ArcaMax

Democrats are buzzing over the surprise victory of Taylor Rehmet in a Texas state senate race. Rehmet won by 14 points in a Fort Worth-area district Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.

That outcome inspired a piece by Republican strategist Karl Rove titled "Midterms Are Dems' to Lose -- and They May." Rove doesn't gloss over ...Read more

For once, something President Donald Trump and I can agree on. The arrest was "the best thing that could have happened" to Don Lemon, the president told reporters, after calling the former CNN anchor "washed up" and a "failed host." In fact, Mr. Lemon hosts a daily two-hour YouTube news program with 1.16 million subscribers. Who knew? I ...Read more

You can't just shut down a city's beating heart for the arts for two years, especially in times of turmoil. People should hear a Brahms symphony, played live in a concert hall, to feel alive again.

Make that a capital city's shimmering marble center by the riverside, with a terrace. It packs a punch of red-carpet glamour with vibrant shows ...Read more

While the production of my Lowdown commentaries is high-tech, I confess that I'm antiquated.

I still write each piece in longhand, applying my ballpoint to paper. This has caused bewildered glances from some who see me scribbling away in local coffee shops and bars. Recently, one fellow sidled up and whispered: "Watch out! If they see you ...Read more

The term "blitzkrieg," German for "lightning war," is used to signify the swift deployment of concentrated military force to overwhelm a line of defense. It's most often used to describe the Nazis' use of tanks to rout first Poland in September 1939 and then the rest of Western Europe in a few short months thereafter. Time Magazine described ...Read more

The U.S. makes artificial intelligence chips so special, so advanced, that the Biden administration limited their export for national security reasons. They didn't want them to get into the hands of China or Russia.

But days before Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term, go-betweens for an Abu Dhabi royal signed a secret deal that ...Read more

For death penalty opponents, the dramatic spike in executions last year was truly horrifying. After several years of no more than 25 executions, there were 47 in 2025, nearly double the years prior. This included the executions of people with intellectual disability, powerful claims of innocence and whose trials were marked by profound ...Read more

It was the Fox News poll of voters that a reporter asked the president about, the one that showed 59% saying that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had gone too far. Hard to dismiss as fake news, but the president wasn't biting. He ignored the question, just sat resolutely at his resolute desk and stared ahead.

But he's not ignoring ...Read more

Many people assume that Germany instantly transitioned from representative democracy to totalitarianism following the ascension of Adolf Hitler to chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933. Actually, the Weimar Republic had already been reeling from the global Great Depression, unpopular austerity measures and overreliance on emergency decrees that restricted...Read more

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement terrorizes our nation, I keep seeing social media posts that compare ICE to Nazi Germany's Secret State Police, the Gestapo. Some in Trump's ranks like to lean into Nazi symbolism and cosplay in reminiscent trench coats, but don't let that misguide you.

As horrific as the Holocaust was, Nazi Germany is ...Read more

"I've seen plenty of guys die with a gun in their hand."

A guy older than I was said that to me in a bar maybe 25 years ago. He was almost, but not quite, drunk, and we were talking about the number of friends I had who kept a gun to repel burglars, or to defeat the hordes of Black Americans who would one day attack their suburb or, if ...Read more

Measles is a "cost of doing business," says a highly placed official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I'd like to know what business that is.

To be fair, let me finish the CDC principal deputy director's quote. Ralph Abraham said that measles is a cost of doing business "with our borders being somewhat porous for global and...Read more

Getting rid of Gregory Bovino, who had been the face (intentionally so) of President Donald Trump's war on immigrants, is a first step, but it is hardly enough. "You know, Bovino is very good, but he's a pretty out-there kind of a guy," Trump said in a Fox News interview Tuesday. "And in some cases, that's good. Maybe it wasn't good here."

In...Read more

President Donald Trump and his federal forces chose the wrong city and state for the escalating war on civilians out on the streets and in their homes, resulting in two deaths so far.

Minneapolis residents are defending city walls as best they can against masked federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who shot and killed two 37-...Read more

The U.S. military has long been an easy mark -- for our own avaricious corporate contractors, that is.

During the Civil War, for example, J.P. Morgan sold rifles to the Union army, which cost him only $3.50 each, but he charged the military $22 each. Worse, his rifles were defective, blowing off the thumbs of soldiers who fired them. Still, a...Read more

It wasn't enough last week for Americans to stomach the global humiliation of watching an untethered president babbling about "taking" territory from a NATO ally, or listening to his hourly cascade of lies about everything, from the sacrifices the allies he dissed had made on our behalf or the latest execution of an American citizen by U.S. ...Read more

Of course, Bill Clinton should cooperate with any investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking of underage girls. The suggestion that Democrats would shield a former president from questions that might tarnish his legacy speaks ill of Democrats. This concerns a criminal enterprise, not bad-boy behavior.

Democrats siding with the pursuit ...Read more