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A fresh string of attacks by Donald Trump this week on rivals in the GOP establishment — including one delivered against a prominent Latina governor in her home state — raised new doubts about his ability or desire to unite the party’s badly fractured leadership.

The intraparty skirmishing began with an attack on New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) during a campaign rally in Albuquerque, where Trump blamed her for mismanaging the state’s economy and suggested that she was shirking her responsibilities to her constituents

Martinez has criticized the way Trump describes illegal immigrants and decided not to attend his Albuquerque rally.

the times also called for a leader who could subdue the vast political and administrative forces arrayed against change—for someone with the strategic and tactical instincts to overcome the most-entrenched opponents, and the courage to decide instantly, in a moment of great uncertainty and doubt, to throw his full weight behind progress. The civil-rights movement had the extraordinary figure of Lyndon Johnson.

Days after Kennedy’s murder, Johnson displayed the type of leadership on civil rights that his predecessor lacked and that the other branches could not possibly match. He made the bold and exceedingly risky decision to champion the stalled civil-rights bill. It was a pivotal moment: without Johnson, a strong bill would not have passed. Caro writes that during a searching late-night conversation that lasted into the morning of November 27, when somebody tried to persuade Johnson not to waste his time or capital on the lost cause of civil rights, the president replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” He grasped the unique possibilities of the moment and saw how to leverage the nation’s grief by tying Kennedy’s legacy to the fight against inequality.

The best hope of moving the civil-rights bill from the House Rules Committee—whose segregationist chairman, Howard Smith of Virginia, had no intention of relinquishing it—was a procedure called a “discharge petition.” If a majority of House members sign a discharge petition, a bill is taken from the committee, to the chagrin of its chairman. Johnson made the petition his own personal crusade

The political network overseen by the conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch plans to spend close to $900 million on the 2016 campaign, an unparalleled effort by coordinated outside groups to shape a presidential election that is already on track to be the most expensive in history.

In the last presidential election, the Republican National Committee and the party’s two congressional campaign committees spent a total of $657 million.

The $889 million spending goal for 2016 would put it on track to spend nearly as much as the campaigns of each party’s presidential nominee.

What has become of the Republican Party, which I once served on Capitol Hill and which I now consider a dangerous extremist movement on a par with the ruling Fidesz party in neo-fascist Hungary?

Where did its principles go? What became of Ronald Reagan’s “party of ideas”?

One by one, those ideas were tossed aside for expediency and power — except the tax cut.

Washington (CNN)Amid renewed debate over gun control after Wednesday's school shooting in Florida, House Speaker Paul Ryan is arguing that now is not the time to wage political battles. "This is one of those moments where we just need to step back and count our blessings," he told reporters Thursday at a news conference at the Capitol. "We need to think less about taking sides and fighting each other politically, and just pulling together. This House, and the whole country, stands with the Parkland community."

"That legislation is now just taking place, that legislation is now being implemented," he said.

President Donald Trump's decision to crack down on Chinese trade practices may seem a world away from the rural roads of Martin County, Minnesota, the self-proclaimed "Bacon Capitol of the USA."

"I think the marketplace is speaking for itself. Hog futures are down. Stock market is down," says David Preisler, the CEO for the Minnesota Pork Board said Wednesday. "There are some pieces in the President's trade policy that we really like, but this is a big piece that we don't."

And tariffs on soybeans, a cash crop for much of the Midwest, could impact key Senate races in North Dakota and Ohio, two states in the top 10 of soybean producing states.

It’s hard to know exactly when the Republican Party assumed the mantle of the “stupid party.”

Stupidity is not an accusation that could be hurled against such prominent early Republicans as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes. But by the 1950s, it had become an established shibboleth that the “eggheads” were for Adlai Stevenson and the “boobs” for Dwight D. Eisenhower — a view endorsed by Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 book “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” which contrasted Stevenson, “a politician of uncommon mind and style, whose appeal to intellectuals overshadowed anything in recent history,” with Eisenhower — “conventional in mind, relatively inarticulate.” The John F. Kennedy presidency, with its glittering court of Camelot, cemented the impression that it was the Democrats who represented the thinking men and women of America.

