Michael Warren

Trump’s FDA chief hasn’t been much in the news—and that’s a good thing.

The White House aims at Chinese trade practices, hits Americans.

They are emails designed to grab you by the lapels. "CRISIS AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER," announced one. "MS-13 Is 'Taking Over the School' One Teen Warned Before She Was Killed," read another. The subject lines are always over the top:

The Trump administration on Friday announced a new set of sanctions against 38 individuals and entities in Russia in response to a "consistent pattern of malign activities" by the Russian government.

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:

The Trump administration is sending the National Guard to the southern border, per a presidential memorandum issued on Wednesday. Citing a "drastic surge of illegal activity on the southern border" including drug trafficking, illegal border crossings, and gang activity, President Trump authorized…

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…

Here's one more indication the White House's infrastructure proposal is stuck in a ditch: D.J. Gribbin, the National Economic Council's point man on the project, is leaving the administration—for "new opportunities" as a White House official put it. The official added Gribbin does not have a set…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,”…

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…

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…

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…

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…

(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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Ivanka Trump, the White House official and daughter of President Trump, will be leading the U.S delegation to the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. According to senior administration officials, Ivanka will leave for Seoul on Thursday on a commercial flight, arriving in…

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…

Will President Trump’s interest in new legislation to toughen federal background checks on gun purchasers last? As White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Monday morning, Trump is “supportive of efforts to improve the federal background check system” and has spoken…

Donald Trump spent a big chunk of the Sunday before Presidents Day tweeting—about the Mueller investigation, the “fake news” media, and NASCAR. But in one tweet, Trump highlighted new poll numbers. And they weren’t even his own!

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:

Paul Ryan, of all people, was in a defensive posture about his commitment to fiscal discipline. Speaking on February 13 to Maria Bartiromo of the Fox Business Network, the speaker of the House insisted that the two-year budget deal Republicans in Congress had just brokered was a necessary…

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.

Are Republicans in the Trump era deficit-hawks-in-name-only? Or does the party still have faithfulness toward reducing the federal deficit in meaningful ways. Between last week’s Republican-forged budget deal that ended a severely flawed, but effective, system of spending caps and the advent of…

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.

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.

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…

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…

Donald Trump says the House Intelligence committee memo on the FBI’s application to surveil an associate of his campaign “totally vindicates” him in the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The memo, authored by Republican Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes, does…

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…

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…

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…

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 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…

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…

The Trump administration did not condemn Turkey last week after the country’s military began attacking Kurdish forces in northwestern Syria. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders exemplified the administration’s response: “We hear and take seriously Turkey’s legitimate security…

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 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…

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…

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.

Saturday is the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, so in the brand-new issue of the magazine I take a look at four lessons we can learn from Year One of the Trump presidency. Here’s an excerpt:

The first year of the Trump presidency was like the election that preceded it: unpredictable, norm-shattering, and disorienting. From the “American carnage” in his inaugural address to the kerfuffle over whether he referred to countries in Africa as “s—holes” or “s—houses,” Washington and the…

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?…

National security adviser H.R. McMaster met with his counterparts from Japan and South Korea (Shotaro Yachi and Chung Eui-yong, respectively) in San Francisco this weekend, as Jonathan Swan of Axios first reported. The meeting, which had been planned months ahead of time, nonetheless came shortly…

Another week means another round of questions about Russian interference for associates of the Trump campaign. Fox News reports that on Tuesday, former White House adviser Steve Bannon will testify before the House Intelligence committee. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is also…

President Trump’s administration made a significant policy move on Friday—extending the Iran deal by waiving nuclear sanctions, while simultaneously issuing new, non-nuclear sanctions against Iran in light of the recent protests there. But you’d be forgiven for forgetting all about that, because a…

This post has been updated.

If there were any doubt about the numerous reports that President Trump referred to Haiti and nations in Africa as “shithole countries” in a Thursday meeting about immigration with lawmakers, it melted away with a statement from the White House that did nothing to deny it.

