Category: Politics

Trump Changed. The Intelligence Didn’t.

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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 of Iranian nuclear intentions has stayed remarkably consistent. Now, Trump has gone all in. His decision this week to drop more than a dozen of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal on key Iranian nuclear facilities was based,…

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The New Danger in Trump’s Washington: Honoring Federal Employees

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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 in customer service, and top-notch stewardship of taxpayer money. The ceremony, however, was unusual in one respect: Hardly any of the honorees took the stage to accept their awards. Instead, they stayed at their seats, away from the cameras. Public…

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Photos: A Military Parade in D.C.

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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 drizzling Washington, D.C. The event, a celebration of the Army’s 250th anniversary, also fell on President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday—and took place against a backdrop of fierce immigration crackdowns and nationwide protests against the administration. While millions demonstrated across the…

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Are Liberals to Blame for the New McCarthyism?

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The Trump administration is carrying out a brazen crackdown on academic freedom: deporting students for writing op-eds, withholding funds from colleges that defy his control, and justifying it all as a response to anti-Semitism. Who is to blame for this? According to one popular theory on the left, the answer is liberals who have consistently supported free speech and opposed Donald Trump. The logic of this diagnosis has a certain superficial appeal. Many of President Trump’s authoritarian moves have been justified in terms of arguments that originated on the center-left.…

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Sometimes a Parade Is Just a Parade

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President Donald Trump has gotten his way and will oversee a military parade in Washington, D.C., this summer on the Army’s birthday, which also happens to be his own. Plans call for nearly 7,000 troops to march through the streets as 50 helicopters buzz overhead and tanks chew up the pavement. One option has the president presiding from a viewing stand on Constitution Avenue as the Army’s parachute team lands to present him with an American flag. The prospect of all this martial pomp, scheduled for June 14, has elicited…

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The GOP’s New Medicaid Denialism

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Congressional Republicans claim to have achieved something truly miraculous. Their One Big Beautiful Bill Act, they argue, would cut nearly $ 800 billion from Medicaid spending over 10 years without causing any Americans to lose health care—or, at least, without making anyone who loses health care worse off. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, by imposing Medicaid work requirements, the bill would eventually increase the uninsured population by at least 8.6 million. At first, Republican officials tried to defend this outcome on the grounds that it would affect only lazy…

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