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- Marco Rubio Seems to Be Having a Grand Time
It’s a low bar, perhaps, but no one in the Trump administration seems to be having more fun at the moment than Marco Rubio. Last weekend, he was acting as a DJ at a family wedding, headphones to his ear with head and hand pumping to the beat. Midweek, the secretary of state was at the podium in the White House briefing room, spitting rap lyrics and cracking jokes. (“Two more questions!” he said, before entertaining seven more.) And toward the end of the week, he was in Vatican City, being escorted through marble hallways by members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard for an audience with Pope Leo XIV, who has been criticized by the president and vice president.Rubio comes across as the happy warrior, not the angry one—the one offering lighthearted jokes more than brash confrontation.In a more normal time, he would seem like just another glad-handing politician. But consider the moment: Gas prices are rising, the GOP midterm outlook is dimming, and the war that President Trump launched against Iran continues with no tidy ending in sight. The president faces record-high disapproval ratings. Three Cabinet members have been ousted, and others worry they could be next. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is up on Capitol Hill testifying about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and FBI Director Kash Patel faces questions about his alleged excessive drinking, which he denies. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is navigating the war with Iran and a closed Strait of Hormuz. Vice President Vance, despite his original reservations about that war, has been pulled in as a negotiator and defender.But Rubio—the guy who once became a meme because of the way he sat uncomfortably on an Oval Office couch, looking exhausted with his many jobs—suddenly looks joyful and light. He seemed to be everywhere all at once this week, followed by a hum and then a buzz of: Hmm, he sure looks like he’s running in 2028. That’s the murmur that once followed Vance. Although people close to Rubio and Vance downplay any rivalry—insisting that they are close friends and ardent allies—it’s hard not to see a shadow Republican presidential primary beginning to emerge. Vance made his first trip to Iowa as vice president on Tuesday, to campaign for vulnerable midterm candidates, raise money for the party, and stoke interest in his own political future.Toward the end of the Tuesday briefing, a reporter from the Christian… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago - The GOP’s Stunningly Swift Gerrymandering DriveFor more than four decades, the Ninth Congressional District of Tennessee stood as a bulwark, ensuring that the Black voters who compose a majority of the city of Memphis could choose their representative in Washington. With a nod from the Supreme Court, the state’s ruling Republicans took barely a week to wipe that district off the map.Tennessee yesterday enacted legislation that splits much of Memphis among three separate districts, diluting the votes of Black residents and all but guaranteeing Republicans an additional House seat. The move was the first, and surely not the last, GOP legislative response to the Supreme Court’s decision last week gutting enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. Across the South, Republicans are rushing to redraw congressional districts that, because of the Court’s 6–3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, they believe they are no longer required to reserve for nonwhite voters, who predominantly cast ballots for Democrats.Voting-rights advocates expected GOP-led states to use the ruling to escalate a nationwide gerrymandering race. But the speed and blunt force of the Republican response has been astonishing. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry invoked emergency powers usually meant for natural disasters to suspend a primary election that was already under way to give lawmakers time to redistrict. Alabama Republicans held votes during a tornado watch while a storm flooded the state capitol to allow for new primary elections if federal courts clear the state’s path to redistrict. South Carolina legislators also took an initial step toward gerrymandering the district of Representative James Clyburn, one of the nation’s most prominent Black leaders.Collectively, the moves could increase the GOP’s chances of retaining its narrow House majority in this fall’s midterm elections. Republicans received another major judicial boost this morning, when Virginia’s highest court struck down a statewide referendum designed by Democrats to give them as many as four additional House seats.The Virginia decision will help Republicans in the short term, but the Callais ruling, written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by the Supreme Court’s five other conservative members, could benefit the GOP and reshape congressional representation in the South for years to come. “This feels like the echoes of the ‘southern strategy’ of the ’60s,” Anneshia Hardy, the executive director of the advocacy group Alabama Values, told us. “This is diluting Black political power.” When the Court issued its ruling last week, Hardy had just finished speaking at an event at the Equal… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- The Man Trying to Make Trump’s Tariffs Go on Forever
