Outside the Beltway

New York and several other states have filed an incredibly dubious lawsuit against the Republican’s new tax law.

Republicans will hold their 2020 National Convention in the same city that hosted the Democrats back in 2012.

Donald Trump’s military parade will cost roughly the same as military exercises in South Korea he has previously called “tremendously expensive.”

The 95-year-old elder statesman is slowly shedding his public reticence at the risk of the access on which he has built his fortune.

Donald Trump’s longtime attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen apparently recorded a conversation where the two men discussed paying off a Playboy model who claims she had an affair with him.

In the wake of a grievance filed by the union representing players, the N.F.L. has suspended the new National Anthem policy it announced earlier this year. This guarantees even more cynical political exploitation by the President.

The Trump Administration is inviting Vladimir Putin to Washington, D.C. for a second summit in the fall. What could possibly go wrong?

Happy Friday.

We still don’t know what President Trump and Vladimir Putin talked about or agreed to during their two-hour meeting on Monday.

Three new polls show that Republicans basically agree with the leader of their party when it comes to the issue of Russian interference in American elections.

There should be no question about a request to interview a former US Ambassador.

You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means.

An initiative that would have purported to split California into three separate states has been barred by the California Supreme Court from appearing on the November ballot.

More evidence that the politics of the moment aren’t just about illegal immigration.

It took less than twenty-four hours for President Trump to essentially repudiate his purported attempt to walk back the appalling comments he made in Helsinki.

Some Democrats want to compel President Trump’s translator to testify about his private meeting with Vladimir Putin. That’s a bad idea.

Initial polling on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court find the public more divided than they have been for other recent SCOTUS picks, but that’s unlikely to impact the fate of his nomination.

One day after an embarrassing performance at the Helsinki Summit, President Trump an absurd, completely unbelieve walk back of things the entire world heard him say loud and clear.

Rick Scott is pulling in impressive fundraising numbers, giving Democrats reason to worry that they’ll have another Senate seat to worry about in November.

Mariia Butina, a Russian “gun rights activist, is accused of being an unregistered agent of the Russian government and attempting to influence Republican Party policies regarding Russia in an operation that pre-dates the Trump Presidential campaign.

President Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin was an even bigger disaster than anticipated.

Despite Republican hopes, the tax cuts passed by Congress in December are not manifesting themselves in increased wages.

The midterm elections are still four months away, but Democrats are already making moves to prepare for the race for their party’s Presidential nomination in 2020.

Forget the “republic v. a democracy” abstraction. The numbers show some serious flaws in translating popular will into government.

A reference point for the future.

Even if all he gets out of the Helsinki Summit is a handshake and a photograph, Vladimir Putin has already won.

California’s Democratic Party endorsed “progressive” upstart Kevin de León over Senator Dianne Feinstein, but this is unlikely to stop Feinstein from winning election to a sixth term in office.

The Strzok hearing provides a return to this timeworn favorite.

Some thoughts on the Strzok hearing.

The Office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued indictments against twelve Russian intelligence officials for election-related hacking, and in the process has shown most of the arguments made by the President and his surrogates regarding the Russia investigation are nonsense.

Not surprisingly, the President’s visit to the United Kingdom wasn’t exactly diplomatic, or even borderline polite.

Happy Friday.

The Democratic National Committee is one step closer to adopting a rule change that would make superdelegates largely irrelevant to the party’s nomination process.

Another poll shows that the vast majority of Americans do not want to see the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade overturned.

The NATO Summit is going about as well as can be expected.

At least in these early days, Democrats appear to lack a coherent message, or a coherent strategy, to propel any effort to block Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

A new poll lends credence to the suggestion that Democrats should be careful about rallying behind the call to “Abolish ICE.”

There’s a reason President Trump’s Supreme Court picks are “normal” in a way his national security and economic teams are not.

In one area (with an important caveat) this has been a pretty normal administration.

A Federal Judge has rejected a Trump Administration effort to change a 20-year-old legal settlement that bars long-term detention of immigrant families.

There are good arguments as to why progressive Senators should vote against his confirmation. Let’s stick to those.

A selection that is likely to keep the Senate GOP united and red-state Democrats up for re-election under pressure to vote to confirm.

The Thai SEALs have completed an amazing rescue effort with success.

On the eve of the NATO Summit, President Trump continues to engage in tactics that seem to serve no purpose other than to undermine America’s most important and successful alliance.

With Brexit negotiations proceeding slowly, Theresa May loses her Brexit Minister and, more significantly, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who is likely to become one of her leading critics inside the Conservative Party going forward.

A new poll finds that most Americans oppose key elements of the immigration policies that the President and Republicans in Congress support.

Some additional comparative info (internationally and state-to-state).

Some considerations on the politics of Roe v. Wade.

A police officer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania who tased an apparently compliant African-American man will not be disciplined by his department, and probably won’t face charges either.

A man who had been identified as an assailant at last year’s Charlottesville rally and apparent member of a white supremacist organization has been dismissed by defense contractor Northrop Grumman.