Outside the Beltway

President Trump is now threatening to close the border if he doesn’t get funding for his border wall.

The Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by the Trump Administration to have an injunction against its new asylum policy lifted.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has announced that the deployment of U.S. troops to the Mexican border will be extended through the end of this year.

A bad look for all concerned.

President Trump’s latest attack on the Federal Judiciary prompted a rare rebuke from the Chief Justice of the United States.

A Federal Judge has ruled that the Trump Administration’s efforts to limit the ability of migrants to claim asylum violates Federal law.

Now that the election is over, President Trump and his sycophants in the right-wing media seem to have completely forgotten about the “invading” “caravan” of Central American asylum seekers.

A filing in an unrelated case has apparently revealed the existence of a sealed indictment against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

The next head to roll in the Trump Administration appears to be frequent Trump target DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

My latest for The National Interest.

As expected, the midterm elections ended up being a split result that gives Democrats and Republicans alike reason to celebrate.

National Republicans are worried that the President’s concentration on hot-button issues could end up backfiring. They should be.

As the midterm campaign draws to a close, Donald Trump is returning to the message of xenophobia and fear that dominated his Presidential campaign.

President Trump wants to send more troops than we have in Syria and Iraq combined to the border to deal with a non-existent threat.

Angela Merkel announced yesterday that she would step aside as Chancellor at the end of her current term. What that means for the short and long term future of Germany and Europe is unclear.

Former President Jimmy Carter is warning his party against drifting too far left as we head into the midterms and, beyond that, the 2020 campaign cycle.

Paul Laxalt, the former Nevada Senator who was one of President Reagan’s closest confidantes outside the White House, has died at 96.

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.

The situation isn’t as awful as portrayed by the AP—but it’s still pretty bad.

America promised immigrants who volunteered to serve in our military a fast track to citizenship. Now, we’re throwing them out.

Today is a great day to reflect on the Enlightenment ideals that fueled a Declaration.

Trump uses an array of ugly language about immigrants. He pretends like he is just talking about MS13 but that is not the case.

President Trump’s short list of potential Supreme Court nominees consists mostly of conventionally conservative, well-qualified, jurists.

Donald Trump continues to demonstrate that he has nothing but utter contempt for the Rule of Law. At some point, he will either be called to account for this or our nation’s institutions will suffer as a result.

President Trump has reversed the family separation policy and replaced it with a family detention policy. This is likely to lead to Court challenges.

House Republicans are supposed to vote on one or more immigration bills this week, but can’t even agree what their policy should be.

Trump supporters seeking to justify the Trump Administration’s family separation policy are drawing a false, and baseless, equivalence between immigrant families and people who have been convicted of crimes.

Children are not political bargaining chips, but that’s exactly what this President plans to turn them into.

The Trump administration’s approach to immigrant children is a serious test of our national morality.

President Trump and his supporters are blaming the policy of separating parents and children at the border on Democrats. This is, simply put, a lie.

A Trump Administration policy announced in April has resulted in roughly 2,000 children being taken from their parents at the border.

House Republicans put forward a plan to protect DACA beneficiaries, but President Trump appears to have doomed it already.

Two months ago, the President called on states to send National Guard troops to the border. As expected, they’re not guarding the border.

An inordinate amount of cruelty is being perpetrated in the name of border security. It’s only partly the fault of the current President.

The Trump Administration has lost track of nearly 1,500 children at the same time that it is implementing a new policy that will result in children who arrive at the border with their parents or other family members.

The answer is, of course, no. Really, this is a post about the wall as policy.

Thanks to a combination of sensationalism and outright lies, a fairly conventional story about an annual protest march in Mexico was turned into Fox News fodder that raised images of an invading army of illegal immigrants.

The “caravan” of immigrants that sent the President off the deep end on immigration issues is basically coming to an end.

President Trump wants to send the military to the Mexican border. This is both unnecessary and a bad idea.

More than 1200 refugees, mostly from Honduras, are trying to come to the United States. What should we do about it?

He cooperated with the FBI. He was arrested by ICE.

In a bizarre Twitter rant, President Trump declared a DACA deal “dead,” blaming Democrats when it’s clear that it’s largely his fault.

Stephen Paddock’s crime was clearly terrorizing, and will impact the lives of survivors, families, first responders in many ways for a long time. Based on the currently available evidence, though, the Las Vegas shooting was not “terrorism.”

The President gathered supporters around him, and blatantly lied to them, so as to increase support for his policies.

Two new polls show that most Americans oppose President Trump’s ban on travel from seven majority Muslim countries, but that most Republicans support it.

Another attack in what has been a bloody 2016 for Europe.

Political change coming to Germany? Or more of the same.

It has become necessary to destroy the party in order to save it.

Donald Trump responded to the attack on the Pulse nightclub by renewing his call to ban members of an entire religion from coming to the United States.

Americans don’t trust their government or each other. There’s no reason to hope it’ll get better.