President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force news briefing at the White House, July 30, 2020. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) Assertions that the focus was ‘the Trump campaign’ are now known to be ludicrous Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink takes part in the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in New York in 2017. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) From the New York Times: Laurence D. Fink presents himself as the vanguard of a progressive form of capitalism in which profits are not everything: The enlightened money is supposed to press for environmental and

1. Daniel Schwammenthal: To America, From a Worried European Friend America can’t remain the leader of the free world if it is itself no longer free. To be the guarantor of Western security requires military and economic power, but also a sense of mission. And right now Americans are committing mass character suicide. If the

Voters wait in a line, which continued a few blocks south of the polling location, to vote in the presidential primary election while wearing masks and practicing social distancing at Riverside High School in Milwaukee, Wisc., April 7, 2020. (Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters) Fears that the elections would be a

Over on the home page, I take a look at 20 things you probably didn’t know about Susan Rice — and Benghazi isn’t one of them, because you almost certainly already know about that. In about a week, that list is going to look prescient and important . . . or quickly forgotten. And I

H. Lee Sarokin 1996—The annals of This Week suffer a severe blow, as arch-activist H. Lee Sarokin resigns from the Third Circuit after less than two years of service. Imagine what he could have accomplished with more time! Even Sarokin’s reason—or, more precisely, his stated reason (see This Day for April 25, 1996)—for resigning is

A sign for BlackRock at their building in New York City (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) The attempt to legislate for society via shareholder resolution rather than old-fashioned elections trundles on. A week or so back, S&P Global reported that BlackRock, the world’s largest asset-management company, and, these days, one of the most prominent advocates of “socially responsible” investing

(traveler1116/iStock/Getty Images Plus) On July 30, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the law P. L. 84-140, which made “In God We Trust” the nation’s official motto. The motto had appeared on coins since the Civil War era, but now it would also be printed on paper currency. Critics grumbled about the new motto stamped

A voter drops ballots for the March 3 Super Tuesday primary into a mobile voting mail box in Laguna Woods, Calif., February 24, 2020. (Mike Blake/Reuters) USA Today turns over some op-ed space to David Rothkopf, host of Deep State Radio, who declares that “the threat posed by Trump’s musing about illegally delaying the election

Attorney General William Barr attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., May 19, 2020. (Leah Millis/Reuters) The U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit on Thursday vacated an earlier ruling by the court to dismiss the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. A majority of judges on

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks with U.S. soldiers based in Grafenwoehr, Germany November 7, 2019. (Jens Meyer/Reuters) In a move that sparked bipartisan criticism, the Trump administration announced Wednesday that the U.S. will pull nearly 12,000 troops from Germany, a decision President Trump said is a response to Germany’s reluctance to spend a

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Seth Rogen has, at best, a facile understanding of basic history, faith, or politics. We shouldn’t expect anything else. His job is to act. The problem, though, is that Rogen increasingly feels the need to share his illiterate opinions about serious issues with … Read More

President Donald Trump talks to reporters on the South Lawn at the White House, July 27, 2020. (Tom Brenner/Reuters) Watching some of the exchanges in the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee hearing, featuring chief executives Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Google, I realized that no

A friend has just called to my attention Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter’s wonderful review of Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived, the New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia that his son Chris and I co-edited. I’m embarrassed to say that I somehow missed the review

Former American ambassador to Japan, Bill Hagerty, speaks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as he arrives in Osaka, Japan for the G-20 summit, June 27, 2019. (Jacquelyn Martin/Reuters) A state that has long favored relatively moderate, business-friendly Republicans is poised to go in a more populist direction this November. If a Trumpian populist created

The Capitol Building at sunrise in Washington, D.C., November 17, 2008 (Jim Young/Reuters) With a $2 trillion gap between the parties’ respective proposals, the last-minute scramble to get something done is just beginning. You can give House Democrats credit for one thing: When they realized that another COVID-19 relief bill would be necessary, they got

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos testifies before the House Judiciary Subcommittee in Washington, D.C., July 29, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/Reuters) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told a congressional antitrust hearing on Wednesday that he was unsure if his company had used the data of third-party sellers to inform Amazon’s business decisions, in violation of its own policies. Bezos

Legislative houses are where national and international leaders meet to discuss policy and formulate laws and treaties meant to benefit the people they represent. As a result of issues of national and international interest being debated in these chambers, emotions will always run high. Because of this, proper decorum is always expected throughout the world.

(Encounter Books via Amazon) This penetrating and insightful book — with the secondary title, “How Identity Politics Is Dividing the Land of the Free” — has already been favorably reviewed by us here. It also features a nice blurb from Rich Lowry (“an incisive, unsparing treatment of identity politics”), as well as from Michael Barone

Storm clouds loom over an American flag in Convent, Louisiana, June 11, 2018. (Jonathan Bachman/Reuters) Last week, several self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists defeated long-serving Democratic incumbents in New York State primaries. One of the insurgents, Zohran Mamdani, tweeted out the words, “Socialism won.” His pinned tweet on his profile page says, “Together, we can tax the

Rep. Jerry Nadler speaks during a news conference in Washington, U.S., January 15, 2020. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Tuesday accused Attorney General William Barr of deploying federal agents to cities wracked by violence as a “prop” to further President Trump’s reelection campaign. Barr testified during a hearing of the House Judiciary

As John McCormack notes, Tom Cotton may have been awkward in his phrasing, but there is nothing shocking in saying of slavery, “As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich) addresses a rally in Detroit, Mich., June 6, 2020. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters) Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) declined to endorse Joe Biden for president in an interview with Newsweek released on Monday, in another sign of progressive dissatisfaction with the more moderate Democratic nominee. “I don’t want to get into a

A female polar bear cub with her mother at Tierpark Berlin Zoo in Berlin, Germany, March 15, 2019 (Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters) Michael Shellenerger makes a good case for a hopeful, pragmatic, populist environmentalism. With the polar bears pictured on the cover of his new book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, Michael Shellenberger is here

Welcome to The Tuesday, a newsletter about politics, language, and culture — mostly language and culture, lately — and other things that I think you might want to know about. Neighborliness I suppose it is normal to be sophomoric when you are a sophomore, but I was a junior in high school when Clayton …

Senator Josh Hawley (R, Mo.) speaks committee hearing in Washington, D.C., June 10, 2020. (Al Drago.Reuters) Senate Republicans criticized their party’s own coronavirus relief bill in public comments and during a private lunch with Senate GOP leadership on Tuesday. The disagreements could make negotiations with House Democrats over the legislation even more tricky, with enhanced

Attorney General William Barr appears before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, July 28, 2020. (Matt McClain/Pool via Reuters) The Barr hearing wasn’t very edifying, in large part because Democrats were utterly committed to keeping him from saying anything. One of them would make a sermonettte, pause to ask Barr a hostile question, and

Attorney General William Barr appears before the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill, July 28, 2020. (Matt McClain/Pool via Reuters) Barr brings out the worst in them, which is saying something. If it’s a “hearing,” Bill Barr asked with an irked tongue in cheek, “aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be heard?” His frustration

A nurse tests a patient for the coronavirus disease at Westmead Hospital in Sydney, Australia, May 12, 2020. (Loren Elliott/Reuters) The utilitarian bioethicist Peter Singer does not believe that human life has intrinsic value based simply on being human. Rather, he endorses a “quality of life” ethic in which some of us have greater value

I somehow missed the Fifth Circuit ruling a week ago (in Texas Democratic Party v. Abbott) that overturned a flamboyant district-court order that would have required Texas officials to allow mail-in voting by any voter who claims disability because of lack of immunity from or fear of contracting coronavirus. In his majority opinion, Judge Jerry