POLITICO – Politics | Politics & Government

“There are two tragedies in life,” the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said. “One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.” It’s easy to see King Charles III, the longest-serving heir apparent in British history, as a tragic figure. The king waited 73 long years to ascend the royal throne. Now three-and-a-half years into the job he craved his whole life, Charles faces myriad challenges: poor health, advancing years, estrangement from his California-dwelling son, and the Epstein-sized scandal enveloping his younger brother. And now this. What should have been a pinnacle moment in his reign — a state visit to America with all the pomp and ceremony that Washington can muster — has morphed into something much more serious: a high-stakes diplomatic mission to save Britain’s most important alliance. It’s hard for Americans to appreciate the importance of the trans-Atlantic relationship in Britain. While Pete Hegseth cracks jokes about the once “big, bad Royal Navy,” Brits have long known the state of the nation’s armed forces is depressingly underpowered. But this never much mattered, given the endlessly touted “special relationship” with the United States. Images of FDR and Winston Churchill sharing cocktails; Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher locked in embrace; Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as the West’s bright young things; form part of a postwar national mythology. The bond is unbreakable, Brits have told themselves for 80 years. No nation is closer to the U.S. This special relationship — partly real, partly imagined — has allowed an entire generation in Britain to grow up feeling untouchable, safe under the impenetrable shield of the U.S. military umbrella. When anti-Brexit campaigners tried to warn in 2016 that leaving the EU would be a risk to national security, they were laughed out of town. Europe doesn't keep us safe, the Brexiteers said, convincingly. That job belongs to NATO — the most successful defensive alliance in modern history. Sure enough, Britain voted to leave the EU in June 2016. Donald Trump was elected president four months later.It’s taken another decade of turmoil to bring us to this point, but NATO now looks holed below the water line. It’s a “paper tiger,” Trump has said repeatedly over recent weeks, dropping hint after hint that he may no longer adhere to NATO’s central tenet — that an attack on any one of its members is an attack on… [TheTopNews] Read More.

One moment was utterly familiar: The massive ballroom at the Washington Hilton was filled with an indistinct buzz from thousands of mostly inconsequential conversations all blended together across a sea of hundreds of tightly packed tables, just like always happens before the formal program gets underway at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. The next moment was utterly bizarre: Women in gowns, men in tuxes, nearly everyone in the place crouching down on the floor as the ballroom turned quiet. When people tentatively lifted their gazes to survey the room we saw men with machine guns standing at the head table where President Donald Trump had been and cabinet secretaries being escorted by agents one-by-one out of the giant hall. The juxtaposition of those scenes may suggest a sudden, piercing realization of terror. Perhaps some in the room did experience it that way. For my part, and I sense for others around me, that’s not quite how it felt as the incident unfolded. The sensation instead was something akin to the blurred in-between zone of consciousness when a phone call awakens you in the middle of the night. Huh, what’s happening, I’m confused, is this for real?  Donald Trump told reporters when he returned to the White House that the shots fired just outside the ballroom sounded to him like a food tray dropping. Yes — a good way of putting it. In my case, the noise was on the periphery of awareness, not enough to cause a jolt alarm or even to interrupt my conversation. (Others on the POLITICO team heard them clearly.) What happened next took place within seconds but seemed to unfold slower than that in my mind. The subconscious instinct to assume normal order was overcome by cognitive recognition that something definitely abnormal was underway. People were ducking on the floor. C’mon, I wondered, is that really necessary? The sight of agents with guns brandished made it clear that joining colleagues on the ground was in fact a good idea.Once there, my thoughts were dominated first by a question: What the hell is actually happening? Then came a journalist’s instinctual reaction: Whatever the answer is, the president just got rushed out of the event, this is a big damn story. Many colleagues while crouching on the floor lifted their phones above their heads to record the scene. At no time during the episode did I perceive… [TheTopNews] Read More.

We are entering a startling new era in the politics of birth control, with President Donald Trump launching the most serious effort in decades to curb contraception. The Department of Health and Human Services recently released new guidance that outlines a major overhaul of federal family planning programs — prioritizing childbirth over contraception, and privileging “natural family planning,” like period-tracking apps, over far more effective methods, like the birth control pill. The Trump administration is also poised to establish new regulations that would end further funding for Planned Parenthood chapters. Millions of Americans who receive federally-backed family planning services are likely to feel the impact of such a policy shift. And there is real political risk as well. Birth control remains overwhelmingly popular in the United States: Only 8 percent of Americans say using contraception is morally wrong, according to Pew Research Center polling. (More Americans object to drinking alcohol, getting a divorce or being extremely rich). Given widespread support for birth control, it’s no surprise that politicians have long been reluctant to zero in on it. So, what’s changed? The unwieldy political coalition that sent Trump back to the White House in 2024 is clamoring for action. For different reasons, an alliance of MAHA adherents, social conservatives and pronatalists are eager to go after birth control. With Trump sinking in the polls and his coalition fracturing, he may want to deliver for his core supporters. But regardless of whether he succeeds, the administration’s move signals a major transformation in America’s culture war: Contraception has gone from being politically untouchable to a real target on the right. A bit of history underscores just how significant this shift is. In 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved the birth control pill, and a broad consensus in support of birth control quickly took hold. Nearly a century after moral crusaders had introduced the first laws criminalizing the use, mailing or sale of birth control, millions of Americans began using the pill. At the same time, as sexual mores changed, opposing contraception became a liability for an emerging anti-abortion movement. These activists claimed to champion the civil rights of the unborn. If they also targeted birth control, they opened themselves up to the argument that they were really trying to control women or police sex. The result: For years, opposing birth control outright was something of a political third rail, even after Congress… [TheTopNews] Read More.

