WASHINGTON — It was only a few weeks ago that the top Senate Republican was hinting that his chamber would make short work of impeachment. But this week, Senator Mitch McConnell sat his colleagues down over lunch in the Capitol and warned them to prepare for an extended impeachment trial of President Trump. According to […]
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WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday failed to overturn President Trump’s veto of a resolution that would have terminated the national emergency he declared at the southwestern border. The defeat allows Mr. Trump to continue to defy Congress and divert federal funds to the construction of a border wall, his signature campaign promise. The override […]
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I am not one of the nervous Nellies who believe that Democratic candidates shouldn’t dream big and pitch big, transformational ideas. I’m not one of those who believe that Democrats should negotiate with themselves, in advance of submitting a proposal, so that they present only incremental half measures in the name of practicality and perceived […]
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Conventional wisdom holds that the Republican Party suffered a big political penalty for impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998. But that’s not quite right. Republicans paid a modest, short-term penalty, while the costs to the Democratic Party appear to have been larger and longer-lasting. This history has obvious relevance today. As in the 1990s, the economy […]
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Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device: Via Apple Podcasts | Via RadioPublic | Via Stitcher The White House response to the impeachment inquiry has been to dismiss the allegations, deflect the facts and discredit the Democrats. It’s the same approach that Republicans used in 2018 to push through the Supreme Court […]
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President Richard M. Nixon was running low on bipartisan allies. Indictments were piling. Impeachment was coming. Mr. Nixon was not a crook, he insisted, though that 18-and-a-half-minute gap in the Watergate tapes did make the town wonder. But from the Senate floor in April 1974, Joseph R. Biden Jr., a 31-year-old freshman Democrat, addressed his […]
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WASHINGTON — President Trump is once again pursuing a national security strategy at odds with the official position of his government, ordering a pullback of American forces just inside the Syrian border. It is a move that his own senior advisers have warned would risk new chaos throughout the region. He is demonstrating that in […]
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Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | RadioPublic | Stitcher As evidence mounts that Donald Trump abused the power of the presidency, could members of his own party start to turn against him? This week on “The Argument,” the columnists debate Republicans’ response to […]
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Now that we’ve worked our way through the dramatic first phase of the impeachment drama, it’s time to start thinking hard about what the ultimate political fallout of all this might be. Of course it’s impossible to predict the twists and turns that await us, especially with so unstable a protagonist. But I’m going to […]
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PHOENIX — Mark Kelly, a former astronaut turned Democratic Senate candidate, checked off the policy issues he expects to focus on as he campaigns to unseat the Republican Senator Martha McSally here: energy, health care, education and a strong national defense, in that order. Conspicuously missing from that list: gun control, an issue that has […]
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WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell’s comment this week that the Senate would be forced to “take up” articles of impeachment from the House had the capital in a swirl, bracing for a full-blown Senate trial of President Trump. But as things now stand, any trial would likely be swift, ending in dismissal of the accusations. […]
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“I think the American people are going to have a chance to decide this at the ballot box in November 2020,” Beto O’Rourke said in March, neatly expressing prevailing Democratic opinion on the question of impeaching President Trump, “and perhaps that’s the best way for us to resolve these outstanding questions.” This is no longer […]
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Republicans have had their differences these past few years. Most have supported President Trump; a few have not. Some of the president’s supporters have been enthusiastic; many have not. Some of the reluctant Trump supporters have expressed reservations at certain times; many have not. But with the revelations of the last week, and the launch […]
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To the Republican members of the United States Senate: You have always told us that you believe in the distinctive greatness of the United States of America. “America is different,” as Senator Marco Rubio has said. Ben Sasse likes to say that “America is an idea” — a commitment to universal dignity over brute power. […]
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It is the clarity of Donald Trump’s transgression that is most remarkable. By his own admission, and backed up by the quasi-transcript released by the White House and by the whistle-blower complaint, he abused the power of the presidency to enlist a foreign government to help him politically. People don’t have to wade through the […]
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The Senate on Thursday confirmed Eugene Scalia, a longtime lawyer representing corporations, to be labor secretary. Mr. Scalia, a son of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, was chosen by President Trump in July,days after Mr. Trump’s first labor secretary, R. Alexander Acosta, announced that he would resign. The Senate confirmed Mr. Scalia by […]
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Congress on Thursday gave final approval to a short-term spending bill that would punt the threat of a government shutdown to just before Thanksgiving, giving lawmakers an additional two months to resolve their differences over paying for President Trump’s policies. The measure ensures that all federal agencies and departments, as well as a number of […]
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Here’s what you need to know: ImageJoseph Maguire after testifying during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last year.CreditAl Drago/Getty Images The acting intelligence chief will appear before the House Intelligence Committee. Joseph Maguire, the intelligence chief at the center of the fight over a whistle-blower complaint about President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, will make a […]
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It is truly wondrous and arresting to see the Constitution in action, to see its ultimate tool — impeachment — employed, to see this mechanism that the drafters of the document must have considered an 11th-hour alternative be called up out of necessity. It is not a thing to be celebrated. It is a thing […]
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Here’s what you need to know: ImagePresident Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times The Trump-Zelensky call shows the president encouraging a Biden investigation. President Trump released a reconstruction on Wednesday of a July 25 call he had with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, in which he encouraged his […]
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