Political Op-Eds

Julian Zelizer writes that the nonstop coverage of Trump's racist tweets is exactly what the President has hoped for, because regardless of how the stories evaluate him or his supporters, the message itself keeps circulating in the public square.

What can we expect July 24 when Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, testifies in back-to-back hearings before the House Judiciary and House Intelligence Committees?

Shock is not the right word when I heard the crowd at a Trump rally chanting "send her back." There has been so much shock recently that it is hard to know what to call it anymore.

Donald Trump's attack on four freshman Democratic congresswomen fits into a long tradition of people in power trying to define who is a real American—and an equally long tradition of resistance from those whom the powerful are trying to define out of the country.

Puerto Rican women warned us. They have been alerting us for years that there is a crisis of violence against women on the island. After Hurricane Maria, the crisis became an emergency. Nonprofits that provide services to survivors of domestic violence reported a surge in requests for help.

William D. Hartung writes that the Senate must pass Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee's House bill to restore Congress' constitutional authority and prevent the executive branch from launching unnecessary "wars of choice," like a potential one with Iran

David Axelrod says Joe Biden is likely to face criticism by two of his most aggressive attackers and several feisty progressives who are desperate for a big moment to keep their bids alive, but it gives him a chance to improve on his weak performance in the first round of debates

Dear State Representative Robert Foster and former Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr.,

This year's report misconstrues well-established facts, cherry-picks data, relies on economic theories widely rejected by mainstream economists and entirely omits critical subjects. I correct the record in the Joint Economic Committee Democratic response to the report, which is mandated by law, and was released Monday.

"I am the law and order candidate," GOP nominee Donald Trump proclaimed in 2016, days after a gunman killed five Dallas police officers on July 7, 2016. Many in law enforcement, from patrol officers on up to police executives, were gratified to hear that. And they should have been. For whatever else American presidents are and do, they are required by Section 3 of Article II of the Constitution to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Based on this, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton described the president as the nation's "chief magistrate." And in July 2016, candidate Trump clearly acknowledged this most basic duty.

"Send her back" perfectly encapsulates President Trump, his ambitions and his supporters' zeal for punishing and otherizing his detractors, SE Cupp writes. It covers all the features of the Trump doctrine: an appeal to basest instincts, personal animus, racism, xenophobia and revenge.

Since President Donald Trump has taken office, 24 individuals have died in ICE custody, according to federal data analyzed by NBC News.

Sent away from his family as a youngster, the President knows well the fear of being rejected and cast out, writes Michael D'Antonio. Hence his willingness to use bullying racism toward four congresswomen, draw supporters closer and cow lawmakers into mute passivity. It's a powerful tactic that should alarm voters, he writes.

President Donald Trump may have finally met his match: The Squad.

President Trump is used to inventing crises. He declared a fake national emergency to seize funds that Congress refused to give him to build a wall on the border with Mexico. He declared another phony national emergency over Iran in order to sell Saudi Arabia the weapons that Congress had blocked. Meanwhile, on climate change -- a real and urgent threat to the entire planet -- Trump just calls it a "hoax."

"Go back to your country" and "love it or leave it" -- those were taunts thrown at me 28 years ago in high school. When the President of the United States tweeted something similar about members of Congress on Sunday, it brought back some painful memories but also some hopeful ones, that our communities can resist the forces of racial exclusion and demagoguery.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a proclamation officially declaring July 13 "Nathan Bedford Forrest Day," thus honoring the former Confederate general, slave trader and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Jeffrey Epstein dodged justice the first time he faced criminal charges for trafficking and molesting children, exploiting a combination of wealth, influence, vile attack-the-victim tactics and an incompetent prosecutor, then-US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and current US Department of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta. This time, however, Epstein is likely cooked. He faces charges likely to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life. The famously aggressive and independent Southern District of New York (where I worked for eight-plus years) has indicted him on charges of running a sex trafficking ring in which he allegedly sexually abused dozens of girls. Neither SDNY nor a public spotlight will permit a hush-hush sweetheart deal like Epstein got in Florida. The big question is, as the SDNY takes down Epstein, who else will go with him?

Joe Biden and his wife Jill just released their joint tax returns for the last three years. They show the couple have earned nearly $16 million since Biden left the vice presidency.

