Kellyanne Conway is best known as a spin artist, a mascot, and a folk hero to Donald Trump voters—in other words, a high-profile spokeswoman. But there’s a deeper role she hasn’t gotten much credit for: a principal architect of the theory behind Trump’s winning campaign.Years bef … | Continue reading
As Judge Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings begin Monday, Democratic senators, led by Chuck Schumer, are preparing to argue that President Trump’s nominee favors big business over small business and capital over labor.The Center for American Progress argues that “ … | Continue reading
As the Judiciary Committee hearings for Judge Neal Gorsuch begin, I retain my impression that he is in his way a splendid fellow, intelligent and hard working, and, as near as I can tell, devoid of the streak of jack-in-office meanness that mars the legacy of his predecessor, Ant … | Continue reading
On October 9, 1983, a large delegation of senior South Korean government officials assembled at a mausoleum across the street from Burma’s gleaming Shwedagon Pagoda, located in what was then the city of Rangoon. They were in Burma for a state visit, and had come to the pagoda for … | Continue reading
—Secret Service officials said they arrested a man who drove up to a White House checkpoint and claimed to have a bomb in his car.—New York author and columnist Jimmy Breslin, a Pulitzer Prize winner, chronicler of eccentric Manhattan, and who became Son of Sam’s regular corresp … | Continue reading
The greatest artists offer a reflection for a nation to see itself and its time, and Chuck Berry, a beautician by trade, knew a thing or two about holding up a mirror for a customer. His most famous song, “Johnny B. Goode,” is a classic story of the American dream: A poor, uneduc … | Continue reading
How to Look at Kristen StewartJosephine Livingstone | The New Republic“The problem with this type of characterization is that it defines Stewart’s magic through a gendered absence. Stewart refuses to give herself over to the audience, these critics say, and so she is mysterious a … | Continue reading
On March 6, the zoning board in Bayonne, New Jersey, turned down a request to convert an old warehouse into a mosque. Such denials are happening with increasing frequency in the United States. In the 10 years between 2000 and 2010, the Justice Department intervened seven times ag … | Continue reading
On the campaign trail, President Trump pledged “to bring hope to every forgotten stretch of this country.” But his new budget has critics questioning whether that pledge can be reconciled with his plan to eliminate the Legal Services Corporation, a move whose impact would be seve … | Continue reading
Katie Martin / The AtlanticIn this week’s Atlantic coverage, our writers explored the cult classics of the future, Monopoly’s forgotten meaning, the legacy of Carol Field, a volcano’s impending explosion, the history behind a far-right candidate’s rise, and more.Can you remember … | Continue reading
“We are about to run an experiment,” the international-relations scholar Robert Jervis recently observed of the Trump presidency. Scholars of international politics, he wrote, “bemoan the fact that our sub-field cannot draw on the experimental method.” But with an American presid … | Continue reading
—Security officers at the Paris Orly Airport shot and killed a man who had tried to take a soldier’s gun, and the incident is now being investigated as a possible act of terrorism.—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is visiting China, where officials urged the U.S. to remain “coolh … | Continue reading
The science community is still reeling from the huge cuts proposed by President Trump’s budget blueprint. If it passes would slash $5.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health, $2.5 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency, $900 million from the Office of Science a … | Continue reading
Don’t MissWhy Female Cannibals Frighten and Fascinate—Kate Robertson analyzes the danger and appeal of insatiable women in Raw, Santa Clarita Diet, and The Lure.DisneyFilmBeauty and the Beast: A Tale as Old as Time, Told Worse—David Sims bemoans the live-action remake of the 1991 … | Continue reading
To understand the thinking of American presidents, historians, contemporaries, and political rivals, have often sought out the texts that most influenced them. George Washington, for example, was known to love Cato: A Tragedy, Joseph Addison’s civics-heavy play about the man who … | Continue reading
Most the time, Elizabeth MacDonough’s job is as unglamorous and uncontroversial as any in Congress—tedious even. Since 2012, she has served as parliamentarian of the Senate, which means her role, as outlined on the Senate’s web site, is “to provide expert advice and assistance on … | Continue reading
