Pope Francis’s relationship with the conservative wing of the American Catholic church was already on shaky ground when reports surfaced this week of his plan to evict one of his most prominent critics from a Vatican-subsidized apartment in Rome. Cardinal Raymond Burke, who led dioceses in St. Louis and Wisconsin before moving to Rome, is […]
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The roots of the Republican crackup this fall that paralyzed the House, fueled the unexpected rise of Speaker Mike Johnson and now threatens to force a government shutdown crisis early next year lie in a fateful choice the party made more than a decade ago that has come back to haunt its leaders. In early […]
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Speaker Mike Johnson struggled to defend himself at a recent private party meeting on Capitol Hill when some House Republicans confronted their new leader asking for any evidence that he was leading them in a new direction or taking hits on their behalf. “Just Google my name and you’ll see,” was Mr. Johnson’s reply. He […]
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American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law are the righteous causes of our times, and the nation’s legal profession is obligated to support them. But with the acquiescence of the larger conservative legal movement, these pillars of our system of governance are increasingly in peril. The dangers will only grow should Donald Trump […]
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The Supreme Court refused on Thursday to revive a Florida law that banned children from “adult live performances” such as drag shows. The court’s brief order gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications, and a First Amendment challenge to the law will continue in the lower courts. Justices Clarence […]
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A bloc of far-right House Republicans torpedoed a major spending bill pushed by their own leaders on Wednesday, protesting Speaker Mike Johnson’s move a day earlier to rely on Democrats to push through legislation staving off a government shutdown. The mutiny in the House, which forced the chamber to adjourn abruptly for the Thanksgiving holiday […]
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Just weeks into his new job, Speaker Mike Johnson has already learned a valuable, if painful, lesson: Being an uncompromising conservative hard-liner is much easier from the backbenches of the House than it is from the leadership suites. The stopgap spending bill he pushed through the House on Tuesday with overwhelming support from Democrats over […]
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An employee of the hospital where Ms. Daniels was being treated urged Ms. Stelly to call Mr. Benton and Mr. Johnson for help, advising that they were “Christians, both of them, and they are so against abortion clinics,” Ms. Stelly recalled in an interview. The lawyers soon drove to the hospital to see her, and […]
Read More An employee of the hospital where Ms. Daniels was being treated urged Ms. Stelly to call Mr. Benton and Mr. Johnson for help, advising that they were “Christians, both of them, and they are so against abortion clinics,” Ms. Stelly recalled in an interview. The lawyers soon drove to the hospital to see her, and […]
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Donald J. Trump is showing surprising resilience on the abortion issue, appearing less vulnerable than fellow Republicans despite his key role in shaping the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. An Ohio referendum last Tuesday guaranteeing abortion access and similar election results have bolstered Democrats’ hopes that they could repeat those successes in 2024. […]
Read More Donald J. Trump is showing surprising resilience on the abortion issue, appearing less vulnerable than fellow Republicans despite his key role in shaping the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. An Ohio referendum last Tuesday guaranteeing abortion access and similar election results have bolstered Democrats’ hopes that they could repeat those successes in 2024. […]
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Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, one of the loudest American voices against Pope Francis within his own church, recently responded to a Vatican investigation into his leadership and talk of his potential resignation with a public letter stating, “I cannot resign as Bishop of Tyler because that would be me abandoning the flock.” He […]
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At odds with one another on spending, House Republicans abruptly scrapped their legislative work on Thursday and left Washington with little progress toward funding the government and no plan to avert a shutdown next week. Speaker Mike Johnson, just two weeks into the job, had yet to give any public indication about his plan to […]
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Adam Liptak contributed reporting. The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle […]
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Vivek Ramaswamy does not shy away from his Indian heritage. It is present in his name (his first name rhymes with “cake,” he explains) and his Hindu faith. He has explained on the campaign trail that he is vegetarian because of his family’s tradition. And during a Republican debate in August that was a breakout […]
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For months, some of the Republican Party’s top donors have dreamed of a dramatic late entrance into the presidential race by Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, envisioning an improbable scenario in which the fleece-vested former financier rips control of the party away from Donald J. Trump. On Tuesday night, those fantasies were dealt a dose […]
