Steve Benen

When Donald Trump and his team disclosed Social Security numbers while releasing documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination, it was a reminder that this White House has a competence problem. When the president and his team sent non-criminals […]

When Donald Trump has an important personnel decision to make, the president too often looks to people he knows personally, as if he were the head of a social club and its members are entitled to certain perks — such

If I were to ask readers to guess where they’d find the nation’s best K-12 public schools, they might not immediately think of the Defense Department’s educational system, but that would be an important oversight. As The New York Times

In the recent past, there was reason to believe Donald Trump might face criminal accountability for Jan. 6 and his actions after his 2020 defeat. Those hopes were dashed, however, by the results of the 2024 election and the demise

Donald Trump took a moment at an Oval Office event to brag about his decision to release thousands of documents related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination, which he characterized as a great breakthrough. Unprompted, however, the president brought up a

After the 2024 elections, as Democratic officials came to terms with just how limited their powers would be after Donald Trump’s second inaugural, it was an open secret that the party’s strategy focused heavily on the federal courts. Every time

A few weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, the president announced he was deploying Elon Musk, his top campaign donor, to conduct an audit of the Pentagon, which quickly became controversial for reasons the Republican didn’t appear to understand. Musk,

As a presidential candidate in 2024, Donald Trump never came up with a detailed plan related to education policy, but the Republican did make one thing explicitly clear: He wanted to shut down the Education Department if given a second

Since returning to power, Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he expects Ukraine to turn over many of its rare earth metals to the United States — as a token of its appreciation. The president has been quite candid about

After the Trump administration lost yet another court fight this week, his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, turned to a familiar complaint. “This is a judicial coup,” the Republican megadonor wrote by way of his social media platform. “We need