What We’re FollowingAye, Spy: During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel today, President Trump continued to claim that he’d been wiretapped by the previous administration. Sean Spicer, too, stuck to the story yesterday but offered no evidence, so it see … | Continue reading
Today in 5 LinesDuring a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Trump stuck by his claim that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, citing “a certain very talented legal mind” he had seen on Fox News. Fox News anchor Shep Smith said later t … | Continue reading
According to a Tuesday analysis from the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), millions of Americans have fallen behind on their student loans. The data, obtained from the U.S. Department of Education, reveals 42.4 million people in the U.S. owed $1.3 trillion in federal student … | Continue reading
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday the military “option is on the table” if North Korea escalates its nuclear-weapons program “to a level that we believe requires action.” Do these remarks mark a break from the Obama administration’s policy toward Pyongyang, or do … | Continue reading
Last year, Julie Beck wrote a popular piece centered on the question, “When Are You Really an Adult?” She went beyond the biological and legal answers to delve into the more subjective realms of culture and personal experience. The many markers of adulthood were then illustrated … | Continue reading
Early Friday afternoon, President Trump and German Chancellor Merkel held one of the more awkward photo ops in recent memory. Merkel sat, looking like she was trying hard to appear casual. Trump barely bothered, grimacing tightly. When photographers asked for a handshake, Merkel … | Continue reading
Over the years, I’ve heard well-meaning people argue that events including the LAPD’s beating of Rodney King, the questioning of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, and the slaying of Trayvon Martin have nothing to do with race or racism. The impulse to deny or minimize racism, to … | Continue reading
When the Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney suggested that parents in struggling rural and urban areas might not consider funding public television through the Corporation for Public Broadcast a good use of taxpayer dollars during an appearance on Morning Joe … | Continue reading
Ever since the United Kingdom’s shocking vote to leave the European Union in 2016, nearly every political contest in the Western world has been characterized as a showdown between the moderate, establishment cosmopolitanism that has dominated Western politics for decades and the … | Continue reading
This week, Hasbro announced the results of an online vote on the future of tokens in the board game Monopoly. The results are startling: the boot, wheelbarrow, and thimble have been expunged from the iconic game, replaced by a Tyrannosaurus rex, rubber ducky, and penguin. Voters … | Continue reading
When Charles Murray, the conservative author who sparked national attention for his statements on class and race, was invited to give a talk on the Middlebury College campus earlier this March, it was because a group of students—the American Enterprise Institute Club—was curious … | Continue reading
Republican leaders are desperate for President Trump to use his vaunted dealmaking skills to sell skeptical conservatives on their flagging American Health Care Act. They need his backing, and more importantly, they need the political cover he provides.On Friday, the president de … | Continue reading
This week, in honor of March Madness, we asked Politics & Policy Daily readers: If you had to pick a lawmaker to coach your team and take it to the Final Four, who would you pick—and why?Eileen is one of several readers who thought of Arizona Senator John McCain:His military serv … | Continue reading
Let’s catalog a few important moments in the history of conceptual art:In 1917, Marcel Duchamp signed and dated a porcelain urinal, installed it on a plinth, and entered it into the first exhibition for the Society of Independent Artists.In 1961, Robert Rauchenberg submitted a te … | Continue reading
Donald Trump is an unprecedentedly wealthy president, who owns or licenses his name to buildings, casinos, and luxury hotels around the world. An ethics watchdog group has already brought a lawsuit against him for violating the Constitution’s “Emoluments Clause,” which prohibits … | Continue reading
A therapeutic greyhound in Spain, a civil defense drill in South Korea, flooding in Peru, a robot-run hotel in Japan, a blizzard in the American northeast, refugees learn curling in Canada, and much more. | Continue reading