WARREN, Mich. — Jamieson Greer is a trade lawyer. He is a well-respected trade lawyer. He was chosen by President Donald Trump to be the country’s top trade lawyer: the U.S. Trade Representative. He is not a member of a union. He is not a welder. He is not a manufacturer. He is definitely not a salesman. But here he is one cloudy morning on a factory floor in Michigan, in front of an American flag that could hide an elephant, selling the administration’s trade agenda in one of the most important political states in the country with a man hoping to become its next governor. And that man just went soft on the core tenet of Trump’s efforts to reshape global trade. “We don’t want the tariffs to go on forever,” said Rep. John James (R-Mich.). “We want reciprocal tariffs. We want fair trade.” Greer stares off at a machine in the distance. He’s heard a similar line from tariff-skittish Republicans before — that the tariffs are a tool, a way to get countries to open markets and expand exports, and then they will come down. But those reassurances contradict his daily reality: His boss does want tariffs to go on forever. And he’s made it Greer’s job to ensure they do. Trump has never hidden his love of tariffs. But his second term has seen the so-called “Tariff Man” unleashed, with a trade policy defined by a fire-from-the hip approach that’s upended global markets. He immediately set about imposing tariffs on three of the country’s top trading partners — China, Canada and Mexico — and quickly followed with “Liberation Day,” when he imposed duties on goods from nearly every country in the world in the hopes that it would end the alleged global exploitation of American commerce and mark the beginning of a grand resurgence in domestic manufacturing. He justified those tariffs with the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to regulate trade during a national emergency. The trade deficit between the U.S. and other countries, Trump said, constituted such an emergency. But the law had never been used for that purpose and doesn’t explicitly mention tariffs. In April, the Supreme Court ruled that it couldn’t be used that way at all, striking down the cornerstone of Trump’s economic agenda. Trump was undeterred. He vowed that his administration would find a new legal mechanism with… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago - Ukraine’s Weirdest Front Line
WILHELM ARCHIPELAGO, Antarctica — Sometimes, in the middle of a long workday or as she’s falling asleep, Anzhelika Hanchuk sees her phone jolted to life by a bright notification that means Kyiv is under attack from Russian missiles. The meteorologist is about as far as she could be from the Ukrainian capital and the conflict raging in her home country. Surrounded by the jagged glaciers and towering peaks of the Antarctic Peninsula with only a colony of gentoo penguins for neighbors, Hanchuk is leading a group of 14 Ukrainians helping the war effort in an unlikely way: by keeping its Antarctic program afloat. “Stopping the base for even one year and then trying to restart it is simply impossible,” she said. “To stop the base for a year would mean losing it forever.” Maintaining a permanent scientific presence at Vernadsky Research Base, the mint-green structure perched on a remote, rocky outcropping nearly 10,000 miles from Kyiv, might seem an unusual priority for a country fighting for its existence at home. But Ukrainian officials see their small polar foothold as not just a scientific endeavor, but also a crucial bulwark in their fight for survival and against Russia’s expansionist plans. That’s because its very existence secures Ukraine a seat at the table where major world powers govern the vast white landmass entirely by consensus — giving the besieged country an important forum to draw attention to Russian aggression in all its forms. A long-term polar strategy adopted this year by Ukraine declares its Antarctic presence a “platform for protecting national interests.”“Ukraine’s systematic presence in the regions of Antarctica, the Arctic, and the World Ocean is of major strategic and geopolitical importance,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said when approving the strategy in February. “It provides additional foreign policy instruments, strengthens Ukraine’s national security, enhances our country’s position on the global stage, and contributes to countering Russia’s aggressive policy in these regions.” On May 11, the core decisionmakers in the continent’s governance will gather in Hiroshima, Japan, for the annual Antarctic Consultative Treaty Meeting. Representatives of 29 nations will debate everything from restrictions on krill fishing in the Southern Ocean to the future of Antarctic tourism to the frontiers of mineral prospecting on the resource-rich continent. The politics of the war in Ukraine have seeped into the work of the little-known governing body. Lines between the Western countries backing Ukraine on one… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago - I Helped Craft the 25th Amendment. It Was Never Meant to Oust a President.
