Outside the Beltway

Attorney General William Barr has opened a new investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, a move that seems suspiciously political.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other firebrands aren’t steering the ship. Yet.

The Constitution’s invitation to struggle over foreign policy continues.

Sometimes symbolism is important. This is one of those times.

Republicans are blindly loyal to this President in a way we have not seen before. They are likely to end up paying a price for that.

Last week, the House passed two bills to strengthen the laws regarding background checks for guns, but they’re not likely to even make it to the floor of the Senate.

The House of Representatives voted yesterday to block the President’s declaration of an “emergency” at the southern border. Now the matter goes to the Senate.

Republicans face a choice in the coming days. Do they support the Constitution, or do they support Donald Trump? You can count on them making the wrong choice.

Steve King isn’t backing down from his history of white supremacy and racism. And he’s also running for re-election.

Following Donald Trump’s lead, the GOP is making clear that its game plan for 2020 is paint all Democrats as ‘socialists, baby killers, and anti-Semites.’

The right has spent a seemingly inordinate amount of time focusing on relatively powerless Members of Congress.

The White House isn’t ruling out the idea of a second government shutdown, but Senate Republicans have other ideas.

Not surprisingly, the President’s proposed shutdown deal is not being received well by Democrats on Capitol Hill.

As the shutdown drags on, it’s beginning to have an impact on the economy.

The House GOP has moved to rebuke Iowa Congressman for his racist remarks. What took them so long?

If you’re looking for the biggest obstacle to a resolution to the government shutdown, look no further than President Donald J. Trump.

As the shutdown drags on, Republicans are beginning to fear that members in the House and Senate may begin to fall away from supporting the President.

As the shutdown continues, there’s little sign of progress on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

As 2018 draws to a close, there’s no sign that the government shutdown will end any time soon.

There was no progress on resolving the government shutdown today, and little hope that anything will happen before late next week.

The government entered its third shutdown of the year with little sign of an immediate resolution.

With just hours to go, a partial government shutdown is becoming more and more likely.

Hours before the House was set to vote on a temporary funding bill for the government, President Trump has apparently changed his mind.

In a small, but meaningful, step, the Senate has rebuked the Administration’s policies toward the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

House Republicans reportedly don’t have the votes to fund the President’s border wall.

A brewing fight over funding for the President’s border wall could throw a monkey wrench into plans to pass a budget by next Friday.

With one week to go before Election Day, Democrats seem well-positioned to gain control of the House while Republicans seem likely to hold on to the Senate.

Most Americans think Justice Kavanaugh was at least partly deceptive in his response to allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford and other women.

Trumpism is a direct by-product of the poisonous populism of the Tea Party movement, and they’ve both taken over the Republican Party.

In the past, President Trump has threatened to shut down the government if the doesn’t get what he wants in the budget. The latest budget deal effectively dares him to do it.

With less than two months to go before the midterm elections, President Trump’s job approval numbers are hitting new lows.

It’s not obvious that two more felons in the Trump inner circle will have any immediate impact.

Jim Jordan, who heads the powerful House Freedom Caucus, is being accused of ignoring reports of sexual abuse by a team doctor while he was a coach at The Ohio State University.

There is a frustration and a growing sense that the American political system is illegitimate.

The odds of an immigration bill passing the House were already low. This morning, President Trump pretty much guaranteed failure.

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

Donald Trump wants Republicans to make his immigration policies the centerpiece of the midterm campaign. What could possibly go wrong?

New polling shows that the Trump Administration’s family separation policy is widely unpopular, with only Republicans supporting it. That last fact, though, is why Trump is unlikely to change the policy.

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

The GOP and Donald Trump are indistinguishable now. But it’s not clear what that means.

A small group of Senators is engaged in a seemingly quixotic effort to save DACA before the election.

The effort by a group of Republican rebels to force a vote on a DACA bill is moving closer to success, but that may end up being the easy part.

Backing up the nation’s intelligence agencies, the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a preliminary statement that it had concluded that Russia sought to aid Donald Trump’s campaign in the 2016 Presidential election.

A small group of Republican rebels in the House are attempting to push legislation protecting DACA beneficiaries to a floor vote. Unfortunately, they’re not likely to succeed.

With just over six months to go before the 2018 elections, the storm clouds are starting to gather for the Republican Party.

Some Republicans are suggesting that Paul Ryan should be pushed out as Speaker before the November elections.

Paul Ryan won’t be running for re-election this year, opening up both a Congressional seat and a leadership spot.

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

Republicans on Capitol Hill worried about all the leaking coming from the Trump White House would be wise to actually do the oversight the Constitution compels them to do.