Jeff Flake

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

The retiring senator is threatening to block advancement of judicial nominees.

The retiring Arizona senator touted the benefits of foreign aid to the central American countries whose migrants are headed north to the U.S. border.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he has no idea how a key vote will go on Friday morning for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Calls for one-week FBI investigation into allegations against the SCOTUS nominee.

The word is losing all meaning at this point.

But the temperamental Trumpists are losing to the Trump-loving establishment in 2018.

Arizona Republican Jeff Flake returned to the Senate from his three-week trip to Zimbabwe and Botswana on Monday night. The retiring senator had gone to Zimbabwe to serve as an official observer in the country’s presidential election held in late July, but he raised eyebrows back in D.C. when…

Three senators skipped Judiciary Committee meeting on Thursday, including Ted Cruz.

On Monday, Republican senators learned that their Arizona colleague Jeff Flake would be absent for much of the month of August, missing two full weeks of votes and potentially causing problems for the judicial confirmations schedule. Frustration with the decision grew among Senate offices and…

Senator says 'there is real value in having a broad bipartisan statement' even if the measure has no force of law.

Even as Republican leaders in the Senate have become more open to a measure that would roll back some of President Donald Trump’s unilateral trade powers, GOP leadership in the House is sounding increasingly skeptical of the idea.

Jeff Flake’s personal trade war, waged with hopes of imposing congressional oversight over President Donald Trump’s unilateral national security tariffs, could move closer to a resolution this week.

The model might be too high on Sinema. But it also might have a point.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he doesn’t know whether the Senate will take up a bill this week to rein in President Donald Trump’s authority to unilaterally impose tariffs on national security grounds.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes

The retiring Arizona senator wants to force a vote limiting Trump's trade authority, and he's using his leverage over judicial nominations.

Jeff Flake switched his vote from 'no' to 'yea,' and John Thune says the Arizona senator was 'negotiating another matter'

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…

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.

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.

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…

She doesn’t say so, but 2018 has been a tricky year so far for Arizona Senate candidate Kelli Ward. After months of polling strongly as an uncompromising, Trump-loving alternative to unpopular incumbent Jeff Flake, the conservative firebrand now finds herself squeezed between two new challengers:…

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.

Republican members of Congress travelling to an annual retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia on Wednesday morning were involved in a train wreck with a garbage truck, a House Republican aide told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The basic math of the 2018 Senate elections shows a challenge for Democrats. In order to win control of the upper chamber, the party need to successfully defend all 26 of its seats up for election (some of which are in highly red states like Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota, West Virginia, and…

A West Wing source says the White House is “cautiously optimistic” that a government shutdown can be avoided by the Friday spending deadline. Questions remain: Can the House pass its continuing resolution (which leadership spent Wednesday whipping on) to fund the government for another month?…

Retiring senator Arizona Jeff Flake accused President Donald Trump of reckless disregard for the truth Wednesday, saying that the White House had launched an “unrelenting daily assault on constitutionally protected free speech.”

On Wednesday night, before Washington was completely consumed by Michael Wolff’s West Wing tell-all, Politico published a piece feeding into a different frenzy: the notion that Congress was concerned President Trump might be mentally unfit for office.

The Senate's longest-serving Republican, Orrin Hatch of Utah, has announced that he will not seek reelection. Mitt Romney, as The Weekly Standard was first to confirm, intends to run for the seat. This news item provoked a characteristically fevered round of speculation and theorizing from the…

In 1986, President Reagan signed the largest overhaul of the U.S. tax system since the New Deal. The law simplified the tax code and substantially reduced individual rates for the second time in Reagan’s presidency—the top rate coming down to 28 percent from 50 percent. When Reagan had appealed for…

Donald Trump’s predictable unpredictability on Twitter has gone from a frustration to a mere annoyance for Capitol Hill, his cabinet, and his White House staff. Amazingly enough, Washington seems to have factored Trump’s tweets into the complex equation of how government works. But the president…

President Trump was understandably thrilled by the House’s passage of its tax-cut bill Thursday. On Twitter he called the vote a “a big step toward fulfilling our promise to deliver historic TAX CUTS for the American people by the end of the year.” Trump did not celebrate in the Rose Garden with…

While the allegations of sexual misconduct and assault against Roy Moore have seriously cast the viability of his Senate candidacy in doubt, some Republicans are now calling for his expulsion if he still wins the Senate race in deep-red Alabama.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Monday that he would vote for Democrat Doug Jones over Judge Roy Moore in the Alabama special election for Senate and would support expelling Moore if he wins.

Election wonks don’t play favorites with polls. We love them all equally. (Translation: We do our best to judge them impartially based on their past accuracy, methodology, question wording, context and other relevant factors.) But it’s hard not to have a soft spot for surveys that offer something…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scottsdale, Ariz.

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

Scottsdale, Ariz.

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

One of the primary challengers to Donald Trump’s top Senate rival says she’s sticking with the president after his immigration deal with Democratic leaders.

