Outside the Beltway

The first night of games in the N.F.L. pre-season included some sporadic protests during the National Anthem, and prompted a predictable response from the President.

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

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.

Corey Stewart rose to become the Republican Party’s Senate nominee in Virginia with blatant appeals to racial division. Now his party fears they’ll be the ones who end up paying the price.

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro survived an apparent, albeit amateurish, assassination attempt yesterday in what could be a sign of underlying instability in Venezuela.

Washington, D.C.’s Metro system has scrapped any plan to give participants in next week’s white supremacist rally private train cars.

Next week, some of the same groups that rallied in Charlottesville last year will be gathering in Washington, D.C. and the D.C. Metro is considering a transportation plan that is causing controversy.

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.

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

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.

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.

It’s more complicated than one might think.

An idiot climbed the monument, wasting police resources and ruining the day for hundreds of visitors.

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.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a populist from the left, rode a wave of populism and public disdain for the outgoing President to a landslide win in Mexico

A Pittsburgh area police officer has been indicted on homicide charges after a video emerged that appears to show him shooting a fleeing suspect in the back

Joe Crowley, widely considered in line to replace Nancy Pelosi as party leader in the House, has been defeated.

A pioneer woman born in 1867 depicted American Indians and African-Americans in ways that are cringe-worthy today.

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

In a new interview, the President says that he doesn’t believe that N.F.L. players who kneel during the National Anthem have a real issue.

Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia have apparently finally settled a three-decade old name dispute.

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

Trump’s withdrawal of his invitation to the Philadelphia Eagles is just another example of his populistic nationalism. (And it isn’t healthy).

Most Americans disagree with Trump on the N.F.L. National Anthem protests, but Republicans are behind him.

President Trump waded back into the National Anthem debate when he revoked the invitation of the Philadelphia Eagles to come to the White House today.

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.

Conservatives claim to support freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but they’ve utterly failed that test when it comes to their reaction to players who peacefully and respectfully kneel during the National Anthem.

We have a generation of schoolkids who aren’t even surprised when there’s a shooting at their school. That’s a problem.

President Trump’s response to the N.F.L.’s new National Anthem policy is as narrow-minded and divisive as you’d expected it to be.

The N.F.L. has come up with a dumb “solution” to a non-existent problem.

The President and the Secretary of State had some oddly contradictory statements this week.

New York attorney Aaron Schlossberg found himself on the receiving end of an Internet firestorm this week. His case raises some interesting questions about Internet vigilantism.

Not surprisingly, the North Koreans are pushing back against American efforts to force them into a corner on denuclearization.

The Leader of the Free World is, sadly, enabling atrocities.

Celebrations and a deadly day in the Middle East.

Whether Don Blankenship wins or loses in West Virginia, his success is yet another example of how Donald Trump has changed the GOP for the worse.

Support for gun control spiked in the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting but it appears to be returning to more normal levels, and that’s bad news for gun control advocates.

President Trump’s on-again, off-again visit to Great Britain appears to be on again.

Two months after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, support for gun control measures seems to be slipping.

The United States can’t do any good in Syria, but we can do a lot of bad.

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

Stephon Clark died after being shot eight times in the back and side by police in Sacramento. So far, the authorities haven’t acted.

New polling shows that public support for several gun control proposals continue to increase in the wake of February’s shooting at a Parkland, Florida High School.

Organizing protests was the easy part. The hard part for those who would seek to expand gun regulations is yet to come.

Personal attacks on teenagers whose friends were murdered is a strategy sure to backfire.

If you’re tired of the restraint being shown by this President, you may be in luck.

Polls released since the Parkland, Florida shooting show that support for gun control measures is at its highest level since 1993, but will it last?

Students across the country are staging 17-minute protests at 10 am in their time zones.

China’s Xi Jinping solidified his hold on power well into the next decade over the weekend.