Outside the Beltway

Congress will get a temporary funding bill passed in time to avoid a shutdown on Thursday, but it may just be delaying the inevitable.

Trump remains in the lead, but he has been steadily falling over the month of September. (And this triggers, as these things do, musings about institutions and our party system).

The seeds of the current peace deal date back to 2007-2008 (plus some longer-term background notes).

She’s where she’ belongs.

Big news out of Washington, D.C.

The latest effort by conservative Republicans to oust John Boehner appears to be coming to an unsurprising end.

To listen to many of the Republican candidates for President, it would appear that the lights have been turned out on Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill.

Britain’s Labour Party has taken a hard tilt left with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

A Federal Judge has ruled that part of a lawsuit filed by the House of Representatives can go forward, but the legal battle is far from over.

Some Republicans are threatening a government shutdown over funding of Planned Parenthood, but a new poll shows that it would be a big political risk for Republicans.

A Federal Appeals Court has upheld a 1949 law that bars protesters from the property around the Supreme Court building. This seems inconsistent with the Court’s recent First Amendment jurisprudence.

Another poll confirms the fact that Americans of all political stripes continue to hold Congress is disdain.

Carly Fiorina will most likely be excluded from CNN’s prime time debate in September, so of course her campaign is complaining about rules that were established months ago.

Today’s revision of Second Quarter G.D.P. growth was good news, but it doesn’t seem likely to last.

Donald Trump’s support in the polls appears to become coming largely from people who don’t typically vote in primary elections.

Even if Donald Trump isn’t the Republican nominee in 2016, he could still end up causing real harm to the party’s chances of winning the White House and holding on to the Senate.

If we are gong to assess the significance of Trump, we need to pay attention to the numbers.

There are no “anchor babies,” there are only Americans.

The July Jobs Report indicates that while the economy is growing, it is not growing very much. This seems to call the Federal Reserve’s interest rate plans into question.

The Senate Majority Leader says there will be no immigration reform while Obama is President. This is unlikely to help the GOP’s already serious problems with Latino voters.

A Federal Appeals Court has dealt a setback to Texas in the battle over its Voter ID Law.

The last three polls to be released before Thursday’s debate show Donald Trump continuing to solidify his lead.

Public opinion on the Supreme Court has declined significantly, largely because Republicans don’t like the Supreme Court very much right now.

Low costs and regulatory barriers are attracting people to red states–thus turning them purple and blue.

Hillary Clinton’s two biggest challengers were ambushed at a progressive political convention over the weekend.

We are still a ways from actual voting–this needs to be remembered.

There’s another round of reports about Joe Biden running for President, but I wouldn’t put much stock them.

The Huffington Post announced today that they would not be covering Donald Trump in their politics section from this point forward. That’s the wrong thing to do.

Relying on a particularly strained and incredulous legal analysis, the EEOC has ruled that laws against discrimination based on gender also bar discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Republicans have nobody to blame but themselves for the anti-immigrant Frankenstein in their midst.

Despite the clear language of the 14th Amendment, Texas is apparently refusing to issue birth certificates to some children born in the United States whose parents happen to be in the country illegally.

A new polls seems to show that Republicans are still clinging to their opposition to marriage equality in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has formally entered the race for President, but can he overcome his flip-flops and a turn to the hard right?

While “fundamentals” will have more impact on choosing our next president than what happens on the campaign trail, the race itself is important.

A 1980 debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush shows a different GOP.

A Republican political consultant says Hillary Clinton is in danger of losing the nomination.

The GOP’s Trump-induced headache isn’t going away any time soon.

For the first time since 1961, there will soon be an American Embassy in Havana, and a Cuban Embassy in Washington. It’s well past time that this happened.

SCOTUS has upheld the use of election commissions to draw Congressional district lines.

The era of legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act is over.

Political reality shows us that the shootings in Charleston are not going to have any appreciable impact on the likelihood of any type of gun control law passing anywhere outside of the bluest of the blue states.

Virginia Republicans are deciding later this week how they will make their choice in the 2016 Presidential Race. And they may end up regretting their decision.

To nobody’s surprise, Jeb Bush has entered the race for President.