Since Donald Trump became president, pundits have wondered what it would take for the Republican establishment to stand up to him. Now we know. …

Government shutdowns are a useful window into what really matters to politicians. It’s one thing to say you care about an issue. It’s another to care about it enough to tell hundreds of thousands of federal employees to stay home, and to risk the political blowback that arises when their absence starts wreaking havoc on ordinary Americans’ lives. …

On Wednesday in The Washington Post, Vice President Mike Pence contrasted his boss’s response to protests in Iran to President Obama’s response in 2009. Obama, he said, had “stayed silent” and “declined to stand with a proud people who sought to escape from under the heavy weight of a dictatorship.” But “under President Trump,” Pence crowed, “the United States is standing with them.” …

If you oppose Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy, take heart. Apparently, he does too. Fifteen minutes into his speech unveiling the strategy on Tuesday, Trump butchered it in a revealing way. In its fourth paragraph, the strategy declares that the Trump administration will pursue a “strategy of principled realism.” But Trump mangled the phrase, declaring instead that, “Our new strategy is based on a principle, realism.” …

Amidst the exhilaration of Roy Moore’s defeat, and the broader cultural revolution sparked by women’s willingness to expose the sexual misdeeds of powerful men, it’s worth remembering this: Ninety percent of Republican women in Alabama, according to exit polls, cast their ballots for a man credibly accused of pedophilia. That’s a mere two points less than Republican men. By contrast, Democratic men voted for Moore’s opponent, ...

For Donald Trump, Muslim barbarism is a political strategy. It inspires the fear and hatred that binds him to his base. Muslim barbarism is so politically useful, in fact, that, when necessary, Trump creates it. …

Now that Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and agreed to dish on his former boss, some Trump-watchers are suggesting that impeachment may be around the corner. “It’s time to start talking about impeachment,” announced a Saturday column on CNN.com. The Flynn deal, declared former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman in Friday’s New York Times, “portends the likelihood of impeachable charges being brought against the ...

When the President of the United States retweets crude anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, a neo-fascist convicted for harassing Muslims on the street, it’s useful to have a secretary of state with a different point of view. And Rex Tillerson, for all his faults, does. Tillerson has declared that, “there’s a great deal that’s misunderstood about the Muslim world” and that “we need to put a lot more effort into understanding ...

When asked by reporters on Wednesday about President Trump’s retweets of anti-Muslim videos, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “what the President is talking about is the need for national security, the need for military spending.” …

Early on Wednesday morning, Donald Trump retweeted three graphically anti-Muslim videos—one entitled “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!,” the second entitled “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!” and the third entitled “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”—posted by British First leader Jayda Fransen, a woman convicted last year by a British court of harassing a woman wearing a ...