A year from now will mark the start of the traditional campaign season for the 2018 midterms​—​which will see all the seats in the House of Representatives plus a third of the Senate up for grabs. Obviously, these contests are too far away to estimate results, but a general outline is coming into…

Is Donald Trump a rogue Republican—an independent president rather than a party leader? Or is he simply remaking, in fits and starts and with the establishment kicking and screaming, the GOP in his own image? This is a central political question of Trump’s presidency, one coming into focus as the…

A year from now will mark the start of the traditional campaign season for the 2018 midterms​—​which will see all the seats in the House of Representatives plus a third of the Senate up for grabs. Obviously, these contests are too far away to estimate results, but a general outline is coming into…

Since the defeat of the Obamacare repeal effort in the Senate, President Donald Trump has seemed to be on the warpath against the upper chamber. He has made negative comments about a number of Republican senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Some reports suggest he may strike out on…

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans mixed it up the first several months of 2017, concocting a doozy of four parts discord and one part accomplishment. Candidate Trump made antagonism with the GOP establishment a selling point of his campaign. While that approach earned votes at…

Donald Trump has been president for just over seven months.* The 2020 election is more than three years away. So why is his chief pollster asking if Republicans would vote for him in a presidential primary today? That’s what Tony Fabrizio asked 1,500 self-described Republican or Republican-leaning…

The president’s speech at his political rally in Phoenix Tuesday night was a disjointed ping-pong between a prepared address and Donald Trump’s own extemporaneous comments. In other words, it was a typical Trump campaign speech.

At his campaign-style rally in Phoenix Tuesday night, President Donald Trump reconfirmed one of the laws of his presidency: For every sane, measured presidential action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

A group backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., launched a new ad campaign Tuesday against Kelli Ward — the primary opponent of Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. — attacking her over "crazy ideas" and "embarrassing behavior" during her time as a state senator and her primary campaign…

President Donald Trump opened his statement of policy on Afghanistan and South Asia by offering a rare allowance that he had changed his mind about an issue—namely, about withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan. “My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like to follow my…

For the first time, Donald Trump has inserted himself into a 2018 Republican primary against an incumbent. The president tweeted Thursday morning that it was “great” to see Trump nemesis Jeff Flake of Arizona get a Republican challenger. “Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake…

The chairwoman of the RNC responded to intra-party criticism of President Trump with a warning Monday.

Data is the best. Or data are the best. Whatever. Everyone agrees that in politics, as in baseball, you can’t trust your own lying eyes. You have to look at the data.

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, deputy online editor Chris Deaton talks with Eric Felten about Arizona Senator Jeff Flake's new book taking on Donald Trump, Conscience of a Conservative.

The (really good) website FiveThirtyEight is tracking how often members of Congress vote with the positions favored by President Trump. A “Trump Score” of 100 percent indicates that a senator or representative has matched the White House’s stance on every bill to have been weighed up or down. The…

In a provocative excerpt of his new book, Arizona Republican Jeff Flake identifies hazards of the Trump aura that conservatives have abetted and must challenge today. They include: “the most egregious and sustained attacks on [President] Obama’s legitimacy” ... “the strange specter of an American…

The AARP is targeting five GOP senators in an ad campaign about the American Health Care Act, even though Senate Republicans have said they'll scrap the bill in favor of new legislation that presumably won't tank with the American public.

House majority leader Kevin McCarthy said there is a "better way" to unite Republicans than the national party chairman's recent threat to punish future GOP presidential candidates who refuse to support Donald Trump. Speaking with reporters at the Capitol Tuesday, McCarthy responded to the comments…

Arizona senator Jeff Flake has endorsed his Senate colleague Marco Rubio for president, the Rubio campaign announced Monday.

With the Senate dedicating a fair amount of floor time to the Energy Policy Modernization Act, Republican senators are taking the opportunity to shine a light on bad practices in the energy economy through the amendment process.

A new ad for Republican Senate candidate Jeff Flake of Arizona, which features Republican senators John McCain and Jon Kyl, prompted a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to call the spot a "hostage video."

In an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, retiring Republican senator Jon Kyl raised some possible reasons why Democrat Richard Carmona, one of candidates vying to win the Arizona Senate seat Kyl is vacating, might be seeking public office. If a past interaction Kyl had with Carmona reveals a…

Richard Carmona, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Arizona, said that obesity would "dilemma will dwarf 9/11 or any other terrorist attempt."

The U.S. Senate race in Arizona to replace retiring Republican Jon Kyl was supposed to be an easy hold for the GOP. But the last several polls have shown the race is tightening between the Republican candidate, Congressman Jeff Flake, and his Democratic opponent, Richard Carmona, a former U.S.…

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has earned the endorsement of Arizona congressman and 2012 Senate candidate Jeff Flake. From a Romney press release:

The New York Times has an interesting story today on how budget negotiations have been affected by the lack of congressional earmarks:

Arizona GOP congressman Jeff Flake announced today that he will try to fill the seat of retiring senator Jon Kyl in 2012. Flake, a tea partier before there were tea partiers, has already won the endorsement of the Club for Growth, and he'll be a strong candidate in the GOP primary. But he's no sure…

As the House Appropriations Committee stands poised to make a former earmarker its chairman, incoming House speaker John Boehner throws his support to porkbuster Jeff Flake: