Just this morning we were talking about the unfolding disaster in Syria near the Turkish border. This decision to start pulling our troops out rests on the President’s shoulders, but it was hastened by the fact that our supposed “ally,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was planning to move his troops in and begin taking

As of now, Donald Trump is scheduled to appear at the Target Center in Minneapolis on Thursday, part of his plan to flip Minnesota to the GOP in 2020. The city wants to make sure he pays for the privilege — through the nose, apparently. The city sent a $530,000 security bill to the venue

Game on. A joint congressional committee had requested a deposition from Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU, over text exchanges regarding Donald Trump’s actions with Ukraine. That deposition was set for later this morning, until the State Department ordered Sondland not to testify on the issue. It’s the first real indication that the

Just how far does presidential immunity stretch — and just how far should it? That question might get lost in the acute issues surrounding Donald Trump’s challenge to a subpoena for his tax records. Jazz wrote about Donald Trump’s loss earlier today and what it means for his legal situation, but Judge Victor Marrero’s order raises serious

Donald Trump’s week got off to a rough start. First his favorite morning show tears into him, and now his favorite pollster seems to be throwing some shade his way. In a hypothetical head-to-head match in 2020, Trump would only get to a 45/45 tie against the woman he vanquished in 2016, according to Rasmussen

Why does this remind me of the famous Ghostbusters admonition never to cross the streams? I’m sure this is all under control and nothing bad could possibly come of it: In his quest to rewrite the history of the 2016 election, President Trump’s personal attorney has turned to an unusual source of information: Trump’s imprisoned former

It takes a fair bit of digging into this Daily Beast article to get to Adam Schiff’s attempt to backpedal from being caught in a series of prevarications. The article’s headline emphasizes that Donald Trump had decided to “take a hatchet to Adam Schiff,” and talks about Trump’s strategy to make the House Intel chair

Now has the summer of our middling economic content extended into the autumn. Job creation in September continued its slowing pace, only adding 136,000 jobs to the US economy, while wages stagnated. The good news is that the unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%, a change made even better since it isn’t tied to any exodus

The good news is it sounds like Bernie Sanders survived his heart attack and subsequent corrective surgery quite well and is on the road to recovery. And just for the record, his campaign confirmed yesterday that it was indeed a heart attack, though they chose the more clinical description of myocardial infarction. He’s already out

Another directive from the White House came out yesterday and it’s sure to have immigration activists setting their hair on fire. Beginning on November 3rd, prospective immigrants applying for a vis to enter the United States will need to be able to demonstrate that they have health insurance or the financial means to pay for

At first glance this looks like a briar-patch strategy, and to some extent it might be, but it’s also a tactical move intended to legitimize the next phase of White House strategy. According to both Fox News and Axios, Donald Trump will send Nancy Pelosi a letter today essentially daring her to hold a full

Stop us if you’ve heard this before. A whistleblower with second- or third-hand information alleges wrongdoing within the Trump administration. It gets leaked with allegations that the administration tried to quash it, only to find out that the House committee had the relevant information for months. Get ready for Whistleblower II: Audit Boogaloo: An Internal

Get ready for another round of Partisan Rorschach. Overnight, three House Democratic committee chairs released texts between State Department officials to show that the Trump administration leveraged aid and access to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Burisma and by extension Hunter and Joe Biden. Those inclined to agree with Adam Schiff, Eliot Engel, and

Oh, we all know why. It’s still good to see some acknowledgment of the strategy on mainstream media sites. Writing at The Hill, liberal legal analyst Jonathan Turley scolds Democrats and media outlets for attacking Attorney General William Barr needlessly on their Shermanesque march to the Impeachment Sea: With all of the breathless headlines of the

It’s not another iteration of Pow Wow Chow or high cheekbones, but it might point to another credibility and authenticity issue for Elizabeth Warren. While Warren talks about her life of enduring gender discrimination, a progressive journalist has dug up an old interview which strongly suggests that Warren has engaged in yet even more fabulism