Rather than run away from the anti-intellectual label, Republicans embraced it for their own political purposes. In his “time for choosing” speech, Ronald Reagan said that the issue in the 1964 election was “whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant Capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.” Richard M. Nixon appealed to the “silent majority” and the “hard hats,” while his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, issued slashing attacks on an “effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”

Winsome Packer had a plum overseas assignment, an apartment in Vienna and a six-figure salary as an adviser to a Washington congressman when it all came crashing down.

But both sides say the process is unfair and abusive to the accuser and the accused. Packer said she has not recovered from the harrowing legal fight, and Hastings said his reputation was damaged. As lawmakers prepare to unveil bipartisan legislation as early as this week that would alter the current system for handling such claims, both Packer and Hastings said their dispute reveals a broken law that must be fixed.

The attorney said Packer took a “kernel of truth” about Hastings’s sexually tinged comments but “grossly distorted events and circumstances in order to create a fiction that she experienced sexual harassment and intimidation,” the document says. For example, the attorney alluded to an incident in which Hastings told Packer he had trouble sleeping after sex, which Hastings said he shared only because he believed they were friends, not because he was pursuing her sexually.

Mr. Durbin, who has been in Congress for more than three decades and is no stranger to political back rooms, said the meeting was not the usual case of salty language shared among politicians gathered behind closed doors.

“It was beyond, and the intensity of the president’s feeling, and what he said there, as well as many other epithets during the course of it, I was surprised and shocked in a way,” he said, noting that upon his return to the Capitol, some colleagues commented on his demeanor.

“They said, ‘You look shaken,’ and I said I was,” he said. “After you have been in politics as long I have, it takes something to shake you up.”

As part of an effort to protect young “dreamers” from deportation in exchange for border wall funding, Trump convened a bipartisan meeting at the White House in January.

“It really suggests that his effectiveness is compromised as long as his word is unreliable.” Trump’s style poses challenges for members of both parties, observers say.

Fresh uncertainty about where Trump stands on guns came Friday as White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fielded questions from reporters about whether the president remains committed to a proposal to raise the age to purchase rifles and shotguns to 21 from 18 — an idea opposed by the NRA.

an informal roster passed along by word-of-mouth, consisting of the male members most notorious for inappropriate behavior, ranging from making sexually suggestive comments or gestures to seeking physical relations with younger employees and interns.

"Amongst ourselves, we know," a former Senate staffer said of the lawmakers with the worst reputations. And sometimes, the sexual advances from members of Congress or senior aides are reciprocated in the hopes of advancing one's career -- what one political veteran bluntly referred to as a "sex trade on Capitol Hill."

Both House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell support ramping up sexual harassment training.

Monday afternoon, President Trump delivered a press conference from an alternative reality, or perhaps a slightly-less-dark timeline. His relationship with Mitch McConnell is great! They have the votes for Obamacare repeal! The hurricane relief effort in Puerto Rico is a smashing success! Democrats are to blame for GOP divisions on Capitol Hill! These claims range from the highly dubious to the patently false.

He topped it off on Saturday night by tweeting that “perhaps no Administration has done more in its first 9 months than this Administration.”The question is not whether these claims are balderdash. The question is whether Trump believes them.

Certainly, Trump is unusual in being willing to fight this fight. Other presidents, faced with firestorms of controversy, tend to lie low and hope the moment passes. Trump’s answer to is call a press conference and plead his case, going around his communications staff. The condolence flap shows the risks of that approach.

Over the past 10 days, two things happened that make clear that a) Trumpism isn't going anywhere and b) it's going to complicate Republican attempts to retake control of the Senate next November.

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R), who resigned from office in 2018 amid a series of allegations of sexual and campaign misconduct, is running for the open Senate seat of Roy Blunt (R).

