ArcaMax

As a candidate for president, Donald Trump constantly complained about the "weaponization" of the Justice Department, arguing that its prosecution of him was politically motivated. But as president, Trump has weaponized the entire federal government, to investigate and punish those he considers the "enemy from within" -- whether it is current ...Read more

President Barack Obama finally did last week what so many of us have been waiting for him -- and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- to do. He stood up and spoke out about the threat to our constitutional democracy posed by Donald Trump.

There is a very nice tradition that former presidents don't step up to criticize their successors, ...Read more

What do you do when the economy is going to hell, 401(k)s are going down the toilet and we're bracing for higher prices on nearly everything?

If you're an average American, you worry.

If you're Donald Trump, you go golfing, as he did twice last weekend, even as people took to the streets in every major city in the country to protest his ...Read more

She is a self-styled Islamophobe, a proud white nationalist and a conspiracy theorist. She called 9/11 an "inside job." She has been banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (pre-Musk), PayPal, Uber and Lyft, among others, for hate speech and posting misinformation. She has been banned from events and had her press credentials suspended for ...Read more

According to Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, "The White House, in coordination with the Department of Justice, has dismissed more than 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies in the past few weeks."

One of those dismissed was Adam Schleifer, a career prosecutor in Los Angeles with an outstanding reputation as a fair and effective ...Read more

The White House press secretary accused him of being an "anti-Trump hater," a "propagandist in the mainstream media," and of trying to sell a Signal "hoax." The president called him a "sleazebag."

President Donald Trump was reportedly furious, not at his own team but at the press, calling the investigation a witch hunt and The Atlantic, owned...Read more

The news came via email, without further explanation, from Ian Simon, the head of the Office of Long COVID Research and Practice. The email, obtained by Politico, says this:

"We are writing to let you know that the Office of Long COVID Research and Practice will be closing as part of the administration's reorganization coming this week. We ...Read more

There is an obvious answer to what California Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing. He's running for president. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. He is nothing if not ambitious. He's termed out as governor and in two years will be looking for a place to land.

But he's doing it all wrong, and it's offensive to the very base he is going to ...Read more

"For more than two centuries," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote Tuesday in an extraordinary statement, "it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."

"Not appropriate," huh? That's really going to scare them....Read more

They call it "Cancer Alley." It's an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that connects Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The name stems from the fact that the area's residents have a 95% greater chance of developing cancer than the average American. Some 200 petrochemical and fossil fuel operations are located in the area. About 25% of the ...Read more

I probably don't agree with anything Mahmoud Khalil has to say about Israel. He's the Columbia University student activist who has been arrested and threatened with deportation in the name of fighting antisemitism.

Trampling on free speech rights is no way to fight antisemitism. Neither is cutting off funding for much needed medical research....Read more

Should the government be able to tell a private university what to teach and how to teach it?

Is there a libertarian left in the house?

This is the letter that former and current Trump lawyer (officially the Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney) Ed Martin sent to the dean of Georgetown Law School:

"It has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown...Read more

There they were, dressed in hot pink, waving signs, banging on a cane.

If that is what counts as resistance, we are all in trouble.

The fact is that by showing up, the Democrats gave the president an audience he doesn't deserve. Would they all have shown up at a Donald Trump campaign rally? That's what it was. He doesn't deserve the respect ...Read more

The president and JD turned a meeting that was supposed to make nice in the White House into a segment for Fox News as they openly shouted at Ukraine's leader for not being thankful enough for America's aid and Donald Trump's leadership. After Vance accused him of being "disrespectful" by being insufficiently thankful, Trump joined in, telling...Read more

Good for Janet Mills, the governor of Maine. On Friday, at the White House, she did something that too many politicians have been afraid to do.

She stood up to President Donald Trump and stood for the rule of law.

The issue was Trump's threat to cut off federal funding for public education unless states comply with a recent executive order ...Read more

"But isn't there really a lot of waste, abuse and fraud in all the government spending?" my Uber driver asked.

I don't bring up these topics with strangers. Too dangerous. But my Uber driver raised it, wanting to know what I thought of Elon Musk and Donald Trump's latest doings in D.C. I thought I'd avoid the topic by just telling him I was a...Read more

"You should have never started it," President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, accusing Ukrainian leaders of having started the war with Russia. "You could have made a deal." He followed up the next day on social media, branding Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's leader, as a "dictator without elections" who had "done a terrible job" in office.

Even...Read more

You made it. There are any number of reasons you should not have been confirmed, but Republicans were afraid to buck Trump. They voted in lockstep (except polio survivor Mitch McConnell, who Trump then ridiculed), and now you are the most powerful man in the world when it comes to health care. There are many people -- especially sick people --...Read more

Maybe.

That's the best constitutional scholars can say right now.

But I'm putting my money on the federal courts.

So far, it is the federal courts that have stood in the way of our presidents' (that's Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who's kidding whom) efforts to strip Congress of its power over appropriations and rewrite the Constitution. ...Read more

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order barring transgender girls and women from playing as girls and women at federally funded schools, colleges and universities. Nearly all schools receive federal funds.

A day later, the NCAA, the governing association for college sports in this country, followed suit, barring ...Read more