If there were any doubt about the numerous reports that President Trump referred to Haiti and nations in Africa as “shithole countries” in a Thursday meeting about immigration with lawmakers, it melted away with a statement from the White House that did nothing to deny it.

After striking a conciliatory tone on immigration reform in a meeting with lawmakers Tuesday, President Trump returned to tougher line on Wednesday, insisting that any legislation reinstating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program must also include funding for a border wall.

After striking a conciliatory tone on immigration reform in a meeting with lawmakers Tuesday, President Trump returned to tougher line on Wednesday, insisting that any legislation reinstating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program must also include funding for a border wall.

Say, where are those new sanctions on Iran? The White House was said last week to be considering new, non-nuclear sanctions against Iran in response to the anti-government and anti-regime protests—and the violent response by government forces. The administration last week did sanction five…

Following the recent protests across Iran and the impending deadlines related to the nuclear deal, President Trump faces a few big choices this week—and on some of them, his staff in the White House still isn’t quite sure what he’s going to do.

As someone who covers the Trump White House daily, I’m having a hard time figuring out what I think of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. On the one hand, the book is full of suggestions and half-truths that Wolff treats as fact. That might be forgiven if the author were writing a gossipy exposé—except…

Your must-read of the day comes from the New York Times, and it’s full of interesting details about special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Michael Schmidt reports that Mueller has learned a lot of new information about the nature of Donald Trump’s decision-making in his first few months as…

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…

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…

The protests in Iran challenging the repressive Islamist regime present both an opportunity for the Trump administration, as one White House official puts it, and a challenge. The administration is quietly urging European and regional allies to join President Trump in offering support for the…

Donald Trump begins 2018 with a rare condition for his presidency: the biggest news story isn’t directly about him. That doesn’t mean the president hasn’t had a lot to say about the wave of anti-regime protests in Iran that have taken place since last Thursday. As Jeryl Bier reported, the Trump…

When President Trump and Congress come back to Washington in January, will infrastructure be first on the to-do list? My new piece for the magazine looks at the White House’s plans for building new roads and bridges. Here’s an excerpt:

The deadly derailment of an Amtrak train near Tacoma, Wash., last week prompted a tweet from Donald Trump. The accident, the president wrote, “shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly. Seven trillion dollars spent in the Middle East while our…

It was a joyous celebration on the White House lawn Wednesday afternoon, and deservedly so. Republicans in Congress passed their tax cut bill, their biggest legislative achievement all year, amid some difficult circumstances—particularly their little-room-for-dissent Senate majority. Donald Trump…

A procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate means the House of Representatives will return on Wednesday to vote on a slightly modified version of the tax bill it passed Tuesday. After House speaker Paul Ryan gleefully gaveled the vote, but before the Senate parliamentarian determined three provisions…

Voting on the final Republican tax bill begins Tuesday, and a pledge Monday afternoon from Maine senator Susan Collins that she would support it all but sealed the deal—she’s the 50th vote in the Senate, and Vice President Mike Pence, if needed, can provide vote number 51.

President Donald Trump will deliver remarks Monday afternoon on his new national security strategy, a comprehensive set of priorities, challenges, and proposed solutions required by law of every administration since that of Ronald Reagan. Appropriately, Trump will deliver his Monday speech at the…

Could we be seeing some voluntary turnover at the White House come New Year? I explore this question in a piece for the new issue of the magazine. Here’s a preview:

Washington was surprised to learn that Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser for strategy, will be leaving her post early in the new year. Powell, one of the few veterans of the George W. Bush administration to take a senior role under Trump, had been something of a rock of normalcy in…

Before Rod Rosenstein began his testimony before the House Judiciary committee on Wednesday, a Justice Department source told me the deputy attorney general would be “calm and very well versed in the law.” Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, Rosenstein has overseen the FBI’s…

Doug Jones’s victory in Tuesday’s special Senate election in Alabama is an “embarrassment,” as one Washington Republican told me. Embarrassing because it’s Alabama, one of the most GOP-friendly states in the country. Embarrassing because the party’s candidate, Roy Moore, was perhaps one of the only…

It’s Election Day in Alabama, and what might have been a sleepy affair—replacing long-time senator Jeff Sessions with another conservative Republican—has been anything but. The wildly divergent polls show everything from a relatively modest victory for the Republican, former state supreme court…

Here’s the president’s message to Alabama voters ahead of Tuesday’s special election for the U.S. Senate: “Get out and vote for Roy Moore.” That’s what Donald Trump said Friday in Pensacola, just across the state line in Florida and well within the Mobile media market.

