Outside the Beltway

I find it hard to take.

The move to build Trump’s Big Beautiful Ballroom is moving at record speed.

Trump exploits our mistaken beliefs about crime to consolidate his power.

When empathy goes too far.

A shocking, but not surprising, event. I fear it’s a harbinger rather than an outlier.

Can Democrats do anything?

There’s a vast difference between someone getting dogpiled on social media and the most powerful man in the world using the machinery of the state to eliminate dissent.

Are Democrats triggering voters by pushing the Overton Window on language, thereby subverting norms and creating barriers to participation?

The artless deal.

Authoritarianism is popular.

This week: the Fantastic Four movie.

A plea to the mass media and anyone else who is guilty.

Budgets are choices and choices reveal values.

A massive purge ahead of the long weekend.

The scholar-statesman best known for coining “soft power” has died at 88.

A major reshuffling of the foreign policy team 100 days into the administration.

The 88-year-old Bishop of Rome has died.

Then process gets in the way of efficiency, kill the process.

When does Executive overreach become something more?

On Christian compassion (and hypocrisy) and a little bit of the Streisand Effect for good measure.

It “literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

There are a lot of people there.

Politics, rhetoric, and the question of controlled burns.

An unlikely and almost certainly inefficacious possibility.

The wrong solution for a real problem.

And yes, Trump fits the definitions all too well.

They won’t tell you who’s going to be President. They’re still useful.

Was Marbury v. Madison a mistake?

A mild-mannered JD Vance out-debated a nervous Tim Walz. It won’t matter.

The 39th President hits the century mark.

Sometimes the bird gives you the bird

Policy is only a part of it.

What Trump and many supporters get wrong about Kamala Harris

That’s not a rhetorical question.

It’s not been a great few days for J. D. Vance

The President’s support is considerably stronger among Black Democrats.

Caution about making too many assumptions.

Did Trump’s stoic reaction win him the election?

A clash of possibilities.

A second Trump presidency got much more likely last night.

Their feelings don’t care about your facts.

Could Thursday’s match-up shake up the race?

That’s some catch, that Catch-22.

The war cabinet is gone. He now owns the war completely.

*Parenthetically, his opponent wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the ass.

The fine line between xenophobia and patriotism.

Democratic strategists are complaining that Biden is being too honest.

Voters in Mexico, India, and South Africa are making their voices heard.

Faux amateurism is dead. What replaces it remains to be seen.