THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

Two things are as certain as bluebonnets in spring now that Ken Paxton is the Republican nominee for the Senate in Texas: Democrats have a better-than-usual chance of winning statewide. And the next 23 weeks are going to be hideous.Paxton’s big win comes days after President Trump stuck his finger into the wind, determined that incumbent, John Cornyn, was toast, and gave the attorney general his last-minute support. Even though the nearly 28-point margin was surprising, it was probably always going to be Paxton. A runoff tends to attract the hardest of the hard-core—the kind of determined voter who is willing not only to show up to vote in March, but to show up and vote in March, sit through 12 weeks of brutal attack ads, then head back out to the polls in May. The kind of Republican who might argue, as one woman did in Dallas when I spoke with her last week, that Paxton and Trump are bringing masculinity back to the party like Bambi’s father “coming out of the forest with those huge antlers.”Now that these dutiful Republicans have secured the animated stag of their dreams, they will turn their attention to his general-election opponent: James Talarico, the 37-year-old Democratic state lawmaker and aspiring Presbyterian minister. In some ways, the two men have become avatars for their respective parties, which will spend the next five months ruthlessly attacking each other.Paxton, a MAGA folk hero, seems even more committed to the movement than Trump himself. As attorney general, he filed dozens upon dozens of lawsuits against Presidents Obama and Biden, and sued to overturn the 2020 election results. Paxton and Trump happen to share a strikingly similar ethical and legal rap sheet: Both men have been indicted (Paxton’s charges involved securities fraud and were dismissed after he agreed to do community service and take an ethics class); both have been impeached (Paxton was suspended by the Texas House but later acquitted by the Senate); and both have been accused of—and deny—infidelity. (Angela Paxton is now divorcing Ken on “biblical grounds.”)[Read: Ken Paxton is actually doing this]Although Talarico doesn’t yet have Paxton’s name recognition, he does have strong youth-pastor energy and, at least for now, the moral high ground. As a faith-forward economic populist, Talarico’s core campaign message is one of love triumphing over hate, and little guys taking on the billionaires. Republicans know that they’ve got a… [TheTopNews] Read More.

The first surprising thing about President Trump’s impending defeat in the 2026 Iran war is that he already fought and won a successful war against Iran last year. In June 2025, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes badly damaged the Iranian nuclear program in 12 days of bombardment. Exactly how badly remains controversial. But they didn’t do nothing. If Trump had quit while ahead, he could have banked his gains from last August as a solid if imperfect win.The second surprising thing about Trump’s impending defeat is that he does not seem to have cared at all about the only evident reason to resume fighting in 2026: the Iranian people’s rebellion against their brutal oppressors. Trump has never given any evidence of caring about Iranian democracy or human rights. He promised the Iranian people “Help is on the way” on January 13, but military operations did not commence until thousands were dead and the rebellion was already effectively crushed. During military operations, Trump made clear that he sought a deal with the existing regime. He made no effort to support or cooperate with Iranian dissidents before, during, or after the uprising.The third surprising thing about Trump’s impending defeat is that even he himself seems never to have understood why he went back to war against Iran. What exactly did he think he would achieve? He kept saying that he wanted to ensure that Iran never developed a nuclear weapon. He also insisted that he had effectively prevented it from doing so in August. He seemed genuinely to believe that claim. If so, why resume the fighting? If, however, those words were wrong, then why not simply hit the nuclear sites again? Why the need for this bigger war?Trump started the February 28 war for reasons of personality, not strategy. He is on his way to losing the war for the same reasons of personality.Trump is arrogant. Think how often Trump mocks his predecessors as “dumb” and praises himself as “smart.” Those predecessors, from Jimmy Carter through Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, all had to ponder military responses to Iranian terrorism and aggression. They all ultimately decided not to wage a major war against Iranian national territory. Among the prime deterrents to action: the Strait of Hormuz problem. Trump apparently decided that a problem that was too hard for everybody else would magically disappear for him, because he is tough and growls in… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi occupy a lonely space in Congress. Their respective parties—Fitzpatrick is a Republican from Pennsylvania, Suozzi a Democrat from New York—are waging a nationwide gerrymandering fight that neither wants any part in. With the seat-for-seat battle expanding to new states seemingly by the day, Fitzpatrick and Suozzi are calling for a truce—if only anyone would listen.“There’s got to be people that come to the table and agree that it’s in the best interest of our nation to not do this, that it’s a race to the bottom,” Fitzpatrick told me.National leaders in both parties, however, are in no mood for peace. President Trump has directed Republicans to seize every opportunity to draw House seats in their favor, in hope that the GOP can create a buffer big enough to overcome the president’s sagging poll numbers in the midterm elections this fall. The Supreme Court’s decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act last month freed Republicans to redistrict even more aggressively across the Deep South, building on the party’s gains in Texas and a handful of other states last fall.Democrats, who hit back in California but lost a court fight in Virginia, have vowed their own escalation in blue states next year. “We’re going to win in November,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed to reporters last week, before adopting a bit of fantasy-flick hyperbole: “And then we’re going to crush their souls as it relates to the extremism that they are trying to unleash on the American people.”The gerrymandering frenzy will likely extend for at least two more years, which in turn will only exacerbate the polarization and partisanship that has gripped Congress and steadily diminished its standing. “We’ve just made this so bad for our country,” Suozzi told me. “We have got to address this problem, or we’re going to fall further into this spiral, this death spiral.”Fitzpatrick and Suozzi are co-chairs of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, a group that in an ideal world might comprise the entirety of Congress—after all, what else is a legislative body for?—but in these dysfunctional times make up a few dozen lawmakers along the center political axis of both parties. With the House so closely divided over the past decade, the caucus has occasionally exerted influence over policy—when it’s been able to avoid its own issues. I spoke with Fitzpatrick and Suozzi in a joint phone interview… [TheTopNews] Read More.