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…

It’s become a joke around Washington that every week is “infrastructure week” at the White House, a policy focus derailed usually within the first few hours of Monday by news developments (or President Trump’s tweets).

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…

On the Monday following Thanksgiving, the principals of President Trump’s National Security Council met to discuss what the administration would do about recognizing the capital of the state of Israel. A federal law requires the U.S. embassy to be moved to Jerusalem unless waived by the president…

Donald Trump endorsed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore on Monday morning with a pair of messages on the president’s Twitter account about political prudence.

Here’s what most folks are overlooking on the issue of Michael Flynn’s guilty plea on Friday: Mueller’s exchange for Flynn’s cooperation may not primarily concern what the former national security adviser admitted to lying to the FBI about. Perhaps Mueller is looking to pin down President Trump or…

Discussions to remove Rex Tillerson from the State Department and replace him with CIA director Mike Pompeo have been going on for months, even if State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert says White House chief of staff John Kelly is telling State the “rumors are not true.”

The White House is moving forward with a plan to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with CIA director Mike Pompeo. The New York Times reports Tillerson could be forced out “within the next several weeks.”

Will the president accept just about anything on tax reform? He seemed to suggest as much at his rally in Missouri Wednesday. “If they send it to my desk, I promise all of the people in this room, my friends, so many friends in this room—a great state—I promise you I will sign it,” Donald Trump…

The Senate Budget committee voted to move forward on the Republican tax bill Tuesday afternoon, a small but substantial step forward for the GOP overhaul, which will now go before the full Senate for debate. “I think we're going to get it passed,” said President Donald Trump at a White House…

A federal judge ruled against a deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday, declining to issue a restraining order against the Trump administration for installing its own selection for acting director of the agency.

The president’s crack Monday afternoon about “Pocahontas”—aka Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren—was classic Donald Trump.

It’s been more than five days since President Trump figuratively stood by Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. As he was leaving the White House last Tuesday to spend Thanksgiving with his family at Mar-a-Lago, Trump stopped to talk with the press and told them Alabama does not need to send a…

President Trump tweeted Saturday night a link to a sycophantic website that traffics in conspiracy theories and has aligned itself to the alt-right and white nationalist movements. Here’s the Trump tweet, which promotes MAGAPILL.com’s “President Donald Trump Accomplishment List”:

Donald Trump is confident he can get a comprehensive agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. As one diplomat in Washington recently put it, the president is more optimistic than anyone else for peace in the Middle East. Trump told Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority,…

For nearly two weeks, the White House has been tiptoeing around the sexual assault allegations against Roy Moore, neither condemning nor defending the embattled Senate candidate, who has been accused of pursuing teenage girls for dates as a grown man and even touching a 14-year-old girl sexually…

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…

What did President Trump accomplish on his 12-day, 5-nation trip through East Asia? Not much, at least not substantively—and that’s judging by the president’s own remarks at the White House on Wednesday. Speaking to cameras and the press pool from the Diplomatic Room, the president provided a…

President Trump came home from his Asia trip with a significant political conundrum on his hands: What to do about Roy Moore. For days, the White House has been publicly cautious in rendering any judgment on the credible sexual misconduct allegations against Moore, even as Republican senators and…

Attorney general Jeff Sessions has told political allies in Alabama that he is not considering running for his old Senate seat as a write-in candidate in next month’s special election. That’s according to a spokeswoman for Sessions at the Department of Justice, Sarah Isgur Flores, who also tells me…

Attorney general Jeff Sessions has told political allies in Alabama he is not considering running for his old Senate seat as a write-in candidate in next month’s special election. That’s according to a spokeswoman for Sessions at the Department of Justice, Sarah Isgur Flores, who also tells me…

