There are no atheists in foxholes and few isolationists in high office. Confronted with sobering briefings revealing Ukraine on the brink of collapse, Speaker Mike Johnson made the leap from Benton, Louisiana (pop. 2,048) congressman to custodian of the trans-Atlantic alliance. “It was the intelligence, it was the Europe generals who are in charge of the freedom of the world and of course it was the developments as well, everything has escalated,” Johnson told me, alluding to the conversations he had with the American brass at European Command. If those developments, namely Ukraine running out ..read more

As the Jan. 6 committee was working on its bombshell investigation into the Capitol riot and President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the last election, committee staffers took some time out of their seemingly 24-hour jobs one day in 2022 to brief a group of lawyers and legal pundits on a Zoom call. The people on the call weren’t affiliated with the investigation or the government. But they would have been familiar to anyone who watches cable news. They were some of the country’s most well-known legal and political commentators, and they were there to get insights into the committee’s work ..read more

This weekend, the annual White House Correspondents Dinner will cap off what is informally known in Washington as silly season — the series of dinners where the powerful and connected raise glasses, rub elbows and tell jokes. As someone who has attended dozens of these dinners (and has written jokes for dozens more), there will be plenty of laughs from the well-dressed and well-lubricated audience. But the laughs this year — as they have been throughout the last couple of silly seasons — will be less har de har and more cri de coeur. That’s because if tragedy plus time equals comedy, as Steve ..read more

Speaker Mike Johnson is on the verge of his biggest legislative victory yet — and it might mean his undoing. Johnson’s decision to maneuver a long-stalled, sprawling foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan through the House amid stiff resistance from many conservative Republicans has once again raised the threat of a coup through the motion to vacate. How that drama ends is still unclear. But in the meantime, the move has fueled an extraordinary experiment in bipartisan governing of the House, as Democrats stepped in to save the aid — supporting the rule governing the legislation in ..read more

The bellhop at the Orlando hotel delivered a large red bag to the Cypress Penthouse, where he was met at the door by a woman in a green-and-white dress with a green-and-white “Shevin for Governor” sash around her neck. It was Myrna Shevin, the wife of Florida’s attorney general, and she did not look happy. Because the bellhop was one of her husband’s opponents in the 1978 gubernatorial Democratic primary. That was Bob Graham, a young state senator from Miami with a quirky campaign gimmick: He was spending 100 days working 100 different jobs done by ordinary Floridians. This was the first time ..read more

The first week of former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial has concluded, and a full jury has been chosen — twelve jurors and six alternates. Beginning next week, they’ll put to the test Trump’s contention that he can’t get a fair trial in liberal Manhattan. What we’ve learned after a week filled almost entirely with the process of jury selection is that the jurors appear to represent a reasonable cross section of the kind of people you generally find in Manhattan. There’s a salesperson from West Harlem, an engineer from the Upper West Side, a businessperson from Murray Hill, two lawyers ..read more

As Speaker of the House Mike Johnson fends off another conservative rebellion over his four-part foreign aid plan, he’s garnering support from former speaker — and infamous conservative pugilist — Newt Gingrich. Gingrich, who claimed the gavel in 1995 after leading Republicans to their first majority in the House in nearly 40 years, is a somewhat surprising ally for Johnson. As a junior member of the House, Gingrich pioneered the style of confrontational conservatism and bare-knuckle partisan brawling that today’s Republican hard-liners — led by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz — have seemingly made th ..read more

In 1986, when David Whelan was just a baby, his mother Joan had her first psychotic break. Throughout David’s childhood, Joan spent time in institutions and eventually was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. David always wondered whether something in her past had triggered it; all he knew was that his mother had been adopted from Greece when she was young, and that something tragic had happened to her parents. As a kid, David never dared to broach the subject. But in 2013, when he was 26 and back home visiting from grad school, he worked up the nerve to talk to his father. “Did something happen t ..read more

According to Donald Trump, he oversaw sky-high economic growth, soaring markets and half-century-low unemployment. Joe Biden says Trump was the first president to preside over a net loss in jobs since Herbert Hoover. Biden boasts that his own presidency is defined by booming job growth and plunging deficits. Trump says consumers haven’t felt worse in decades, because of inflation. The weird thing is, they’re both right — about everything. Voters have the unusual opportunity to choose between two candidates that have already worked in the Oval Office. But the pandemic irreparably garbled data t ..read more

If Mike Johnson’s plan for Ukraine aid fails in the House, he might have Sen. J.D. Vance partially to blame. Last week, the Ohio Republican authored a New York Times op-ed headlined “The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up,” and he’s followed that up by meeting with the House’s Republican Study Committee on Wednesday to whip against Johnson’s Ukraine bill. Earlier this year I spent months speaking to Vance for an extensive profile exploring how the freshman Republican has become Donald Trump’s most loyal ally in the Senate, while also laying the groundwork for an even more expansive and radical vis ..read more