It is hardly news that President Trump has deliberately provoked liberal outrage, as a candidate and as president. But in case anyone is still wondering whether his inflammatory language is the result of design or impulse, recent comments from current and former White House strategists are revealing. Last month, an […] Read more »
When the Supreme Court Locks Arms With Republicans
This term, the five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices locked arms with their GOP counterparts in the White House and Congress against the unstinting forces of demographic change. In muscling through a series of 5–4 decisions on voting rights, redistricting, and President Trump’s travel ban over the unified objections of the […] Read more »
The Uncertain Political Ramifications of Justice Kennedy’s Exit
An already turbulent national political environment was rocked by another major development Wednesday afternoon: Justice Anthony Kennedy, the closest thing there is to a swing vote on the Supreme Court, decided to retire. … Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who sees pushing the judiciary to the right as a […] Read more »
Are Democrats Ready to Make Immigration an Issue in the Midterms?
Nitroglycerine. That’s how one long-time political strategist recently explained the politics of immigration to me. It’s one of those issues, he said, that can just as easily explode in your face as it can blow up the other side. Right now, it looks like the Trump administration is juggling bottles […] Read more »
GOP increasingly opposes legal — not just illegal — immigration
The firestorm over the separation of children from their undocumented parents at the border has almost completely overshadowed another milestone in the long-running national immigration debate: Opposition to legal, as well as illegal, migration is hardening into a bedrock principle of the Republican Party. CONT. Ronald Brownstein, CNN Read more »
Registering by Party: Where the Democrats and Republicans Are Ahead
This is not the best of times for the Democratic Party. No White House; no Senate; no House of Representatives; and a minority of governorships and state legislatures in their possession. Yet the Democrats approach this fall’s midterm elections with an advantage in one key aspect of the political process […] Read more »