Politics Politics Politics

Graham Platner is out… but is he? Last night in Maine, he released an 11-minute video that savaged the Democratic establishment and the progressive establishment. He blamed everybody but himself for why he’s suspending his campaign, saying all of his resources were taken away from him. The people who didn’t fight for him — Ro Khanna, Bernie Sanders, Hasan Piker — all wound up in the blast radius....

European leaders are talking about a rupture with America — a de-Americanization of the continent driven by Donald Trump’s demands that NATO members spend more on defense, his transactional view of alliances, and even his threats to annex Greenland. I don’t blame them for being frustrated. Their citizens hate the guy, and they still have to deal with him. Trump is never going to be a weepy interna...

We talk all the time about how America is a very young country, and that’s true when you compare us to Europe, Africa, and Asia, where countries are built around lineages, ethnic majorities, and religions. But not America. We’re a melting pot. We’re risk takers. It’s woven into the fabric of the United States that no matter where you are right now, tomorrow can be better than today was, and your l...

The Supreme Court wrapped up its term with three major decisions, and one surprise that turned out not to be a surprise after all. NPR briefly published a report that suggested Justice Samuel Alito was retiring, which would have handed Donald Trump another Supreme Court appointment, but that story was pulled, leaving us to wonder when that announcement might finally land. The actual rulings were s...

What should have been a bipartisan housing bill touting affordability has instead become a fight over the Save America Act. Representative Anna Paulina Luna is leading a House conservative blockade, freezing routine procedural votes until the Senate takes up the Trump-backed elections bill. The problem is that the Senate has no path forward. The bill doesn’t have the votes, and the Senate isn’t ab...

All eyes are on New York. The congressional primaries happen tonight, and in a city this Democratic, many of these races will effectively decide who heads to Congress. What I’m watching is a battle between Hakeem Jeffries and Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani is flexing. We’re going to see exactly how much of a kingmaker he is in New York City. Jeffries is backing incumbents like Dan Goldman and Adriano Esp...

Republicans are now arguing that their aggressive mid-decade redistricting campaign could preserve their House majority even in an environment where history is usually not on their side. According to a new memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee, newly redrawn maps have reduced the number of competitive districts and forced Democrats to compete in more Republican-leaning territor...

The memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran was apparently signed over the weekend, but the text remains a mystery to most. Donald Trump says he’ll release it and even read it himself so nobody can misunderstand it. If it’s such good news, though, why not put it out right now? Israel isn’t a fan of it, nor are those who believe we’ve abandoned the Iranian people by making a...

The situation with Iran continues to feel like Groundhog Day, except this time, believe it or not, there may actually be movement. Earlier this week, I mentioned that I had heard from people in the know that the United States military was coiled to strike Iran and was looking for either provocation or justification to resume major military activity. That appeared to happen when Iran shot down an A...

California is inviting questions about its elections because of a problem that is entirely solvable: the state takes too long to count ballots. This LA mayoral race is just the latest example. Let’s look at what happened. On election night, Karen Bass was at 30 percent of the vote. Spencer Pratt was at 28 percent. Nithya Raman was around 20 percent. Every model from respected vote-modeling people...

A new Graham Platner story dropped today, and it answers one question while opening about a dozen others. The reporting centers on an ex-girlfriend from his time in Washington who describes behavior that she says included being yanked out of cabs, shaken by the shoulders, blocked from leaving rooms, and subjected to bizarre conversations about violence and power. The Platner campaign does not appe...

The Trump administration is backing away from a planned $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund after a revolt from Republicans on Capitol Hill. The fund, tied to a settlement and intended to be administered by the Justice Department, had drawn criticism as a potential slush fund that could benefit Trump allies prosecuted under the Biden administration. White House officials told GOP leaders they wer...

