It’s Not Just Iran. Trump Is Flailing on Multiple Fronts.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. You’ve heard the joke: The White House is going to start talking about the Epstein files to distract from how badly the Iran war is going. Except that this reverse “Wag the dog” is based on bizarre truth: First Lady Melania Trump did bring the disgraced financier up, unprompted, late last week in an effort to distance herself from the scandal (in a move that, predictably, only shifted it back into the spotlight…

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Jay Jones Hints at Just What Kind of Attorney General He Might Be

It is considered impolite to say, “We told you so.” However, after the debate Thursday between Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and his Democrat challenger, Jay Jones, the temptation to is daunting. Last week, in the wake of the “October Surprise” release of Jones’ text messages from 2022 where he fantasized about shooting then-Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates Todd Gilbert and about Gilbert’s two children dying in his wife’s arms, we published a look into the substantial punitive power that a Virginia attorney general has—power that Jones could…

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Sometimes a Parade Is Just a Parade

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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Just Don’t Call Her Unqualified

Donald Trump has been widely ridiculed for staffing his administration with unqualified partisan hacks recruited from Fox News. This is not quite fair. Yesterday, Trump named Jeanine Pirro as the new interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. Pirro is a partisan hack recruited from Fox News, but she’s a qualified one. Millions of Americans know Pirro as a prolific conservative-television pundit, most recently as a member of Fox News’s afternoon talk show, The Five. Even compared with other right-wing TV personalities, Pirro’s record of unwavering Trump support, including at his…

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Government shutdown is averted just after deadline as Congress rejects Trump’s debt limit demands

WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing a government shutdown deadline, the Senate rushed through final passage early Saturday of a bipartisan plan that would temporarily fund federal operations and disaster aid, dropping President-elect Donald Trump’s demands for a debt limit increase into the new year. House Speaker Mike Johnson had insisted Congress would “meet our obligations” and not allow federal operations to shutter ahead of the Christmas holiday season. But the day’s outcome was uncertain after Trump doubled down on his insistence that a debt ceiling increase be included in any deal…

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