Sometimes the losers in presidential politics still have an immense impact on the way that we conduct our democracy.

For the second time in two weeks, President Donald Trump has claimed that the United States is a leader in reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. He said this first at the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, and again Monday at the White House in remarks about his environmental record. It's worth understanding this fatuous claim, as the Trump administration is likely to repeat it.

Peter Bergen writes that Jared Kushner's Middle East peace plan has no chance of success -- though the collapse of any real agreement has been a work in progress since the beginning of President Donald Trump's administration.

Decentralizing the operations of the federal government by spreading its officials more widely around the country has always been a good idea in principle. But the way the Trump administration is trying to do it is badly flawed.

The decision to cancel a retaliatory strike on Iran came with an almost immediate disclosure of what had happened behind closed doors in the White House. Commentators said avoiding an escalation of the crisis was the right call.

In the last few days, President Donald Trump flip-flopped on his order to launch a military strike on Iran and then suddenly delayed his much-hyped mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

In his recent CNN.com article, Aaron David Miller claims to know the "real" goals of the Trump Middle East peace plan. This is strange, because Miller has not seen the plan or been involved with its creation. I have.

After the United Nations released an independent report this week that concluded Saudi officials killed and dismembered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump reacted in a way true to his character. He ignored it.

The President said an attack on Iran would not have been a "proportionate" response to Iran bringing down an unarmed US drone. Other good reasons, writes Peter Bergen, include the lack of buy-in from Congress and allies. Trump's decision to pull back is one of the better moments of his presidency.

Biden is not making it easy for black voters, including those black leaders with whom he has built up a reservoir of goodwill over the years, writes Dorothy Brown. As he tries to win the Democratic nomination in 2020, he should be careful--not cocky, not defiant--about rhetoric that offends people of color: the black vote may be his to lose.

Less popular than head lice, root canals and Nickelback. The ultimate fixer upper. The swamp.

The shooting down of a US military drone by Iran on Thursday emphasizes that the conflict between the United States and Iran is deepening.

Like many watching the 2020 presidential race this closely this early, I don't have a favorite yet. My goal this primary season is to help make sure that the women running for President are taken as seriously as the men. So Elizabeth Warren's recent rise in polls is exciting, mostly because of what it can mean about the electorate.

President Trump will try to light a spark under his 2020 campaign as he kicks off his re-election bid Tuesday night in Florida. Coming after reports of terrible internal polling on key battleground states, the President will officially begin the long and grueling process of doing whatever it takes to keep the office for four more years.

Aaron David Miller writes that Donald Trump's peace plan on the Israel-Palestine conflict has proven so far to be pretty much a fraught affair. The administration's agenda is clearly focused on not just killing the two state solution, but to make it harder for its successors to embrace.

Donald Trump's campaign message -- that voters should be thinking about themselves and their families when they vote -- could help close the gap between how people view him as an overall president and how they view his handling of the economy, Scott Jennings says.

Historian Timothy Snyder writes that Liz Cheney is wrong in her understanding of the history of concentration camps and the Holocaust, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is wrong in her application of "concentration camps" to present-day detention centers.

Let's hope Congress has the will and time to make it clear to the Trump campaign that working with a foreign government to help you get elected is never an option, Larry Noble says.

A week ago, Joe Biden seemed to be sailing to the Democratic nomination. His nearly flawless launch had allayed doubts about the durability of his support, his ability to raise enough money and even his desire to enter the fray.

Sam Donaldson writes that Jim Acosta's new book "Enemy of the People" shows how we have never seen a president like Donald J. Trump, whose disdain, even contempt for many members of the press is almost daily on display. Jim Acosta and the other hardworking men and women who cover the White House will continue the effort to do their job.

Recent attacks on shipping including oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and missile attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels directed at targets inside Saudi Arabia are ratcheting up tensions in the Middle East, writes Peter Bergen.

Swamps flourish in darkness. The metaphorical swamp threatening to engulf our social and political freedoms uses money in lieu of water for its sustenance. So it is no surprise that the "Creatures of the Beltway Lagoon," as I like to refer to them, have created dark money, which are funds that can be used by nonprofits to influence politics without any need to disclose the identities of the individual donors.

