News Muncher - searching for congress - category jackie calmes

Opinion: Politics past will haunt Washington in 2025. It won't be pretty

LA Times

President-elect Donald Trump sits in the White House Oval Office during his meeting with President Biden after the Nov. 5 election. Having first made U.S. history by ousting a speaker in the just-concluded Congress — former Bakersfield Rep. Kevin McCarthy — some House Republicans are already predicting that Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana won’t survive the new one. First Musk …

Congress Trump Debt Democrats House Biden President

1 month, 2 weeks ago

Elon Musk's budget-cutting promises defy arithmetic

LA Times

President-elect Donald Trump’s designated debt-busters, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, last week wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal providing the fullest accounting yet of their plans to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” — that most well-worn and oft-broken of political promises. Indeed, an omission from the dynamic duo’s piece suggests that they — and Trump — may have …

Budget Congress Trump Musk Spending Federal Cut

2 months ago

Opinion: Trump and our disappearing checks and balances

LA Times

If ever a U.S. president needed the checks and balances that the founders established, it’s law-breaking, oath-violating Donald Trump. Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, House speaker in 2017 and 2018, broke with Trump in 2016 over the “grab ’em by the pussy” tape, but became accommodating enough once Trump was president. As Punchbowl News reported : “Now Trump gets …

Congress Trump Senate House President Republicans Ryan

2 months ago

Calmes: Coming soon to Washington — America's dark ages

LA Times

I can’t do better than those words, uttered last year by Donald Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, when he dolefully contemplated Trump returning to power. Politics Donald Trump elected as the United States’ 47th president The presidential race between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Trump is at the …

Trump Democrats Republican Harris President Jackie Calmes

3 months, 1 week ago

Living life instead of obsessing about politics? The news will break through

LA Times

Even if everyday life gets in the way of following politics, you’ve probably heard something about North Carolina Lt. Gov. But it’s my avocation as well, covering “the art of power,” as Nancy Pelosi titled her recent book, and the drama of American democracy. Robinson denied the allegations, but Trump ghosted him anyway, even as the Harris campaign, in video …

Politics Life Trump Ohio Washington Harris Robinson

3 months, 4 weeks ago

Opinion: What's with the silence from former Trump heavyweights?

LA Times

McMaster, Trump’s former national security advisor, won’t unambiguously tell voters what he seems to think: his former boss is unfit for another term. His own former National Security Advisors, Defense Secretaries, and Chiefs of Staff have said so.” Politics On a night of fierce exchanges, Harris sets the tone Kamala Harris got an apparent boost when pop megastar Taylor Swift …

Security Trump National White House Republican White Harris

4 months, 4 weeks ago

Calmes: Donald Trump's state of mind should be under debate

LA Times

Former President Trump in Montana on Friday. “God help us,” in the words of retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff. During Trump’s presidency, however, several dozen professionals invoked a civic “duty to warn”; they wrote and later expanded a bestseller assessing Trump’s psychological maladies. Trump had dubbed Vice President Kamala Harris “Kamabla,” said …

Trump White House Democrats State Montana Harris Biden

8 months, 4 weeks ago

Opinion: Trump inspires yet another profile in cowardice

LA Times

President Ford, left, and former President Nixon, right, flank their wives, Betty Ford and Pat Nixon, as the Nixons leave the White House in 1974. One of the foundation’s best-known trustees — Pulitzer Prize-winner David Hume Kennerly, Ford’s White House photographer and then his friend — resigned on Tuesday after its executive committee refused three times to consider giving its …

Congress Trump White House Foundation Republican Republicans Ford

9 months, 2 weeks ago

Opinion: Worst Congress ever? Let's count the ways

LA Times

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on his way to infuriating more than half of his fellow House Republicans by finally funding the U.S. government last week. Recall the House Republicans’ rejection last month of a bipartisan, conservative immigration bill of the sort they’d demanded. “I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and …

Congress Party Democrats Senate Republican House Biden

11 months, 1 week ago

Opinion: The border crisis isn't Mayorkas' fault. House Republicans should impeach themselves

LA Times

The articles of impeachment aimed at DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are nothing more than mumbo-jumbo about a run-of-the-mill policy disagreement. South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman said the quiet part out loud when he explained in November that his fellow Republicans “need to focus on what they can get — Mayorkas is easier than impeaching the president of the United States.” …