President Donald Trump, said White House aide Kellyanne Conway on Sunday, “is not as focused on this as he is his major 13-day trip abroad.” The “this” is the question of Roy Moore and his political future after the Washington Post’s bombshell report last week that included, among other…

So far, the White House is urging people to be “cautious” about the allegations against Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore of Alabama documented in a Thursday article in the Washington Post. Citing 30 sources, the Post reports four teenage girls who now say the thirtysomething Moore asked them on…

More Election Day Fallout—The White House pushed back Wednesday on the conventional assessment that the Democratic wave election in Virginia and elsewhere reflected poorly on Donald Trump: The president’s party always faces “headwinds” in elections in the first year; Virginia was trending…

More Election Day Fallout—The White House pushed back Wednesday on the conventional assessment that the Democratic wave election in Virginia and elsewhere reflected poorly on Donald Trump: The president’s party always faces “headwinds” in elections in the first year; Virginia was trending…

Republican Ed Gillespie didn’t just lose his race for governor in Virginia on Tuesday. The former George W. Bush aide and Washington lobbyist led the GOP ticket in what ended up being a huge rout for the party. From gubernatorial nominee Ralph Northam to the lieutenant governor and attorney general…

What have we learned from the first day of marking up the House Republicans’ big tax reform bill? There’s a long way to go, with lots of tweaks and alterations to be made to the bill House Ways and Means chairman Kevin Brady released last week. There are plenty of factions in the House GOP…

There was a noticeable absence of anyone from the Trump administration on the five main Sunday talk shows. President Donald Trump himself was just two days into his marathon foreign trip to Asia, but there seemed to be no eagerness on the part of the White House or the rest of the administration to…

George Papadopoulos was ambitious and underqualified, the kind of wannabe who fills the lower rungs of many a political campaign. This foreign policy adviser to the Donald Trump campaign would not have been even a footnote in the history of the 2016 election before he pleaded guilty to lying to the…

Vice President Mike Pence made a relatively quiet visit to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency on Wednesday. According to the White House schedule, the visit consisted a series of briefings with CIA officials, but Pence also delivered prepared remarks to agents and employees there.

Wednesday was supposed to be a big day in Washington for Republicans still searching for a big legislative accomplishment for Donald Trump’s first year in the White House. GOP leaders in the House of Representatives had planned to release their legislation Wednesday, which the White House is saying…

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

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

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

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

The 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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things keep getting worse for Tom Price, the Health and Human Services secretary who has taken numerous chartered private or government jets to travel around the country and the world, all on the taxpayer’s dime. Nearly every day the total bill for Price’s known flights keeps going up—the latest…

President Trump announced on Wednesday the broad outlines of a sweeping tax reform package that would simplify and cut taxes. He praised the framework as “a middle-class miracle” and “a tax code to put American jobs first.”

The Republican tax reform gets its big introduction on Wednesday by way of a presidential speech in Indiana. President Donald Trump will deliver an afternoon address in Indianapolis, joined by, among others, the state’s Democratic senator, Joe Donnelly.

A trio of Republican senators are hoping to solve the DACA problem, and they have reason to believe President Trump will get on board. The senators, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have introduced the Solution for Undocumented Children through…

Where do things stand now that the great presidential football uproar weekend is over? Donald Trump’s comments in Alabama on Friday about NFL players—primarily former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick—protesting police by kneeling during the national anthem set people off in a most…

On his last day in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump held his final bilateral meeting of the week with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. It was the leaders’ first one-on-one meeting since Erdogan’s trip to Washington in May. Here’s how Trump introduced…

President Trump announced on Thursday new economic sanctions on “individuals, companies, financial institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea.” Making a statement in New York at the beginning of a meeting with South Korean president Moon Jae-in and Japanese prime minister…

The squeeze is on Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign who has become a major target of special counsel Robert Mueller’s aggressive investigation. The latest details from the Washington Post describe email evidence that Manafort offered “private briefings” about the Trump…

United Nations Watch—President Trump’s first address to the United Nations General Assembly was a bit of a hodge-podge. At times, it sounded as if it were a message to Americans that Trump would be defending them and their interests even if (and especially when) those interests contradicted the…

Ever since John Kelly was tapped as White House chief of staff, right-wing news outlets have been publishing articles making harsh allegations about Donald Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster.

