Washington dc

You wouldn’t expect the Kennedy Center to exactly love J.D. Vance. But that doesn’t make the audience’s reaction to him showing up there on Thursday any less extraordinary. Vance went to the Kennedy Center with his wife Usha, to watch a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra, perhaps expecting a genteel evening at one of Washington’s most high-brow venues. Instead, the audience acted like a mob, booing him as he took his seat in a box. Boos for JD Vance as he enters tonight’s concert at the Kennedy Center pic.twitter.com/IWTsJUWjCR— Andrew Roth (@Andrew__Roth) March 13, 2025 The crowd’s performance is perhaps explained by the President’s recent, er, changes to how the Kennedy Center runs.

From the moment you enter Donald J. Trump’s Oval Office, you are surrounded, not by staff or Secret Service, but by presidents. In his second term, he has chosen to envelop himself in Americana to an unprecedented degree. He faces Franklin D. Roosevelt whenever he sits at his desk. Looking back are Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln, McKinley, Polk, Jackson, Jefferson, and alone among them as a non-president, Franklin. Ronald Reagan looks over his shoulder for every decision he makes. “We took them out of the vaults. We have incredible vaults of things,” he tells me. “They have 3,900 paintings.” It’s a roster of the greatest American leaders assembled in an oval around him in their most sterling depictions. They serve as motivation.

The strangest thing happened last night: the Democratic Party, which has built its success in recent years thanks almost entirely to framing themselves as the candidates espousing normalcy versus the chaos offered by Republicans, showed up to Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress and cried havoc. Part of this may be due to institutional decay. The sight of a weakened Nancy Pelosi murmuring to Steny Hoyer in advance of the speech served as a reminder of the strongarm tactics from the Democratic leadership class that used to restrain their far-left wing from losing its shit in public with all the restraint of a toddler denied their binky.

First Lady Melania Trump held a roundtable on Capitol Hill Monday with victims of revenge porn, deepfakes and sextortion in support of the "Take It Down Act." The “Take It Down Act” is a bipartisan bill cosponsored by Senators Ted Cruz and Amy Klobuchar that would require social-media platforms to remove any nonconsensual intimate images within forty-eight hours of a victim’s request. While the act passed the Senate with a unanimous vote, FLOTUS hopes it will be passed with the same enthusiasm in the House before being signed into law by her husband. She called for the prioritization of “robust security measures and to uphold strict ethical standards to protect individual privacy.

So much for the flurry of visits by European leaders such as French president Emmanuel Macron and British prime minister Keir Starmer this past week to placate, prod and persuade President Donald Trump to back Ukraine in its struggle against Russia. Kyiv’s lonely battle to retain its sovereignty just got a little bit lonelier as Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky quarreled during a televised meeting in the Oval Office.   The president and his deputy disrespected Zelensky by telling him that he was being “disrespectful.” It ended with Zelensky being dismissed from the White House, a canceled press conference and the mineral deal with Ukraine in a state of inanition.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?

When your fiercest loyalists are accusing your government of being taken over by Elon Musk, who they brand a “parasitic illegal immigrant,” what’s the best way to respond? Donald Trump opted for a side-by-side interview with the X CEO on Fox News, speaking to Sean Hannity, the anchor with whom he remains friendliest.  And for all the attempts — both from inside and outside the conservative tent — to drive a wedge between Trump and tech billionaire Musk, the two seemed chummier than ever.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMbcMO5JgEo&ab_channel=FoxNews Responding to Hannity’s claim that the mainstream media wants to see the pair get a divorce, Trump was nonplussed.

I am reliably informed that the flow of water in the Potomac River is approximately 11,500 cubic feet per second. At Little Falls, near Washington, DC, that works out to about 7 billion gallons per day. Is it enough? I ask because all the chatter we hear about “draining the swamp” is completely pointless. The swamp that is the Washington establishment cannot be effectively drained. There is no valve huge enough to handle the requisite discharge. The institutional sewers would be overwhelmed by the effluvium. No, the fetid, corrupt, woke and self-serving bureaucracy that is the seat of government can be disburdened of its accumulated muck only by more vigorous means. Repristination requires that it be aggressively flushed, not passively drained.

