Outside the Beltway

The efforts by Speaker Pelosi and President Trump to leverage their institutional powers raise interesting questions.

President Trump responded to the suggestion that the State of the Union be rescheduled by revoking military transportation for a Congressional trip to visit troops in Afghanistan.

The Speaker is well within her rights to make Trump’s invitation conditional on ending the shutdown. But let’s not pretend we can’t keep him safe.

Don’t expect the Congress (i.e., the Senate) to pull us out of this shutdown mess.

Nancy Pelosi is apparently close to a deal with dissident Democrats that will keep her in power until at least 2022.

The verdict of last month’s elections was clear, but Republicans still don’t seem to get it.

President Trump’s first choice to replace John Kelly as Chief of Staff turned the job down, leading one to wonder why anyone would want the job.

Honoring the 41st President cast a poor light on the 45th.

He says he won’t announce anything until after the start of 2019, but Joe Biden is sure sounding like a guy who’s running for President.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says he’s not running for President in 2020.

In news replete with irony, it’s being reported that Ivanka Trump used a private email account to communicate about government business.

For Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter, Jr. being indicted didn’t stop them from being re-elected.

The emergence of a silly talking point.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper’s name may be unfamiliar, but he’s looking to change that.

Add yet another name to the potential Democratic campaign field in 2020.

Rather than cauterizing an open wound, she’s fanned the fuels of a fire.

Math rules.

We should take Congressional officers out of the line of succession.

Regardless of who wins control of the Senate in November, the person who will stand third in the line of succession will either be over, or very close to, eighty years old. That doesn’t make sense.

Indicted New York Congressman Chris Collins will run for re-election despite being indictment for securities fraud.

Ohio billionaire Les Wexner was a top Republican donor and fundraiser in Ohio, but not anymore.

As I have repeatedly noted: Trump is the leader of the Republican Party.

Tom Nichols argues it should. I disagree.

Max Boot proclaims “Trump is an illegitimate president whose election is tainted by fraud.”

It’s not obvious that two more felons in the Trump inner circle will have any immediate impact.

The American public is not sold on the idea of a ‘Space Force.’

Omarosa Manigault Newman, who used to be a Trump favorite, is out with a book that makes sensationalistic claims about the Trump Administration. The real story, though, is what she has on tape and how she got it.

There has been a deluge of responses to Laura Ingraham’s recent diatribe about culture and immigration, but I want to look at her rhetoric from a different perspective. The perspective I want to look at is statements by Ingraham about cultures changing over time and the implications in regards to policies about these changes.

After one year at a job that has to be among the most frustrating in Washington, John Kelly has agreed to stay on through the 2020 election.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she’d like to stay on the Court at least until she turns 90, but it’s unlikely she’ll go anywhere voluntarily as long as Donald Trump is President.

The natural intuition of the aluminum tariff is that it would help Alcoa, the largest manufacturer of aluminum in the U.S. But apparently these things are a bit more complicated that one’s intuition would indicate.

Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, who challenged Nancy Pelosi for a leadership spot in 2016, is telling supporters he’s running for President in 2020.

Some considerations on the politics of Roe v. Wade.

The President is generating so much outrage on a daily basis that we’re missing important stories.

Trump uses an array of ugly language about immigrants. He pretends like he is just talking about MS13 but that is not the case.

Turkey’s authoritarian leader is going to be around for a long time.

Donald Trump hinted that he’s considering a pardon for Muhammad Ali, but Ali doesn’t need a pardon.

Based on a strict reading of the Constitution, a sitting President probably does have the power to pardon himself. That doesn’t mean he should be allowed to get away with it without consequence.

In the Trump Era, the White House Press Briefing is becoming shorter and less informative.

An important message from Josh Marshall.

The requirement that the President be a “natural born citizen” is a historical anachronism that has outlived its usefulness or necessity.

A majority of Americans want the President to stay in the nuclear deal with Iran. That’s unlikely to matter to him.

Eleven states plus DC, who have 172 of the 270 electoral votes needed to elect a President, are now part of the compact.

Remember Donald Trump’s strange doctor? Well, things just got stranger;.

The Donald Trump presidency has some eerie parallels with his run on “The Apprentice.”

Mitt Romney stumbled in his bid to become Utah’s next Senator but he’s still likely to win the nomination anyway.

The campaign-agnostic political science models predicted a toss-up in 2016 and again in 2020.

The Editorial Board of the Newspaper of Record urges Congressional Republicans to steady themselves for a constitutional crisis.

Trump suggests US might seek to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Like many Presidents before him, Donald Trump wants a line-item veto. Getting there won’t be easy, nor should it be.