A recent study from the Los Angeles Times and the American Enterprise Institute shows that even the poor have become leerier about Washington's efforts to lift them from hardship. Read more
The State Department admitted Thursday that a controversial $400 million payment the United States made to Iran in January was used as "leverage" in the release of American hostages. Read more
George Soros’s philanthropy network sought to obscure its close coordination with a liberal Jewish advocacy group connected to the Obama administration and to campaigns designed to increase pressure on Israel and bolster the U.S.-Iranian relationship, newly leaked documents show. Read more
Perhaps not since Louis Réard introduced the first bikini to Paris in 1946 has beachwear been such a heated topic in France. The controversy began last week, when a women's group from Marseilles advertised a "burkini day" at a local waterpark. The event, which would have banned men over the age of 10 as well as two-piece bathing suits, drew a barrage of criticism before quickly being cancelled. Read more
The case of a clash between Uber, the city of Seattle, and labor unions has put a new spin on an old saying: If you can't beat ‘em, make them join you. Read more
The Hillary Clinton campaign has taken notice of Donald Trump's newest hire, blasting the Republican for tapping former Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon as the campaign's CEO. Read more
With less than three months to go until Election Day, Donald Trump's campaign has announced that it will finally start running television ads. However, the ad buys so far are modest and limited to a few swing states. Read more
The chief of Amtrak's police division, Polly Hanson, is under investigation for violating conflict of interest rules and committing fraud in hiring her boyfriend's firm for a government-funded counterterrorism contract. For a million-dollar contract on the railroad's RAILSAFE program, she chose ABS Consulting, where her live-in boyfriend Kerry Thomas works as homeland security director—all without disclosing their close relationship. Hanson and Thomas, while unmarried, are not just romantically linked but financially intertwined as well, sharing a mortgage on a co-owned condo. Read more
I received an email this morning from Michael Lieber, the former GOP city captain for Bay Village, Ohio, who resigned that post last month to protest Donald Trump's nomination as the presidential candidate for the Republican party. Because Lieber says concisely and eloquently what so many others have communicated to me as well, I asked him for permission to post his email, which he granted. Read more
The best in books and arts from around the web, including: Why teachers don’t make more money, curiosity and science, the old problem of damaging museum art, and more. Read more
Steven Rattner, a New York Times columnist who was also the Obama administration's "auto czar," has a piece out Thursday morning defending the auto bailout. This being the New York Times, the piece can't just make an argument about the bailout: It also has to serve as a rebuke of Donald Trump. And so, the headline is "What Trump Doesn't Know About Detroit." Read more
I admire Tom Edsall a ton. Like Robert Putnam and Phil Longman, he's smart and honest and interesting and you don't have to be a fellow-traveler to profit from reading him. Read more
Mike Pence said Wednesday that Twitter doesn’t "matter a hill of beans" in shaping voters' preferences for the presidential candidates, even as the man for whom he's campaigning has used the social media utility to dictate news cycles—often to his detriment—since entering the race last year. Read more
As George Costanza once said, it's not a lie if you believe it. He might have said the same of political spin. It's not clear whether Michael Cohen, an executive vice president with the Trump Organization and a surrogate for the Donald Trump campaign, believes his latest spin on the increasingly poor outlook for the Republican nominee. Read more
The U.S. delayed delivering a controversial $400 million payment to Iran until American hostages held there were “wheels up," The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The revelation adds to mounting criticism that the Obama administration's January payment was for ransom. Read more
Over the last three years of the Syrian Civil War, Hezbollah has increasingly operated as a regular army rather than in its traditional, decades-long role as a guerrilla force. The Shiite group has operated Syrian tanks and artillery, jeeps with recoilless rifles, and is even rumored to have acquired its own 75-tank armored brigade. As a result, some pundits have begun suggesting that Hezbollah has transformed into “an army in every respect," as Haaretz columnist Amos Harel has written. Others, like Foreign Policy's Nour Samaha, have suggested that "Israel may have reason to be concerned," that Hezbollah will "transfer the skills learned in Syria to any future confrontation with Israel," and fight the IDF as a conventional army. Read more
