David Faris

On Monday night, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) hinted strongly at a presidential run at the launch of the centrist No Labels political organization in New Hampshire.

It's been easy for people in certain parts of the country to look at weather-related disasters like wildfires in California or hurricanes in Florida, Texas and the Gulf Coast and think these places will bear the brunt of global warming.

The ruling is a worrisome example of Trump judges using their lifetime positions to prosecute right-wing culture war obsessions rather than objectively interpreting the Constitution.

Well, it was another banner week from the six unelected zealots who apparently make all of America's public policy decisions.

In a simpler time, a presidential candidate getting hit with a damning, 37-count federal criminal indictment would be enough to torpedo his campaign.

There are so many investigations closing in on him that there might need to be an interagency summit to determine where Trump goes to prison and for which crimes.

Can Sen. Dianne Feinstein still do her job at 89 years old? And what does her situation mean for how Congress works?

In their quest for a scalp, any scalp, in the debt ceiling fight, House Republicans have fallen back on an old hobbyhorse from the pre-Trump GOP.

Declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional. Do it now and maybe Chief Justice John Roberts' reactionaries will finally take notice.

America got one step closer to the presidential rematch almost no one wants when President Biden launched his re-election bid Tuesday morning.

The settlement should be a moment of reckoning for the network and those who continue to profit from it, but it won't lead to much of anything unless we take concerted action.

Once again, millions of Americans were hit with the bleak realization that no matter who is in the White House or which party runs Congress, the country is governed by an outlaw judiciary appointed by a long-vanished Republican political majority.

Trump's indictment marks the emergence of the country from a terrifying period of institutional decline, systematic cronyism and democratic erosion.

If you were wondering whether former President Donald Trump would embrace the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in his bid to reclaim the White House, you got your answer over the weekend.

By entrenching their preposterous state legislative majorities with bare-knuckle gerrymandering and using the state supreme court to reinforce their ill-gotten political gains, the Wisconsin GOP has been able to maintain its grip on state politics and policy despite the presence of now two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis squares off with the College Board over Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies, continues to lead the movement to muzzle free speech in schools and prepares to transform the state's public colleges and universities into taxpayer-funded versions of far-right Liberty University, it is worth asking if there is anything connecting these seemingly disparate maneuvers.

Last night, President Biden gave the annual State of the Union address, stuffed with data-infused tidbits about his administration's accomplishments. The president was unusually lucid and buoyant in his hour-plus speech,

It's only been a little over two weeks since the GOP took official control of the House of Representatives by electing Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaker on the 15th ballot. Yet somehow the United States has already plunged itself into a crisis over the so-called "debt ceiling"—the statutory limit on how much the U.S. government can borrow to pay its obligations, which was technically breached Thursday.

On Wednesday morning all domestic flights were grounded for hours after the F.A.A.'s flight safety data system experienced an outage caused by a "damaged" database file, creating chaos from coast to coast. But it was the unprecedented holiday meltdownof Southwest Airlines that should have been the impetus to create the kinds of protection and compensation that European passengers take for granted.

Yesterday afternoon, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) lost several embarrassing floor votes for the House speakership, after a fiery closed-doors meeting of the GOP caucus. It was day one of what is likely to be a contentious two years for the fractious, razor-thin Republican majority in the House of Representatives and a very bad omen for the country's near-term governability.

Former President Donald Trump could use a lot of referrals—to a tailor, for example, who could outfit him in clothes that are his size. But this week he got the referrals that he most deserved: to the Department of Justice, recommending his criminal prosecution for trying to thwart the peaceful transfer of political power.

I don't necessarily think this is a top tier issue for the American people right now.

While Kyrsten Sinema still plans to caucus with Democrats, it was obvious almost immediately that this maneuver was less about her plans as a legislator and more about carving herself a path to re-election in 2024.

Energized by the Democrats' unexpected overperformance in the 2022 midterm elections, President Biden is reportedly leaning toward running for re-election in 2024. While he deserves his share of the credit for the party's history-defying showing last month, we should also be careful not to over-interpret the results as a sudden shift in popularity.

As Americans head into their third full winter accompanied by COVID-19, the Biden administration continues to disappoint in its management of the pandemic.

Even though Republicans still have a good chance to narrowly capture the House of Representatives, the midterm elections should be seen as a total and stunning rebuke of the GOP's extremist candidates and behavior.

If it's a Republican flood and they ring up a series of gubernatorial wins and continue dominance in legislatures in states like Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, what exactly can we expect from these Republicans?

If they lose, Democratic leaders will need to dust themselves off and remember that American government still features an inexplicable two-month period after general elections during which the outgoing government gets to continue making policy.

The Democratic Party should should think harder about setting the bar a little bit higher.

There are a lot of reasons to dread a potential red wave election next month that delivers control of the House, Senate, and critical swing state governorships to a radicalized GOP, including the message that will be sent to gleeful Gilead Republicans hellbent on using Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization as a beachhead to expand their control of women's bodies.