Security Immigration Constitution Congress Border Trump California

11 months, 4 weeks ago

Opinion: By demonizing immigrants, U.S. betrays its ideals — and economic reality

LA Times

Migrants walk along a highway in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico on Monday, during their journey north toward the U.S. border. Extinguish her torch welcoming from other nations “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” And forget the rhapsodizing we’ve long heard, from social-studies teachers and presidents including John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, …

Immigration Congress Mexico Republican House Republicans Nation

1 year, 1 month ago

Opinion: This Thanksgiving, let Trump's 'best people' do the arguing with your MAGA uncle

LA Times

What more can anti-Trumpers say to counter the MAGA devotees at their holiday tables? “Toxic Trump in MAGA Meltdown,” the Drudge Report headlined, while the front page of the Murdochs’ New York Post declared newly reelected Gov. … Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” William Barr, second attorney general: “A very …

Constitution White House White House President Trump Maga Jackie Calmes

1 year, 1 month ago

Opinion: GOP shutdown drama in Washington costs us plenty, even when Congress averts a stoppage

LA Times

Tired of Congress’ repeated partisan standoffs every time a big fiscal deadline approaches, like this week’s? Here’s why you should pay attention: These senseless, self-induced crises have cost us taxpayers big bucks in higher interest on U.S debt, even when Congress manages to avert a government stoppage or a default. The latest came Friday, when Moody’s Investors Service announced that …

Congress Debt House Biden Republicans Jackie Calmes Fiscal

1 year, 1 month ago

Column: The shutdown looms, and Speaker Mike Johnson has nothing

LA Times

House Speaker Mike Johnson, the obscure former backbencher vaulted out of the far-right field to Congress’ highest-ranking job just over two weeks ago, told Sean Hannity that the many Americans wondering about his worldview should simply “pick up a Bible” and read it. Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, last Thursday posted on X: “With all the political news this week” …

Democrats Republican House Biden Mccarthy Republicans Maga

1 year, 2 months ago

Opinion: Trump promises vengeance and power grabs if he wins in 2024. Here's the plan.

LA Times

We’ve been warned about another four years of Trump — and new polls show Biden losing to the former president. In the wake of this week’s terrifying news of the New York Times/Siena College polls showing Donald Trump beating President Biden in must-win battleground states, keep in mind two words and spread them: Insurrection Act. The newspaper’s report said Trump’s …

Trump White House Biden Plan President Post Barr

1 year, 3 months ago

Column: Kevin McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry proves there’s only one political party of revenge — the GOP

LA Times

It was nearly 80 years from Congress’ creation to the first impeachment of a president, Andrew Johnson in 1868, and 130 years more until the second, Bill Clinton in 1998, both of them Democrats impeached by Republican House majorities. Yet to conclude that we’ve entered into a sorry new era of tit-for-tat impeachments — as some scholars and other observers …

Impeachment Congress Trump Inquiry Power Democrats House

1 year, 4 months ago

Opinion: Watch as Kevin McCarthy puts on 'impeachment theater' while the government teeters

LA Times

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy holds a news conference at the Capitol in Washington as the House prepares to leave for its August recess. Last spring House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rightly got props from folks across the political spectrum, myself included, for compromising with President Biden to raise the nation’s debt limit and thereby avert economic armageddon. As Florida Man Rep. …

Congress Democrats Senate House Biden Mccarthy Republicans

1 year, 5 months ago

Why does Justice Alito keep making things worse for the Supreme Court?

LA Times

Amid all the attention paid lately to the now thrice-indicted former president, the first in U.S. history to defy voters’ will, spare some time for the recent outrages of yet another major actor in our political theater. “Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court’s Plain-Spoken Defender” was the congenial headline for its latest article based on interviews with the justice. What Alito …

Justice Supreme Court Constitution Court Congress Journal Republican

1 year, 5 months ago

Column: Here’s what’s so frightening about the Supreme Court’s latest power trip

LA Times

Talk to the hand: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has had little patience for concerns about his colleagues’ ethics. The public’s opinion of the justices remains at an all-time low, with less than a third of American voters having positive views of the Supreme Court, according to a recent NBC News poll. Next Thursday, the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee …

Supreme Court Court Power Senate Republican Biden Supreme

1 year, 6 months ago

Opinion: Kevin McCarthy's clowns waste your tax dollars and Congress' time

LA Times

Rep. Adam B. Schiff outside the House chamber Wednesday after the Republican majority voted to censure him for comments he made years ago about investigations into President Trump’s ties to Russia. Separately, Republicans trumpeted a House hearing into a recent report widely derided as a dud — except in their parallel, fact-free, Fox-friendly MAGA universe — that tried to show …

Russia Congress Trump Democratic Republican House Biden

1 year, 10 months ago

Column: The Republican Party can’t decide if it’s for Ukraine or not

LA Times

For years Joe Biden has told audiences, “This is not your father’s Republican Party.” He’s right. Russia’s year-old war on Ukraine is the crucible that will test which strain could come to define the 21st century Republican Party: its traditional internationalism or “America First” isolationism. But as Biden walked a Kyiv street with President Volodymyr Zelensky, with air-raid sirens screaming, …

Support War Ukraine Russia Congress Trump Party

1 year, 11 months ago

Column: On the debt-ceiling crisis, take it from moderate Republicans: Be afraid, be very afraid

LA Times

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy knows better, but he is cynically engaging in radical, misleading brinksmanship over the debt ceiling limit. As one of the Concerned told me, “The base wants to blow everything up.” Given Republicans’ narrow House majority, just a few radicals can block any legislation that Leader-in-Name-Only Kevin McCarthy ultimately might agree to. Even as they call for …

Budget Congress Party Republican House Mccarthy Republicans

1 year, 11 months ago

Column: Republicans being the party of fiscal conservatism? Don’t believe it for a minute

LA Times

With a Democrat inhabiting the White House, perhaps the most predictable thing about House Republicans’ return to power is this: They’ve rediscovered their faux fiscal conservatism. Democrats for years had wanted to add a drug benefit for older Americans, but were stymied by the cost; in 1990, they’d agreed with the first President Bush that new tax cuts or spending …

Tax Taxes Congress Trump Conservative Debt Democrats

2 years ago

Column: McCarthy and the GOP have only themselves to blame for their humiliation

LA Times

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, left, walks off after speaking with Rep. Andrew Clyde after the seventh vote for speaker. Fitting bookends framed the House Republicans’ first week of majority control/not control in a new Congress. Republican “leader” Kevin McCarthy, who’s dreamed of becoming speaker since he arrived in Washington from Bakersfield 16 years ago, sat with a game grin through his …

Congress Trump Power Speaker House Vote Mccarthy

Filters

Articles for Jackie Calmes, search results for congress

Opinion: Politics past will haunt Washington in 2025. It won't be pretty

Elon Musk's budget-cutting promises defy arithmetic

Opinion: Trump and our disappearing checks and balances

Calmes: Coming soon to Washington — America's dark ages

Living life instead of obsessing about politics? The news will break through

Opinion: What's with the silence from former Trump heavyweights?

Calmes: Donald Trump's state of mind should be under debate

Opinion: Trump inspires yet another profile in cowardice

Opinion: Worst Congress ever? Let's count the ways

Opinion: The border crisis isn't Mayorkas' fault. House Republicans should impeach themselves

Opinion: By demonizing immigrants, U.S. betrays its ideals — and economic reality

Opinion: This Thanksgiving, let Trump's 'best people' do the arguing with your MAGA uncle

Opinion: GOP shutdown drama in Washington costs us plenty, even when Congress averts a stoppage

Column: The shutdown looms, and Speaker Mike Johnson has nothing

Opinion: Trump promises vengeance and power grabs if he wins in 2024. Here's the plan.

Column: Kevin McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry proves there’s only one political party of revenge — the GOP

Opinion: Watch as Kevin McCarthy puts on 'impeachment theater' while the government teeters

Why does Justice Alito keep making things worse for the Supreme Court?

Column: Here’s what’s so frightening about the Supreme Court’s latest power trip

Opinion: Kevin McCarthy's clowns waste your tax dollars and Congress' time

Column: The Republican Party can’t decide if it’s for Ukraine or not

Column: On the debt-ceiling crisis, take it from moderate Republicans: Be afraid, be very afraid

Column: Republicans being the party of fiscal conservatism? Don’t believe it for a minute

Column: McCarthy and the GOP have only themselves to blame for their humiliation