The Beltway & Beyond

Facing twin public-health and economic emergencies, racial justice, climate change, and other urgent and compounding crises, President Biden is working with little, if any, political honeymoon. Since January 20, he has signed more than three dozen executive orders and directives aimed at addressing those crises. Public Strategies’ Howard Schweitzer, Patrick Martin, and Kaitlyn Martin grade the new...

Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president on Wednesday amidst fear and uncertainty and facing a combination of overlapping and compounding crises. President Biden entered the White House hours after the historic inauguration and signed his first executive orders targeting Trump policies on immigration, climate change, racial equity, and coronavirus. Can Biden make the executive branch function...

On January 20 – two weeks after a violent mob stormed the Capitol and one week after Trump became the first American president to be impeached twice, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th U.S. President, surrounded by an extraordinary show of security. Even amid a global pandemic and economic downturn, Biden’s most pressing challenge when he takes office may be calming a rattled nation and assuri...

January 6 will be remembered as one of the darkest days in U.S. history, when the unthinkable happened: an assault on the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob that drove Congress from its chambers as it was seeking to count Electoral College votes. The day before, a fractured Republican Party lost both Senate runoff races in Georgia, thereby handing the Senate majority to the Democrats, and serving as a...

The State of Illinois and the City of Chicago are going through periods of profound political change. Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, both first-time officeholders, are dealing with a number of political and fiscal challenges related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Michael Madigan, the longest-serving state legislative leader in American history, faces an unprecedented challenge to his...

‘Twas the Night Before the Election -by Howard Schweitzer 'Twas the night before the election when all through the land, Not a Trumpster was mailing, not even by hand; Democratic ballots were sent by the thousands with care, In hopes that Joe Biden soon would be there; The Democrats assumed the elections was theirs, With visions of Chuck and Nancy passing mores CARES; But out in the country, Repub...

As members of the electoral college are convening in state capitals throughout the country to formally vote for the nation’s next president and vice president, Public Strategies' Howard Schweitzer, Mark Alderman, Patrick Martin, and Kaitlyn Martin share their views on how President-elect Biden’s administration is taking shape now that he has announced top White House staffing picks and unveiled ke...

In the 2020 elections, a polarized nation yielded a polarized outcome. On the one hand, Biden won more votes than any U.S. presidential candidate in history. On the other, millions of Americans who rejected Trump also voted for the Republicans who backed his policies on down-ballot races. Is the inescapable reality of the election results then that Trumpism remains a powerful current in American p...

The grinding 2020 presidential election that rendered millions of Americans exhausted and frustrated represented a big test for our democracy, a test the country would eventually pass. The election system appears to have worked in the face of many challenges – including a pandemic and the resulting unprecedented shift to widespread mail-in voting, as well as a threat from foreign interference from...

The results of the 2020 presidential election, in which each candidate received more than 70 million votes, show that the nation remains deeply divided. As Trump campaign’s legal challenges to the results continue, Biden’s team forges ahead with transition planning, and the pandemic rages on, Public Strategies’ Howard Schweitzer and Mark Alderman discuss the current state of the election and ponde...

The polls have closed and the voters have cast their ballots, but the nation has yet to find out who the winner of the 2020 presidential election is. As several states work to finish counting the ballots, with key battleground states too close to call, Public Strategies’ Howard Schweitzer, Mark Alderman, and Kaitlyn Martin discuss and analyze the current state of the presidential election.

The 2020 election is still fluid. There are millions of votes left to be counted in the presidential race, including in key battleground states, and the outstanding votes will ultimately decide the presidency. Public Strategies’ bi-partisan team, including Howard Schweitzer, Mark Alderman, Alex Campau, Patrick Martin, and Kaitlyn Martin, discuss the current state of the presidential election and a...

One of the most divisive and intensely personal presidential campaigns in contemporary history is coming to a close tomorrow. Public Strategies’ Howard Schweitzer and Mark Alderman discuss the two presidential candidates’ starkly different political identities and make their final predictions for the election that is likely to be a referendum on the president. Will it be Mr. Trump, who has largely...

