David A. Graham

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Partisan gerrymandering—the practice of drawing districts in a way that is designed to aid one party and hurt the other—is one of the more pernicious phenomena in American politics today. It’s fundamentally antidemocratic because it’s designed to circumvent or at least dampen the will of voters.

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Any legislation titled with a backronym is automatically suspect, and the SAVE America Act—that’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility—is no exception.

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Stephen Colbert’s Late Show ends in May, and he’s in almost open warfare with his soon-to-be ex-bosses at CBS. Last night, he had planned to broadcast an interview with James Talarico, a member of the Texas state House who is running in a heated Democratic primary for United States Senate.

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“I have nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a Senate committee yesterday. Perhaps that’s true—but given his recent history, don’t bet on it.

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Last night, during Super Bowl halftime, I watched a mustachioed entertainer put on a show that celebrated working-class values, the pleasures of a good party, and the virtues of marriage, with a side serving of grievance against elites.

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The CIA World Factbook occupies a special place in the memories of elder Millennials like me. It was an enormous compendium of essential facts about every country around the world, carefully collected from across the federal government.

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With nine months to go until the midterm elections, President Trump’s campaign to subvert them is escalating.

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The attack on Representative Ilhan Omar on Tuesday was horrifying but depressingly predictable. Not only has the country seen a recent spree of political violence, but Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, has also been a frequent target of death threats.

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Destruction is easier than construction. If Donald Trump’s decades as a real-estate developer didn’t teach him that, his time as president might.
In October, the administration bulldozed the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom he wants to put on the site.

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Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Trump administration’s immigration operation in Minnesota is not just that agents of the state are killing peacefully protesting citizens on the streets.

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Donald Trump retains the ability to shock; the day he loses that, he will, like the biblical Samson—another man notable for his coiffure—lose his power entirely.

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The most notable, and perhaps most effective, ad of the 2024 presidential campaign featured footage of the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, voicing her support for gender-affirming treatment for inmates in federal prisons. “Kamala is for they/them.

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After an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis last week, forensic examinations of videos of the incident emerged within hours.

In the summer of 1968, three years into the Grateful Dead’s existence, the band fired singer and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir. Jerry Garcia, the band’s other guitarist and its reluctant leader, and bassist Phil Lesh had decided that Weir and keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan were dragging the band down musically. Weir was just 20 years old, the youngest member of the group and the least technically accomplished.

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Until recently, Donald Trump was consistent about this: The time for the United States to police the world, enforcing laws and norms, was over. “We are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everybody else in the world,” he told The New York Times in 2016.

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When a federal immigration agent shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis today, the details were fresh but the story was familiar.

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One indicator of a polity’s health is whether a citizen can be punished merely for telling the truth about the law. The signs for American democracy are not good.

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A year ago, no one knew for sure whether Project 2025 would prove to be influential or if it would fall by the wayside, like so many plans in President Donald Trump’s first term. Today, it stands as the single most successful policy initiative of the entire Trump era.

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This past Friday was the legal deadline for releasing files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the Justice Department blew right through it.
In an interview Friday morning, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged that not everything would be ready by the deadline.

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When President Donald Trump visited George Washington’s Mount Vernon in 2018, he reportedly showed little interest in the estate or in the first president. But Trump did have a critique of his predecessor. “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” he reportedly said.

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Last week, the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado made a daring escape from her home country to Norway, where she was honored as winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

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The president is the only person in the United States with the megaphone to speak to the nation and guide them through moments of tragedy.

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A force is pulling on Donald Trump that is even more inexorable than the march of time: political mortality.
Sometimes scandal or ineffectiveness is what fells a politician; if they survive those, term limits may get them anyway.

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The president of the United States can expect to face tough questions, but one that ABC’s Rachel Scott asked Monday wasn’t among them. In fact, it was nothing more than a recitation of his own words.

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Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, took an awkward victory lap last week. The bureau notched a major success by announcing the long-awaited arrest of a suspect in the placing of pipe bombs, neither of which exploded, outside the Washington, D.C.

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Sometime in the next 15 days, the Justice Department is set to release a huge cache of files related to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The release, mandated under a law passed by Congress last month, has been the subject of a great deal of anticipation—but not a lot of clarity.

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Even today, nearly five years later, listening to Donald Trump’s call is shocking.
“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes,” he told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and a few aides on January 2, 2021.

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For the past few weeks, President Donald Trump has seemed uncharacteristically passive. His own Republican Party bucked him on the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein—in a movement partly led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once seemed like his staunchest apostle. His U.S.

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In his new memoir, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania shows little love for his current job, but he’s even more dismissive of his previous gig: serving as lieutenant governor. It was, he writes, “the easiest job in all of America, with few mandated duties.