President Trump’s decision to commute the prison sentence of his longtime friend and political adviser Roger Stone just days before Stone was to begin a 40-month prison sentence – he and the president say he was falsely accused — reminded me of anoth

With the coronavirus on a rampage, President Trump has commanded that all public schools reopen, and has vowed to cut federal funding for those that don’t. Oooh, what a big scary person! All over the country, principals and superintendents must be sh

In this summer of many discontents, my biggest frustration is the way every major crisis seems to open up another culture war. It wouldn’t be so annoying if we also saw some movement toward compromise and even agreement, but culture wars don’t work t

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s televised tirades against Sen. Tammy Duckworth conveyed a very specific message to Trump voters: The America you wish to retain, the one without protesting Black and Latino people, the one where you can keep right on pr

Donald Trump’s half-right when he says there’s a dangerous movement underway in the country. There’s a dangerous movement underway, all right. It’s just not the one he claims. It’s not, as he claims, the “Black Lives Matter Movement” and, in the wake

Jonah Goldberg will not be filing a column today. His column will return next week.

As near as I can tell it began in 1995, when Republicans won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years and captured a Senate majority. By “it” I mean the accusation that Republicans and especially conservatives (not alway

Change. Now. I get that, and understand the symbolism of packed heat. A gun says: We mean business. But that symbolism stops as soon as the trigger is pulled. What the armed protesters could wind up with is a bitter present-day civil war and the bloo

President Donald Trump likes to call himself a fighter. That’s true, although he tends to show it by taking on easy targets, whether he needs to or not. For example, on Monday after the Fourth of July weekend — as surging COVID-19 cases began to pack

I didn’t watch President Trump’s weekend speeches live. It was a holiday, so I chose to take one. As a result, I first learned about them from the reactions they elicited. As usual, it was like “Rashomon” for the Trump era. According to the Washingto

A myth says lightning never strikes twice in the same place. President Donald Trump appears to believe it can when it comes to replicating his narrow victory in 2016. What is not a myth is that you can’t reproduce experiences, such as a sports contes

Among the many challenging jobs in the Donald Trump re-election campaign is picking out music for his rallies — or what’s left of his rallies. For years, Trump’s staff has preferred to use popular songs without asking permission from the artists, sin

Yet another chapter in the U.S.’s racial awakening seems to be unfolding. A bill to change Mississippi’s state flag, with a design that venerates the Confederate battle, passed the state’s house of representatives and senate in late June. Mississippi

When I first heard that hot-headed vandals had knocked down a statue honoring a Confederate leader or a slave trader, I confess that I felt a twinge of satisfaction. Slavery was a horrible institution, after all, of which some of my own ancestors wer

Let’s have an experiment. Before I propose it, let me set the stage a bit. I have long been a critic of most “reforms” to the voting process. While I’m sympathetic to the idea of making Election Day a holiday, or moving it to an “Election Weekend,” I

Topple a few statues, remove some iconic names from American institutions . . . and the ghosts of the past start to escape from history, filling the present moment. It’s called awareness. Too much awareness can feel like chaos. Not surprisingly, a lo

In providing the crucial fifth vote to strike down a Louisiana law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals, Chief Justice John Roberts has re-enforced a longstanding theme: there is no guarantee a judge nomin

Great country that we are, there are still shameful moments in our history. Among them: 1857, the Dred Scott case, when the Supreme Court upheld the institution of slavery; 1942, FDR’s Executive Order, which forced the relocation and incarceration of

As the Trump campaign flounders under the accumulated weight of the pandemic, the economic crisis, the mass protests and a Twitter account plugged straight into the president’s limbic system, I wonder: What if the parties mattered? I’m a subscriber t

In the latest of many cynical and highly political moves, the House of Representatives last week passed a measure that would transform the District of Columbia and make it the 51st state. “DC,” as it is often abbreviated by locals, is already a “sta

Well, does President Donald Trump approve of what news media are calling the “white power video,” or doesn’t he? That burning question arose after the president retweeted a video over the weekend showing a few residents of The Villages, a huge centra

There is a viral video taken in Missouri that probably ought to be required viewing for white people like me, who once thought that the public, defiant, in-your-face racism we saw during our youth had relocated in the shadows. If George Corley Wallac

In some progressive police departments, new recruits hear a version of this story emphasized during training: “Always be aware that whenever you answer a call; someone is armed and possibly already leveraged to fire their weapon,” goes the admonishme

Maybe CHOP won’t last, but something is changing. Our national groupthink, as maintained with such stalwart certainty over the last half century by centrist politics and the mainstream media, seems to be crumbling before our very eyes. And as the gro

If Donald Trump is going to defeat Joe Biden he’s going to have to define Joe Biden. It’s not looking good right now. It’s forgotten now, but there was a time when some of the crazier right-wing types thought President Dwight Eisenhower was a Soviet

This is turning out to be the weirdest presidential campaign ever. It’s the inside strategy vs. the outside, the visible vs. the invisible, the everywhere vs. the nowhere. Donald Trump’s everywhere, frenetically running around the country, defying al

What did we think would happen once boundaries were destroyed? The chaos plaguing the country today was inevitable after truth, standards and self-control were all but ignored by many in our society. That great “philosopher,” the late Marilyn Monroe,

Even before Chicago’s carnage-infested Father’s Day weekend was finished, the predictable emails from readers began to flow in. “Where’s Black Lives Matter now?” they asked in so many words. The surge was predictable. At least 106 people were shot in

President Trump’s speech Saturday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a toxic stream of consciousness that ignored a great opportunity to speak words of healing and unity to a divided nation. His remarks, which lasted nearly two hours, were full of self-j

The most cringe-inducing thing about Donald Trump’s Saturday night rally didn’t happen in Tulsa, Okla., where it was held, but 700 miles away in Alabama. But before I get to that, let’s set the stage. The Tulsa rally was supposed to signal to the cou