Maybe it’s just the summer heat. Perhaps it can be attributed to spending a lot of time overseas lately. Or, as most observers seem to feel, maybe it’s still just the economy, stupid. Whatever the cause, the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll has some good news for President Trump. He’s seen a six-point rise in

If we have not yet reached the nadir of non-partisanship in judicial confirmations, Politico reports that we’re right around the corner from it. In the first six months of this session of Congress, Senate Democrats have voted against far more of Donald Trump’s appointments than in his first two years. And it’s tough to see

The biblical prophet Jeremiah once asked, “Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots?” His question was rhetorical – pointing out how impossible it was for someone to change his or her nature or character. One who is a liar tends to stay a liar. One who is honest tends to sway

Last time Donald Trump ran for president, he was an upstart, outsider, unlikely to win, who put some $66 million of his own into that successful unorthodox campaign. This time is different, very different. He’s an incumbent commander-in-chief with no real challengers and the Republican National Committee is fully on his side. So, it seems,

Yesterday, there were reports at every major news outlet saying the same thing: The citizenship question would not appear on the 2020 Census. This morning, Trump said all of those reports were fake news: The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect

Twitter’s latest policy change regarding how they choose to trample on the speech of their users and avoid triggering anyone went into effect last week and now it’s being fully kicked into gear. They are also no longer making exceptions for world leaders, candidates for office or anyone else of the sort. Yep… they’re looking

The top stories on CNN as I write this are all about the planned celebration in Washington DC for the 4th of July. This year’s program is going to be different from previous years because President Trump is using this opportunity to celebrate America’s military. Naturally, CNN is deeply troubled by it. Chris Cillizza’s piece

President Trump was interviewed by Tucker Carlson during his trip to Japan. After a question about Big Tech, Carlson pointed out that when you walk through the city of Osaka or Tokyo, it’s very clean. There are no tents, trash or human waste on the sidewalks. “It’s very nice, isn’t it?” Trump said. “Very different

There’s a highly disturbing story in the New York Times this morning which, if true (and that remains a major “if”) would represent a worrying shift in foreign policy regarding North Korea. Without evidence or any named sources, and despite being expressly denied by multiple officials, the Gray Lady reports that the President is thinking

So what happened to Canadian editorial cartoonist Michael de Adder? That’s the mystery going around the media community this week. He announced on Twitter over the weekend that he had been cut off from publishing in some of the newspapers owned by Brunswick News Inc., where his work has appeared. The highs and lows of

Yesterday we examined the last minute offer by President Trump to travel to the DMZ and meet yet again with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Earlier this morning all of the details were hammered out and the President traveled to the DMZ, crossing over the border and becoming the first sitting United States president to

If this was a planned exercise, the White House has done a bang-up job of keeping it completely secret until last night. And if it wasn’t, this is another case of the President flying by the seat of his pants and engaging in foreign policy via social media (something he’s proven quite adept at doing

Twitter has announced a new plan to label tweets which violate its rules but which it has decided to leave on the site because they are in the public interest. Twitter says the new labeling will only apply to government officials who have more than 100,000 followers. The site isn’t outright saying this new rule

You’ll hear literally thousands of words in tonight’s and tomorrow’s Democratic primary debates about policies all the candidates favor and propose, each one carefully nuanced to appear dramatically different from the rest of the crowd on-stage. But it turns out, little of all that policy blather actually matters. Democrats’ top abiding concern about the qualifications

President Trump relishes turmoil, especially if he creates it. It keeps opponents off-balance, keeps his own staff on high alert and keeps the attention on him. But exactly 71 weeks before Americans render a verdict on renewing  Trump’s Oval Office lease comes a new poll revealing that such turmoil displayed through divisive and harsh political

Yesterday I explained why the pending border bill drawn up by Nancy Pelosi’s House Democrats should be considered dead on arrival. It’s true that the Senate is working on their own version (and who knows if they could actually resolve the two by the end of the week), but that one is lacking in many

Not that we have word of any openings coming up on the Supreme Court in the immediate future, but it always pays to be prepared, right? Particularly when you have several justices in their septuagenarian or even octagenarian years and one of them regularly talks about packing up his RV and touring the country. But

No matter how far to the left much of the mainstream media may swing, I’ll confess to never having seen this one coming. At the Washington Post this week, Jackson Diehl pens an op-ed about the horrific conditions in Venezuela. Regular readers are already familiar with the tragic story because we cover it here every

When we previously discussed the President’s decision to put the planned deportation raids in as many as a dozen cities on hold, I suggested that Speaker Pelosi might have put an offer on the table that caught Trump’s attention, prompting the delay. His statement about giving Congress “a couple of weeks” to hammer out a

Only one day after mayors and governors around the country stood in unison to support people breaking the law, the President has temporarily put on hold plans to have ICE detain and deport large numbers of illegal aliens in as many as ten cities. Is this a sign that he’s suddenly “seen the light” and

When the rape allegations brought against President Trump by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll surfaced on Friday, you could instantly predict that we were going to see a standoff between supporters on both sides. That’s been playing out over the weekend already, but one interview that Carroll did on Friday night caught my attention. She

The withdrawal by Patrick Shanahan from consideration for the top Defense job has brought a rare moment of bipartisanship from the Senate — and likely a brief one, the Washington Post reports. Members of both parties publicly criticized the White House for not discovering issues of domestic violence in the now-former deputy secretary’s public record

It doesn’t really matter how you or other Americans feel about substituting the presidential popular vote total for the Electoral College with a constitutional amendment. It’s not going to happen. Live with it. But still the folks over at Gallup keep asking that old question — and a new one. It’s a hot topic since

The somewhat disturbing news from last night involved Iran once again. Yesterday I was pondering what our response would be to Iran shooting down one of our drones. Surely some sort of meaningful action was called for, but what form would it take? Now we may (or may not) have found out what was on

Well … yeah, that’s exactly what censure is, and why it might have been a good exit ramp for Nancy Pelosi from Impeachapalooza. The House Speaker dismissed it at a breakfast interview with press today, calling it just a “way out” from the responsibility to impeach “if the goods are there.” But what if “the goods”

As the 2020 presidential race gains momentum, religion is shaping up as a surprisingly important issue and a key sector of voters sought by both parties this time. Faith voters were a vital segment of Donald Trump’s GOP primary campaign in 2015-16 and the general election that year. This despite Trump’s three marriages, alleged affairs

One sure sign the Democratic primary race is getting more heated: Those 23 wannabe presidents are promising to take more of American workers’ income in taxes to pay for some of the free stuff they’re offering simultaneously. Such a deal! We’re sure to hear more about their vast spending hopes next week during the first

Call this one a Kinsleyan gaffe from NBC’s Al Roker, who makes the mistake of saying what nearly everyone else is thinking. His network will host the two-night, dual-round Democratic debate extravaganza, which premiers a week from tonight in prime time. NBC’s betting that the rest of TV Land will be more enthusiastic than its own

Will this convince Bernie Sanders? Naah, but at least some in the media have taken notice of the Pentagon’s evidence of Iranian attacks on oil shipping in the Gulf of Oman. Following up on initial video evidence of Iranian sailors trying to retrieve evidence from the two oil tankers damaged near the Strait of Hormuz, experts

Say goodbye to MAGA Country, and hello to … KAGville? “How do you give up the number one call it theme, logo, statement, in the history of politics for a new one?” Donald Trump asked an overflow crowd in Orlando, where he formally launched his re-election campaign. Simple — you declare mission accomplished to Make America Great Again. The new mission