Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

The man to save the Democratic party: Hunter Biden

“The one thing that binds each and every one of us is not necessarily love... it’s pain,” Hunter Biden said in his interview yesterday with independent journalist Andrew Callaghan. Well, that’s good, because we’re not all sons of a former president, so at least we have something in common. Someone has really been working the 12 steps! Cockburn will admit that he didn’t really see it until now, but after yesterday, he’s ready to admit that Robert Hunter Biden may be the only person who can lead the Democratic party out of the wilderness. It’s a development worthy of the best "scion’s fiction.

Hunter Biden interview with Andrew Callaghan
Economy

Don’t bet on the Trump economy

The Trump White House took a victory lap on Monday, declaring in its newsletter that the American economy is back – back bigger and better than ever. Core inflation is down. Industrial production is up. Claims for unemployment dropped. Tariff revenue rose. The newsletter even cites the Wall Street Journal—otherwise in bad odor in the Trump White House – for decreeing that the American economy is “regaining its swagger.” Is it time to splurge on a fancy vacation? As it happens, I’m currently visiting Vermont where the number of tourists is distinctly lower than in previous years.

The ‘Russia Hoax’ and other grudges

Too long, didn’t read, but late last week Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard proclaimed that she had in her possession a full ream of intel conclusively proving that the Obama Administration, in its 11th hour, prepared a fusillade of fake evidence designed to defame President Trump as an agent and dupe of the Russian Government. Trump, somewhat on his heels with the Epstein Files scandal, began screeching online about the Russia Hoax. Today he posted a meme showing various Obama Administration figures, including Obama himself, wearing orange prison jumpsuits, holding up cards with their names on them, with the logo “THE SHADY BUNCH” embossed on top. Very hip, Mr. President, retweet a Beverly Hillbillies joke next. “HOW DID SAMANTHA POWER MAKE ALL THAT MONEY???

Trump
High-speed rail construction site in San Francisco, California

The $130 billion train that couldn’t

In the annals of stupid and poorly run schemes, the California High-Speed Rail project ranks among the worst. Its future, even a dramatically scaled down one, has become ever more precarious since the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation rescinded $4 billion in funds already granted the project. Governor Newsom has already filed a suit to reverse the action, but he can’t legislate away the reality that this project is an abject embarrassment. When voters approved $9 billion for the plan in 2008, the California High-Speed Rail Authority estimated that it would cost $33 billion and start running by 2020 – and that was just for the San Joaquin Valley portion. The cost has since ballooned to $130 billion, and no stretch is operational.

Hospital

America’s top medical schools still hire by race

The institutions just won’t quit. Even after the Supreme Court made it abundantly clear that race-based admissions violate the Constitution, many of America’s top medical schools are digging in their heels – and, apparently, digging graves for meritocracy. A new report by Do No Harm, a group of physicians and health policy experts, reveals that public medical schools continue to admit students with dramatically different qualifications based largely on race. In other words, the diversity-industrial complex is alive and well – just operating in the shadows. The numbers don’t lie. According to the report, black students admitted to these schools had average MCAT scores significantly lower than their white and Asian counterparts.

The sad saga of Lena Dunham

I preface this review by saying that – unless you are the greatest admirer of Lena Dunham or anyone in the (admittedly impressive) cast of her new Netflix series, Too Much – it is very easy to give this particular show a miss. It is a tedious, unfunny collection of clichés, strange American-centric perspectives on life in London, a charmless, Dunhamesque lead, a chemistry-free central pairing and guest appearances from her famous friends that seem somewhere between embarrassed and incongruous. Yet there are many worse shows on streaming services, most of which have not attracted anything like The Discourse that Too Much has thus far – and which, I am painfully aware, this article is contributing to. Why this? Why now?

