Score one win for Donald Trump early in the 2020 election cycle. After getting Trump’s endorsement and a significant amount of campaign support, Fred Keller easily defeated Democratic opponent Marc Friedenberg in a special election to fill the House seat in Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district. Is this a harbinger for next year, or simply a

One can certainly understand why Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox wanted to talk with Michael Avenatti last month. Rarely has anyone had the public-relations arc that Stormy Daniels’ attorney achieved. Even Avenatti described it as “Icarus,” presumably if the Greek legend involved alleged embezzlement, fraud, and domestic violence. But with massive federal indictments hanging over

Jazz wrote about the growing push for impeachment this morning. I agree with his analysis about the realities of impeachment and what Pelosi knows it could mean for Democrats’ future as a majority party in the House. But the drumbeat really does seem to be growing. Rep. Yarmuth is using another i-word: “inevitable.” From NPR:

Don McGahn didn’t send his regrets to Jerrold Nadler. The White House took care of the RSVP instead. Donald Trump invoked executive privilege yesterday on conversations with his former White House counsel, setting up a legal fight with the House Judiciary Committee. Or more accurately, another legal fight: Former White House counsel Don McGahn will not

Donald Trump suffered his first loss in a series of fights with Congress over demands for records production, this time involving his private financial records. Federal judge Amit P. Mehta ordered accounting firm Mazars to comply with a House subpoena that demands several years of Trump’s business records, rejecting the argument that the subpoena served

Wasn’t this the party of change, a party looking for fresh faces to lead the faithful to progressive places? If so, then Washington Post reporters Annie Linskey and Michael Scherer wonder how Joe Biden became the dominant polling frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. This looks like the least likely election cycle for a nostalgia

Whatever could be causing this saber rattling, the Washington Post wondered today. With tweets like these, Ishaan Tharoor writes, Trump is setting the Middle East “on a knife edge,” even though talk of war with Iran had receded during the week. Tharoor then provides enough context to make this sound like a chicken-egg exercise: If

Michigan Congressman Justin Amash decided to go there when discussing the Mueller Report by suggesting President Donald Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct. The libertarian Republican laid out his case on Twitter yesterday in a series of well thought out tweets. His main argument has nothing to do with Russia – there was no collusion

Former Vice President Joe Biden “relaunched” his campaign yesterday with a rousing speech before his supporters in Philadelphia. (How many times is he going to need to launch this rocket with a twenty point lead?) While Uncle Joe had plenty to say, there was much that was missing when compared to the hot chaff streaming

Yesterday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that bars the government from doing business from telecom companies considered national security threats. To no one’s great surprise, the Commerce Department quickly added Chinese telecom giant Huawei to its new “entity list” of banned companies. That move left European allies and trading partners in a tough position,

Scott Morrison was not supposed to continue to be Australia’s Prime Minister. Polls had consistently shown his Liberal Party, which is a center-right party, trailing the center-left Labor Party for several months. But to everyone’s surprise, the right-leaning party pulled it out. Morrison, who is an evangelical Christian, called it a miracle. From CNN: In

The special counsel may have had his fill of Washington. Robert Mueller sent his regrets to Jerrold Nadler over the House Judiciary chair’s Russiagate party this week, Nadler told Politico yesterday. The committee will push off its hearing to take Mueller’s testimony until next month, but thus far it’s looking as though Mueller might not

A bombshell comment, but perhaps more flash than impact. In an interview with Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff, former FBI general counsel James Baker says that a sharp disagreement arose within the bureau over how to brief president-elect Donald Trump on the Christopher Steele dossier. Some, including then-director James Comey, wanted to assure Trump that he was

Who tried to flip Michael Flynn? A court filing yesterday from Robert Mueller’s special counsel office revealed a heretofore unknown set of contacts between the former national security adviser and “people linked” to the White House and Congress. Flynn himself alerted special counsel investigators to these potential attempts to tamper with him, the filings declare

The Trump administration declared California’s high-speed rail project dead yesterday, even while state officials extolled its beautiful plumage. Noting that the state had abandoned the full San Francisco to Los Angeles vision which prompted federal funding for the project, the White House pulled back nearly a billion dollars — and said it would come after

