Trump’s First Defense Secretary Was a “Mad Dog.” Will His Second Be a Lapdog?
Deputy defense secretary Patrick Shanahan prays before the start of a Cabinet meeting in August at the White House.Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Donald Trump’s bizarre, rambling performance during a Cabinet meeting last week received attention for all the obvious reasons, from his historically inaccurate interlude about…
The Top US Diplomat in the Fight Against ISIS Just Resigned Over Trump Pulling Out of Syria
Brett McGurk briefing reporters at the State Department in 2017Susan Walsh/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. The lead US envoy in the fight against ISIS resigned abruptly on Friday due to his disagreement with Trump’s decision to withdraw 2,000 troops from Syria. Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the State…
Trump Said ISIS Has Been Defeated in Syria. That’s News to His National Security Team.
Leon Neal/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Donald Trump’s baffling decision to withdraw US forces from Syria provided critics and allies with another reason to doubt promises made by the president’s national security team—as Trump’s claim that ISIS has been “defeated” was quickly contradicted by his own aides. In September,…
Vaccine Studies Still Exclude Pregnant Women. That’s a Big Mistake.
Pregnant women stand in line to receive birth kits at a camp for Internally Displaced People in Kibati, Democratic Republic of Congo.Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. On August 1, the governor of North Kivu, a province in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo, sent out a frenzied…
Maria Butina Claimed to Have a “Signed Cooperation Agreement” With the National Rifle Association
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Confessed Russian agent Maria Butina claimed more than five years ago that her gun rights group had entered into a “signed cooperation agreement” with the National Rifle Association, according to a contemporaneous account of a talk Butina gave to an Israeli organization. Butina, who pleaded…
Disgraced Trump Fundraiser Tried to Use GOP Contacts to Score “Billions” in Africa
Mother Jones illustration; Billy Bennight/UPPA/ZUMA, Getty Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. In late 2016, as Donald Trump was readying to move into the White House, Elliott Broidy, then one of the Republican Party’s top fundraisers, was working on a deal to gain control of what a business partner called “billions…