only problem was the wind, which pushed directly against us and picked up speed the further we pedaled on the…
The Trump administration is expected to provide lawmakers with a report Monday that calls out Russian president Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a document that has had Russian elites worried for months.
The Trump administration on Thursday released a framework for a compromise immigration deal to members of Congress. The plan calls for a pathway to citizenship for people brought to America illegally as children, increased spending for security on the U.S.-Mexico border, and new restrictions on…
Returning from Davos, the gathering of the global elite who had never before seen fit to invite this exhibitionist television celebrity, familiar with the bankruptcy courts, to eschew Big Macs in favor of canapés for a few days, Donald Trump faces a more demanding test next Tuesday, when he…
Donald Trump very nearly had the special counsel investigating him fired, until the top White House lawyer told the president he would resign rather than give the order to the Justice Department. That’s the gist of the latest bombshell story from the New York Times, which reports President Trump…
As the technology empowering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, blockchains have been in the news a lot lately. Bitcoin, of course, has both roiled markets and is making world governments nervous about the possible creation of an alternative currency while simultaneously thrilling investors in…
Last night we joined two of Davi's friends for beers at a local brewery. Both women are now full-time residents of Mexicali, but living in the border town for the sake of their engineering careers in the United States. Special SENTRI passes allow them to commute back and forth every day. We woke up…
The pace of all things Trump and Russia is accelerating. Every day comes news of either campaign or administration workers having been interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, or new revelations about the content of intra-office FBI text messages—or the news that many such messages…
President Trump told reporters Wednesday that he welcomed the chance to speak under oath to Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. "I'm looking forward to it, actually," Trump told reporters during an impromptu briefing in the West…
The House Intelligence Committee is now home to dueling memos over alleged surveillance abuses related to the 2016 election. Democrats on the committee have crafted their own secret document in response to a Republican-drafted memo that outlines alleged FBI misconduct against the Trump team, as…
Congress has just two weeks to come to a consensus on how to codify protections for the Dreamers—roughly 700,000 unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the United States as children—before government funding runs out February 8, or risk another shutdown scenario.
The recent assault by Turkey’s military on Kurds in northwestern Syria has presented a conundrum for the administration: Turkey is our (strained) NATO ally while the Kurds have been one of America’s most important friends in the region, with Kurdish forces fighting valiantly alongside Americans in…
On Tuesday, January 22, President Donald Trump announced the imposition of a 30 percent tariff on imported solar panels and a 20 percent tariffs on washing machines. Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the president to issue duties when an imported product becomes “substantial cause of…
In this latest micro episode, the Substandard discusses the nominees for this year's Academy Awards. Sonny thinks The Shape of Water is in great shape to win. JVL wonders if a movie that's not woke even has a shot. Vic fears that Darkest Hour and Dunkirk split votes? And where's Wonder Woman?
A “best practice” among those who spread false information is sloshing it around with the tiniest bit of truth. Some, however, ignore this and go straight to peddling absolute falsehoods.
It’s not surprising that members of Congress would have a habit of repeating a short list of talking points, given how often they face the media and how important it is for them to stay on message. But that tendency was more apparent than usual last week during a feud over a stopgap spending…
The First Amendment to the Constitution does not impose, as some believe, “a wall of separation between church and state.” That phrase comes from a letter by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to Connecticut Baptists, cited approvingly by Supreme Court decisions in 1878 and 1947.
After a two-day impasse, enough Senate Democrats agreed to pass a short-term continuing budget resolution Monday, the first step to ending a government shutdown that began early Saturday morning. The measure passed overwhelmingly, with just 18 senators, mostly Democrats, opposing. The House of…
Time dulls the sharp edges of painful memories, but some events are so traumatic that they are burned into our psyches where they live on forever.
A short-term funding bill to end a three-day government shutdown passed the House Monday evening after getting a thumbs-up from the Senate earlier in the day.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Trump negotiated toward a bargain on immigration reform that could have satisfied both parties and reduced the likelihood of a shutdown, the New York Times reported hours before government funding expired at midnight Saturday. Democrats would have…
Donald Trump and the White House have greeted the government shutdown, which has been in effect since the Senate was unable to pass a continuing budget resolution by early Saturday morning, as an opportunity to push this point: Democrats are extremists on immigration.
On January 17, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told us what she’s really up to. She was the keynote speaker at the American Enterprise Institute conference “Bush-Obama School Reform: Lessons Learned.” There she gave a tough-but-fair appraisal of the costly failed federal attempts at education…
Activists who oppose abortion doubted Donald Trump when he was a candidate because he had once described himself as "very pro-choice." A year into his presidency, however, they happily point to victories he has achieved for them.
The New Normal. Slow growth. Persistently low inflation threatening to morph into Japanese-style deflation. Stagnant wages. Rising inequality. The American Dream converted to a nightmare. All the result of the metastasizing of the regulatory and entitlement states, say the Republicans. No, it’s the…
On the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. government shut down.
