RealClearPolitics Articles

“Lincoln in the Bardo” is such a compelling ghost story – one I struggled with at first, and then fell hard for – that when I saw that the novel by George Saunders was being made into an opera by the composer Missy Mizzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, I knew I had to see it and did at the Met premiere on Monday night. RCP This is not a review, but if it were, it would be a rave, because the singing, the living-and-breathing set, and the adaptation of this wildly imaginative work were no magic trick but that other thing: a near-miracle. And it’s some of the...

It is so hard to watch what is happening in France. On Saturday night, masked rioters looted shops in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and Bordeaux and set cars ablaze along the Canal Saint-Martin, one of the loveliest corners of Paris. In Limoges, the spire of a 143-year-old town hall collapsed in flames, and for many in France, it brought back memories of the night Notre Dame burned. More than 2,000 people were arrested over the weekend, and now at least two people are dead. France helped America win its independence. It is our oldest ally, and it is in trouble. But so too is our country, because...

The central question at this point in the 2026 midterm congressional election is not whether the voters will swing against the Republicans, but by how much. Large swings can result in wave elections. The recent midterms considered to be waves (1994, 2006, 2010) led to gains by the out party of at least 30 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate. In 2018, the Republicans during Trump’s first term lost 40 House seats but gained two Senate seats. It is rightly not remembered as a full wave, so let’s call it a semi-wave. Even though President Trump’s favorability is now lower...

Mahmoud Khalil wants to take the case against his deportation all the way to the Supreme Court -- and if the justices accept it, they will be deciding one of the oldest and most controversial questions in American politics, a dispute more than 200 years old. Khalil is not an American: He's a Syrian-born Palestinian, but he's here legally. He's opposed to the policies of the democratically elected government of our country, and he's used the freedoms and privileges afforded to him on American soil to agitate for changing those policies in ways that would benefit Hamas and harm Israel. The...

Less than two weeks before Election Day, Michigan’s two Senate candidates met for the last time in a Southfield television studio just outside Detroit. It’s a race that could decide which party controls the U.S. Senate, and the contest between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers has become one of the most personal of the year. On Wednesday night it came down to two questions: whether El-Sayed, a Michigan-born Muslim, can be trusted, and whether Rogers can keep Donald Trump’s voters while stepping carefully out of the president’s shadow. For El-Sayed, the...

The civil trial of the seven Cornell University fraternity men is already being turned into a media spectacle with almost no chance of fairness to the accused unless the court shuts down the theatrics pronto. This is a case basically about the actions of eight college kids, but it has an all-star cast of legal titans, with Thomas Giuffra lawyering for the female accuser. Giuffra has raked in millions of dollars representing women accusing Harvey Weinstein and Sean "Diddy" Combs of sexual assault. Mark Geragos, who has represented Combs, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and Hunter Biden, is...

The New York Post cover on Oct. 19 summed it up in two words: "FRANCE BURNS." Over the weekend, there was massive unrest in France from leftist extremists. So there were several interesting journalism patterns. Labeling. Typically, reporters didn't want to label protesters as "far left," let alone "left." Note to reporters: When Greta Thunberg shows up in solidarity, it's a leftist protest. But some reporters stayed vague, like ABC's Marcus Moore: "A protest that started with high school students now spiraling to more general concerns about the cost of living, and France's future." Anyone...

Imagine you’re walking through a quiet park with your best friend. You lower your voices and speak privately about something very personal and sensitive. You need no government permission to have this conversation. You do not expect an intelligence agency to listen in and decide whether your conversation sounds suspicious. You’re just two friends, talking. Why shouldn’t we expect the same freedom to speak freely and privately when we communicate online? Wednesday, Oct. 21, is Global Encryption Day, an occasion to defend the technology that makes digital conversations as...

Every few months, a young 19-year-old woman from South Carolina boards a plane to London. She isn't going sightseeing. She's going to get her next dose of a cancer treatment that was invented in the United States, developed by an American company, and credited by her doctors with clearing a brain tumor other surgeons had refused to touch. She was diagnosed with glioblastoma at 16. It is the most common and most lethal brain cancer, the disease that killed John McCain and Beau Biden. Her tumor came back so aggressively after her first surgery that doctors stopped operating. This was a death...