The 25th Amendment has been mentioned in public debate over the past eight years — often as a mechanism for removing a president from office. That is a fundamental misunderstanding. Adopted in 1967 in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the amendment was designed not as a tool of removal, but as a practical framework to ensure continuity of presidential power. Its purpose is limited and precise: to address presidential inability and fill a vacancy in the vice presidency. It was not meant to address political dissatisfaction with a president. I know the history and intent of the amendment: I was given an opportunity to assist Congress in its development because of an article I wrote for the Fordham Law Review in 1963. The article detailed the history of the Constitution’s presidential succession provision and stated that an amendment on the subject was long overdue. Invited by the American Bar Association and leaders of Congress to become involved in this reform, I ultimately helped in the crafting and ratification of the 25th Amendment and in its implementation. In the decades since, I have studied and written extensively on its meaning and legislative history. Three of its sections have been implemented since adoption of the Amendment in 1967, and they are not controversial. It’s Section 4 — which empowers the vice president and the president’s Cabinet to declare a president disabled and enables Congress to resolve a case where the president disagrees with their declaration — that receives the attention. And it’s this section that has been at the center of the misunderstanding. In fact, what I see today is a gap between what the amendment was intended to do and how it is understood. As the world becomes more polarized and political parties more divided, the 25th Amendment is increasingly seen as a tool for presidential removal without a full understanding of its provisions and limitations. Quite the contrary, the 25th Amendment was intended to deal only with the discharge of the president’s powers and duties by the vice president, with details respecting the president’s four-year term in office. It is practical and consistent with the principle of separation of powers. Its purpose, carefully defined at the time of its adoption, remains narrower than discussions today suggests.The Constitution states that “in case of the removal of the president from office, or of his death, resignation or inability to… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago - ‘We Want to Move on From Losing’: Pritzker on Antisemitism, Trump and 2028CHICAGO — Nobody asks “who sent ya?” when you walk into Manny’s Deli, pick up a tray and deliberate over pastrami or corned beef to go with your latke. This South Loop institution welcomes every element of Chicago. That was evident last week when we took “On The Road” to the American city that’s perhaps most consumed by its own politics. Manny's crowd spanned class and racial lines. They were united in caloric excess, the Chicago way. It’s one of the few things that links a city otherwise balkanized by neighborhood, class, ethnic group, even baseball allegiance. Another is its obsession with its own politics, particularly its mayors (pronounced locally as: Da Mare). Presidents and senators are fine — and one of their own will open his presidential library next month in Hyde Park — but the adage that all politics is local really could have been coined for Chicago. This clubhouse culture is why ward committeemen and aldermen — and the favors they distribute or retribution they exact — endure in Chicago’s municipal-centric ecosystem. But just as Manny’s feeds all, the historically closed system that was Chicago’s Democratic political machine is close to a relic, on its way to being as dated as the famous footage of 1968 in Grant Park. Nobody today is posing the locally famous question a young Abner Mikva faced when he showed up at a local Democratic office to volunteer and was told: “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.” That’s in part because there’s not a Richard Daley on the fourth floor of City Hall. And because the other enduring Illinois Democratic boss, Mike Madigan, was finally felled by the feds, meeting the same fate as so many others in both parties here. But someone has stepped up to fill the vacuum: Gov. JB Pritzker. Pritzker is hardly a political outsider — his family name can be found on buildings and philanthropic endeavors across Chicagoland. But the billionaire Hyatt hotel heir was always a donor and, he’s quick to note, an activist. He was no machine regular. Pritzker’s only run before his winning 2018 gubernatorial bid was in a 1998 House Democratic primary (he came in third). He may hate the term, but by virtue of his office and the personal money he’s steered toward consolidating political power, he’s effectively become Chicago’s new boss. That was apparent enough when, in March, he helped engineer… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago
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