The Mueller investigation is heating up, and it doesn’t look good for Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. CNN reported Monday that federal investigators wiretapped Manafort’s phones under “secret court orders” both before and after the 2016 presidential election:

Donald Trump is back in his hometown for a full week of meetings surrounding the convening of the United Nations General Assembly. The president’s anticipated speech before the GA isn’t until Tuesday, but Trump has a packed schedule starting Monday, including bilateral meetings with the leaders of…

It has taken just under eight months for the signature issue of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—the construction of a border wall along our southern border with Mexico—to become negotiable. You could almost hear Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer grinning as they typed their statement out…

Nobody knew MAGA could be so complicated.

The Trump administration has completed its comprehensive review of America’s Iran policy, according to an administration source, setting the stage for a possible recalibration of the nuclear deal with that country, which Donald Trump campaigned against in last year’s election.

The president’s effort to help get tax reform passed by the end of this year is in full swing. Tuesday night Donald Trump held a bipartisan dinner at the White House with three Republican senators on the Senate Finance committee and three moderate Democrats up for reelection next year in swing…

The White House has a new argument for why President Donald Trump fired James Comey earlier this year: The FBI director possibly committed perjury. At her Monday briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders faced a question about former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s recent…

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…

With the North Koreans claiming to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb this week, President Donald Trump on Thursday reiterated that “military action would certainly be an option” against the rogue regime. “I would prefer not going the route of the military, but it’s something certainly that…

Nearly a month ago, it looked as if Donald Trump could be setting himself up to leave the Republican party. His departure could either be official or de facto, but the signs were beginning to suggest that Trump, who has no real ties to the GOP establishment or its infrastructure, was putting…

Has there been an administration in the modern era where the internal debates are hashed out in so public a manner? Consider Tuesday, when two members of Donald Trump’s cabinet spoke out forcefully on unresolved policy questions.

This article has been updated with information that Haley provided in her speech.

Will hundreds of thousands of young immigrants, brought illegally to the United States as minors by their families, suddenly be at risk for deportation? That’s what hangs in the balance with the Trump administration’s expected announcement that he will fulfill a campaign promise and rollback the…

Remember when Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, was on thin ice with President Trump? For a couple weeks in July, the president was passive-aggressively criticizing Sessions on a near daily basis. But ever since John Kelly took over as chief of staff at the very end of July, Trump’s uttered…

The flooding and rain continues in Texas (and now Louisiana, too), but the White House is already talking about getting an emergency relief spending package through Congress next week. The Washington Post reports the funding “is expected to only be a partial down payment and serve in part to…

The president travels to Springfield, Missouri, on Wednesday to deliver a speech about tax reform. Congress will take up this next legislative agenda item when it returns from its August recess after Labor Day. But don’t expect Donald Trump to roll out a detailed set of proposed reforms and changes…

President Donald Trump is off to Texas Tuesday—specifically Corpus Christi, the coastal town south of Houston where Hurricane Harvey first made landfall in the Lone Star State.

There’s a protest of sorts happening among some of President Trump’s Cabinet officials and top advisers. It was Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, who kicked things off on Friday by way of an interview with the Financial Times. Following the president’s broadly criticized…

Things went from bad to slightly worse between Donald Trump and Republican leadership in Congress Thursday. It started—as it always seems to—with a series of presidential tweets.

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.

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…

Throughout the entire length of the administration’s internal debate about Afghanistan, President Donald Trump was torn between two competing impulses: his desire to end the 16-year-long war, and his need to win. When it came time to make a decision on Afghanistan, which he will announce in a…

The departure of Steve Bannon from the White House won’t have a big impact on the day-to-day operations of the West Wing. An economic nationalist who served as Donald Trump’s political id (as well as his chief strategist), Bannon was effectively sidelined back in April, after he was removed from…

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…

One of the leading public intellectuals who formulated and argued on behalf of a coherent ideology around Donald Trump now says he “sorely regrets” supporting the Republican president. Writing Thursday in the New York Times, Julius Krein says his optimism about Trump and Trumpism was “unfounded.”

