Category: Politics

A Trump Cabinet Pick Gets a Rare GOP Grilling

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Republican senators have confirmed a onetime Bernie Sanders supporter to lead the nation’s intelligence community and a member of America’s most famous Democratic family as its health secretary. This morning, however, they saved some of their sharpest questions for a Cabinet nominee who, until last month, served alongside them as a GOP member of Congress. President Donald Trump’s pick for labor secretary, former Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, knew she’d face a skeptical Republican audience during her Senate confirmation hearing. Last year, she supported a major pro-union bill known as…

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Growing Up Murdoch

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Updated at 11:35 a.m. ET on February 15, 2025. James Murdoch was seated at a conference table in a Manhattan law office in March 2024 when he realized he was witnessing the final dissolution of his family. Three months earlier, his father, Rupert, had told James and his sisters that he was rewriting the family trust to grant his elder son, Lachlan, full control of the Murdoch empire after his death, rather than splitting it equally among his four oldest children. The amendment was part of a secret plan that…

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Trump Says the Corrupt Part Out Loud

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Amid the flurry of changes to the face of American government—the president may or may not have the right to unilaterally eliminate agencies; engaging in insurrection has been decriminalized while prosecuting it has become grounds for termination; wars of conquest are now on the table—you could be forgiven for missing the news that bribery is basically legal now, as long as you support, or are, Donald Trump. Consider the Trump administration’s actions yesterday alone: The president officially pardoned Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who served eight years in prison…

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What the Democrats’ Musk Whisperer Thinks Now

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Representative Ro Khanna has known Elon Musk for more than a decade, so he thought he should raise some concerns about the billionaire’s assault on the federal government where he would be sure to see them. Posting on the platform Musk owns, the California Democrat said yesterday that Musk should be hauled before Congress to explain himself. “Musk’s attacks on our institutions are unconstitutional,” Khanna wrote. It took Musk just 16 minutes to reply: “Don’t be a dick.” The two continued their conversation over text message, Khanna told me. In…

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Purging the Government Could Backfire Spectacularly

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The U.S. federal government manages a larger portfolio of risks than any other institution in the history of the world. In just the past few weeks, wildfires raged across Southern California, a commercial flight crashed over the Potomac, a powerful Chinese-developed AI model launched to great fanfare, the nuclear-weapons Doomsday Clock reached its closest point ever to midnight, a new strain of avian flu continued its spread across the globe, and interest rates on long-term government bonds surged—a sign that investors are worried about America’s fiscal future. The responsibility of…

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The Day Trump Became Un-President

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“We’re so back,” one reporter whispered to another. All of the chairs in the White House briefing room were filled, and reporters and photographers were crammed into every available nook and cranny. I was standing in the back, squeezed in between a window and a none-too-pleased Secret Service agent. The sight was reminiscent of the COVID briefings of 2020: President Donald Trump gripping the sides of the lectern in the White House briefing room, pursing his lips as he looked out at the journalists yelling and jockeying for his attention.…

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