The Latest Breaking News from Jonathan Bernstein

The House bill that sets Pentagon policies for the next year, which began as mundane and bipartisan, passed on Friday on a party-line vote. The bill received a 58-to-1 vote in committee, but radical Republicans offered dozens of amendments on such issues as abortion, book banning, bases named after Confederate…

Federal awards to states for expanding broadband access are out, and U.S. senators are rushing to brag about the money their states will receive, including those like Texas Republican John Cornyn and others who opposed the bipartisan infrastructure bill that contained the funding they’re now lauding.

As soon as the indictment of Donald Trump was revealed Thursday, prominent Republicans lashed out against Alvin Bragg, accusing the Manhattan district attorney of bringing a groundless and politically motivated case against the former president.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sent a clear signal Tuesday: The chances of a debt limit breach and subsequent government default and economic calamity aren’t only very real, but fairly high. Probably higher than 50-50. Maybe a lot higher. And McCarthy has no idea how to get out of it.

North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature last week approved the expansion of Medicaid to more low-income adults, leaving only 10 states that continue to reject the federal government’s incentives under the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid expansion, aimed at adults who make too much money to qualify for conventional Medicaid but not enough…

If you want a good summary of all that’s wrong with U.S. politics right now, you could do worse than “The most important U.S. election this year is the runoff for a seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.”

Politicians generally don’t like looking silly. And yet a whole bunch of Republican politicians reacted to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank by raging about “woke” banking” in ways that made them appear ridiculous to anyone actually concerned about the danger to the banking system and the economy.

It looks increasingly likely that former President Donald Trump will be indicted by Manhattan prosecutors over alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Republican politicians and other party officials who have tried to avoid taking a position on Trump and the 2024 nomination — the keep-quiet Republicans —…

One of the biggest political stories of 2022 was how the Republican Party fielded an unusually large number of weak candidates for Senate and gubernatorial primaries. Republicans’ failure to elevate candidates with wide appeal cost them dearly in the November midterms, when they bungled potentially winnable contests in Georgia, Pennsylvania…