The Trump presidency has entered a new and disturbing phase. As if an impeachment inquiry wasn't enough, Trump keeps digging himself a deeper hole.

Abandoning allies as he cedes northern Syria to Turkey. Planning to host the Group of 7 meeting at his golf resort. Stonewalling the impeachment inquiry. Insulting the speaker of the House.

And ...Read more

If it's true that "a riot," as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "is the language of the unheard," then a lot of people around the world are becoming fluent in that particular dialect.

Hong Kong, with its epic showdown between street demonstrators and police over demands for more democracy, has grabbed most of the world's attention. ...Read more

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him."

-- George Orwell, "1984"

The third week of October 2019 will go down in history as the moment when Donald Trump made his final, most essential demand on the ...Read more

There've been so many things wrong with Mick Mulvaney's series of explanations for why his office delayed nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, it's hard to know where to begin.

In summary, though, the acting White House chief of staff did two things no public official should ever, ever do. He denied saying what he was recorded saying...Read more

Anyone who has ever owned a dog knows the experience can have its, um, drawbacks. Dogs of our acquaintance have been known to shred rolls of toilet paper, gobble food off counters, bark furiously at squirrels and letter carriers, barf on rugs, whine to be walked no matter what the weather and require expensive, time-consuming visits to the ...Read more

In 2008, days after political newcomer Mick Mulvaney won a seat in the South Carolina state Senate, he told a local newspaper that many voters had suggested that he run for the U.S. House seat held by Democrat John Spratt instead. "I couldn't stop laughing," Mulvaney said. "I'm perfectly happy being in the Senate."

But within a year, Mulvaney ...Read more

Many Republicans just can't seem to grasp why African Americans are so committed to the Democratic Party. If anyone really wants to understand this seemingly shatterproof bond, they need look no further than Rep. Elijah Cummings.

At one of the most crucial periods of our time, when the future of an American president is on the line, a black man...Read more

For several years I've argued that the Middle Eastern power most likely to be able to impose semi-stability on the region is Iran. The United States has labored at this task for decades without success. Now President Donald Trump's bungling in northern Syria and his public expression of a desire to leave the Middle East completely have destroyed...Read more

A rare, underappreciated drama broke out in last week's Democratic presidential debate in Ohio: The candidates had a serious argument over foreign policy.

Asked about President Trump's decision to let Turkey seize northern Syria, the Democrats unleashed a predictable flood of condemnation: "outrageous," "shameful," "a betrayal of American ...Read more

President Donald Trump is wrong. Kurds have not been natural enemies of Turks, fighting for hundreds of years. In fact, Kurdish lords were allied with the Ottoman rulers against Iran in the early 16th century, and that military and cultural connection stayed strong for centuries. Said Nursi, the most influential Muslim modernist thinker of ...Read more

We don't know what was running through the mind of a Fort Worth, Texas, police officer when he shot through a woman's window while she sat playing video games with an 8-year-old child, killing her. Aaron Y. Dean, who has since resigned from the police force and been charged with murder, isn't saying much about what led him to fire.

What we do ...Read more

Next year's G-7 summit is good news for South Florida, great news for Doral -- and horrendous news for a nation in which the president of the United States, no matter who holds the office, is ethically beholden to maintain a bright line of separation between his business and the business of the country.

But little has been traditional, or ...Read more

You look at the picture and just can't turn away. Doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican; if you're a woman, it's simply amazing.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is staring down President Trump in the White House, their first meeting since she launched impeachment proceedings against him. The most powerful woman in the United States ...Read more

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has confounded his critics by reaching a last-minute agreement with the European Union on the terms of the United Kingdom's departure from the EU. The agreement mostly tracks an earlier Brexit deal negotiated with the EU by former Prime Minister Theresa May, with new language on the contentious issue of how ...Read more

Two of President Donald Trump's presumably loyal appointees painted an alarming picture Thursday of how Trump and lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani turned up the pressure on Ukraine to ensure its help with two politically oriented investigations. No matter how the White House tries to spin the news, it's seeming increasingly clear that the president ...Read more

This was a remarkably challenging week for President Donald Trump's ever-fearful, fawning, but increasingly fed-up Republican congressional claque. An eruption of stunning Trump Team admissions and disasters has just propelled them toward inevitable impeachment decisions they'd hoped to duck.

Now they know that's where this week is taking them....Read more

A day will come when this long national migraine is over.

Or, if you like: A day will come when the national kidney stone that has brutally ravaged America's psychic innards will have passed. Does that go too far?

In any case, at some point, President Trump will be gone.

We got this reminder in less physiological terms from Pete Buttigieg, ...Read more