POLITE VS. PASSIONATE: THE HALEY-TRUMP INTENSITY GAP. SUMMERVILLE, South Carolina — Nikki Haley has two big problems as the South Carolina primary approaches. The first is that not enough Republicans support her. A new CBS News poll of South Carolina finds that former President Donald Trump leads Haley by 50 points, 74% to 24%, among […]

Does the State Sponsor of Terrorism list mean anything anymore? The list was created almost 45 years ago as a diplomatic tool to identify terrorism sponsors and impose automatic sanctions upon them, but White House and State Department inconsistency and mendacity enable those on the list to dismiss the designation as unjust. Equally important, failure […]

When control of Congress and the White House falls under one party, it’s easier to get legislation passed. As Democrats proved in early 2021, a tie in the Senate and rules surrounding reconciliation, bypassing cloture motions, allowed them to pass the American Rescue Plan Act, a $2 trillion behemoth of a spending bill. However, when […]

The puppet-master here is of course former President Trump, who opposes any military assistance to Ukraine and pressured congressional Republicans to kill the border-security compromise because it deprived him of a potent political issue.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm issued a warning Wednesday about China's hold on the mineral supply chain, saying the U.S. is "very concerned." “It’s one of the pieces of the supply chain that we’re very concerned about in the United States," Granholm told CNBC. "We do not want to be over-reliant on countries whose values we...

Investors bought more than a quarter of lower-priced homes in the fourth quarter of 2023 as mortgage rates and home prices hover well above their pre-pandemic baseline. Investors bought a record-high 26.1 percent of low-priced U.S. homes in the fourth quarter, according to real estate data company Redfin. The company defines low-priced homes as those...

The Republican-led Kentucky state Senate has approved a bill to limit diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices at the state’s public universities. The measure passed 26-7 on Tuesday, sending it to the state House, after a nearly two-hour debate that dove into race relations, according to The Associated Press.  Under S.B. 6, public colleges and...

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated his push for more aid to Ukraine in virtual remarks Wednesday, following his release from the hospital a day earlier. In opening remarks to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group — a group of about 50 member nations that coordinate military support for Ukraine — Austin affirmed that the U.S. will...

I see no signs that the coming quarters will experience an escalation to the point where freight and/or energy supplies will be substantially affected again.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz said the result of Tuesday's New York special election was the “final wakeup call” for House Republicans after former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) won back his old seat and helped Democrats further narrow the GOP majority. “Democrats just flipped George Santos’ #NY03 House seat,” Luntz posted to X, formerly known as...