It was something of a political hall of mirrors: Hunter Biden arriving at Candace Owens’s house, sitting in a book-filled room decorated with a crucifix and orchids in the shape of a heart, holding a coffee cup labeled conspiracy theorist, and answering a range of questions from a podcast host who has called him “an alleged sex predator” and “A DEGENERATE THAT SHOULD BE IN PRISON” who comes from a “SCUM family.” The first question: “The cocaine that was found at the White House, was it yours?”To say this was an unusual pairing is an understatement. To claim it was Frost/Nixon is an overstatement. But it said something about modern-day politics—and the weirdness of online culture—that the son of a former Democratic president and a right-wing podcaster were sitting there together, conversing for nearly two hours, finding common ground on being misunderstood, on being targeted by a powerful president, and on questioning the circumstances of Charlie Kirk’s death and whether the assassination attempts against Donald Trump were staged.Owens apologized for treating Biden like “a caricature” and joining the “political machine” that attacked him during one of the lowest moments of his life (“I’m really sorry that I contributed to that. Like, I just feel really shitty”). He lavished her with praise (“You’re probably the most effective communicator I’ve ever heard behind the microphone”). She encouraged him to spend time in confession (“Don’t worry,” he responded, “I’ve been to confession”), and he giddily proposed that they go see Pope Leo XIV together: “For real, let’s go to the Vatican.” Biden offered book recommendations (“Have you ever read The Devil’s Chessboard?”), and Owens complimented his intelligence (“Not to be rude, but I thought you were dumb”).Much of the conversation focused on Biden’s recovery story, human details of which Owens seemed largely unaware. “I just didn’t even consider: He’s a crackhead. That’s actually a very relatable thing,” she said at one point. (Never mind that in December 2024 she devoted a segment to President Biden pardoning his son, in which she mentioned “crack” more than two dozen times over about 20 minutes.) To anyone who has read Hunter Biden’s 2021 memoir, followed his federal court cases, or heard him in previous interviews, there were a lot of familiar themes: The guy who has long had addiction issues, and been in and out of rehab through much of his adult life. The guy who… [TheTopNews] Read More.

President Trump took 11 weeks to choose between Senator John Cornyn and State Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate primary runoff—so long that most people figured he’d never actually decide. Which is why, when Trump finally endorsed Paxton on Tuesday, the news hit a crowd of Republican retirees at a Tex-Mex restaurant like manna from the MAGA heavens.Paxton was due that day for a meet-and-greet at Matt’s Rancho Martinez in Allen, but he was running late. Suddenly, the sound system, which had been vibrating gently with a selection of the Country Top 40, began blasting “Y.M.C.A.” People read Trump’s Truth Social post aloud from their phones and waved their arms in time with the president’s unofficial anthem. A man near me with slicked-back hair shouted into his phone, “We did it!” And by the time the next song came on—Thunderstruck! Ahh-ahh!—waiters were circulating with trays of free margaritas. “I have chills!” one elderly woman told me happily. Another lifted her plastic cup to the sky and shouted over the din, “What a time to be alive!”It really is. Donald Trump is a historically unpopular politician. Gas prices, high inflation, and the war with Iran have all systems flashing fire-engine red for Republicans in November. Yet here was the president, throwing his political weight behind Paxton—a man who has been indicted, impeached, and allegedly unfaithful to his wife. In Washington, D.C., Senate Republicans were apoplectic at the president’s casual betrayal of one of their own. But here at the Rancho, an endorsement from Trump was welcomed like a hug from Oprah or the title of “Sole Survivor,” an American prize of inestimable value. These Texas Republicans love their attorney general the way that they love Trump: wholeheartedly, with no questions asked.By choosing Paxton, the president is rewarding his—and his base’s—unwavering devotion. He is likely also guaranteeing Paxton a primary victory over Cornyn. And in so doing, Trump may have cemented a set of very difficult circumstances for his party. If Paxton wins on Tuesday, Democrats will probably be better positioned to win statewide in Texas than they’ve been in the past 40 years.In the beginning, there was a pen. A $1,000 Montblanc, to be specific, the writing instrument of choice for celebrities, heads of state, and other kinds of people who recognize the cultural cachet of a customizable gold nib. Paxton apparently knows a good pen when he sees… [TheTopNews] Read More.