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U.S. democracy is clearly in crisis. It’s entirely possible that in less than two years dissenters will face the power of a government with an authoritarian bent; if that sounds to you like hyperbole, you aren’t paying attention. But is America beyond the political realm also in crisis? Are the very foundations of society eroding? […]
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Over the past half-century, one of the books that most electrified conservatives was Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind.” Bloom, a political philosopher, warned of the dangers posed by moral relativism and nihilism, of “accepting everything and denying reason’s power.” The book, published in 1987, sold more than a million copies and spent […]
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There are two moments from Mike Johnson’s early days as speaker of the House that almost perfectly encapsulate the broken way that so many Republican evangelicals approach politics. The first occurred just after the House elected Johnson. ABC’s Rachel Scott started to ask Johnson about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But before she […]
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It’s easy to become inured to the extremism that has suffused the Republican Party in recent years. Donald Trump, the dominating front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination, spends days in court, in a judicial system he regularly disparages, charged with a long list of offenses and facing several trials. In the House, Republicans recently chose […]
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It’s been a long time since the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians occupied such a central place in Western political attention and debate — certainly not since the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2009, arguably not since the second intifada ended in 2005. In that fairly distant past, the politics of Israel-Palestine broke down […]
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Election Day is a year away, but key allies of former President Donald J. Trump are already thinking about staffing a potential administration, including by filling White House and agency legal positions with aggressive and ideologically like-minded lawyers. Trump allies are preparing to populate a new administration with a different breed of lawyer — a […]
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In the moments before he was to face a vote on becoming speaker of the House this week, Representative Mike Johnson posted a photograph on social media of the inscription carved into marble atop the chamber’s rostrum: “In God We Trust.” His colleagues celebrated his candidacy by circulating an image of him on bended knee […]
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Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, working to maintain his second-place status in the Republican primary, said Friday that as president he would “reorient” U.S. foreign policy to give clear priority to China while downplaying national security risks posed by conflicts such as Russia’s war on Ukraine. In a speech laying out his approach, Mr. DeSantis […]
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Republicans didn’t have a speaker for 40 years until Newt Gingrich finally reclaimed the gavel for the party in 1995 after decades in the wilderness. But hanging on to it has proved extremely challenging for Republicans in the years since — a potential object lesson for incoming Speaker Mike Johnson. From Newt Gingrich to John […]
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The three-week battle to choose a House speaker may be over, yet the fallout for the United States and its reputation as a sound government and a beacon of democracy will be long-lasting and profound. The Republicans in the House unanimously voted for a man who made it his mission to try to overturn the […]
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Speaker Mike Johnson, the little-known congressman from Louisiana who won the gavel on Wednesday, is deeply conservative on both fiscal and social issues, reflecting the G.O.P.’s sharp lurch to the right. Mr. Johnson, a lawyer, also played a leading role in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, helping to push […]
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Luke Broadwater contributed reporting. The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle […]
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We are used to thinking of our ideological divide as cleaving conservatives from liberals. I think the Republican Party’s collapse into incoherence reflects the fact that much of the modern right is reactionary, not conservative. This is what connects figures as disparate as Jordan Peterson and J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel and Donald Trump. These […]
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In the end, Republican hard-liners got their man. He wasn’t the person whom the most extreme element of House Republicans really wanted — that was Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the godfather of the far right in the House who ultimately was too toxic to ascend to the top post and fell short. But the […]
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It was clear from the start that House Republicans would struggle to govern this year given their deep ideological divisions, narrow majority and myriad personal feuds and grudges. But even the most pessimistic of predictions could not have captured the remarkable, drawn-out Republican self-own now raging on Capitol Hill. In merrily decapitating their third speaker […]
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