"I'm Grant Wishard, a journalist at The Weekly Standard, and I plan to bike the entire U.S. Mexico border, from Tijuana, Mexico to Brownsville, Texas, starting January 17th." Yes, you read that right. Currently I'm in JFK airport waiting for a connecting flight to San Diego International. The…
Earlier this week, Senator Dianne Feinstein released some 315 pages of closed-door testimony by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Fusion GPS was the firm paid by Democrats to compile the dossier alleging ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
While U.S. politics have witnessed any number of distressing trends in recent years, one of the more disturbing is the decline in support among Republicans for free trade. The rise of Donald Trump, who regularly blamed American economic ills on China and trade deals such as the North American Free…
The world has not seen the last of the anti-regime protests that have swept Iran in recent weeks, the Trump administration’s intelligence chief said Sunday.
There was a moment at the end of 2017 when, if you squinted hard enough, it seemed as though the Trump presidency might be approaching normal.
Michael Wolff couldn’t have asked for better publicity. His new book, Fire and Fury, doesn’t officially come out until January 9, but its salacious revelations about the infighting within the Trump campaign, transition, and administration dominated the political news cycle Wednesday, including the…
Steve Bannon is a self-described Leninist who wants to destroy The Weekly Standard. Much worse, he's a notorious creep who promotes even bigger creeps like Paul Nehlen, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Roy Moore. So it is more than a little amusing to watch President Trump furiously attack Bannon in response…
Republican senator Orrin Hatch of Utah announced he would not seek re-election to an eighth term in 2018 in a video Tuesday afternoon.
Special counsel Robert Mueller may be the most well-known figure in the special counsel's office (SCO), but the attorneys Mueller has assembled for his investigation into connections between the Trump campaign and Russian government during the 2016 election are a prosecutorial dream team. The SCO…
Ukraine is living through its bloodiest year in the conflict on its eastern border since it began in 2014, the Trump administration’s envoy for the crisis said Tuesday.
Winning isn’t everything, nor is it the only thing for Democrats in special elections this year. Political observers had built up Tuesday’s Alabama Senate vote as yet another put-up-or-shut-up moment for Washington’s minority party, suggesting that a loss by Doug Jones there would be another…
For the last five weeks, most of the political world has been (rightly) focused on the wild race for the Alabama Senate seat that l Jeff Sessions vacated earlier this year to become attorney general. But other key races didn’t stop while Democratic senator-elect Doug Jones was beating…
Republican lawmakers and officials are feeling a moment of relief after the defeat of embattled GOP candidate Roy Moore in Alabama’s special election Tuesday.
In the game of electoral addition, Republicans find themselves calculating a doubtful future in California. A dizzying carousel of unfavorable statistics reminds the national party that the Golden State, once reliably red, is now hostile political territory. Decades of changing demographics,…
There’s a specter haunting Donald Trump’s presidency: the specter of powerlessness.
Members of the Republican National Committee are responding to the news that Joyce Simmons, committeewoman for Nebraska, resigned her post Monday in response to the RNC renewing its support for Roy Moore.
Birmingham, Alabama
Athens, Alabama
As special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators continue to bore into President Trump’s inner circle, Republicans have intensified their attempts to discredit the investigators as partisan hacks. As news began to break last weekend that former national security advisor Michael Flynn had struck a…
The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee said Thursday that the committee will never support Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate who has been accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls.
Bill Cosby. Bill O’Reilly. Harvey Weinstein. Kevin Spacey. Charlie Rose. Matt Lauer. John Conyers. What drives these men to engage in such terrible behavior? The Book of Genesis may offer us some answers.
About three in ten Republicans want someone other than Donald Trump to be their party’s presidential nominee in 2020 according to the Public Religion Research Institute. It’s easy to see how that number could make some Trump supporters nervous and some anti-Trump Republicans hopeful. If a third of…
Less than a week ago, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser was pleading guilty to lying to the FBI and cooperating with Robert Mueller’s investigation, but things might be looking up for the president. Both houses of Congress have now passed a version of his signature tax reform plan (or…
President Trump’s decision to “officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel” is a high-risk statement that acknowledges “the obvious.” His intent to move the US embassy from the beachfront at Tel Aviv to Jerusalem restates that obvious without necessarily raising the risk. By granting…
President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced plans to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, describing the move as a “recognition of reality.”
What happened to Trumpism? Sure, we still get the oh-so-Trumpy tweets, but many of the issues that Donald Trump ran on have been cast to the wayside in the 11 months (it hasn’t even been a year yet!?) of his presidency.
Next Tuesday, we’ll finally know whether Republican Roy Moore or Democrat Doug Jones will become the next Senator from Alabama.
One day after President Trump formally endorsed Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate and accused sexual predator, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered this explanation for the move: the allegations against Moore are troubling, but the prospect of electing a Democrat is more…
Birmingham, Ala.
This is a day of mourning for Americans who believe that our politics are broken, who yearn to reach across the aisle, stop the partisan bickering, and eradicate the influence of money, Big Business, the military, corporate media, parochial interests, anti-tax activists, the NRA, the AMA, the CIA,…
The holiday shopping season is on. American shoppers spent $655.8 billion during the 2016 holiday season and that figure could climb to $682 billion this year.
Congressman John Conyers of Michigan announced Tuesday he would retire from Congress effective immediately, making him the first sitting congressman to resign amid the wave of sexual misconduct allegations that has swamped the nation in recent months.
A foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, as the poet had it, but a flailing inconsistency isn’t a particularly good look either.
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