Lena Dunham and Megan Stalter at "Too Much" screening in the UK (Getty)
Trump

Trump puts God back on the ballot

It was the summer of 1954, and Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson was locked in a primary fight with fellow Democrat Dudley Dougherty. Flush with cash, Texas oil tycoons threw their support behind Dougherty through tax-exempt organizations like Facts Forum and the Committee for Constitutional Government. But Johnson, political shark that he was, quietly slipped in a new amendment to the IRS code banning tax-exempt organizations from engaging in partisan political activity. Lyndon Johnson sailed through the primary, and the name Dudley Dougherty became lost to history. The Johnson Amendment lived on, though in the present age, it has been contorted by political activists to crack down on Christians.Johnson’s intention was not to censor religious institutions.

The return of Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abrams resurfaced last week – not to deny another election she lost – but to declare that “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is in the DNA of the United States.” This is the bizarre and ahistorical premise on which her new non-profit, American Pride Rises, is founded. Its website claims that DEI is “a centuries-old movement dedicated to upholding American values,” complete with a timeline that casts everything from America’s Founding in 1776 to the 19th-century abolition movement to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as part of the “History of DEI” in America. That is complete and utter nonsense – it would be comical if it weren’t an insidious lie that attempts to rewrite American history.

Stacey Abrams DEI
Third party

MAGA is America’s third party

Gearing up to launch his new "America Party," Elon Musk now speaks of a GOP-Democratic duopoly that has the country in its grip. But this system died ten years ago at the hands of Donald Trump: America's first third party president.  With a small band of misfit toys drawn from the world of Manhattan real estate Mr. Trump invaded an old and established party, replacing it with his own ideas and – in true cuckoo fashion – his own children. There is almost no intellectual continuity between the faction he now leads and the pre-2015 Republicans beyond a generic commitment to free markets and to law and order.

left

One issue I can’t stop snubbing the left over

Before I’d established my tiny crew of fellow local moms, I aggressively befriended – or tried to befriend – any woman with a baby who looked vaguely friendly. I’d try my luck in cafes, playgrounds, baby classes, yet with only minimal success (one find, a Cambridge-educated Irish lawyer, "forgot" her wallet on our date, leaving me to pay for her expensive glass of wine).So I clung gratefully to one of my café pickups, Marta, with whom two or three pleasant playdates (or rather: mommy walking dates) had taken place. I had rosy hopes for more as her kid was cute and reminded me of my own. But one day, strolling along the dark and wintry main drag that connected our two adjacent neighborhoods, things took a turn for the ominous.

Is Mike Lee a bad Mormon?

Politico recently published a piece titled “Mike Lee Can’t Stop Throwing Social Media Grenades. His Church Isn’t Happy.” It cast Senator Lee as a liability to his own religion and positioned him against the church. The entire article hinges on a premise that is misleading at best and manipulative at worst: that Lee, being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church), must conform to a certain political tone or risk disapproval from “his Church.” But this article isn’t reporting on some objective religious rift. It’s a political attack dressed up in ecclesiastical robes. The author of the piece is himself a member of the LDS church.

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert kills The Late Show

“When you die at the palace, you really die at the palace,” laments Comicus, the ancient Roman “stand-up philosopher” played by Mel Brooks in his iconic, if not exactly well received, History of the World, Part I (1981). Forced to improvise a comedy routine for Dom DeLuise’s Emperor Nero, Comicus repeatedly puts his foot squarely in his mouth, insulting the capricious ruler for his corruption and weight. An enraged Nero sentences him to death, setting up a madcap escape sequence.

Was Trump in Epstein’s birthday book?

Bombshell or damp squib? The Wall Street Journal has dived into L’Affaire Epstein with a vengeance, reporting tonight that Donald Trump contributed an epistolary effort to a leather-bound birthday book in 2003 for his Palm Beach buddy that contained what it delicately refers to as “bawdy language” as well as a drawing of a naked woman. The letter that has Trump’s name affixed to it apparently concludes, “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”  This is catnip for Trump’s detractors who apparently are starting to include a number of disaffected MAGA followers. They’re disenchanted by Trump’s volte-face.

