Lindsey Graham

It’s poetic that the same day Darline Graham won her primary to seek a full term in the United States Senate, the Wall Street Journal admitted it had published an AI-written op-ed and, based on opinion page editor Paul Gigot’s remarks about it, would happily do so again. “AI is a fact of modern life. People will use it to assist in their work and their writing, including with research, checking grammar, editing and more.” On social media, journalists at the New York Times and elsewhere were quick to voice objections to Gigot’s leniency, but others, including one at the Washington Post, shot back at the critics: how was publishing an AI-written op-ed any different from publishing a ghost-written one? She’s gaffe-prone.

When Senator Lindsey Graham died suddenly last month from a heart condition, official Washington paused its partisan spitting contests to honor a Master of the Beltway. Not since John McCain’s funeral in 2018 had there been such a high display of institutional respect for a senator – complete with eulogies in the Capitol Rotunda and an invitation-only funeral at the National Cathedral attended by foreign leaders. But now South Carolina has to decide who replaces the Great Man. We are used to a political climate dominated by candidates who embrace egotistical posturing and exaggerate their qualifications. So on one level it was refreshing to see the South Carolina debate last night.

Political lives almost always end in failure, or at least anticlimax, but Lindsey Graham went to his reward while in the midst of achieving his goals. Indeed, even the timing of his death might advance one of the causes dearest to him. He had just returned from a visit to Kyiv and his fellow advocates of greater US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war have questioned whether he might not have been murdered by Vladimir Putin. The evidence is against that but the South Carolina senator certainly had deadly enemies: he was high on Iran’s hit-list as well. For decades, he’d called for the use of force against the ayatollahs’ regime and he lived to see that call answered. The Republican aviary still has many other hawks. But can any take Graham’s place?

Already the denunciations of Senator Lindsey Graham, who died at 71, are piling up. Former Republican operative Steve Schmidt’s verdict was not untypical. He declared on X that Graham not only “lacked a moral core,” but also found relevance “as a cast member in the most malignant reality show ever made.”  There’s never been a bummer rap. Graham’s moral center was never in greater evidence during the Trump era. Had Graham not aligned himself with Trump, American foreign policy would look vastly different over the past several years. Rather than delivering pompous, empty speeches like former senator Jeff Flake, he made a conscious decision to influence Trump rather than flee the field of fight.

Operation Absolute Resolve, Donald Trump’s rendition of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, was a brilliantly executed coup. The audacious raid did not undermine international law, as many European and Democratic politicians have said. But it did expose the weakness and pomposity of the world’s multilateral bodies. Maduro traded oil for loans with China while helping Moscow avoid sanctions. He permitted the terrorist group Hezbollah and Iran to operate and build drones within his jurisdiction. He rigged elections and had opposition activists shot in the street. He allowed and enabled weapons, fentanyl and illegal migrants to flood towards America’s southern border. Yet it wasn’t the International Criminal Court that arrested Maduro to bring him to justice in a New York court.

The Kremlin pulled out all the stops for the visit of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow yesterday. Accompanied by Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Witkoff and Kushner strolled through crowds on Red Square with minimal security after lunching at a fancy restaurant on Petrovka street. Not coincidentally, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi was also in town for a meeting with Russian Security Council head Sergei Shoigu, where Russia affirmed its support for Beijing’s One China policy.  It was a sophisticated piece of great power signaling intended to send a multi-part message to Donald Trump.

Already the Kremlin is setting the terms of the forthcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff, Trump's emissary, set the meeting in motion with his mission to Moscow on Wednesday, which Trump called “highly productive.” But productive of what? Putin’s foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov stated today that it was the White House, not the Kremlin, that wanted the meeting. He went on to dismiss Trump's proposal that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could take part in a tripartite negotiation, noting that “for this to happen, certain conditions must be created. Unfortunately, such conditions are far away yet.” Those conditions remain the complete surrender of Ukraine.  The Kremlin, in other words, has a strategic plan.

For the most part, President Trump hasn’t had to worry too much about the loyalty of his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill. Sure, he needed to make a trip to the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue to pressure a few Republican holdouts to support his “big, beautiful” package of tax cuts and spending cuts, but the rank-and-file has tended to blindly follow whatever the White House wants.  Yet over the last several days, a slight divide has emerged between Trump and Republicans – or more specifically, Trump and Senate Republicans – on Ukraine and Russia policy.

When Donald Trump declared that Russia could do “whatever the hell it wants” to NATO countries, he was espousing his own lifelong credo. Trump has done whatever he pleases for most of his life. It was generous of him to extend the same carte blanche to the Kremlin, which is presumably pleased with his offer but has yet to comment on it publicly.  Once upon a time, conservatives used to raise an eyebrow over the notion over doing whatever the hell you want. They were in a more censorious mode, arguing that this amounted to moral relativism. Now it seems that anything goes.  The old certitudes are gone.

Sometimes the true power of someone new to politics is that they don't arrive in Washington with any of the preconceived notions about the possible. In a political moment that is decidedly post-norms, that's what made Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville's stance against an array of foes, including many on his own side of the aisle, so impressive. Tuberville came to Washington as a cipher. He was a Republican, certainly, and a conservative endorsed by Donald Trump by dint of the failure of Jeff Sessions's brief tenure as attorney general. But it was convenient to think of him as a former football coach who viewed being one of the hundred members of the United States Senate as a step down from the task of raising up some of the most talented athletes in the nation.

“We must move forward,” Representative Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to his Republican colleagues as he works to lock up the votes he needs to become speaker, lay out an agenda of empowering rank-and-file lawmakers and expand the fragile House majority. Following a surprise call for a weekend-long recess, Jordan has been herding the cats in his conference. After facing what seemed like long odds to secure the gavel on Friday, Jordan made several key strides, securing backing from former foes like Representatives Vern Buchanan, Ken Calvert, Mike Rogers and Ann Wagner, the latter a fierce ally of his rival last week, Steve Scalise. Right now, Jordan is the only announced candidate for speaker — and pulling former critics on board is a sign of some much needed Jordanmentum.