Politics
‘A perfect storm of stunning failure’: Senate probe finds huge Secret Service errors at Trump rally
Sweeping failures by the Secret Service directly contributed to a gunman’s ability to carry out an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump at his July 13 rally, according to an interim Senate report released Wednesday. The bipartisan report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee pointed to multiple critical failures by the…
Israeli strikes on Hezbollah, explained
More than 450 people were killed and 1,500 injured in Israeli airstrikes targeting southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the country’s capital, Beirut, on Monday. The airstrikes mark a significant and threatening escalation of hostilities following an apparent Israeli attack that used explosive pagers (and other electronic devices) to kill members of the Shia…
Lobbyists exploit massive loophole to wine and dine lawmakers, aides at fancy getaways
In 2007, after one of the biggest scandals in K Street history, Congress cracked down on lobbyists’ ability to wine and dine lawmakers and aides with a host of reforms — including limits on extravagant, all-expenses-paid trips. In the nearly two decades since, the influence industry has blown a hole through those rules, according to…
Agatha All Along has enough fun to make you forget about the MCU
Do you think Patti LuPone would be able to explain who Tony Stark is? Does she know anything about the multiverse? Could she cobble together three facts about Kang the Conqueror? Or the difference between Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel? Is she familiar with Wanda Maximoff and how she became Scarlet Witch? Did she watch…
Security at Trump’s Chicago hotel is stepped up. What about his other properties?
In the aftermath of the apparent second attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump, the Chicago Police Department has honed its attention on Trump International Hotel and Tower, located in downtown Chicago. A spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department said the agency doesn’t divulge the exact number of patrols but acknowledged that they are giving…
Lawmakers expect Johnson will greenlight clean spending bill into December
Lawmakers widely expect Speaker Mike Johnson will put a spending bill on the floor next week that has widespread Democratic support — funding the government into December without a GOP voting proposal. Johnson himself isn’t indicating what his Plan B is after his proposed spending plan, which paired government funding through March with a Republican…
How did Israel pull off the Hezbollah pager attack? And why?
Over the past two days, the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has been targeted with an attack as sophisticated and audacious as it is brutal, with the devices in their own pockets turned into deadly weapons. On Tuesday, hundreds of pagers distributed by Hezbollah to its members and associates in Lebanon and Syria exploded, killing at…
The other Jan. 6 Democrats are worried about
Democrats have spent much of the 2024 campaign reminding Americans of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. But on Capitol Hill, some are already growing concerned about Jan. 6, 2025. They are hoping that Kamala Harris will win in November and they’ll flip the House, too — meaning it would likely be Hakeem Jeffries holding…
‘The most complex, dynamic and dangerous threat environment I’ve experienced’
The toxic political climate and a complex web of threats — punctuated by Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump — is putting an extraordinary strain on the national security officials tasked with safeguarding American democracy. Security experts say sharp polarization and increasingly hateful political rhetoric — fanned by foreign adversaries and supercharged by social…
Are the 2024 Emmy Awards the future of television?
At the 76th Emmy Awards, the biggest surprise was perhaps the most telling. At the end of a night in which The Bear, arguably not a comedy, swept most of the comedy categories, it lost the crucial trophy for Best Comedy Series itself. The winner ended up being Hacks, another long-time Emmys favorite that is…