A few days before the Senate was due to vote on whether to proceed with the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump on charges of inciting insurrection, an article in The Washington Post’s opinion pages boldly proclaimed that “Trumpism is American fascism.” Equating the...
Let’s start with a little good news. It appears that a new US president will be inaugurated on January 20, and, when the Congress convenes for the first time after that, there will be a thin Democratic majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Given what has transpired in...
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin is proposing a new constitution. Meanwhile, in Washington, US President Donald Trump is disposing of the old constitution. The first is a demonstration of power meant to showcase the unity of the Russian political system behind a strong leader. The...
It’s a cliché in Westerns. The bad guys ride into town only to be met by a sheriff who stands tall. “I am the law,” the sheriff says, “and you boys better move on.” This line appears in King Vidor’s 1930 film, "Billy the Kid." But the speaker, sheriff William...
In a remarkable confluence of events, the right-wing national leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel find themselves, at least for a brief historical moment, besieged by criticism and stark political dangers. In the US, President Donald Trump is facing a more serious...
It is a hallmark of right-wing populists to make a preposterous policy and then be forced — by opposition, by circumstance, by the laws of physics — to retreat. Three very recent examples involve US President Donald Trump, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Turkish President Recep Tayyip...
William H. McRaven, a retired Navy SEAL admiral and former head of US Special Operations Command who, under President Barack Obama, led the raid to assassinate Osama bin Laden, has unsurprisingly endorsed the initiative to impeach Donald Trump. He wants readers of his op-ed in The New York Times...
Donald Trump loves to talk about ending the endless US wars that he inherited as president. He tweets about it. He endlessly criticizes his predecessors for their martial mistakes. But like the old saw about the weather, Trump talks a whole lot about endless wars but doesn’t do...
Donald Trump’s public appeal to China last week to help with uncovering dirt on the Biden family was both a brazen flouting of the law and (it pains me to say) an astute political tactic. “China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad...
After months of grappling with the issue of whether US President Donald Trump should be impeached, on September 24, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi formally launched an impeachment inquiry. Pelosi had stayed clear of impeachment talks even after earlier this March Special Counsel Robert Mueller...
A month after he won the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump gave a speech in North Carolina where he declared that “we will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.” It’s still commonplace for foreign policy...
If an entire system is heading toward a cliff, there’s no better brake than bureaucracy. The two events that put 2016 in the history books — alongside other pivotal years such as 2001, 1989 and 1945 — were, of course, the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump...
Donald Trump is a response to what many perceive as the tyranny of normal. I'm not a fan of Adam Gopnick. I mildly appreciated his Paris to the Moon, but gave up late in the book when he started gushing with enthusiasm about Paris's fashion industry, a subject that tends to bore me. If...
