Outside the Beltway

Donald Trump’s trade war is helping China expand its diplomatic influence.

The military regime in Myanmar has sentenced two reporters to prison for reporting on the repression of the Rohingya Muslims.

President Trump is alienating our allies and making friends with dictators, and the world is responding as you might expect they would.

One year after Charlottesville, it’s clear that President Trump still doesn’t understand what happened there, or that he just doesn’t care.

The Trump Administration has taken the latest step in a process that began in May with the withdrawal from the JCPOA. Where it takes us is anybody’s guess, but the probability of something going wrong is quite high.

A powerful political network is distancing itself from the Trump-dominated Republican Party.

President Trump and the President of the European Commission announced an agreement late yesterday on trade issues, but it’s long on promises and short on results.

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.

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

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.

The ill-advised move is sure to raise costs for businesses and consumers and roil global stock markets.

The right-wing government in Warsaw has purged more than one-third of the members of the Polish Supreme Court in a crackdown on political opponents.

Donald Trump continues to do something that Russian and Soviet leaders likely only thought possible in their wildest dreams, drive a wedge between the United States and its NATO allies.

The Polish Government has amended a controversial law that sought to punish people for discussing the role that some Poles played in the Holocaust.

President Trump reportedly trashed the NATO alliance in conversations at the G-7 Summit, something that should make Russian President Vladimir Putin quite happy.

The Presidents of the United States and Russia will meet next month and there’s reason to worry about what Trump might give away.

Was one of the pioneering African-American entertainers a “house Negro”?

The Vietnam memorial helped heal a gaping wound. What purpose will this one serve?

Madison was right about politicians and ambition. He just didn’t see the how it would all play out.

Trump spent much of Tuesday praising a dictator who has murdered and imprisoned millions of people. Then he returned to attacking the democratically elected leader of one of our closest allies.

Thanks to Donald Trump, the happiest man in the world right now is Vladimir Putin.

European alliance and Russian goals edition.

Hurricane Trump hit the G-7 this weekend, and the damage it left behind will take years to clean up.

Dan Coates, the Director of National Intelligence, has issued a strong warning that has received little attention.

Anthony Bourdain was a renowned chef, writer, television host, and storyteller. He also suffered from demons that ultimately caught up with him.

As he headed to the G-7 Summit, President Trump threw our ostensible allies another curve.

The actions of the Trump administration are helping Russian-EU relations (to the detriment of the US).

The arguments in favor of a permanent U.S./NATO base in Poland are not very convincing.

The new American Ambassador to Germany is making what clearly seem to be inappropriate statements about domestic politics in Europe.

According to reports, President Trump is preparing to go to war against luxury German cars.

Donald Trump may or may not be racist himself, but he has most certainly exploited and helped widen racial divisions ever since bursting on the political scene in 2015.

President Trump is setting off another trade war, this time with some of America’s closest and most important allies.

Poland makes the U.S. and NATO an offer they might want to consider refusing.

A Federal Judge in Virginia has handed a significant legal victory to a student who sued their school district because they were barred form using the bathroom of the gender they identify with.

The Internet is a global platform. Should every country’s laws apply to everyone using it?

The number of Americans professing no religious affiliation is on the rise. This will have some interesting cultural and political implications.

President Trump’s decision to violate the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran could be a turning point in relations between the United States and its most important allies, and not in a good way.

As expected, President Trump has withdrawn the United States from the nuclear deal with Iran. There was no rational basis for doing so.

Seven years after deactivation, the U.S. Second Fleet will be patrolling the North Atlantic again.

The new Secretary of State is an improvement over the worst Secretary of State in history.

Israeli Prime Minister gave a speech yesterday designed to undermine the nuclear deal with Iran. The evidence was unconvincing, but the speech was really only aimed at an audience of one.

Not surprisingly, Mike Pompeo was confirmed as America’s 70th Secretary of State today. Now, the hard work begins.

French President Emmanuel Macron predicts, correctly, that President Trump will pull out of the nuclear deal with Iran for the worst possible reasons. This will be a disaster for America’s national interests.

French President Emmanuel Macron is in the U.S. hoping to lobby President Trump to keep the United States in the nuclear deal with Iran. He’s got his work cut out for him.

President Trump undercut his own Ambassador to the United Nations today by blocking the imposition of new sanctions on Russia.

A plurality of Americans aged 18 to 34 have no idea how many people were killed, what Auschwitz was, or how Hitler came to power.

Once again, President Trump’s foreign policy tweeting is causing problems.

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.

Not an Easter song, exactly, but certainly evocative of some of the holiday’s major themes.

Under the proposal certain visa-seekers (such as China and India) would have to have their social media presence scrutinized.