Jonah Goldberg stories, Page 6

President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions in federal student loan debt is like a pinata: You can attack it from any angle and find some reward. In short, people making less than $125,000 will get $10,000 of their debt forgiven, no strings attached. Recipients of needs-based Pell Grants will...

Well, I was wrong again. For much of the summer, I’d been writing that Donald Trump’s hold on the GOP was shrinking. I thought I was right at the time. But the times changed. Right now, his hold appears to be growing. That’s at least in part because it is...

Donald Trump has a lot of charisma. Let me finish. I do not mean charisma in the colloquial sense of being charming, though he has charmed millions. I’m referring to a style of leadership famously described by the German sociologist Max Weber, who described three forms of authority or leadership:...

On Monday, evening news broke that the FBI searched the Florida home of Donald Trump, the former president. Trump himself informed the world, calling it a “raid” and an “assault.” While both words are colloquially defensible, it wasn’t some Eliot Ness style breach with a battering ram or sledgehammer. The...

In an era of ugly legislative gridlock, it’s easy to forget that progress isn’t necessarily pretty. Last week, Washington got blindsided by the unveiling of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. For Democrats, it was a moment of spontaneous joy, while Republicans reacted with instantaneous outrage. In brief, here’s what...

“It’s not like in the movies,” is good advice for almost any field or endeavor, from war to Wall Street. But perhaps nowhere is it more true than in politics. At the end of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Claude Raines admits he was the villain all along. Lonesome Rhodes,...

The wall-to-wall coverage of progressive carping about Joe Biden has been interrupted by reruns of progressive carping about West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Last week, in the wake of horrible inflation numbers, Manchin said, in effect, “I’m out” on President Biden’s climate, energy and tax package. Because the Senate is...

President Biden is in deep trouble. A New York Times-Siena College poll released Monday is just the latest survey showing profound discontent with the president and the direction of the country. His job-approval rating is a mere 33%. More than 6 in 10 Democrats want someone else in their party...

Will the Jan. 6 committee issue a “criminal referral” to the Justice Department for Donald Trump? Committee members can’t give an interview without being asked that question. Pundits can’t stop talking about it, and cable TV anchors can’t stop asking legal experts for their predictions. It’s nothing less than a...

In overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court delivered the right’s biggest single victory ever, and it may spell the end of the conservative movement as we’ve known it. It was Ronald Reagan who popularized the notion that the conservative movement rested on a fusionist “three-legged stool.” In theory, the...

For congressional Republicans, the election can’t come soon enough. In the modern era, it’s hard to think of a time when the party out of power had more things going its way. Harry Enten, CNN’s political data analyst, recently noted that, going by the generic ballot, things haven’t looked this...

We’re only two installments into the limited-run production of the Jan. 6 hearings, and so far, I think they’ve been great. But I also think they’ll leave almost everyone, except for me, unsatisfied. For many Democrats and Never Trumpers, the hope is — or was — that this would lead...

On Thursday, the Jan. 6 committee will make its televised primetime debut, some 519 days after the event that gave the committee its name and purpose. For its ardent supporters, the committee’s mission is nothing less than an effort to save democracy. For its harshest critics, it’s both a waste...

In 2020, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana was the top recipient of money from members of the “gun rights” industry. According to Open Secrets, his campaign received a total of $142,653 for the 2019-20 cycle. That put the so-called gun lobby at 33 on the list, far behind other industries...

During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden was outspoken in his desire to “revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country.” On May 15, Politico reported that, at the urging of many advisers, Biden had mostly given up on working with the GOP, which he purportedly now “views as an existential...

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said something interesting while campaigning for Dave McCormick, still in the running for the GOP nomination to replace departing Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. “Just once, I’d love to see a Republican candidate stand up in a primary and say: ‘I am a moderate, establishment...

The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a passionate advocate for abortion rights, but she was also one of Roe v. Wade’s most effective critics. “My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” she said, explaining that abortion...

“What is the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?” the president of the United States asked 10 years ago at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “A pit bull is delicious.” Of course, to echo E.B. White: Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it...

“Freedom is awaking from its coma today because of a huge, huge, huge Supreme Court decision — huge,” Rush Limbaugh declared in 2010. “I cannot tell you how big this is.” What, pray tell, had roused freedom from its slumber? The Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision,...

One of the silver linings of the very large dark cloud of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the clarity it provides. This is, broadly speaking a contest between good guys and bad guys. A lot of people who fancy themselves foreign policy realists roll their eyes at talk about...

Perhaps the most interesting thing about last weekend’s French election isn’t who won, but who lost — and what it might mean for America. French President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen of the National Rally party won enough of the vote — 27.8% and 23.2% respectively — to head...

Conan O’Brien recently tweeted: “Well, I’ve officially lived a long life because people are excited Germany is rearming.” I had a similar feeling recently listening to the 538 politics podcast that discussed “wedge issues.” The conversation between the host, Galen Druke, and two prominent political scientists was illuminating, but the...

An enormous amount of effort and planning went into crafting a single coherent message, and in one instant it was all for naught. I’m not talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during Sunday night’s Oscars, but President Biden’s similarly unscripted call for regime change in Russia. In Warsaw on...

You know who benefits the most from liberal media bias? Conservatives. I spent much of the last 25 years writing about liberal media bias. Heck, I grew up on the stuff. My father, a longtime editor, used to joke that he “worked behind enemy lines.” He’d often tutor me about...

It’s hard to pick up a foreign policy journal or even turn on the TV without encountering someone predicting, recommending or lamenting a “new Cold War” with Russia, China or both. This is entirely understandable and even justifiable, if you mean a new period of strategic competition, pressure and geopolitical...