ArcaMax

President Donald Trump likes to fire people, and he resents congressional constraints on that presidential prerogative. While Trump's opponents may view that attitude as one more manifestation of his autocratic instincts, his complaint is grounded in legitimate concerns about the separation of powers that presidents of both parties have raised...Read more

Donald Trump's much-ballyhooed Department of Government Efficiency does not actually exist. The program's official status is more significant than it might seem, because it reflects the yawning gap between the president's promises of fiscal restraint and the reality of what can be accomplished without new legislation.

Billionaire entrepreneur...Read more

"I'm gonna create borders," Donald Trump promised during his 2016 campaign. "No drugs are coming in. We're gonna build a wall. You know what I'm talking about. You have confidence in me. Believe me, I will solve the problem."

Trump did not, in fact, solve the problem: The annual number of drug-related deaths in the United States rose by 44% ...Read more

In practical terms, Donald Trump's attempt to nullify birthright citizenship by executive decree, which ran into immediate legal trouble last week, is probably the least significant element of his immigration crackdown. But it is telling as an indication of the president's willingness to disregard the law in pursuit of his agenda.

Under the ...Read more

Monday was a big day for presidential clemency, but that does not mean it was a good day. Both outgoing President Joe Biden and incoming President Donald Trump used that power in self-interested, shortsighted ways, sacrificing the public interest to benefit political allies and, in Biden's case, family members.

Biden granted preemptive ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump's sentence of "unconditional release" for violating a New York law that prohibits falsification of business records entails neither jail nor probation. But unless Trump successfully challenges his 34 felony convictions on appeal, he will suffer a lifelong penalty that should trouble civil libertarians across the ...Read more

Even moderate drinking could give you cancer, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned last week. But according to a congressionally commissioned report published last month, moderate drinking is associated with reduced overall mortality.

Although those findings are not as contradictory as they might seem, the dueling glosses reflect the ...Read more

Bryan Bowers and his business partner, Mike Licata, planned to build medical office space across from a new hospital in downtown Utica, New York. The Oneida County Industrial Development Agency nixed that plan by agreeing to take the property so a competing business next door could use it for a parking lot -- a land grab that a state appeals ...Read more

Last February, explaining why he thought President Joe Biden could not be successfully prosecuted for mishandling classified documents, Special Counsel Robert Hur suggested that jurors would be apt to view the president as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" and "diminished faculties." That amply supported ...Read more

On his first day in office, President-elect Donald Trump promises, he will pardon at least some of the 1,500 or so people who have been charged with crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. He notes that most of those defendants were not violent and that they faced a lot of pressure to plead guilty, as about 1,000 have ...Read more

"I'm a big believer in tariffs," President-elect Donald Trump said this week, not for the first time. "I think they're beautiful."

Trump claims the heavy tariffs he plans to impose during his second term are "going to make us rich," at no cost to American businesses or consumers. That is a dangerous fantasy.

Trump's position on tariffs ...Read more

"Hunter was singled out only because he is my son," Joe Biden said on Sunday, when he issued a pardon that saved Hunter Biden from serving time for his gun and tax crimes. That much was accurate, but not in the way the president meant.

Naked nepotism allowed Hunter Biden to avoid the consequences of a criminal justice system that punishes ...Read more

For 126 years, U.S. courts have recognized children born in this country as American citizens. President-elect Donald Trump plans to overturn that understanding by issuing an executive order on his first day in office.

That order, Trump claims, will "end automatic citizenship for children of illegal aliens." But the president cannot do that ...Read more