Joe Biden leads the Democratic race for president, despite a series of headlines that might have done in candidates in years past. He's taken flak for the way Anita Hill was treated by his committee during the confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas, and his support for the 1994 crime bill that's seen as a driver of mass incarceration. He also reversed his longtime support for the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits most uses of federal funds for abortion, after facing criticism from members of his own party. Yet he's still on top.

With his abandonment of the moderate view on abortion, he's ceding not only fertile voting territory but the thing that set him apart from a field of far-left progressives who don't represent a majority of Americans, writes SE Cupp. What's the point in that?

On Saturday, President Donald Trump praised Franklin Graham, a right-wing evangelical minister with a strong anti-gay rights platform, for declaring June 2 as a day "to pray for the President." Trump first thanked Graham on Twitter and then retweeted nearly a dozen other tweets touting this special day that Graham created to protect Trump from his "enemies."

Pressure is mounting among Democrats to impeach, and Nancy Pelosi planting the image of the 45th President behind bars after his term ends might mollify a portion of Donald Trump's critics. But not everyone is buying it.

Commentators have been sounding the alarm almost on a daily basis, warning that President Donald Trump's words harm national security and weaken our standing in the world. They are largely wrong. In many cases, foreign leaders and citizens of the world alike have likely "priced in" Trump's erratic behavior and sidelined his pronouncements. If so, the result is a neutered presidency and an America that is safer because Trump is often not taken seriously.

Swanee Hunt writes that the Nevada legislature is making history as the first to become majority female. This could inspire more women to run for office and create a political seismic shift that could positively impact policy.

Samantha Vinograd writes that President Donald Trump's warmongering may have fatal consequences -- particularly since his national security team seems ill-equipped to prioritize and develop coherent strategies.

Although Americans might suspect the national security adviser's office in the White House is a high-tech command post, like something out of Hollywood, the modest space has few bells and whistles. It is not bereft of personal touches, however. Above his desk, President Donald Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, has a gold-framed portrait of President George H.W. Bush and his foreign policy team, which included then-national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.

David A. Andelman says that with growing tensions between Presidents Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron, it is highly unlikely their meeting Thursday will produce any sort of tangible policy results.

In the latest in the slew of controversial and restrictive immigration provisions put in place by the Trump administration, the US State Department announced this week that nonimmigrant visa forms had been updated to require "most" visa applicants to provide information about "their social media handles along with other information" going back five years. In a diffident statement to The New York Times, the State Department played down the potential impact of the new requirement, saying: "We already request certain contact information, travel history, family member information, and previous addresses from all visa applicants." The new screening requirements, officials added, were put in place to "protect US citizens."

How many times can the White House slap Congress in the mouth before Congress hits back? The list got longer this week when the White House instructed former Trump administration officials Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson to defy a House Judiciary Committee subpoena for documents relating to their work in the White House. Hicks and Donaldson now join other subpoena recipients -- Attorney General William Barr, former White House counsel Don McGahn, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin -- in telling Congress to pound sand.

No matter how the high court rules, there is now even more evidence that the citizenship question was a Republican attempt at a partisan power grab, writes Raul Reyes.

His vacant interview with Axios lays bare this senior advisor's real qualifications: He married a Trump, and his father-in-law likes him, writes Jill Filipovic. The urgent takeaway: 2020 is an opportunity to regain control of the White House from unqualified sycophants and loyal family members of Donald Trump.

Arab and Muslim leaders have just concluded a series of emergency summits in Mecca to discuss recent attacks on Saudi and Emirati territory which US officials have linked to Iran and its proxies.

Kate Maltby says that Donald Trump invited his four adult children to the UK probably to feel like his family is on the same level as Britain's royals. With Trump, there doesn't seem to be the traditional American skepticism of monarchy.

In the past 30 years, the Chinese government has effectively disappeared Tank Man and the Tiananmen massacre of student protesters from their national memory, writes John Avlon. The government censors the internet. Mention of it on social media is deemed subversive. There's no better example of George Orwell's warning from 1984 that "who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

On Saturday, President Donald Trump praised Franklin Graham, a right-wing evangelical minister with a strong anti-gay rights platform, for declaring June 2 as a day "to pray for the President." Trump first thanked Graham on Twitter and then retweeted nearly a dozen other tweets touting this special day that Graham created to protect Trump from his "enemies."

Impeachment defense lawyer Ross Garber says the House Speaker is setting an arbitrary bar for impeachment, ignoring what the Constitution says and potentially establishing a dangerous precedent

I've had post-traumatic stress.

