This is becoming a terrible pattern. President-elect Donald Trump appeared at the entrance to his Mar-a-Lago resort Wednesday to take credit for 8,000 new jobs, 5,000 of which he said would be created by Sprint: So we just had some very good news. Because of what’s happening and the spirit and the hope, I was […]

Media Matters reports: Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich is advocating for Congress to “change the ethics laws” for President-elect Donald Trump, rather than forcing Trump to “disentangle himself from his multibillion-dollar business to avoid conflicts of interest with his incoming administration.” …Gingrich, a staunch Trump supporter, is calling for “a whole new approach” for Congress […]

President-elect Donald Trump has compounded the numerous ongoing controversies over members of his transition team with yet another troubling pick for a high-ranking position, naming Congressman Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), a far-right Tea Party representative who founded the House Freedom Caucus, to be White House budget director. During the debt ceiling fight in 2011, Mulvaney advocated letting the U.S. Treasury default — which is […]

During an interview on ABC’s This Week, Rep. Adam Schiff explained why the Obama administration is being circumspect in its public response to Russian interference in the U.S. election, and then made clear the steep cost of Donald Trump’s reckless refusal to condemn the interference: .@RepAdamSchiff: For Trump “to continue to give the Russians deniability […]

President-elect Donald Trump has named Fox News correspondent and host Monica Crowley to be the senior director of Strategic Communications for the National Security Council. This is another in a string of appointments from Fox, indicating that Trump’s once frosty relationship with the network is over. Crowley, who was a research assistant and editorial advisor to Richard […]

A group of former congressional staffers — Ezra Levin, Angel Padilla, and Jeremy Haile — has published a crucial guide to the coming resistance against a Donald Trump administration, providing action steps and advice for Democrats seeking ways to fight back against an authoritarian and dangerous Republican government. The hope, they write in the introduction, is for “stiffening […]

[Background: Part One and Part Two.] Speed Thrills But Kills The media business is aggressively competitive and an extremely tough one in which to succeed. Understandably, therefore, metrics like traffic (quantity) are very important for media outlets. However, the big story of U.S. political press in the last two decades has been that a focus […]

While President-elect Donald Trump refuses to stand up to Russia and Republicans are silent or worse, women and men who love their country and the rights it has long guaranteed are organizing. The Washington Post reports: D.C. police confirmed Thursday morning that they have issued a permit for the Women’s March on Washington to gather for what is […]

Well in advance of Donald Trump taking office as President, two of his supposedly “former” top advisors have made overlapping trips to Moscow this past week that appear to telegraph the incoming administration’s foreign and economic policy plans. On December 8th, the Russian propaganda outlet Sputnik News reported Carter Page had arrived in Moscow to […]

We are in the midst of a national crisis: The U.S. intelligence community has confirmed that Russia interfered in the election, in order to help Donald Trump get elected. They now have evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was orchestrating the interference. This was not, as Trump has suggested, just some hacker sitting on his […]

In a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus continued President-elect Donald Trump’s pattern of chilling and intimidating the press by expressing amenability to a range of dangerous ideas — including hinting that the White House daily briefings might not even be necessary in its current form and the possibility […]

Two recent items in The New York Times evince a troubling acceptance and elevation of Trump administration propaganda, without any factual basis. Since his White House transition began, the only interest President-elect Donald Trump has shown in creating jobs has been for department heads who are bent on destroying their own departments, yet the NYT […]

President-elect Donald Trump has not yet been inaugurated and is already terrifying progressives (and not a few conservatives) with his diplomatic recklessness, unwillingness to resolve his vast conflicts of interest, chaotic transition, and alarming Cabinet-building. His belligerent, continually divisive posture is suggestive of an incoming president with a commanding mandate, but he was helped to […]

President-elect Donald Trump’s hostility toward NATO is manifesting even before his presidency begins. The Washington Post reports that Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller, who only assumed her post in October, is being targeted by Trump’s team: Two Trump transition sources told me that a representative of the transition team met late last month with NATO Secretary General […]

