March 30, 2025 at 6:12 AM EDT
National security served up by a dry drunk

I grew up with a raving alcoholic.To call his behavior erratic is to engage in understatement for dramatic effect. My dad was in the Navy, assigned to one of the submarines of the Pacific Fleet in Oahu Hawaii, which meant long periods of welcomed absence. But whenever the submarine was docked, he was home, where he vacillated between two states of drunk: wet drunk and dry.

March 29, 2025 at 5:00 PM EDT
'Should I fire him?' How Trump struggled over embattled senior advisor

When Donald Trump was hosting the hit reality show "The Apprentice" during the 2000s, his most famous line was one that contestants dreaded: "You're fired." And Trump subsequently did plenty of firing during his first term as president -- clashing with his secretary of state (Rex Tillerson), attorney general (Jeff Sessions), national security adviser (John Bolton) and other non-MAGA conservatives he had major disagreements with.

March 29, 2025 at 4:26 PM EDT
Republican's voter challenge a reflection of his embrace of Confederate symbols: critics

The Republican judge who is seeking to throw out more than 60,000 votes in order to win a seat on the state Supreme Court dressed in a Confederate uniform while a member of a UNC-Chapel Hill fraternity, the Associated Press reported. Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin was a member of Kappa Alpha, a fraternity that claims Confederate General Robert E. Lee as its spiritual founder, the AP reported. The wire service obtained a photograph of Griffin posing with other fraternity members at its "Old South" ball in 2001 and a 2000 photograph of Griffin and other fraternity members in front of a Confederate flag.

March 29, 2025 at 3:43 PM EDT
Here's why Trump is really targeting big DC law firms

Two months into his second presidency, Donald Trump is aggressively attacking both judges and law firms. Trump is calling for judges who are blocking his executive orders to be impeached, and he is trying to make life difficult for major law firms that represent his political foes by pulling their security clearances. Some major firms are making concessions in the hope of making peace with Trump, including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Full disclosure: this journalist's mother was employed by Skadden, Arps during the 1980s.

March 29, 2025 at 2:58 PM EDT
Another day, another institution surrenders to Trump

Despite all my moaning since a slim majority of Americans decided it was safer to carry on with their lives walking a tightrope without any safety nets, than it was to stay grounded, and together against the billionaires who have proved over and over again they want to eat us all, I have been mighty proud of the good and righteous people on the Left. Too many Americans don't deserve us, but the idea of America does, dammit. Despite being knocked down and staying down on that gray November day, we picked ourselves up and braved the fascist winds that are blowing at a gale off the Potomac right now.

March 29, 2025 at 2:35 PM EDT
These red states could find themselves in big 'trouble' thanks to Trump

In the United States, income tax rates vary considerably from state to state. Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick examines state income tax rates in an article published on March 29, explaining why states with no income tax at all could be running into some major problems in the future. Drawing on data from the Tax Foundation, Fitzpatrick notes that state income tax rates can be as high as 13.3 percent in California, 11 percent in Hawaii and 10.9 percent in New York State -- while the lower state income tax rates include 2.5 percent in Arizona and North Dakota.

March 29, 2025 at 12:02 PM EDT
'Very bad': Republicans privately express fear as Trump plan execution draws near

President Donald Trump is describing this Wednesday, April 2 -- the day his steep new tariffs are scheduled to go into effect, assuming he doesn't postpone them again -- as "Liberation Day." But critics are saying that there is nothing liberating about a policy that is likely to cause severe inflation, harm both businesses and consumers, damage the United States' relations with Canada and Mexico (two longtime allies and trading partners), and lead to a recession.

March 29, 2025 at 11:58 AM EDT
Why the new Trump leak is so much worse than what Clinton did

Even in a political environment marked by daily scandal and outrage, the revelation of a reckless and stupid security breach by Trump's top cabinet members exploded this week. The potentially catastrophic leak of a top-secret military operation showed why President Trump's cabinet choices were so dangerous - as many seasoned experts warned when he named them. Only by sheer luck was a disaster avoided. It was a simple but stunning story: The Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, as reported by him and his staff, had been included by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz in a supposedly secret mid-March group text chat -- along with Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and more than a dozen other high-ranking officials. A Pentagon spokesman confirmed that the chat, convened on the encrypted app Signal, was authentic.

March 29, 2025 at 11:08 AM EDT
Why did Trump just pardon the 'biggest scam artist' in the auto industry?

-- DOGE plans to re-program Social Security. Social Security runs on an older COBAL programming language and, while it's a bit creaky, it works just fine. But the DOGE wrecking crew -- we learned the day after Musk went on Fox "News" and lied repeatedly to America's seniors -- now plans to replace the entire system with something newer. This is the kind of project, messing with 70 million people's earned benefits, that should take a year or two with multiple layers of redundancy and safety; instead they say they'll do it in a few months. What could possibly go wrong? A lot, as WIRED reports a senior Social Security technologist told them: "Of course one of the big risks is not underpayment or overpayment per se but [it's also] not paying someone at all and not knowing about it. The invisible errors and omissions." The big concern is that they might end up crashing the entire system.

March 29, 2025 at 10:11 AM EDT
'Next domino to fall': Ex-RNC chair predicts MAGA's voter suppression 'end game'

In 2025, a variety of special elections -- including two congressional races in Florida -- will be viewed as a referendum on Donald Trump's second presidency. Democratic and GOP strategists are also paying close attention to a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which finds Trump ally Elon Musk spending millions of dollars in the hope of getting conservative candidate Brad Schimel past the finish line. Democrats, meanwhile, are aggressively supporting liberal candidate Susan Crawford in that race, which is technically nonpartisan.

March 29, 2025 at 9:30 AM EDT
Broken rehab: Their physical therapy coverage ran out before they could walk again

Mari Villar was slammed by a car that jumped the curb, breaking her legs and collapsing a lung. Amy Paulo was in pain from a femur surgery that wasn't healing properly. Katie Kriegshauser suffered organ failure during pregnancy, weakening her so much that she couldn't lift her baby daughter. All went to physical therapy, but their health insurers stopped paying before any could walk without assistance. Paulo spent nearly $1,500 out of her own pocket for more sessions.

March 29, 2025 at 5:53 AM EDT
Lock. Him. Up. Here's what the Espionage Act has to say about disappearing information

In the past month, Trump has threatened to imprison peaceful protest organizers, falsely declared a national invasion, invoked war powers in time of peace, serially ignored court orders, and sent people to an El Salvador prison without due process or review, all while making outrageous comments meant to distract the public from his administration's illegal conduct. This week served up the capper when we learned that Trump officials are coordinating their actions on Signal, an app with an auto delete feature, in violation of multiple federal laws requiring communications to be preserved and protected.