On July 4, 11-year-old Davon McNeal stopped at his aunt’s house in Washington, D.C., to pick up a phone charger. Shortly after he stepped out of his family’s car, gunshots rang out. McNeal fell to the ground. His mother thought he was taking cover, but soon realized he had been […]
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For much of Donald Trump’s presidency, the phrase “Imagine if Obama had” served as a reminder of the double standards and hypocrisy required to defend Trump’s rhetoric and actions. But when it comes to the most recent example of hypocritical corruption, the pardoning of his longtime friend and “partner-in-crime” Roger […]
“She fucks Black dudes? She probably has something.” Those were words said to me in high school — by a friend. I spun on my heels and told him how those words were racist, and my friend, who was nice and would give someone the shirt off his back, listed […]
Now that my 44 years on daily newspapers have ended, I’m finally free to admit my biases. I’m biased toward the facts. Toward compassion. Toward freedom. All basics of our business. All under attack by today’s Republicans. We reporters pride ourselves on open minds. We’re fiercely independent. We defy sources […]
“It’s ridiculous—absurd allegations that have absolute no bearing in truth. Have yet to see the book, but it is a book of falsehoods,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said of Mary Trump’s memoir about her uncle Don the president, Too Much and Never Enough. Kayleigh didn’t need to read […]
In delaying any public release of Donald Trump’s financial records on Thursday, the Supreme Court also handed itself a major victory. The loser could be our democratic system of government. The court’s majority in Trump v. Mazars granted the judiciary broad new leeway to decide whether congressional subpoenas against the […]
Theresa Greenfield is a 56-year-old Des Moines real estate development executive who’s still small-town, girl-next-door-friendly. She’s also running for the United States Senate. Her style is so earnest, affable, and humble that talking to her the first question that comes to mind is: What’s a nice girl like you doing […]
If and when Donald Trump leaves office, whether now or the day after the election, it should be by resignation. We cannot and should not wait until Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021, for him to vacate the White House. His departure has become a matter of national emergency, national safety, […]
After many years demanding the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state flag, Black Mississippians received their wish when a bill doing that was signed into law last week. Just as the state flag had served as a symbol of white supremacy for 126 years, beginning nearly 30 years […]
Donald Trump is right about one thing: he lost at the Supreme Court today. Bigly, as he might say. In two 7-2 decisions, both written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court affirmed that both Congress and the New York District Attorney have the right to subpoena Trump’s (and any […]
Hard as it is to believe that anyone could think Donald Trump could be better than Joe Biden at anything, from running the country to drinking from a glass of water, there are such people. And it was those people to whom Biden pitched his economic speech Thursday afternoon in […]
The most telling revelation I ever received about Donald Trump was from a New York hedge-fund bro for whom I did some occasional speechwriting. In late summer 2015, I went to him and said, “We have to stop this guy. He’s a billionaire. He could fund his own campaign.” The […]
On the strength of six eyewitnesses’ lineup identifications, Lydell Grant was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for the murder of a young Texas man, Aaron Scheerhoorn, who was stabbed to death outside a Houston nightclub in 2010. All six of those eyewitnesses were wrong. New DNA testing on […]
The overall numbers are damning for Democrats. President Trump has confirmed 200 judges, including 53 to the critically important appeals court, the most for any president in a single term since Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. President Obama confirmed 55 appeals court judges, two more than Trump and including nine […]
It may seem hard for some to imagine two more disparate subjects than the U.S. removal of Native American peoples from Indian territory in the nation’s Southeast during the 1830s and the Nazi liquidation of Europe’s Jews more than a hundred years later. Yet the parallels in the machinery of […]
President Donald Trump’s ban on visas for highly skilled immigrants has forced Silicon Valley companies into a rock-and-hard-place scenario where they must choose between an essential group of employees and a fundamental legal protection. In facing the double threat, the choice, though difficult and clouded with political bluster, is clear. […]
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Library of Congress While the rebels were defeated more than 155 years ago, it’s clear from Donald Trump and his GOP cult that the Confederacy has survived. Watching Trump’s hate-filled presidency—preventable mass death, raging indecency, and incitement of violence—has been a reality check. Trump’s deadly pandemic […]
I spent most of the day, the Fourth of July, thinking about cemeteries, the past, America in the rear-view mirror. I thought about all our dead buried in Europe and the Pacific, at Arlington, in small towns and big cities here, their lives, service and sacrifice; a rather quiet, anonymous […]
Pessimism is the mood of the day, with 80 percent of Americans saying the country is generally out of control. Even before civil unrest and pestilence, most Americans believed our country was in decline, Pew reported, with a shrinking middle class, increased indebtedness and growing polarization. It’s a dark hour, […]
Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, a common complaint was that he wasn’t being “tough” enough. Not tough enough on foreign policy, on ISIS, on Russia, not tough enough on the Republicans who were stonewalling his agenda in Washington. What those people thought they wanted was a president who would get in […]
In the 11 months since Jeffrey Epstein escaped justice one last time by killing himself inside the federal jail in Manhattan where he had been held ahead of his trial, the question has been what happened to his alleged procurer and enabler, his deranged girl Friday, Ghislaine Maxwell? Had she […]
Our teenage boy-in-chief has planned two consecutive days of Fourth of July celebrations, assuring our country what we need most as Americans faced with a resurgence of COVID-19 cases and national unrest is more fireworks. The president vowed that the aptly named “President Trump’s 2020 Salute to America” will be […]
A curious detail appears in the press release announcing the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell on charges of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse minors. On Thursday, Audrey Strauss, the newly appointed acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Maxwell had been charged in a […]
Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast / Photos Getty Are you better off now than you were four years ago? For Republicans, the answer is decidedly “No.” Consider this startling stat: Dave Wasserman, House editor for the Cook Political Report, recently noted that “when President Trump took office in […]