The corrosion of support for First Amendment principles started before Trump. He’s supercharged it.
Donald Trump celebrated Sunday that his campaign to delegitimize the free press is working.
Episodes
The Daily 202's Big Idea
Start your day with the news you need to know and insights you can’t get anywhere else. Every weekday morning, The Washington Post brings you an insider’s view of the biggest stories of the moment.
Episodes
Obama and Bush deliver calls to action against Trumpism
On Thursday, both former presidents used major speeches to repudiate President Trump’s brand of politics and approach to the world.
What Jeff Sessions wouldn’t say was more revealing than what he did
Jeff Sessions was the personification of a hostile witness whenever a Democratic lawmaker questioned him during a contentious five-hour oversight hearing on Wednesday.
Ex-CIA officers are running for Congress as Democrats
The spooks have come in from the cold, and they’re running for Congress.
Hawks worry about the lack of American resolve to confront North Korea
President Trump’s bellicose rhetoric toward North Korea is making it harder to marshal domestic support for potential United States intervention.
Trump’s attacks on Senate Republicans are paying political dividends
It was striking how little criticism there was of Trump at the Koch retreat in Manhattan last Thursday and Friday. Meanwhile, the anger directed toward moderate Republicans in the Senate was palpable.
Trump now owns the broken health-care system
Remember the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.
Stepped-up attacks on the press reflect Trump’s bunker mentality
The president's latest comments add fresh data points to the cementing narrative that the brooding president has become increasingly isolated and angry.
Foreign intelligence agencies might be using your anti-virus software against you
Several worrisome stories popped overnight that underscore the growing vulnerability of the United States to hacking and cyberespionage by foreign governments, specifically Russia and North Korea.
Final Virginia governor’s debate spotlights Democratic problems in rural America
Democrats have a real problem in rural America, and it was on display in the third and final Virginia governor’s debate last night.
Trump's Bob Corker tirade encapsulates why Trump has failed at governing
Donald Trump’s escalating feud with Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, captures in miniature why he’s been ineffective during his first nine months as president.
Baseball is a salve for our national wounds
A love letter about the game as the playoffs begin in Washington.
It's all about the base
The Virginia governor’s race is a base election, and Ed Gillespie has a problem with his base. A new Virginia poll shows why Gillespie is fighting the culture wars.
Why a Republican strategist thinks we’re in a new Gilded Age
Everywhere he looks, Republican strategist and lobbyist Bruce Mehlman sees “eerie” parallels between the Gilded Age and today. Stay tuned to the end of the episode to hear part of James' conversation with Mehlman on what those parallels are.
How politics may (or may not) change after the Las Vegas shooting
The horror in Las Vegas may not dramatically change the debate about guns. But the response to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, which has left at least 59 dead and hundreds more wounded, reveals a great deal about our politics.
Trump’s tweets make matters worse in Puerto Rico and North Korea
If Donald Trump doesn’t have anything presidential to say, maybe he shouldn’t say anything at all.
Tom Price’s charter flights in perspective
Is this a distraction from what should be the bigger scandals?
Influx of Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria could tip Florida toward Democrats
Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans are expected to permanently move into Florida as the result of Hurricane Maria. That could tip the swingiest of swing states toward the Democrats.
A Senate that's coming apart
Roy Moore’s victory and Bob Corker’s retirement are fresh indicators of a Senate that’s coming apart.
Trump’s plutocracy problem complicates push for tax cuts
The dichotomy between what the president promises his tax plan will do and what’s he’s planning to unveil on Wednesday is just the latest example of the president’s actions not backing up his rhetoric.
Why the divider in chief embraces culture wars
Picking fights with people like Colin Kaepernick is Trump’s modus operandi. He thrives on feuds, and he likes setting up binary contrasts between himself and others.
In Alabama Senate debate, a noun, a verb and Donald Trump
If you took a shot of liquor every time Luther Strange name-dropped the president during a televised debate last night, you’d probably be too hammered to attend Donald Trump’s rally for him in Huntsville later today.
Gillespie keeps the door open to campaigning with Trump
With the Virginia governor’s race neck-and-neck, whether Republican Ed Gillespie chooses to campaign with President Trump could be determinative.
Why conservatives loved Trump’s U.N. speech
Many conservatives don’t want leaders to speak the language of diplomacy. They want a streetfighter. For those on the right, Trump offered a little something for everyone.
Mueller tightens the screws on Manafort
Could there be tapes after all?
Reading helped Hillary Clinton cope
The collection of works that she cites across the 494 pages of her new memoir showcases a top-flight intellect and would make for a compelling graduate school seminar.
Trump’s DACA ‘deal’ is another humiliation for Jeff Sessions
Immigration has always been Sessions' signature issue. But Trump's DACA deal was too good to be true.
Bipartisan initiative to thwart election hacking gains steam
Four secretaries of state and other election officials from around the country huddled with cybersecurity experts and federal officials yesterday to talk about what they can do differently in the future to prevent election hacking.
McCain and Kerry outline lessons from Vietnam
Hundreds of Washington insiders gathered last night in the Kennedy Center Opera House for an advance screening of Ken Burns’s new documentary on Vietnam.
Trumpism makes strange bedfellows
Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency has created a feeling of misery for leading figures in the establishment of both parties. Two such figures are now teaming up to push back on Trumpism as an ideological force.