Governor John Kasich delivered a fake-out punch to reproductive rights in Ohio on Tuesday when he vetoed a ban on abortions at six weeks, only to turn around and sign a ban on abortion after 20 weeks. Both of these prohibitions are unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade, which sets the point of viability for a […]

Two dozen states with Republican state majorities and/or Republican governors have tried to “defund” Planned Parenthood by attempting to block public funds to clinics. It is a cynical ploy to try to further hollow out the right to abortion guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, and the Obama administration is making a last-minute bid to try […]

In the Washington Post, Drew Harwell details the problems with Donald Trump’s latest promise “that his businesses will do ‘no new deals’ during his time in the White House,” starting with the fact that it is utterly nonsensical. Trump’s complex international business holdings will naturally strike “new deals” moving forward. “Every day there are going […]

KellyAnne Conway just claimed @CNN that @AdamSchiffCA "definitely doesn't have a security clearance." Really? Might want to check that. — Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) December 13, 2016 .@kellyannepolls thinks as Ranking Member of Intel Committee, I'm not read into nation's intel programs. Suggest she google Gang of 8. https://t.co/NzT53Yeglz — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 13, 2016 […]

President-elect Donald Trump recently promised, under pressure, to hold a news conference in order to address his handling of the inherent conflicts of interest between his business and the presidency. But now he has canceled that presser, with no firm new date set: I will hold a press conference in the near future to discuss the business, […]

A State of Denial Susan Glasser, an editor at Politico, recently wrote an article about the media, “Covering Politics in a Post-Truth America,” that was published by the Brookings Institute. Much of Glasser’s article discusses some of her own interesting history as a journalist and how the mainstream media in Washington, D.C., has evolved over […]

In naming ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State, President-elect Donald Trump is seeking to elevate — to the fourth-highest position in the U.S. government — a man who not only has absolutely no governing experience, but who also has no experience whatsoever outside of the multinational oil and gas corporation for which […]

During a Republican primary debate in 2011, Rick Perry tried to name three federal departments he would eliminate if elected president: “It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone: Commerce, education, and the, uh, what’s the third one there? Let’s see,” he said, to laughter. “Commerce, education, and the, um, um, […]

President-elect Donald Trump wasted no time before breaching decades of diplomatic precedent by taking a phone call from the president of Taiwan. Now, he is also demonstrating open disdain for the long-standing “One China” policy. In an interview with Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace, he said he does not know “why we have to be […]

Ten bipartisan electors have published an open letter, addressed to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, requesting an intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the U.S. election. Specifically, the electors seek further information on “whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, […]

Following news of a secret CIA assessment concluding that Russia intervened to help Donald Trump win the election, Democrats have continued to push hard for answers and accountability. Members of the GOP have been considerably more reticent to speak and step up, with very few exceptions, and their new President-elect is deflecting and actively denouncing […]

It was already clear that President-elect Donald Trump is not overly interested in actually performing the job for which he was elected — and that he is happy to allow his second-in-command, Mike Pence, to take the reins on many major decisions and details. Incredibly, those details include the daily intelligence briefings which all presidents and […]

We now know with certainty that “Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.” We now know that one of the very foundations of our democracy was attacked by a hostile foreign power. Yet Trump refuses to stand up to that hostile foreign power.  […]

The Washington Post reports: The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter. Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government […]

NBC has confirmed that not only will they go forward with airing President-elect Donald Trump’s reality show Celebrity Apprentice (albeit with a new host), but Trump will also keep his executive producer title, and be listed in show credits — a decision that has sparked widespread outrage and a petition to remove him. It is hard […]

President-elect Donald Trump has offered Gary Cohn, the current president and Chief Operating Officer at Goldman Sachs, the position of director of the National Economic Council. Cohn joins Steven Mnuchin and Steve Bannon to become the third Goldman Sachs alumnus offered a position in the Trump administration. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly accused Hillary Clinton […]