At 1:08 a.m Eastern daylight time, President Donald Trump proclaimed on social media that a ceasefire between Iran and Israel was “NOW IN EFFECT,” potentially ending an intense 12 days of violence and allowing all sides to step back from a wider, more destructive regional war. “PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE…
The unincorporated town of Saxapahaw, North Carolina, is a 300-mile drive from Washington, D.C. It’s about twice as far from Connecticut, the state that Chris Murphy represents in the United States Senate. So what was he doing hosting a town hall there, of all places, one evening this past April?…
By his own account, the military operation that Donald Trump mounted against Iran over the weekend was an unqualified success. Saturday’s covert raid, in which U.S. bombers dropped a series of massive, tailor-made bombs onto fortified Iranian sites, left Tehran’s nuclear capability “completely and totally obliterated,” the president proclaimed in…
Whenever Donald Trump has contemplated confrontation with Iran, his decisions have been guided less by the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community than by his own calculation of risk and reward. At times he has pulled the trigger. At times he has backed down. All the while, the U.S. assessment…
By carrying out air strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites last night, Donald Trump showed the fundamental error of American political ornithology: There have never been Iran hawks and Iran doves. There have been only doves. Every prior U.S. president, including Trump himself, has refrained from attacking Iranian territory, even…
Well, he did it. He actually did it. President Donald Trump had insisted for months that he wanted the ultimate deal with Iran, one that would put a definitive end to the country’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon. As late as Thursday, he’d suggested that Iran’s leaders would have…
President Donald Trump has done what he swore he would not do: involve the United States in a war in the Middle East. His supporters will tie themselves in knots (as Vice President J. D. Vance did last week) trying to jam the square peg of Trump’s promises into the…
In some ways, last night’s Sammie awards—also known as the Oscars for federal employees—proceeded just as they do every year. In a packed auditorium a few blocks from the White House, government luminaries handed out medals to some of the nation’s most talented civil servants, recognizing groundbreaking research, major improvements…
News of the tragedy unfolded in the group chat: Two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses had been shot in their homes overnight by a man allegedly impersonating a police officer. One of those lawmakers was the former House Speaker Melissa Hortman, someone everyone in the group chat knew. Allison…
The MAGA movement usually displays remarkable unity in attacking the left. But Israel’s military assault on Iran has splintered President Donald Trump’s coalition, as rival factions fight over the true meaning of an “America First” foreign policy. Right-wing figures have descended into vicious debate over whether the White House should…
America’s most famous escalator is a bit of a tourist trap these days. Exactly a decade ago, the gold-rimmed conveyor carried Donald Trump into the basement of his eponymous New York tower and down into the bowels of American politics. His seconds-long descent has lingered in the national memory more…
Yesterday, the American public witnessed one of the most extravagant and unusual displays of patriotic pageantry in recent memory: an Army festival and military parade in the nation’s capital. Nearly 7,000 soldiers, 28 Abrams tanks, 50 helicopters, 34 horses, two mules, and a single dog marched through a cloudy and…
Early this morning, a gunman apparently impersonating a police officer targeted two Democratic Minnesota state lawmakers in their homes. First, he shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, who were seriously wounded. Law-enforcement officials believe the same gunman then shot Melissa Hortman, who served as Minnesota’s speaker of the…
This is the week that Gavin Newsom stopped thinking so much. The governor of California has found himself in a hot swirl of events: Federal authorities are patrolling streets, ICE agents are raiding Home Depots, and protests (most of them peaceful) are spreading across the state. President Donald Trump ordered…
When I caught Donald Trump by phone this morning, the president wanted to make one thing clear: “America First” means whatever he says it does. “Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the…
Today—250 years since the Continental Army officially formed to fight for the independence of the American colonies against the British monarchy—marks a milestone in President Donald Trump’s effort to politicize the U.S. military. Though they are rare, military parades have happened before in Washington, D.C. For the most part, these…
To pull off the most ambitious and sophisticated attack in the long history of antagonism between the Middle East’s preeminent powers, covert Israeli agents set up a drone base deep inside Iranian territory. They recruited disaffected Iranians to aid their cause. They smuggled weapons systems across enemy lines. These are…
As tanks roll through Washington today to mark the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday—and the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump—Europe is commemorating a different anniversary, not with combat vehicles but with a passenger liner moored near a riverbank. Dignitaries from across Europe are gathering in Schengen, a riparian village in…
As Israeli jets streaked over the Middle East last evening, President Donald Trump’s key aides were making preparations for their next round of nuclear talks with Iran, hoping to cement their boss’s reputation as the world’s top dealmaker. For weeks, Trump had been warning Iran to accept the agreement that…
Kamala Harris’s campaign thought it knew exactly how to beat Donald Trump. With just weeks left before Election Day, it warned over and over that he was “unhinged, unstable, and unchecked.” But instead of amplifying that message, Future Forward—the $900 million super PAC that the campaign was counting on for…