The NY Times reports that, as some people has already guessed, Rep. Adam Schiff had advance knowledge of the whistleblower complaint against President Trump: The Democratic head of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days

Ho hum, nothing to see here, just a US Senator demanding that a tech giant deplatform her political opposition. This was a dumb enough idea when Kamala Harris floated it with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday. Harris doubled down on authoritarianism by making the demand official and putting it in writing: In a letter to

As Laura Ingraham tells Rudy Giuliani, it’s certainly a “novel” approach to the tension between the executive and legislative branches. In an entertaining segment on Fox News Channel’s Ingraham Angle, Ingraham spends a significant amount of time in trying to talk Giuliani off the ledge of filing lawsuits and back to more solid ground in pushing

Donald Trump wanted another summit with Kim Jong-un. John Bolton wanted to crack down on Pyongyang, while North Korea wanted Bolton out. Looks like two of the three got what they wanted: North Korea and the United States will resume negotiations Saturday, marking the first official talks between the two sides since President Trump met

Laser focus or broad spectrum? The Ukraine-Gate allegations might have some Republicans distancing themselves from Donald Trump, but The Hill reports that the shift to an impeachment inquiry has begun putting pressure on Democratic unity as well. A split has started to emerge between moderates who want to stay focused on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine,

Get ready for another showdown over privilege between the White House and Congress. Three House committees served subpoenas on Rudy Giuliani over Ukraine-Gate, setting up a fight over attorney-client privilege that will give federal courts another workout and even more headaches. Amazingly, Jerrold Nadler’s name doesn’t make the list: Three House committees issued a subpoena Monday

To borrow a phrase from one popular series of memes on social media… well, that escalated quickly. Having managed to secure at least a partial transcript of a call between President Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff seems to think he’s on a roll. After learning that the White House

President Nancy Pelosi? “It could happen,” promises the Washington Post headline, as an outcome of the impeachment process that the House Speaker endorsed with her alea iacta est declaration. No, it really can’t, but it speaks volumes that this part of the spitballing process that’s going into the media’s approach to impeachment: What happens when

Somehow I don’t think the Intelligence Committee will have time to get around to investigating this one, what with all of the Ukraine stuff going on, but you never know. Donald Trump gets blamed for all manner of things by the mainstream media (and their friends in the Democratic Party). Global warming, children in cages

Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended the big Democratic shindig in Texas this weekend and there was pretty much only one topic on the minds of the reporters covering the event. Impeachment is devouring the news cycle like Gabriel Iglesias at an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. So what did the Speaker have to say on the subject now

As Jim Geraghty wrote yesterday, get ready for the 1918 trench warfare of impeachment, where there’s lots of noise and damage but the lines barely move. The transcript of the call between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky turned out to be mostly a letdown for the media and Democrats, but the whistleblower complaint will take

This is either (a) evidence that Ukraine’s not the only country worried about precedent, (b) the usual Russian trollery at US expense, or (c) a little bit of both. I’m putting my money on … (c): Russia has voiced hope that the U.S. administration wouldn’t publish private conversations between the two nations’ presidents, like it

It’s open season for leaks of presidential conversations in Washington. Last night, the Washington Post reported on one that has long held fascination for the media — just what did Donald Trump tell Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in their 2017 Oval Office meeting the day after Trump fired FBI director James Comey? It had

Score at least a half-point for the whistleblower complaint at the heart of Ukraine-Gate. The complaint alleged that “White House lawyers” transferred the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call to a system used for only the most sensitive material, alleging that the decision was part of a cover-up of Donald Trump’s crimes. This morning the White

The answer is, of course, yes — but mainly because every day over the last three years has been lived in F***nutsville. Politico founder John Harris laments the loss of seriousness in American politics, driven mainly by click-hungry media and grandstanding politicians. Thanks to a rush to impeachment talk even before establishing initial facts on Ukraine-Gate,