ArcaMax

There are so many losers and so few winners in Donald Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" that it's a minor miracle that, as of this writing, Republicans appear poised to pass it. I'm old enough to remember when Republicans were deficit hawks who would chafe at adding trillions of dollars to what future generations will have to spend just paying off...Read more

America's 249th birthday Friday will be no party. Call it bittersweet at best.

The guns of Gettysburg were stilled on July 4, 1863, after the Union Army whipped Robert E. Lee and Confederates brigades in a raging three-day theater of civil war.

Now somehow, without ever reading it, President Donald Trump tore up the Constitution's clear ...Read more

Don't let it be said that the superrich care only about themselves, always taking from society and giving nothing back.

Consider the generous billionaires who live on an island in Florida's Biscayne Bay. Amazon kingpin Jeff Bezos lives there, as do Ivanka Trump and her hubby, Jared Kushner. Actually, their so-called island is fake, built in ...Read more

In Woody Allen's iconic film "Annie Hall," protagonist Alvy Singer instructs his new girlfriend that our existence is divided into two categories: the horrible and, if you're really lucky, the miserable. For many Democrats who find Donald Trump and his presidency an abomination, their alternative seems a Democratic Party dominated by a base ...Read more

Zohran Mamdani seemed to hit the political jackpot in besting former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. Hyper commentary now portrays this once obscure state assemblyman from Queens as a political meteor.

The thing about meteors is that they burn bright for a while and then fall. Mamdani is unlikely to...Read more

The Trump administration floated an idea in recent weeks: suspending habeas corpus.

Why? Because over and over again -- including in the American Civil Liberties Union's challenge against President Donald Trump's illegal use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people without due process -- courts hearing habeas corpus cases have stopped the ...Read more

So now all the babies born to undocumented parents in the 28 states that didn't challenge President Donald Trump's executive order will have to sue (anonymously, of course, lest this administration deport them, which it would if it could find them) to demand that the Constitution be followed in their state and get an injunction of their own. ...Read more

Whatever United States military forces may have achieved in last week's brief attack on Iranian nuclear sites -- a question that will not be answered definitively anytime soon -- we have learned again the most fundamental fact about the current occupant of the White House.

Under Donald Trump, the principal purpose of our military and ...Read more

The people have a message for the establishment: We hate you. We really, really hate you.

The upset victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York's Democratic mayoral primary -- which, in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, makes him the odds-on favorite to win the general election -- has profound implications for a national party still reeling from ...Read more

Birds are dying at an alarming rate, and it's a warning sign to humans that the quality of our environments are getting worse. Bird populations are an ecosystem indicator. The massive decline in bird species serves as our collective canary in a coal mine, an urgent reminder that what matters to birds matters to humans.

The North American Bird ...Read more

I don't burn sage because I want to purify my house. I burn cigars because they taste good. I like to burn them with a cup of black coffee or a glass of Irish whiskey.

I can box a little. I can ride a horse. I'm a fairly good shot.

So, right there, I get the serious, old-school manhood badge that so many guys cultivate with everything from ...Read more

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Republican from Louisiana, is also a doctor. He put up resistance last February to Donald Trump's choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "Bobby," as Trump likes to call him, has long cast doubts on the safety of vaccines that have saved millions from death or serious disease ...Read more

Not exactly.

First of all, it's not clear what "all" exactly means. Was Iran's nuclear capacity really eliminated? What capacity did they actually have? We don't seem to have a consensus within the administration on even the most basic questions, or they wouldn't be pushing back so hard against those who claim that Trump's rhetoric was ...Read more

With each passing day, the violence wielded by ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, grows more intense and widespread. One grotesquely emblematic example of this was the recent violent arrest of 48-year-old Narciso Barranco in Santa Ana, California. Narciso, a hardworking immigrant laborer who came from Mexico over 30 years ago, is ...Read more

In a time of tense partisan clashes, Capitol Hill has a trusted leader in Jane L. Campbell, president and CEO of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.

Campbell's focus is far from skirmishes but rather on the forces and figures that filled the halls of Congress, keeping memory alive in the spirit of Clio, the mythical muse of history whose ...Read more

How embarrassing. Our showbiz president's glorious $45 million military parade -- fssssst -- fizzled. The gods rained on it, the thing dragged on and President Donald Trump himself kept nodding off in his chair. Sad.

His show needed some of the reality-TV drama that defines this president. For example, he could've had a phalanx of food trucks...Read more