Vice President Mike Pence is returning from his Latin American trip to Washington on Thursday, a day earlier than planned. Could a decision on the war in Afghanistan be in the offing?

Vice President Mike Pence is returning from his Latin American trip to Washington on Thursday, a day earlier than planned.

There’s a reason why it was necessary for President Donald Trump to denounce specifically and unequivocally the white nationalists whose demonstration last weekend in Virginia became violent—not the “many sides” who were also protesting, or violence in general. It’s true there were left-wing…

There are reports that White House aides were caught off guard by Donald Trump’s Tuesday press conference in which he said the “alt-left” deserved blame for the violence in Charlottesville last weekend and that there were “fine people” on both sides of the white nationalist rally there. Trump “went…

The only thing likely protecting Steve Bannon’s job is the fact that everyone in Washington expects he’s about to lose it. Administration officials inside the West Wing are already acting as if Bannon is halfway out the door. On Meet the Press Sunday, National security adviser H.R. McMaster refused…

There’s not much more that can be said about President Trump’s insufficient and equivocal statement on Saturday in response to a rally of white nationalists and neo-Nazis in Virginia that turned violent. Our editor-in-chief, Stephen Hayes, demonstrated that Trump has a recent history of being…

As the federal investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller digs deeper into the business dealings of Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for Donald Trump is changing his legal team.

President Donald Trump is inching closer to abandoning the Republican party, even as the GOP is in the middle of an effort to remake itself in Trump’s image.

Whatever strategic planning the Trump administration has for a North Korea with nuclear weapons capabilities, there was no preparing for the president’s comments on Tuesday. The White House, including the national-security team, was unaware President Trump was preparing to speak publicly about…

President Donald Trump responded to reports Tuesday that U.S. intelligence believes North Korea has missile-ready nuclear weapons.

The fallout continues from this weekend’sNew York Times article about the “shadow campaigns” for president forming around ambitious Republicans—including Vice President Mike Pence—ready for if and when President Donald Trump does not run for reelection in 2020.

The war on White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster continues, with allies of Steve Bannon using sympathetic media outlets to push a narrative that McMaster is thwarting the will of President Donald Trump. Senior White House aides now wonder among each other whether Bannon himself and/or…

One story going around among conservatives online Thursday was the production of a letter from Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster to one of his predecessors in the job, Susan Rice. The April letter alerts Rice, who worked in the Obama administration, that her security clearance has been…

General John Kelly may be trying to institute military-style discipline in the West Wing, but that hasn’t put a stop to the civil war happening over President Donald Trump’s National Security Council. If anything, the dawning of the Kelly era may have accelerated that war.

General John Kelly may be trying to institute military-style discipline in the West Wing, but that hasn’t put a stop to the civil war happening over President Donald Trump’s National Security Council. If anything, the dawning of the Kelly era may have accelerated that war.

Two conservative senators will appear alongside President Trump at the White House Wednesday to announce a new version of their bill to restrict and reform legal immigration. Arkansas’s Tom Cotton and Georgia’s David Perdue have been coordinating with the White House on the legislation, which may…

Two conservative senators will appear alongside President Trump at the White House Wednesday to announce a new version of their bill to restrict and reform legal immigration. Arkansas’s Tom Cotton and Georgia’s David Perdue have been coordinating with the White House on the legislation, which may…

Anthony Scaramucci is gone from his position as communications director because, the White House claimed in a Monday statement, Scaramucci “felt it was best to give Chief of Staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team.”

John Kelly begins his first week on the job as chief of staff at a time of great challenge in the White House. President Donald Trump’s first major legislative effort, repealing Obamacare, has failed. Prospects for the next agenda items—tax reform, a budget deal, infrastructure, immigration—are…