Despite frequent claims that Tulsi Gabbard's nomination to be director of national intelligence was in danger, repeated ad nauseam in the Washington press, ultimately she didn't even need J.D. Vance to come back to break a tie. Only Mitch McConnell broke with the rest of his Republican colleagues to oppose her confirmation, which — as I've previously written — was never in doubt once she got out of the Intelligence Committee.  Yet it's worth noting one of the untoward prices paid along the way, given the egregious nature of its violation of the separation of powers.

With Donald Trump moving so rapidly on so many fronts, it is hard to grasp the big picture. What are his overriding goals, politically and electorally? What has he already accomplished?  Here is a summary in case you are keeping score. Trump has done more in a few weeks than any president in history. He took office with a coherent, detailed program and control of Congress (though a very narrow majority in the House). He is acting swiftly before his political capital dissipates.  Trump hopes to sustain his winning electoral coalition beyond his time in office. That’s why he chose a young populist, J.D. Vance, as his vice president and presumptive successor.

Pete Hegseth was the first cabinet nominee to the breach, leading Donald Trump’s collection of outsiders, populists and hellraisers into the Capitol Hill combat they can all expect to navigate in the coming weeks. And in terms of a first confrontation with the opponent, Hegseth handled his mission manfully — taking the slings and arrows from the Democratic side of the aisle with relative ease. At one point, exasperated Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal — you’ll remember him from not serving in Vietnam and falsely claiming that he did — said, “I don’t dispute your communication skills.” And how could he? Hegseth seemed more than ready to address the accusations from Senate Democrats head on, and the Republicans on the committee seemed unperturbed by their attacks.

Former congressman Matt Gaetz kicked off the 119th Congress by not showing up and taking the Capitol Hill press corps to school. After weeks of drama, Mike Johnson was reelected as speaker of the House on the very first ballot — exactly as Gaetz predicted. Some Hill reporters, such as Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman, and even Congressman Thomas Massie, had tweeted in response to Gaetz’s declarative prediction that he was wrong. Heading into the vote, everyone knew that Massie was implacably opposed to Johnson — but everyone else’s opposition proved to be quite placable. The drama kicked off almost immediately, when Democratic congressman Hank Johnson failed to show up before roll was called.

As the clock ticked down late Friday night, the US House and Senate finally passed a stopgap funding bill to keep the government operating for another two months. The passage came after two failed attempts by Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to push through earlier versions of the bill. Any additional delays would have led to a temporary shutdown of some non-essential government functions. Essential functions, like the military, would have continued to operate. What can we learn from this shambolic, last-minute process? First, the good news. The first two bills failed because they contained a trainload of pork, a steaming pile of non-essential provisions that rank-and-file Republicans refused to support.

Mike Johnson's status as an accidental speaker, thrust into his role in part because it was so undesirable or impossible for other longer-tenured members to achieve, was always going to be tested once there was a Republican in the White House again. And since that Republican turns out to be Donald Trump, currently the acting president in everything but title, Johnson's decision-making was going to become all the more controversial, subject to the whims and leanings of Trump's political instincts.  It turns out we didn't even have to wait until the inauguration to find out what that looks like.

You better watch out, you better not cry... President-elect Donald Trump is coming to town. And according to a recent Associated Press report, he’s making a list and checking it twice — that's to say, he’s looking to enforce laws. It’s only November, but officials in DC are already preparing for the so-called disastrous effects of Trump’s reign come January. “We have been discussing and planning for many months in the case that the District has to defend itself and its values,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser in a briefing.  Who knows what disasters will befall us on January 6 when Congress convenes to count the electoral votes — but Bowser is prepared to request the support of the DC National Guard on that day.