Five days before the 2020 elections, Public Strategies Chairman Mark Alderman is joined by Patrick Martin - the group’s Midwest Director, Alex Campau - Health Policy Director, and Kaitlyn Martin - Government Relations Adviser, to discuss the current state of the presidential race and what a potential Biden-Harris administration would look like in Washington. CEO Howard Schweitzer moderates the dis...

Public Strategies CEO Howard Schweitzer is joined by Alex Campau, the group’s Health Policy Director, and Kaitlyn Martin, Government Relations Adviser, to discuss the current state of the 2020 presidential race and what a potential second Trump administration would look like in Washington, primarily from a health-policy perspective. CPS Chairman Mark Alderman moderates the discussion

Public Strategies CEO Howard Schweitzer is joined by Alex Campau, the group’s Health Policy Director, and Kaitlyn Martin, Government Relations Adviser, to discuss the current state of the 2020 presidential race and what a potential second Trump administration would look like in Washington, primarily from a health-policy perspective. CPS Chairman Mark Alderman moderates the discussion

17 days before the 2020 election, Public Strategies’ Howard Schweitzer, Mark Alderman, and Darren Collier are joined by Congresswoman Robin Kelly, who has served as the U.S. Representative from Illinois’s 2nd Congressional district since 2013. They discuss the current state of the presidential race and, regardless of who becomes President-elect on November 3, what it will take to move the fiercely...

Howard, Mark and guest Kaitlyn Martin engage in a spirited debate about the consequences of the vice presidential debate, the direction of the country in a post-Trump world and what’s to become of the Senate races.

Washington insiders and public policy strategists Mark Alderman and Howard Schweitzer are joined by friend Jerry Kilgore to debate the impact of Trump’s illness on Washington, speculation about a new stimulus bill and how conservatives have received a strong return on their 'Trump investment’.

Yesterday, the day after a divided Washington came together to honor Justice Ginsberg, President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. A law clerk to and mentee of the late Justice Scalia, Barrett is described as an "originalist" and a "textualist" and the polar opposite of the liberal icon in judicial philosophy. Trump, who calls himself “president of law and order,” says...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court Justice and a liberal icon who dedicated her life to defying and dismantling institutionalized gender discrimination, died on Friday at the age of 87. This being one of the most polarized moments in our history, on the eve of an election in which the stakes were already extremely high, it was inevitable that the politics of replacing her would surge to the fo...

On the heels of Labor Day, when traditionally the most intense campaigning begins, Joe Biden continues to hold a lead over President Trump. A brace of new polls suggest a majority of voters don’t like the President or approve of the job he is doing. Is the race then Biden’s to lose? Will Trump’s inflammatory campaign tactics be sufficient to alter the underlying dynamics of the election? The futur...

On today’s episode of Beltway Briefing podcast, Public Strategies’ Howard Schweitzer, Mark Alderman, and Jim Schultz are joined by Congressman Eric Swalwell, the U.S. Representative in California’s 15th Congressional district and a U.S. presidential candidate in the 2020 Democratic primaries. Less than 70 days before the Election Day, they discuss the just-completed Democratic and Republican Natio...

More than 170,000 people in the U.S. have died from coronavirus. Beyond the terrible death toll, the pandemic has wrecked the economy and interrupted everyday life. As a result, while Americans may be more politically polarized than ever, if there is one thing people on all sides of the political spectrum agree on, it is that COVID-19 has fundamentally disrupted the 2020 presidential election. On...

On today’s episode of Beltway Briefing podcast, Public Strategies’ Howard Schweitzer, Mark Alderman, and Jim Schultz are joined by Congressman Dan Meuser, the U.S. Representative in Pennsylvania's 9th Congressional district, who previously served as the Secretary of Revenue in Governor Tom Corbett’s cabinet. 79 days before the 2020 Election Day, they discuss the current state of the presidential r...