Politics Features

This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence. Subscribe to its newsletters. Toward the end of 2024, federal law enforcement officials were celebrating a banner year in their fight against homemade, untraceable “ghost guns.” In cities across the country, the number of ghost …

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term on Monday before the world’s richest people. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg were among those seated closest to Trump as he demonized the most vulnerable members of our society, rewrote the history of his criminal prosecutions, and pledged …

WASHINGTON — Everybody in a position of power failed to protect you from this. Many of those same people and leaders are now cashing in, paying millions in protection money, or laughing about what has happened. Others are pretending there was nothing they could do to stop it — and …

Joe Biden concludes his single term as, paradoxically, one of the best and worst presidents to occupy the Oval Office. Biden’s remarkable service to the country includes defeating Donald Trump in 2020 — which in that moment had the air of saving American democracy. A seasoned dealmaker from his career …

It is less than a week until Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C., and Rolla Alaydi can barely stop crying. For more than a year, Alaydi, a Palestinian American teacher living in California, has been working nonstop with an attorney in a heartrending, uphill battle to evacuate nearly …

The Department of Defense is the largest employer in the United States, sending out paychecks to 2.1 million service members and more than 770,000 civilians. Its annual budget — $900 billion dollars —is larger than the GDP of Switzerland. With an estimated 750 bases in at least 80 countries, it …

In the last few days of Joe Biden’s presidency, Steven Donziger hopes Biden will pardon him — as do dozens of progressive lawmakers in Congress, as well as human rights and environmental activists across the world. Donziger’s story is unique. “I’m the only person in the country to be criminally …

Donald Trump’s pick to head the CIA, John Ratcliffe, took a lucrative spin through Washington’s revolving door after his time in the first Trump administration, according to a disclosure with the Senate. In recent years, Ratcliffe has worked as a consultant and advisor for several defense contractors. Two of the …

The Oath Keepers are back. And leaked documents suggest the group is trying to rebuild its brand by targeting youth, and in particular the Boy Scouts. The infamous paramilitary organization has been in disarray since the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, was arrested, charged, and convicted of seditious conspiracy for his …

President Jimmy Carter entered hospice care when he was 98 years old. Nine months later, his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, whom he described as “my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” died. Carter said he wanted to live long enough to cast his vote for Vice President …