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WASHINGTON

Secretary of State Antony Blinken rarely veers off script in public, or with the press, and sticks religiously to his office’s talking points.

Just Spoke to Blinken…

A candid conversation with the Secretary of State about the war in Ukraine, the U.S.’s commitment, oligarch asset seizure, the G20, China, and more.
Julia Ioffe • September 12, 2023
Peter Hamby • September 11, 2023
The DeSantis Hillary Complex
Ron DeSantis has only a faint whiff of the support he had earlier this year, and he could very well be lapped in the coming months by another workhorse rival.
One of the bizarre ironies of DeSantis’s flaccid campaign is that the guy who wanted to out-MAGA Trump has ended up looking like Clinton: an overly professionalized Franken-candidate who could never conjure the enthusiasm of a more charismatic rival.
Abby Livingston • September 11, 2023
Hakeem’s Challenges & Shutdown Forecasting
An inside look at how New York’s migrant crisis poses an existential threat to Hakeem Jeffries’ Senate future. Plus, notes on a particularly nasty House G.O.P. conference meeting.
Facts First, David Brock’s super PAC, has been the main communications apparatus to defend Hunter Biden in G.O.P. inquiries.
Tara Palmeri • September 8, 2023
Here Comes the Hunter Counterattack…
David Brock tells me he is readying an oppo dump targeting the family members of Republicans who are investigating Biden’s son. “Gloves are off,” says Brock. “Families are on.”
Hakeem Jeffries
Tara Palmeri • September 8, 2023
Hakeem’s Hometown Migrant Crisis
The House minority leader, and speaker-in-waiting, is in the middle of a pickle in his own backyard that might cost him the gavel.
Kevin McCarthy faces migraine-inducing dilemmas from the likes of M.T.G. and Matt Gaetz, who’ve threatened to kick rocks in the gears if an impeachment inquiry doesn’t materialize.
Tina Nguyen • September 8, 2023
McCarthy’s Impeachment Theater
The speaker is pinned between pro-impeachment hardliners who want to shut down the government, vulnerable moderates whose fate will determine control of Congress, and maybe the outcome of the 2024 election, too.
President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon was locked in his palace last week after his cousin, General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, announced that his soldiers had taken over the oil rich country.
Julia Ioffe • September 7, 2023
The “Coup Belt” & A New Cold War
As the U.S., China, Russia, and the Gulf states compete for power across the continent, Africa’s fragile semi-democracies have grown more and more cynical about the real value of democracy.
Sens. John Barrasso, Mitch McConnell, John Thune, and John Cornyn in 2016.
Peter Hamby • September 5, 2023
Three Johns:16
Analyzing the post-McConnell sweepstakes.
The White House and others estimate the IRA will help us reduce our greenhouse gas emissions 41 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. That’s still 10 percent short of our pledges.
Baratunde Thurston • September 3, 2023
America’s Carbon Bill Is Coming Due
One way or another, we’re paying for climate change.
Yesterday, the 81-year-old minority leader, Mitch McConnell, seemed to freeze up while addressing reporters in Kentucky, the second such incident in as many months.
Tara Palmeri • September 1, 2023
Pre-Post-McConnell Jockeying & ’24 Dropout-itis
News and notes on the latest anxieties in Washington as the late-summer scaries take hold.
The qualities that have insulated Ramaswamy from the usual MAGA backlash were all on display during last week’s debate.
Tina Nguyen • August 30, 2023
Vivek & Bake
The Ramaswamy Show is reconfiguring the essential dynamics of the Republican primary, threatening to push DeSantis out of the right-of-Trump culture warrior lane into the moderate-ish territory occupied by MAGA milquetoasts like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.
Mitch McConnell
Abby Livingston • August 30, 2023
McConnell Health Murmurs & D.C. Age Agita
Mitch McConnell’s leadership is not imminently imperiled, but his second public “freeze up” in as many months has reignited inevitable succession questions and the attendant rumor mill.
Though Prigozhin had been a Hero of Russia, the country’s highest military honor, there was no honor guard, no military salute. State television largely skipped over his burial.
Julia Ioffe • August 30, 2023
Wagner After Prigozhin & The Next Putsch Attempt
Life in Moscow after the falling plane: the anxieties of the elite, oligarch objectives, the future of Wagner, and the Russian rump state in Africa.
It takes upwards of a billion dollars these days to make it to the White House, more than a fair amount of dough, even for a candidate who today is worth some $800 million.
Theodore Schleifer • August 29, 2023
Let Them Eat Vivek
Sure, he strikes plenty of donors as arrogant and annoying in a Harvard debate-kid kind of way. But his campaign is now very real. Vivek has serious financial hype after the first presidential debate, and the G.O.P. heavies have to reckon with him, whether they like it or not.
Peter Hamby • August 28, 2023
Band of Outsiders
One of the laughable tragedies about this crop of G.O.P. presidential also-rans is that they all still believe that they’re still the outsiders they were, decades ago—you know, before politics became a batshit crazy spectacle, and they started to look a lot like the people they once disrupted.
Ramaswamy’s success on the debate stage was yet another reminder that the G.O.P. establishment is largely out of touch with primary voters.
Tara Palmeri • August 25, 2023
Measuring the Vivekquake
News and notes on what really went down in Milwaukee: despondent donors, missed signals, defensive DeSantis, and the possibility of a Trump-Vivek ticket.
Prigozhin was an insider, somebody who existed entirely within the system of power that Putin built.
Julia Ioffe • August 23, 2023
Prigozhin’s Treason & The Price of Betrayal
Putin’s inner circle has always abided by an unwritten code—“ponyatie,” or understandings—about the rewards of loyalty and the fate of traitors. Prigozhin, lured into thinking that he might be special, was never an exception.
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 12: 2023 J.J. Abrams, Katie McGrath arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 12, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Steve Granitz/FilmMagic)
Abby Livingston • August 23, 2023
The Hollywood Money Race & Slotkin’s Surge
A who’s who of Hollywood donations to congressional candidates, plus updates on the formidable Slotkin campaign.