RIP NPR, the broadcaster that thought emojis were racist

"Nearly 3-in-4 Americans say they rely on their public radio stations for alerts and news for their public safety,” National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher said in a statement after the Senate approved a rescissions package that would, once and for all, take NPR off the federal funding payroll. It was a very NPR way of deploying the usual Democrat policy complaint that “people will die,” which they won’t. In reality, most Americans learn about public emergencies from phone alerts or while watching Wheel of Fortune, or, in the case of non-NPR listening Kerr County, Texas, when the water is at their front door. But these are desperate times at NPR headquarters, so “people will die if they defund us” is their last strategy.

Will Trump bail out Texas Republicans?

With the retirement of North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, the Republican with the heaviest Senate primary burden in 2026 becomes John Cornyn. The Texas incumbent faces off in a contest against MAGA favorite Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton is relying on backlash against some of Cornyn’s more centrist moves in recent years and a range of financial backers who poured nearly $3 million into his campaign coffers in the first quarter, a number Cornyn exceeded – but not by a lot. It’s too close for comfort for some Republicans, who are concerned the clash puts Texas at risk of a rare turn from red to blue.

Axing the Department of Education will improve education

The big education news this week is a court ruling that allows the Trump administration to begin cutting jobs at the Department of Education. A cascade of familiar voices can be heard lamenting that ruling. That’s the angry, unified message from Democrats, the Washington Blob and their Media buddies. Woe betide the students, they wail. Damn this President. They are not just wrong. They are 180 degrees wrong. Why? First, they are wrong for democratic reasons. Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to demolish the Department of Education. He’s carrying out that pledge, not backpedaling. That’s what citizens should expect from elected leaders in a constitutional democracy. They seldom receive it. Trump is not only right democratically, he’s right educationally.

Donald Trump

It’s Kamala 2028!

Even amidst a news cycle full of Republican infighting, the Democrats are finding new and exciting ways to cut through the noise and announce their own impotence. According to a new survey from Echelon Insights, former Vice President Kamala Harris remains the favorite to reprise her role as the party’s presidential nominee in 2028, boasting the support of 26 percent of likely Democratic voters in a hypothetical primary field. Never mind that Harris blew through $1.5 billion during a 15-week campaign that ended with her falling short in every swing state. Never mind that she didn’t make it to Iowa the last time she had to compete in a presidential primary.

Kamala Harris

The secret life of Agent Melania

The activities of First Lady Melania Trump have been the subject of much discussion in Cockburn’s circles during her husband’s second term. Where is she? What is she up to? For the most powerful spouse in the world, she keeps an extraordinarily low profile. But now a new theory has emerged: she’s been spying for Ukraine. Over the weekend, an X user named “Kate from Kharkiv” posted a photo of Melania wearing a blue blazer bearing the Ukrainian trident insignia. Melania is also wearing one of her signature wide-brimmed hats, which shield her eyes from enemy view. “Agent Melania Trumpenko,” the caption read. https://twitter.

Melania and Donald Trump at FIFA Club World Cup (Getty)
Trayon White Sr. after the vote for his expulsion from the City Council (Getty)

Trayon White is DC’s Donald Trump

Cockburn is delighted to announce the special election winner replacing Trayon White (who was unanimously expelled from office in February) in his Ward 8 DC City Council seat: Trayon White.  The Department of Justice charged White for bribery in August 2024, alleging that the councilman “corruptly agreed to accept $156,000 in cash payments in exchange for using his position” to “pressure government employees” in several offices to influence $5.2 million in violence intervention contracts. These impending charges were not enough to deter White from seeking reelection last November, which he walked away from overwhelmingly victorious with 84 percent of the vote.

jerome powell

Trump should bring the Fed to heel

President Trump’s criticism of Jay Powell has increasingly triggered calls for the Federal Reserve’s independence. But those defending Powell’s autonomy are making ahistorical claims about the Fed’s relationship to the executive and legislative branches of government: the Fed has never been independent. The president appoints the Fed’s chairman. The bank enjoys broad authority to implement the policies necessary to achieve its mandates of stable prices, full employment and interest-rate stability, but these objectives are defined by Congress and could be altered by Congress. Congress created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and has amended the Federal Reserve Act more than 200 times. It could do so again.