Newsletters

As Republican senators’, representatives’, and executive branch officials’ responses (ranging from deficient to depraved) to the separation of families at our southern border makes clear, there are three kinds of Republicans currently in office: the Failures, the Cowards, and the Bigots. There are overlaps among these categories, of course, but they’re typologically useful nonetheless. The […]

On Tuesday, in one of the most raw and callous displays of the power that major corporations can wield over cities, the Seattle City Council voted to repeal a business tax it had passed just four weeks ago to generate the funds the city needs to deal with its epidemic of homelessness. Seattle ranks third […]

For more than a decade, Republicans have decided that destroying the Democrats and the competence of government is more important than defending American democracy. We saw that under President Obama, when Republicans pursued a strategy of blocking whatever Obama attempted, sight unseen, and refused to compromise on anything other than keeping the government open. The […]

…such as, percentage of registered California voters who are Democrats, 45; percentage of registered California voters who are Republicans, 25—to know they’re not about to win any statewide races this November. But in the wake of last week’s primary elections, in which one Democratic Orange County state senator was recalled after Republicans waged a campaign […]

Basically, there are two possibilities for Donald Trump’s Singapore Summit with Kim Jong-Un. Either Trump gets annoyed at Little Rocket Man, and storms out. Or the two leaders pretend to have made real progress. What is out of the question is genuine steps towards nuclear disarmament on the peninsula—first, because it’s not possible to get […]

Ayanna Pressley, 44, is a respected African American member of the Boston City Council. A one-time political director for John Kerry, she was the first black woman ever to be elected to the council, in 2010. And she won citywide, in an at-large district. In January, Pressley, calling for new leadership, surprised many observers by […]

CONGRESS: At second glance, the numbers we have now from Tuesday’s primaries in California may look discouraging to Democrats. (At first glance, Democrats breathed a sigh of relief since they didn’t split their votes so badly in the swing congressional districts that they ran out of the money. In every one of those top-two races, […]

For the most part, Republicans have been far too willing to enable Trump’s personal corruption, his sellouts of the national interest for personal gain, and a broad array of impulsive and incoherent policies. But even Republicans have their limits. The big red line is still firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. It would provoke an open […]

It is almost reassuring to learn that Trump truly believes he is above the law. Arguing that the law does not apply to the president is the essence of dictatorship. It’s good to have that claim in black and white—reaffirmed by the even more bizarre claim by Rudy Giuliani that Trump could not merely fire […]

All the recent problems with California’s jungle primary were apparent from the start. As Tuesday’s California primary approaches, both parties are filled with a specifically jungle kind of dread. Democrats fear that their overflow of candidates who are seeking to turn red congressional districts blue will split the vote so many ways that Republicans—fewer of […]