The second is that Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks (R), one of Trump's most ardent defenders and a believer in the idea that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from the 45th president, is running for the open seat being left behind by retiring Sen. Richard Shelby (R).

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s nominees to fill out the Justice Department’s leadership ranks pledged at their confirmation hearing on Tuesday to tackle domestic extremism, racial inequality and other thorny issues within the bounds of the law, seeking to restore order to a department battered by political attacks during the Trump administration.

Lisa Monaco, a Justice Department veteran and national security expert nominated to be deputy attorney general, and Vanita Gupta, a civil rights lawyer known for her criminal justice overhaul work tapped as the department’s No. 3, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that they were committed to ensuring that the department meted out equal justice under the law.

“Throughout my career, these norms have been my North Star,” Ms. Monaco said.

Over the last five decades, Joe Biden endured multiple personal tragedies and saw his political obituary written over and over again—yet always found a way to pick up the pieces and move forward.

Mr. Biden was sworn in amid extraordinary circumstances: an ongoing pandemic, the glaring absence of an outgoing president who refused to accept the legitimacy of last year’s election, the scars of a mob attack designed to prevent him from taking office still visible on the Capitol just behind him, the nation’s first woman and first minority vice president at his side.

The first was that democracy has survived a severe blow. The second was that unity is possible. And the third was that the country will need that unity to weather a coronavirus storm that will continue to rage for a while longer.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, who's facing a federal investigation into sex trafficking allegations, was recently denied a meeting with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate as the ex-President and his allies continue to distance themselves from the Florida congressman.

Gaetz tried to schedule a visit with Trump after it was first revealed that he was being investigated, but the request was rejected by aides close to the former President,

a spokesman for Gaetz, said the congressman did not request a meeting with Trump this week.

On Saturday, before a roomful of top Republican donors, former President Donald Trump called Senator Mitch McConnell a “stone cold loser” — and worse.

On Monday, Mr. Trump was rewarded with the first “Champion for Freedom” award, handed out by none other than the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign finance arm of the Republican caucus that Mr. McConnell leads.

Big donors are beyond tired of Mr. Trump’s antics, but his small-dollar fund-raising is through the roof. If Mr. Trump is in a tug of war with the Republican establishment, he appears to have the upper hand — not just in the polls, but also in dollars.

Most people thought that President Donald Trump’s tweets were bonkers — but for a large portion of the GOP, they have now become the standard by which his successors will be judged. Republicans have gone down the rabbit hole where sanity and sobriety are inexplicable and indeed suspicious.

This is a sign of how the Republican Party is adjusting to post-Trump life. It has embraced Trumpism without Trump. This is not really a set of policy preferences; the GOP in 2020 passed on a platform beyond allegiance to the Orange Emperor’s whims. It is more of a mindless, obnoxious attitude — it’s all about “owning the libs,” spreading conspiracy theories, and waging culture wars as a way to rile up the rabid base and keep the cash register ringing.

Three of the major tenets of the Trumpified GOP have been on public view the past week — if you can bear to watch.

The next phase of President Biden’s $4 trillion push to overhaul the American economy will seek to raise taxes on millionaire investors to fund education and other spending plans, but it will not take steps to expand health coverage or reduce prescription drug prices, according to people familiar with the proposal.

Administration officials had planned to include a health care expansion of up to $700 billion, offset by efforts to reduce government spending on prescription drugs.

The president is set to outline his so-called American Family Plan, which includes measures aimed at helping Americans gain skills throughout life and have more flexibility in the work force, before his first address to a joint session of Congress next week.

President Biden laid blame Tuesday on two Democratic senators for Congress' failure to pass voting rights legislation, apparently a reference to Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

"June should be a month of action on Capitol Hill," Biden said, as he appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House’s efforts to expand voting rights.  Biden vowed to "fight like heck" to get the For the People Act, already passed by the House, through the Senate. 

But Manchin has voiced support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would require states with a record of discrimination in voting to pre-clear new voting restrictions with the federal government.