Disney’s new Beauty and the Beast premieres today, a lavish, live-action affair starring Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, and Luke Evans. The film has thus far received decidedly tepid critical reviews (my colleague David Sims: “A Tale as Old as Time, Told Worse”). No matter, though: If … | Continue reading
Romania Pilfered Another Nation’s Flag Design—and It’s Not SorryDrew Hinshaw | The Wall Street Journal“Romanians remain unflustered: ‘Why should we care?’ said one of the protesters marching through central Bucharest last month. ‘Chad is too far away.’For all the institutions the … | Continue reading
Among the most dominant teams in sports—the NFL’s New England Patriots, the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, the United States women’s soccer team—the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball program stands alone. The Huskies have won 107 straight games, spanning three seasons. The … | Continue reading
Somewhere inside Marvel’s Iron Fist there’s an interesting show struggling to get out, like the powers inside Danny Rand that could make him great, if they weren’t constantly in combat with his smugly mystical non-sequiturs and his bratty sense of entitlement. As the titular supe … | Continue reading
While the details of President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget remain scant, one thing is clear: The Department of Labor will likely be one of the biggest losers. Trump’s budget proposal would cut the department’s funding by $2.5 billion, or 21 percent, which will mean drasti … | Continue reading
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ruffled a few feathers this week by calling everyone who offended him a Nazi, starting with the Germans and winding his way over to the Netherlands. But as Godwin’s Law decrees, invoking the Nazis is the easy way out for an insulter. Here ar … | Continue reading
With the release of Song to Song, it’s time to come up with a name for this creatively fertile, aggressively poetic period in the beloved auteur Terrence Malick’s career. Much like The Tree of Life, To the Wonder, and Knight of Cups, his new film is light on plot and heavy on por … | Continue reading
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Jacqueline Graniel spent her whole childhood in Southern California assuming other families also lived paycheck to paycheck. Now, as she studies for both a medical degree and a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, she has found that some of her classmates avoid t … | Continue reading
I’m not an early adopter. I’ll only start wearing new styles of clothing once they’re practically out of date, and I won’t move into a neighborhood until it’s fully saturated with upscale coffee shops. I was the last person I know to download music and to stop paying for long-dis … | Continue reading
—U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says decades of diplomacy with North Korea over its nuclear-weapons program have failed, and the use of the military option is among those “on the table.” —GCHQ is denying a claim by the White House spokesman that it helped the Obama admin … | Continue reading
Is Florida Underreporting Dropouts? Heather Vogell | ProPublicaFlorida’s Department of Education is expanding an inquiry into how schools classify students who leave without graduating, in response to a ProPublica report that the state may have thousands more dropouts than it ack … | Continue reading
The Arctic Ocean has long been the least accessible of the world’s major oceans. But as climate change warms the Arctic twice as fast as anywhere else, the thick sea ice that once made it so forbidding is now beating a hasty retreat. Since 1979, when scientists began using satell … | Continue reading
For the last six years, the U.S government has pushed resources toward a set of programs called Countering Violent Extremism, or CVE: grants to community organizations, U.S. attorneys’ offices, and police departments designed to derail people “at risk” of engaging in terrorism. C … | Continue reading
Bob Woodson likes to boast that he has “been screwed by the most famous and most influential people in Washington.” At 79, the sprightly, swaggering community organizer and civil-rights veteran has spent decades in D.C. lobbying on behalf of the urban poor, too often partnering w … | Continue reading
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against the Russian hacker Alexsey Belan and three others as the culprits behind a massive cyber attack of Yahoo disclosed in September. The indictment alleges that Belan did the kinds of things criminal hackers do al … | Continue reading
As the noted philosopher Idina Menzel has elucidated, it’s sometimes best to simply let things go. Yet despite the cold weather in Washington this week, the White House has failed to take the lessons of Frozen to heart.Take the debate—raging, inexplicably, for nearly two weeks no … | Continue reading