For the most part, presidential inaugurations are moments of communal pageantry. There is music and poetry. There are oaths to recite and vows to make. Everyone smiles for the cameras, and everyone dresses up — for the inauguration on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, and later for a series of balls that have come […]
In mid-2023, TikTok had just eluded an effort in Congress to ban the video app, the latest Houdini-like escape for the young tech company. For several years, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, lawmakers and officials had trained their sights on the app, saying its Chinese ownership posed a national security risk. Inside TikTok, a […]
He may be President-elect Donald J. Trump’s most “unconventional” cabinet nominee (in the words of Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee), but when Pete Hegseth took his seat in room G50 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building for his confirmation hearing as Secretary of Defense, he looked […]
Three days after the Jan. 6 anniversary, with its indelible images of costumed rioters running amok in the Capitol, former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral service in the National Cathedral presented a historical picture of a different kind, one that spoke not of upended norms, but of preservation and strength. It was a picture, unofficial but […]
At the end of a tenure marked by war and division, the outgoing secretary of state defends his legacy on Gaza and Ukraine and says he’s made America stronger.
An Iraqi who pleaded guilty to commanding insurgents who committed war crimes in Afghanistan filed suit in federal court on Friday, seeking to stop his transfer from the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to a prison in Iraq. The petition, filed by his lawyers, made public negotiations that had been underway for some […]