We currently have a reported 60-day framework on the table between the United States and Iran that would temporarily extend the current ceasefire dynamics and create space for renewed nuclear negotiations. To be clear, it’s not a breakthrough deal. This feels like a pressure valve built to prevent escalation from snapping back while both sides decide whether they can actually land something bigger...

Texas Republicans are about to answer a question that has been hanging over the party since 2024: is partial loyalty to Trump enough anymore, or do you either become fully absorbed into MAGA or get pushed out entirely? Because both John Cornyn and Chip Roy represent different versions of Republicanism that tried, in different ways, to coexist with Trump without completely surrendering to him. And...

The Democratic Party finally released its 2024 autopsy and somehow managed to make the whole situation look even worse. Not because the conclusions were devastating. Honestly, the conclusions barely mattered. The thing itself apparently reads like garbage. Wrong facts, shallow sourcing, no real accountability structure, no serious attempt to interrogate the deeper failures of the campaign. Ken Mar...

Kentucky’s Republican primary out of its 4th District has turned into the most expensive House primary in American history, and it doesn’t take a detective to tell where the money went. No, not into field operations. Not into policy. Not even into persuasion. It went into some of the most deranged political advertisements I have ever seen. Thirty-two million dollars dumped into a district where ba...

The obsession with a hypothetical JD Vance versus Marco Rubio showdown for 2028 says a lot more about the Republican fascination with palace intrigue than it does about actual political reality. Trump himself clearly enjoys stirring the pot, whether he’s privately asking allies which one they prefer or turning a public event into a literal applause contest. To be fair, both men have handled the aw...

Trump’s trip to China is happening at the exact moment his most persistent political vulnerability is becoming impossible to ignore: the economy. Inflation has ticked up to 3.8% year over year, gas prices are rising again, and the White House is leaning on a familiar argument — to the Biden administration, at least — that the pressure is temporary. At the same time, instability in the Strait of Ho...

The Trump administration is looking for a new ICE director, which at this point might qualify as one of the least appealing jobs in American politics. Todd Lyons is heading for the private sector at the end of the month, and whoever replaces him is walking straight into a political minefield. ICE is under pressure from every direction at once, criticism over aggressive raids, backlash tied to the...

Graham Plattner’s campaign is running into the kind of problem that feels very 2026, even if the source material is more than a decade old. His Reddit history, which might have once been shrugged off as niche internet noise, now looks like a liability with real teeth. The difference is not just that the posts exist, it’s how easily they can be repackaged. With AI tools, those old comments are no l...

Janet Mills’ Senate bid in Maine is effectively over — not that it really got off the ground in the first place. She was supposed to be the top-tier recruit, the popular governor-turned-candidate Chuck Schumer believed could finally take down Susan Collins in a state that otherwise leans blue. Instead, she spent the entire race trailing Graham Plattner who, on paper, should’ve been far easier to b...

Florida’s new congressional map is out, and the more I look at it, the more it feels like Republicans are trying to push right up against the edge of what is politically and legally possible. The goal is obvious: take a delegation that used to split closer to 20 to 8 and force it into a 24 to 4 map. The way they get there is not subtle. It is classic packing and cracking, cramming Democrats into a...

An assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner turned what is usually a choreographed, slightly self-congratulatory night into something much more serious, very quickly. I had been at the Washington Hilton earlier, and what stood out in retrospect was how ordinary the setup felt. Security was clearly tight around the ballroom itself, but the rest of the hotel operated like a no...

Republicans are running out of places to redraw the map, and Florida is quickly becoming their last real shot to claw back seats before the midterms. The pressure is now squarely on Ron DeSantis to deliver a map that could net a handful of gains, but even inside the party there is real disagreement about whether that is possible. The risk is not just that the effort fails, but that it backfires, t...

Congress is in the middle of a rare moment where members are actually being forced out, and it is happening on both sides at once. Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales are already gone, both stepping down before they could be expelled, and now the pressure is shifting to others who are caught up in their own scandals. It is not subtle. This is a full blown house cleaning, and it is moving faster than C...