All honor is due to whoever decided that the opening of Barack Obama’s presidential center in Chicago should come right before Donald Trump’s planned July 4 gala on the National Mall. The two events will serve as perfect touchstones for the bigger argument that our country’s 250th anniversary is prompting—the argument over American national identity.
The forty-fourth president delivered an…
Now that President Donald Trump has signed an agreement with Iran that caves on many of his initial demands, you would be forgiven for hoping he’s learned a valuable lesson.
Trump’s main takeaway? There are “no limits” to his power, as he declared on “The Axios Show” on Thursday.
Never mind that he went in with the goal of “unconditional surrender,” and left with a memorandum of understanding…
Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights,…
Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was admitted to the hospital Sunday—but his office has provided scant details about what’s going on.
“Senator McConnell was admitted to the hospital this morning. He is receiving excellent care,” said McConnell adviser David Popp. The statement did not elaborate on his condition, why he had been transported to the hospital, or where he was receiving…
Donald Trump has again upended efforts to renew a critical surveillance statute just as lawmakers had begun to reopen stalled talks.
The president declared on Truth Social Monday that any work to renew FISA Section 702, a statute that allows federal agencies such as the NSA and the CIA to surveil foreigners on U.S. soil without warrants, must be passed alongside his voter ID bill, the SAVE…
The worst El Niño in decades has officially arrived.
Clearly, anthropogenic climate change is a myth.
After months of anticipation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officially declared the onset of El Niño today. It could become one of the strongest El Niño events in history.
According to the agency, there is now a 63% chance of El Niño intensifying to “very…
“Space computing, the final frontier, has arrived,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declared at the Nvidia GTC conference in March.
Indeed, the idea of data centers in orbit has gone from science fiction to a serious spending category. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has acquired xAI (also Musk’s) and is planning a constellation of space-based data centers. Google, not to be outdone, announced Project…
In the wake of Kuomintang (KMT) chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s current visit to the United States, speculation is growing over how her “peace” diplomacy might shape Taiwan’s fate. On Xi Jinping’s side stands a carefully drafted narrative of a “shared Chinese civilization,” presented as an unstoppable force driving toward unification. Xi has declared that “people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are…
On its surface, Polis III Nona’s installation ceremony bore all the hallmarks of a thriving church. The new patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Iraq’s largest Christian denomination, was flanked by clergy, adorned with traditional vestments, marking the transition to a new era for one of the world’s oldest Christian communities. Yet the congregation he inherits has all but vanished since…
When Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a new assault weapons ban in Virginia last month, it got almost zero national news coverage. Yet it amounted to an important milestone: It marked the first time in U.S. history that such a gun control measure was passed into law by any state government in the American South.
So it’s sadly fitting that passage of this law has been greeted by what you might…
A look at a few small cities that are bouncing back.
For more than two weeks, around 300 immigrants locked up at Delaney Hall, an immigrant detention camp in Newark, New Jersey, have been on a hunger and labor strike, refusing to eat and refusing to work maintaining the prison for its operators, the GEO Group. They are not alone: Outside the camp’s chain-link fence, in an industrial area, their family members, loved ones, and a broader community of…
The Ebola outbreak raging in central Africa had a “big head-start”, the World Health Organisation (WHO) chief acknowledged Wednesday, but insisted efforts to rein in the deadly virus were making progress.
The outbreak, which was declared on May 15 in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has so far been confirmed to have infected 359 people, including 61 who have died.
But the…
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox declared June 2026 “Fidelity Month,” calling for a return to America’s “core values,” as Republican-led states across the country issue various proclamations in reaction to “Pride Month” celebrations.
Utah joined Arkansas in endorsing Fidelity Month, a movement promoted by conservative scholar Robert George. The initiative urges Americans to rededicate themselves to…
The fallout from _Louisiana v. Callais_ has been nothing short of tragic, with terrible echoes of the past. As Reconstruction ended in 1877, states in the South either killed, expelled, or used other means to force out Black legislators. Over the last two weeks, freed from abiding by Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Southern states have rushed to redraw their district lines to ensure that…
Sweeping U.S. cuts to critical global health programs, including funding and staffing reductions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), have dangerously weakened the world’s ability to respond to rapidly evolving infectious disease threats,…
Minnesota State Senator John Marty was furious with the nonprofit National Council on Problem Gambling, so much so that he couldn’t wait until morning to fire off an angry email. “I am deeply disappointed to see this!” he wrote to an NCPG staffer one night in April 2025, after a Senate colleague shared the draft of an op-ed by Keith Whyte, NCPG’s longtime executive director and one of America’s…
On surviving the next pandemic.
The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday expressed concern at the speed and scale of the Ebola outbreak in central Africa — declared a “continental” emergency — as the number of deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) jumped to 131.
The toll from the Ebola outbreak in the DRC has risen to an estimated 131 deaths from 513 suspected cases, health minister Samuel Roger…
On Saturday, the World Health Organization declared the current epidemic of Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda “a public health emergency of international concern,” but said it does not meet the criteria for a pandemic. The latest outbreak has killed over 100 people, and at least 330 are suspected to…
Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights,…
Next month marks the four-year anniversary of _Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization_ , the landmark decision where the Supreme Court overturned _Roe v. Wade_ and eliminated the constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Many Americans wondered at the time whether the court would stop there, or whether it would go further in future cases to eradicate the practice nationwide.
For now, the…
Make it while you can.
President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that Venezuela should be annexed by the United States. He reportedly told Fox News correspondent John Roberts—not to be confused with the chief justice—that he was “seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the 51st state.”
This is a far-fetched idea, to say the least. Venezuela has no interest in voluntarily becoming a U.S. state, as its…
Senator Lindsey Graham blew up Tuesday about Donald Trump’s disastrous negotiations with Iran—and made a move at undermining their mediator.
During a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee regarding the Pentagon’s outrageous $1.5 trillion dollar budget request, Graham became visibly frustrated when speaking about a CBS News report from the day before that Pakistan…
Plus, the advantages and disadvantages of digital voting.
Would it have been so hard to write a simple “Happy Mother’s Day” message?
Donald Trump unleashed a flood of AI-generated slop on Truth Social Sunday evening to cheer on his own flailing presidency. While Trump may have declined to publicly reference the fact that it was Mother’s Day, the president did share 10 posts from “Women for Trump.”
“I’m a Trumplican,” read one inscrutable…
President Donald Trump is obsessed these days with reshaping Washington, D.C., in his own image. He demolished the White House’s East Wing and plans to build a grandiose ballroom atop it. He wants to build a massive triumphal arch on the road between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial—ostensibly to honor the troops, but, according to Trump, to actually honor him. Giant banners…
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 4 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here_._
After we recorded, The New York Times posted a piece disclosing more about GOP angst over the war, reporting that Republicans are beset by “increasing nervousness.”
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic , produced and presented by the DSR…
Donald Trump has declared the war “terminated,” but he’s still rejecting Iran’s peace proposals while again threatening it with massive war crimes. And in an interview, Trump declared that he would never have approved an offer that was made to Iran by his negotiator, Steve Witkoff. This is a damning admission: He seemed to blurt out that he has no idea what his own representatives are…