As Donald Trump's bragging about the economy reached a crescendo last fall, former Obama White House communications director Jen Psaki provided a helpful reality check for the American people. "A buffoon could have kept the recovery going," Psaki explained, "and in fact one has so far." That Trump had inherited an Obama boom, an expansion […]

Presidential candidate Donald Trump made a lot of promises on his way to the White House. Most ranged from the outright laughable to the literally impossible. Predictably, very few of Trump's guarantees came to pass. He did not "build a wall" and have Mexico pay for it. President Trump did not provide health "insurance for […]

"When I am president, I will work to ensure that all of our kids are treated equally, and protected equally," Donald Trump declared on July 22, 2016, as he accepted the Republican Party's nomination for president. "Every action I take, I will ask myself: does this make life better for young Americans in Baltimore, Chicago, […]

Writers, bloggers, commenters, and pundits nearly exhausted the dictionary in the runup to the president's July 4th Trumpapalooza™. With his tanks, parades, flyovers, and personal address, Donald Trump's appropriation of America's Independence Day rightly earned descriptions ranging from inappropriate, disgusting, and self-serving to grotesque, Orwellian, and masturbatory. But word that the Republican National Committee was […]

In late May, President Donald Trump shocked many when he rejected the assessments of his own administration and U.S. allies about recent North Korean violations of United Nations resolutions regarding its ballistic missile program. In response to Trump's support for the "very smart man" in Pyongyang, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd offered a novel […]

The United States was the world's lone "hyperpower" when President George W. Bush launched his disastrous and unnecessary war with Iraq in 2003. An economic and military hegemon unchallenged by any single enemy or collection of rivals, the U.S. could and did act with impunity in swiftly toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad. But even […]

So another tax season has come and gone. In this case, that means Americans can render their verdict on the first year of the signature legislative achievement of Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Thus far, the reviews are not kind. Despite an analysis by […]

Zombies have gripped American popular culture for years. In books, television shows, and films, the undead are regularly resurrected for your entertainment. (Even Jane Austen fans were treated to Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy butchering those from beyond the grave in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.) But whatever their reanimation story, the zombie's Achilles' heel […]

Historical events occur twice, Karl Marx famously said, first as tragedy and then as farce. But when it comes to the rampant lawlessness of Republican presidential administrations, the record is a succession of national tragedies for the United States. And the damage to America's democratic institutions is no laughing matter. As President Trump, his attorney […]

When House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal of Massachusetts demanded the Internal Revenue Service turn over six years of Donald Trump's tax returns to his committee, he was doing so with the law fully on his side. As past Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, former Joint Committee on Taxation chief of staff Edward Kleinbard, […]