President Donald Trump recently dismissed claims he’s anxious to end the Iran war, insisting on Truth Social that he’s “possibly the least pressured person ever to be in this position” and has “all the time in the World.” If only. Trump and his aides could use some more time to think through what they want to accomplish in discussions with Tehran’s Islamist regime. The administration’s preparations for launching the war were … not great, and its negotiating efforts so far have underwhelmed. Ending the war — and keeping it ended — is almost certain to prove more complicated than Trump aides suspect. The administration has a number of fundamental questions to sort through, people who have dealt with Tehran in the past tell me. That won’t be easy given the president’s rhetorical waffling. “The details are incredibly important,” said Michael Singh, a former George W. Bush administration official who dealt with the Middle East. “Each new administration has to learn those details the hard way. The Iranians on other hand are often the same or similar teams who have negotiated these terms with multiple American administrations. You may receive what you think is a concession by the Iranians, but when you delve into it, it’s a concession from you to Iran.” I’m still not convinced Trump is ready to genuinely commit to diplomacy with Iran, despite the ongoing ceasefire. He loves using military force and knows that Iran remains the weaker side, even as both the U.S. and Iran wrestle over the fate of the Strait of Hormuz. But at some point, the global economic fallout that is hurting both Americans’ wallets and the country's reputation may force Trump to the negotiating table. If he decides to take a serious shot at talks to end the war, the first critical question Trump needs to answer is: Is he prepared to agree to a deal that ultimately leaves the Islamist regime in place? This is anathema to many Iranians who want an end to a regime that has long brutalized them. It could be intolerable for Israel and some Arab states who view Tehran as the root of many Middle East ills. Despite Trump’s occasional specious claims that he’s already changed the regime, it's clear the U.S.-Israel military attacks have failed to dislodge the Islamist system. Iranian citizens didn’t stage an uprising amid the bombing. And given Iran’s demonstrated willingness to… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Nashville, Ind.—Beau Bayh knows the way out of the wilderness. “You got to go north on Main Road,” he tells me over the phone, trying to guide me through the fall foliage of the Little Smokies, as the locals call them. The candidate for Indiana Secretary of State is set to meet me for a run at a trailhead here in Brown County State Park this morning. It’s his 30th birthday. How else would a chiseled, 6’3 ex-Marine and ambitious Hoosier political scion celebrate but with some PT in the deep woods of southern Indiana? There is, of course, an Indiana University game later in the day, and he’ll watch that with friends. When I finally catch up to him, his campaign manager has dropped him off, and he’s already limbered up for a run across a four-mile stretch of some 16,000 acres of rugged hills and ravines etched into the southern half of the state. His family would vacation here when he was a kid, one of the reasons he chose it as the location of one of our many ranging talks over the last year.I’m not the only one looking to Bayh to lead me out of the wilderness. Democrats haven’t won a statewide office in barn-red Indiana since 2012. And their performance across the rest of middle America hasn’t been much better. President Donald Trump won both Michigan and Wisconsin in 2024. Once-purple Iowa is down to one last statewide Democrat in elected office, Auditor Rob Sand. The old neighboring battleground of Ohio has trended red, too. But Bayh is bringing hope to the ruins — literally. He announced his campaign six months ago amid sculptures from the 1970s called “The Ruins” that look like the vestiges of ancient Greece. Bayh has checked all the right boxes. His grandfather, Birch, was a three-term Democratic senator and sought the presidency in 1972 and 1976. His father, Evan, was a two-term senator and governor who briefly flirted with a campaign of his own ahead of 2008. He went to Harvard and Harvard Law. He served his country in the Marines. He clerked for the 7th Circuit. And, as Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear — a fellow red-state Democrat with a family history in politics — recently said on his podcast, he cuts a figure like “Captain America.” “I’ve even heard people sometimes say he’s so good looking, he almost looks… [TheTopNews] Read More.