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“Todd Blanche, the newly confirmed attorney general, refused to say on Sunday that he would always act independently of White House control but claimed during an interview that President Trump has ‘never’ demanded he prosecute specific people,” the New York Times reports. “Mr. Blanche, displaying a greater ease in fielding a variety of pointed questions […]
“President Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner met Hamas leaders in Egypt on Sunday to press them to carry out their commitment to disarm, according to two sources familiar with the meeting,” Axios reports. “This was Kushner’s first meeting with Hamas leaders since the signing of the agreement to end the war in Gaza last October.” ”The […]
“Sen. Bill Cassidy on Sunday blasted President Donald Trump’s executive order last week targeting the childhood vaccine schedule, calling the action ‘a stupid thing to do,'” ABC News reports. Said Cassidy: “Let’s just take it from the perspective of the parent why this is a — why this is just a stupid thing to do. […]
“Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Sunday that he hasn’t heard back from Sen. Mitch McConnell following formal requests for updates on his health last month amid a weekslong hospitalization that prompted widespread speculation and concern,” CBS News reports.
“President Trump’s vision for a White House ballroom stretches back more than a decade. His argument that it is ‘vital to our national security,’ which culminated Friday in an appeal to the Supreme Court, is far more recent,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “When Trump announced last year that he was demolishing part of the […]
One bill proposes increasing the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 13. Another would cut their lifetime terms to 18 years. Others would create an enforceable ethics code and place standards on how the court rules from its relatively opaque shadow docket, ” the Washington Post reports. ”The latest wave of proposals to overhaul [ ]
Ron Brownstein: Democrats this year are seriously contesting more races for governor and senator across the industrial Midwest and Farm Belt than at any point since the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency. The party still faces substantial skepticism from many heartland voters, especially on cultural issues, but frustration over the high cost of living [ ]
David Smith: He was always one step ahead. Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency as a wildly unlikely outsider in 2016 and staged an astonishing comeback to win it again in 2024. Even his foes grudgingly called him a political savant with an intuition for exploiting grievances that left so-called experts floundering. But now they [ ]
Financial Times: Most U.S. voters say they have become worse off under Donald Trump, according to an FT poll revealing mounting discontent with the president’s handling of the economy and cost of living. With less than three months until November’s midterm elections, the nationwide poll conducted by Focaldata found that over 53 percent of registered [ ]
In mid-May, U.S. negotiators trying to reach a deal with Iran to end the war ran into a problem: They couldn t tell if the people across the table actually spoke for the country s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Axios reports. So Trump administration officials did something unconventional — they went around Iran s negotiators and reached [ ]
Even as U.S. policy has walled off Washington, D.C. from friends across the pond, Americans travel overseas is reaching new heights, Axios reports. Much like the resilient consumer, the American tourist keeps riding the post-Covid travel wave, even as debt delays life milestones and global perceptions of the U.S. slip.
Aaron Blake: One of the Trump administration’s biggest problems in extracting itself from the Iran war is the list of very absolutist goals that President Donald Trump and his team laid out. The goals have included complete Iranian surrender, regime change, Iran never getting a nuclear weapon and ending Tehran’s support for its Middle East [ ]
A movement of young, progressive outsiders has stormed Democratic politics this year, sparking a wave of contentious primary contests across the country and fueling a fraught debate over whether these new, left-wing candidates are remaking the party in their image, the New York Times reports. But as primary season winds to a close, the results [ ]
Nate Cohn: When the midterm election campaign began, Michigan seemed like a state that Democrats could take for granted in their pursuit of the Senate. Yes, it’s a presidential battleground state, but that makes it the kind of state that Democrats would ordinarily win easily in what seems like a strongly Democratic midterm cycle. It’s [ ]
Politico: Now, as Sacramento prepares for Becerra’s all but inevitable ascension, the elected officials, lobbyists, and corporate and labor leaders who shape policy in one of the nation’s most consequential capitals are grappling with a contradiction: Despite Becerra’s decades in public service, no one seems to be quite sure what he’ll do with the biggest [ ]
Frustration with Washington is growing in the Persian Gulf region, where U.S. allies are increasingly concerned that President Donald Trump is unable to manage the diplomacy necessary to secure peace with Iran, Arab and Western officials say, the Washington Post reports. Trump in recent weeks has repeatedly issued threats against Iran, only to withdraw them, [ ]
New York Times: No one expects China to curb its expansionist activities in the region anytime soon. And there are growing doubts among Asian nations over what the United States would be willing to do to deter China, given the enormous distraction and resource drain of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The United States is [ ]
The U.S. admiral overseeing the war with Iran visited the USS Abraham Lincoln on Saturday as the aircraft carrier prepares to return home following an extended wartime deployment, the Wall Street Journal reports. The visit by Centcom commander Adm. Brad Cooper capped a 10-day trip that also included visits to Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi [ ]
The Trump administration doesn’t want Apple to buy memory chips from China, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an interview. Apple may do so anyway, the Wall Street Journal reports. Insatiable demand for computer memory among companies building artificial-intelligence data centers has led to a shortage of the critical component and skyrocketing prices for what [ ]
Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema testified that she repeatedly had sex with her then-married security guard while she was in office representing Arizona, Fox News reports. Matthew Ammel s ex-wife, Heather Ammel, is suing the Democrat-turned-independent, who left office at the beginning of last year, for allegedly breaking up her 14-year marriage.
The Democratic National Committee on Saturday adopted a new early state calendar for the party’s 2028 presidential primary in a significant change that will have major implications for how Democrats pick their next White House nominee, NOTUS reports. South Carolina will kick off the Democratic primary for only the second time, followed by Nevada and [ ]
Democrats on Saturday approved dueling messages on whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be abolished or reformed, reflecting sharp opposition to President Donald Trump’s crackdown but revealing disagreement in the party ahead of the midterms, the Associated Press reports. The Democratic National Committee, gathered for a summer meeting, also signed off on a raft [ ]
Dan Pfeiffer: The bigger the wave, the more Democrats elected, the greater the chance of taking the Senate, and the bigger the rebuke of Trump, his broken promises, his idiotic war, and his rampant corruption. When people talk about a wave (red or blue), they are really referring to the political environment — how much [ ]
“These young beautiful girls, these young beautiful girls, these young beautiful girls in the White House, they come in. Now I m not supposed to say beautiful, but what the hell. These young, these gorgeous, beautiful girls, they want to be safe and they come say Mr. President, thank you, sir.” — President Trump, at a [ ]
It is among the most famous phrases in presidential history: The buck stops here. Except with President Donald Trump, it almost never does, the Associated Press reports. Concerns about a weak economy and still-high inflation? His predecessor, Joe Biden, saddled him with that, he says, even though the Democrat has been out of office [ ]
Iran on Saturday rejected President Trump’s assertion that he could declare the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States, saying the opening and closure of the key waterway will remain up to Iran’s control, The Hill reports.
Democratic voters are showing up for this year’s primaries in numbers not seen in decades, a pattern emerging across several states that has the party optimistic about its prospects in November when control of Congress will be at stake, the Associated Press reports.
President Donald Trump is urging Americans to accept higher gasoline prices while the conflict with Iran continues, NewsNation reports. He told a political rally in New York Friday that paying a tiny little bit more for your gasoline is worth the cost of ensuring a very evil country could not have a nuclear weapon, one [ ]