Trump’s Real Secretary of State
How the president’s friend and golfing partner Steve Witkoff got one of the hardest jobs on the planet
Politics
The Cynical Republican Plan to Cut Medicaid
Work requirements set up a thicket of paperwork that leads eligible Medicaid recipients to lose their insurance. That’s the point.
America Is the Land of Opportunity—For White South Africans
Trump has frozen refugee admissions and cut off resettlement funding, but he has made an exception for white South Africans, who he says are victims of racial discrimination.
The Terrible Optics of ICE Enforcement Are Fueling a Trump Immigration Backlash
The president was elected, in part, on a pledge to crack down on immigration. But he may be overinterpreting his mandate.
China Called Trump’s Bluff
There is a lesson here for anyone Trump threatens.
Retirement Is the New Resistance
The Democrats waging war on their gerontocracy
Just Don’t Call Her Unqualified
Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., is a real prosecutor. She’s also a real MAGA partisan.
Trump Heads Back to Where He Started
The president’s visit to Saudi Arabia comes almost exactly eight years after his surreal first foray abroad.
The Partisan Mind Virus
Dismissing evidence that a politician might be unfit for office is as much a mistake for the right as it was for the left.
We’re All Living in a Carl Hiaasen Novel
In the mangroves with Florida’s poet of excess and grift