Surprising almost no one, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that should a Supreme Court vacancy occur during this presidential campaign, he'd allow the Senate to confirm President Trump's choice.

Reading between the lines of his carefully chosen comments, Robert Mueller appeared to suggest that if he had not been shackled by Department of Justice regulations, the special counsel would have indicted the President, Frida Ghitis says -- issuing a sharp blow against Donald Trump, and a call to arms to Congress and the American people.

After sending out a series of Twitter threads explaining why Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses and why Attorney General William Barr covered up the findings of Robert Mueller's report, Rep. Justin Amash has emerged as the singular voice of genuine GOP opposition to the President. At least some of his constituents approve, and Amash could inspire other Republicans -- or help Democrats who are pushing for impeachment, Julian Zelizer says.

Many attributes distinguish special counsel Robert Mueller from the current crop of high-profile government figures in Washington, the most notable being his total shunning of the spotlight. Indeed, in a town where sage politicians are all too happy to go in front of cameras and provide us with their wisdom, Mueller appears altogether uninterested in fame. For the good of the nation, that must change.

The Department of Justice's superseding indictment of Julian Assange should be seen for what it is: legally idiotic, politically shrewd, and downright scary for its implications.

There's a new clique of countries working together, and President Trump's behavior almost guarantees that we're not being invited to join them. His tariff temper tantrums and caustic insults have cast the United States as an unreliable partner among our allies. And by condoning illegal activities and human rights violations from allies and rivals alike, the President is supporting a global realignment of relationships that does not advance strategic US interests.

Finally, a deeply conservative member of Congress, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, has put the US Constitution before partisan loyalty to President Donald Trump. The question is -- will this inspire other Republicans to do the same, or will they continue to defend Trump against any claims of wrongdoing arising from Robert Mueller's investigation? If social media is any indication, it's likely they will do the latter -- at least for now.

Some years ago, with the Confederate flag in vogue on state license tags, civic boosters in Alabama's high-tech mecca of Huntsville came up with a more dignified vanity-plate statement -- "First to the Moon," in honor of the Saturn V rocket invented there. (True, the inventors were German, Hitler's missile engineers brought to the United States after the war, but their celebrity leader Wernher von Braun liked to say, "You can see I speak with an accent -- that's because I come from Ahlahbahma.")

The power of Congress to investigate and obtain documents to carry out its legislative powers and oversight of the executive branch is well established. The Supreme Court has long recognized that Congress' authority to obtain information necessary to conduct oversight and investigations is necessarily broad. In 1975, Chief Justice Warren Burger, reaffirmed that "'the scope of [Congress's] power of inquiry . . . is as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the Constitution'" and that, ancillary to Congress's oversight and investigative authority, the "[i]ssuance of subpoenas . . . has long been held to be a legitimate use by Congress of its power to investigate."

The anti-abortion movement raises a question about capital punishment that must be answered, says Jay Parini. If state lawmakers rolling out abortion laws across the United States are serious about the "right to life," would they not simultaneously ban capital punishment? Those who do not see the connection between preserving the lives of fetuses and preserving the lives of adults need to take a clear-eyed look at their consciences.

On Thursday, Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, became the newest addition to the already overcrowded field of Democratic candidates vying for the chance to take back the White House from Donald Trump in 2020.

We have seen four major precedents that Donald Trump is setting into place that could have enormous long-term consequences on the institution, Julian Zelizer says.

If we believe human life is infinitely valuable, then how a pregnancy begins, even through rape or incest, is irrelevant. A preborn human life is at stake, writes Carrie Sheffield. The Alabama law allows exceptions for when the mother's life is at stak--but what it doesn not allow are abortions motivated by inconvenience, sexual carelessness, financial calculations or worse.

The Federal Reserve recently reported that about half of Americans have virtually no wealth at all, with four in 10 unable to afford a $400 emergency expense. That means that if their car breaks down or their child gets sick, they have to charge those expenses to a credit card.

Assuming that he's telling the truth -- and with this President this may be a leap -- Donald Trump made at least $434 million last year before expenses. His newly-released financial disclosure form shows much of this money came in the form of rent payments, asset sales, and golf course operations -- with numerous other income streams coming from as far away as the Philippines and Turkey.