A government of hardliners seemingly reveals an opening for moderates. Will that create a window for world-shifting negotiations? Barack Obama thought so when that described Iran, but will Iran think so after reading the Washington Post’s curious inside look at a supposedly pitched battle within the White House? Because it certainly reads as if that’s

Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to do an impeachment but might stage a pretend one. She floats the idea of “inherent contempt” without saying she wants to use it. So what is Pelosi saying? CNN’s Manu Raju doesn’t seem certain either after his exchange with the top House Democrat on efforts to force the Trump administration to

More to the point, William Barr can’t stop Robert Mueller from testifying, and the Attorney General knows it. Barr tells the Wall Street Journal that he’s not even involved in negotiations for Mueller’s testimony to congressional committees. He just wants to get back to his normal job: Attorney General William Barr denied he is standing in

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Vladimir Putin today in Sochi — and that should make Nicolas Maduro very, very nervous. The fate of Venezuela will occupy a significant part of those discussions, as the Maduro regime teeters in the face of a populist uprising led by legislative leader Juan Guaidó. It’s hardly the

I know that everyone is going to see the headline of the latest Zogby Analytics poll of President Trump’s approval ratings and think “outlier.” And perhaps that will prove to be the case, but their numbers still definitely have a lot of good news for the Trump administration and their background hints that this could

Does this mean that Jerrold Nadler has decided not to take the bait? CNBC’s John Harwood asked the House Judiciary chair whether Donald Trump wants to “goad Congress into impeachment,” or whether the president’s just too impulsive to strategize to that extent. Nadler doesn’t quite take Harwood’s bait either, but says that the House is

Yesterday, President Trump invited this very comparison on Twitter, so I’m going to make it. “Can you imagine what would happen if I ever said what she said, and says?” he wrote. Democrat Rep. Tlaib is being slammed for her horrible and highly insensitive statement on the Holocaust. She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel

One could headline this New York Times article thusly: War planners gotta warplan. Administration sources told Eric Schmitt and Julian Barnes that the acting Secretary of Defense has updated the US plans to deal with military provocations by Iran or its proxies, reportedly after prompting by “hard-liners.” Even the Times reporters note that the scale doesn’t really look

To no one’s great surprise, Rod Rosenstein isn’t a big fan of James Comey’s new careers — either as a “partisan pundit” or an expert on soul-eating. In a speech last night in Baltimore, the recently departed deputy Attorney General told civic leaders that the former FBI director is sore because he deserved to be

It’s still on, at least for now — and at least for public consumption. As negotiations continue on trade with China, Beijing announced a new set of tariffs that will take effect when escalated US tariffs do the same. If this is a game of chicken, though, one side has a much bigger car: The

This headline from the Washington Post comes directly from the Someone Left the Irony On Department, with apologies to Mad Magazine. The most hilarious part of the headline is that none of the editors there saw the flaw in the argument. Let’s see if our readers can: I screencapped it in case the Post suddenly

This past weekend, Joe Biden appeared to stick his foot in his mouth when he told supporters at a campaign stop about a conversation he allegedly had with British Prime Minister Theresa May. If his account of their chat is accurate, the PM may have inadvertently stuck her nose into our presidential elections and put

Fact check: True, but likely not a comprehensive list. For some strange reason, CNN held an election-style town hall featuring former FBI director James Comey last night, with questions covering the gamut of the now-closed Russiagate investigation. This format is used by the broadcaster almost exclusively for presidential candidates these days.  Does CNN believe that

How surprising would it be to see Jerrold Nadler ripped at the New York Times for becoming the villain in the Mueller wars? So much so that columnist David Brooks felt the need for explaining just how unpopular he expects his latest column to be: This is an unpopular view at the Times clearly but

As promised, goods from China will cost Americans a lot more money starting today — and selling goods in China even tougher. A last-ditch effort to avoid the imposition of tariffs failed late yesterday, resulting in a broadened trade war between two of the top global economies. At least at the moment, there don’t seem