Trump in Kalispell? Count me in. When the announcement was made that the president would be visiting my hometown on Oct. 14 in support of Aaron Flint’s campaign to replace Ryan Zinke as the congressman from Montana District 1, there was no doubt I would be there. After all, I had been one of Donald Trump’s earliest supporters, writing a column lauding his uncanny political skills in the Daily Inter Lake in August 2015, just six weeks after he launched his presidential bid and while he was still considered a joke by the mainstream media. Over the next three years, my unabashed...

Donald Trump and Democrats agree on one thing: The midterm elections are about Donald Trump. The president seems to think this will work for Republicans – he keeps urging voters to pretend he is on the ballot. But this may be a serious miscalculation that will damage the GOP, Trump’s legacy, and ultimately our country. The polls suggest the midterms will be a Democratic rout. Republicans respond by pointing to flawed polls during this year’s primaries and observing that Trump always outperforms polls. They note that even modest errors could mean Republicans will fend off a...

Three days after hiring Katie Zacharia as White House press secretary, President Trump lashed out at the “fake news” media for its critical coverage of the beleaguered California mother of four – even while signaling that her brief stint in the administration was already coming to an end. In remarks to the press Friday, the president made two quick points: First, he said Zacharia had been “brutalized” by the media and was treated “very, very unfairly.” Then he indicated that although she would be leaving the White House, he didn’t blame her for...

Deputy Director Matt Quinn announced his resignation from the Secret Service in an internal agency email Friday amid questions about his conflicts of interest over the agency’s counter-drone technology. Quinn served 23 years as a Secret Service agent before retiring in 2021. He then went to work at drone-manufacturer Fortem Technologies, which sells the DroneHunter product, as a senior vice president for three years before returning to the agency last year to serve as deputy director. His last day will be Nov. 7. As RealClearPolitics first reported, Quinn was criticized by several...

Ever since 2017, Washington has used a new unit of time: a Scaramucci. It refers to the 11-day period that Anthony Scaramucci served as a communications director in the first Trump administration. This week, the president’s newest press secretary, Katie Zacharia, lasted just half a Scaramucci. From one short-lived administration official to another, he offered a message. “Speaking as the world’s leading expert on short White House tenures: turn off the news and go enjoy your family,” Scaramucci posted to X, tagging Zacharia’s account. “In time you’ll...

For all of our technological marvels, a No. 2 pencil and sheets of paper filled with oval boxes remain a key determinant of success. Sure, plenty of high achievers didn’t ace the SAT, ACT, MCAT, LSAT, and GMAT. But the vast majority of wealthy and influential Americans notched high scores in the alphabet soup of standardized tests, which are key gateways to the American dream. And yet, even as we invest these measures with tremendous power, we feel uneasy about them. Sifting and sorting, differentiating people by their abilities, may be crucial to a well-run society, but it also...

With less than three weeks until the midterm elections, affordability continues to rank as the most important issue for Americans. According to a new RealClearEnergy poll, 37% of likely voters say a candidate’s stance on affordability is most likely to influence their vote for Congress – more than double the 15% who cited immigration as a factor. It was the top issue for Democrats (43%), Republicans (32%), and independents (36%) alike. The poll, taken nationally Oct. 1-3 with 1,000 likely voters, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. A few demographic...

Since the introduction of party primaries at the beginning of the 20th century, they have formed the foundation of our election system. If a candidate can’t make it through a primary electorate, there is only the slightest of chances that she will end up holding elected office. The latest RCINI poll, in conjunction with Emerson Polling and sponsored by Unite America, explores this primary electorate. It finds that despite the critical importance of this electorate, only one in four registered voters says that they cast a ballot in this year’s primaries. Importantly, that group is...

Every two years, the primary season is treated like a national referendum. Turnout maps are parsed, winners and losers declared, and sweeping conclusions drawn about “where the country is headed.” But this ritual is built on a myth. The people who show up to vote in primaries are a small, unrepresentative fraction of America, and the elaborate theater we build around their choices obscures a much larger and more troubling story. For most of the country, the primary isn’t a preview of the real election. It is the election, and most were not invited to participate. Despite the...

On NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday, host Kristen Welker asked Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed if he would "set the record straight" on his alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. "No," El-Sayed quickly replied, before clarifying that neither he nor his family have any ties to the international Sunni Islamist network. El-Sayed is lying. The Democratic Senate hopeful is running as the most thinly veiled Trojan horse in American political history -- on behalf of the Brotherhood and the Islamism it embodies. The Washington Free Beacon helped expose that El-Sayed's...