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WASHINGTON -- Sunday night's "SNL50: The Anniversary Special" celebrated the long-running NBC show as you knew it would -- with the soothing reassurance to its ostensibly liberal viewers that they own comedy and that, in their world, the right's only place in their orbit is as the butt of their self-satisfied jokes.

Even though President ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- "My uncle started USAID in 1961, for humanitarian purposes, to put our country on the side of the poor," Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pronounced Thursday at the White House as he was sworn in as Health secretary.

"It has been captured by the military industrial complex. It has become a sinister propagator of totalitarianism" across the...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Years ago, when I visited Pelican Bay State Prison on the northern coast of California, prison staff explained the rules. They gave me a stab vest and a handy piece of information: If I were taken hostage, prison officials would not negotiate for my release. I should know that before I entered the institution, they said.

Guess ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Communications Commission pulled a "60 Minutes" on "60 Minutes."

In a complaint filed against CBS, the FCC charged that "60 Minutes" and "Face the Nation" last year engaged in "news distortion" that involves "significant and substantial news alteration made in the middle of a heated presidential campaign." The FCC ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- "We will build a massive missile defense shield to protect us," Donald Trump told a crowd at an Arizona campaign rally in October. "And it's going to be made in the USA, a lot of it right here."

It was a timely proposal given that in 2023, Americans spent more than a week watching a Chinese spy balloon travel from Asia to Alaska...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Caroline Kennedy, the surviving child of the late President John F. Kennedy, is leading the charge against her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's pick to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services.

In a letter released Tuesday, she wrote that her cousin Bobby's "views on vaccines are dangerous and ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The first daily press briefing of President Donald Trump 2.0 was not what many predicted last year. Before Trump re-took the White House, there had been speculation that Trump World would eject the daily press briefings from the James S. Brady briefing room with its 49 seats and standing room in the aisles.

That didn't happen. ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- What did President Donald Trump learn during his four-year hiatus from the White House? For one thing, he seems to have learned how to listen. But also, to judge by the first week of his second term, Trump 2.0 seems more focused, mission-driven and prepared to get things done at warp speed.

Here's a short list of other lessons ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Democrats are afraid, very afraid. This week, 12 Senate Democrats and 46 House Democrats joined Republicans in voting for the Laken Riley Act, which requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain unauthorized immigrants who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting.

Expect President Donald Trump to ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump got straight to the point when he delivered his Inaugural Address Monday inside the Capitol. There are things he wants to do in the next four years.

But of course on this cold Monday, Trump could not fail to mention his own personal triumph --winning in 2024 after losing reelection in 2020, two ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- I remember when the networks called the 2020 election for President Joe Biden. It was a Saturday; that evening, as he addressed his gleeful supporters in Wilmington, Delaware, the new president-elect declared victory in "the battle to restore decency."

"Decency," of course, was code for "Not Trump."

Before Biden's one term ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Actress Sara Foster captured the rage of many Angelenos who have watched their city burn from the Palisades to Altadena in one social media post: "We pay the highest taxes in California. Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Embrace the chaos -- that's my formula for dealing with Trump 2.0, especially on the world stage.

If you thought that the second time around President-elect Donald Trump was going to be more congenial toward our allies in the international community, Tuesday you got your wake-up call.

During a Mar-a-Lago press conference, Trump...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Sunday night, President Joe Biden welcomed new Democratic members of Congress at the White House. By the time his remarks were over -- he talked for just under a half-hour -- there was little doubt that with two weeks to go until Jan. 20, the U.S. president is living in the long-ago past, not the present.

Remember how Team Biden...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Why did President-elect Donald Trump pick then Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be the next attorney general back in November?

Gaetz is no legal heavyweight. He's never run an organization with thousands of workers, like the Department of Justice. And he's not exactly big on respecting the law.

Nonetheless, Trump went with Gaetz ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- "Decency. Decency. Decency," President Joe Biden responded when a reporter asked him about late President Jimmy Carter's legacy Sunday hours after the former president passed away.

It was a self-serving summation on Biden's part, as the barely-there chief executive seized the moment to trash President-elect Donald Trump.

"Can ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden announced Monday that he was commuting the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal death-row inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Yes, really.

Thirty-seven murderers, former Clinton pollster Mark Penn posted on X, "are spared the death sentence in yet another desperate act of outgoing ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The Wall Street Journal ran a story Thursday under the banner "How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge." Tuesday's New York Times story "A Weary Biden Heads For the Exit" told a similar tale, as departing staffers have starting spilling the beans.

If this were a game of "Tell me something I didn't know,"...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President-elect Donald Trump said so many things on the campaign trail that critics warned would hurt him in November. Yet he won the popular vote.

Now, a little more than a month before Trump takes the oath of office, President Joe Biden is limiting his public appearances to such an extent that it feels like Trump already is ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- When President Joe Biden issued an unconditional pardon for his son Hunter Biden earlier this month, he took another step in his long walk to placing his presidency on the bottom 10% list.

The unusual blanket pardon covered any and all crimes the president's son, who had been found guilty on federal gun charges and had pleaded ...Read more