History Offers Democrats a Way Out of the Menendez Problem

Senator Robert Menendez had a bad week. A New Jersey Democrat currently serving his third full term in the Senate, Menendez was indicted last Thursday by federal prosecutors who laid out an elaborate and damning case involving secret payments funneled through an American-based businessman, all tracing back to favors the senator allegedly performed on behalf of the Egyptian...

Read More

Second GOP debate ratings: Viewership drops by more than 25 percent

Ratings for the second Republican presidential debate Wednesday are in — and the 26 percent decline is not a good sign for candidates not named Donald Trump. Around 9.5 million people tuned into the debate, which was broadcast on Fox Business Network and simultaneously played on Fox News, where most people tuned in, and Univision, the network said Thursday. In comparison,...

Read More

The case for panicking over Biden’s reelection campaign

Should Democrats be wetting the bed over President Joe Biden's chances of winning reelection? Depends on who you ask. Some in the party are truly panicked. Others are begging their compatriots to take a deep breath. To find out who has the more compelling case, West Wing Playbook asked one person on each side of the debate to make it. Today we present to you the side of panic...

Read More

What does Matt Gaetz really want?

What is Matt Gaetz's endgame: spending cuts, a political boost, or revenge? It’s the question reverberating on Capitol Hill after the simmering feud between the Florida conservative and Speaker Kevin McCarthy flared up again Thursday morning in a closed-door meeting, with one lawmaker telling Gaetz to “fuck off” for leveling unproven accusations against the speaker. Gaetz...

Read More

Adams: NYC policy to shelter the homeless shouldn't cover migrant influx

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams suggested Thursday he wants to exempt the influx of migrants from the city's decades-old right-to-shelter mandate as his administration tightens the length on shelter stays and explicitly discourages new arrivals. “I don't believe the right to shelter applies to a migrant crisis,” Adams said during an appearance on WABC’s "Sid & Friends in...

Read More

Attorneys fret shutdown will derail long-awaited Trump deposition

The impending government shutdown might inadvertently derail a deposition of Donald Trump that has been years in the making, attorneys in a long-running civil lawsuit warned Thursday. Lawyers for former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — who are suing the Justice Department claiming their departures from the bureau were improperly influenced by Trump — say they’ve...

Read More

DeSantis slams Trump and Biden after Republican debate

Fresh off the second Republican presidential debate, Ron DeSantis is going into attack mode. The morning after the debate, the Florida governor took issue with President Joe Biden's new campaign ad that spliced together snippets of DeSantis' debate performance in which he called out former President Donald Trump for his absence on the debate stages. It ends with Biden saying...

Read More

GOP senators rough up Pentagon nominee over Afghanistan evacuation

Republican senators on Thursday tore into President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the Pentagon’s policy chief over the role he played in the Afghanistan evacuation when he was a State Department official. During Derek Chollet’s confirmation hearing to be the undersecretary of Defense for policy before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) called out what he characterized as the State Department’s failure to evacuate American...

Read More

San Francisco’s mayor wants drug testing for welfare recipients

SAN FRANCISCO — Recipients of public assistance — in a city once known for its embrace of counterculture drugs — would have to submit to tests for substance use under a proposal announced Tuesday by Mayor London Breed as she faces mounting pressure to address San Francisco’s fentanyl epidemic. Breed, who is running for reelection in 2024, outlined the plan the same day that...

Read More

Obernolte: House is still choosing priorities on AI law

Rep. Jay Obernolte said Wednesday his near-term priority as vice chair of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus is picking a lane on how to legislate the emerging technology. “Are we going to do a broad-based approach with a new agency? Potentially like the EU has done? Or are we going to adopt a sectoral approach, where we empower our existing sectoral regulators...

Read More

Abbott visited New York City. He didn't take pity on its migrant surge.

NEW YORK — Everything’s bigger in Texas — including the humanitarian crisis of helping migrants. That was the message from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as he spoke Wednesday in Manhattan, where leaders have blasted his continued efforts to ship migrants from the southern border to blue states, particularly the biggest of them all: New York City. Abbott both defended his program...

Read More