On Wednesday, Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill into law that would ban nearly all abortion care in my home state of Alabama. Not surprisingly, a media frenzy ensued. #Alabamaabortionban trended on Twitter, an airplane circled the state capitol proclaiming "Abortion is OK" and reporters called me nonstop for comment.

Corporate efforts to gut unions--like a recent attempt by Delta to persuade workers not to unionize--has led to their decline, fueling income inequality, stalled wage growth, and economic mobility, writes Steven Greenhouse. But unions bring those with high school degree into the middle class, raise up communities, schools, and increase wages--for nonunion workers too.

The photos, obtained by CNN, could have been taken at a refugee camp in the Third World. Children sleep in the dirt, some covered only by Mylar blankets. A woman and child sit on rocks, huddled against a building. People mill about outside makeshift tents.

Joe Grogan writes that no one should be faced with paying a medical bill that they were unaware of or were not given a choice about. This is why the President has called on Congress to end surprise medical billing.

John Bolton, President Trump's national security advisor, seemingly hasn't met a war he doesn't love. His enthusiasm for the muscular use of the military seems out of place in the administration of a President who repeatedly has questioned and sought to end America's wars in the Middle East, writes Peter Bergen.

Elie Honig explains why he joined the more than 400 Justice Department officials in signing a letter stating that they would have charged Trump with obstruction.

Not so long ago, the state of Ohio could expect a quadrennial invasion: campaign staffers by the thousands, TV ads and robocalls by the millions would descend as Democrats and Republicans furiously competed for the Buckeye State's 18 electoral votes.

At the White House on Thursday, President Donald Trump announced his principles to solve a huge problem facing our healthcare system: surprise medical bills. Present at the event were victims of outrageously large, surprise bills and their family members.

The Trump administration will start piloting a Rapid DNA testing program at the US-Mexico border in an attempt to "identify and prosecute individuals posing as families," two Department of Homeland Security officials told CNN. The pilot will reportedly run for two to three days to "assess the usefulness of this technology in an investigative process," according to the acting deputy director of ICE.

Joe Lockhart writes that the new White House policy that cracks down on who gets permanent press passes sets a dangerous precedent that opens the door to denying White House press credentials to media outlets that criticize the administration.

The chief justice is facing a choice between letting the court support a lawless Republican administration or trying to achieve his goal of keeping the court from appearing too partisan to most Americans.

Chase Bank fired off a tweet last week staging a hypothetical conversation between one of its customers and her bank account. The customer asks why her account balance is low, and the bank tells her not to go out for food or coffee when she can make it at home instead, or to spend money on a cab when she can just walk. The customer pretends not to listen. "I guess we'll never know," she says, brushing off her low balance and the bank's "advice" on how to manage her money.

Our system of checks and balances is out of balance. Over the past several months, President Donald Trump and the White House have taken a blunt -- but thus far effective -- tack in response to efforts by Congress to exercise its core constitutional oversight authority: You'll get nothing, and you'll like it.

As critics scoop up the facts reported by The New York Times regarding Donald Trump's tax returns in the '80s and '90s, showing the President's monumental debt, the most profound reaction is almost certainly occurring inside Trump's psyche, Michael D'Antonio says.

Julian Zelizer writes that House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler is surely right to declare that we're in the midst of a constitutional crisis. Unless one side blinks, it will be up to the courts, or perhaps the 2020 election, to resolve it.

Boohoo, writes Jill Filipovic. It's hard to be moved by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's objection to suggestions that she profited excessively from the Trump inaugural and was forced out of her job as a result. She voluntarily worked for a notoriously disloyal and self-dealing family, and turned a blind eye for personal gain, she writes.

Steve Cohen turned up to Thursday's House Judiciary Committee hearing intent on mocking absent Attorney General William Barr by enjoying a helping of Colonel Sanders' finest. The stunt got attention -- but Barr's absence from the hearing should instead have been treated as a serious issue, writes Douglas Heye.

Donald Trump is musing about how two years of his presidency have been stolen (he actually wrote "stollen") and sharing a big supporter's Twitter post about how he deserves "reparations" because he's been subject to a "coup" that limited his success.

On Wednesday, the House Ways & Means committee holds its first-ever hearing on paid family and medical leave, a topic that will touch every working person and family in the United States.