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A lot can change in a year. We have a new president, a new congressional majority, a new season of The White Lotus.  But what about crime in Washington, DC, the subject of my last piece for this magazine back in April 2024? Is our nation’s capital still racked with carjackings and homicides – or have we begun inching our way back to some form of public order? In 2023, Washington saw 274 reported homicides, making it the district’s deadliest year in two decades. There were also 959 carjackings and 3,470 robberies. Overall, violent crime was up 39 percent. We did a lot better in 2024. There were just 187 murders, a 32 percent reduction, while robberies dropped 39 percent.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s trip to NATO headquarters in Brussels couldn’t have been easy for either Rubio or the Europeans.  The normally copacetic relationship between the United States and Europe isn’t in shambles as the more overly sensitive lawmakers and pundits would have you believe. But it’s not exactly rosy either. European policy elites for the most part like to downplay their differences with Trump’s Washington and emphasize the positive, but it’s hard to be a European politician these days and not be terrified of the future.

It's been a minute since Democrats have heard any good news coming out of Florida, a one-time swing state where Republicans now hold a 1.2 million voter advantage in party registration. And so, the fact that Democrats were looking forward to watching special election results in the Sunshine State in two heavily conservative districts Tuesday night is surprising – and reflects some important realities about national and local politics. Perhaps the most important dynamic is the national scoreboard. Republicans went into the night holding a 218-213 advantage with four seats vacant, and came out of it up 220-213, despite two Florida wins that were surprisingly lackluster.

If you have ever been desperate and adrift, you understand the Democratic Party’s frustration. One day, James Carville tells his party to do nothing and let President Trump destroy himself. Another, the Montgomery Burns of American politics, Senator Chuck Schumer, advises a strategy of sustained resistance, rallying his troops to “make Donald Trump the quickest lame duck in history.” The old Senate Minority Leader feeds his angry, cannibalistic followers in hope they won’t eat him. Some Democrats protest their party has been too woke. Others, not woke enough. Pete Buttigieg, a man not often confused with a lumberjack, swaps “darn” and “shucks” for saltier words to demonstrate his party’s determination.

Donald Trump this weekend floated the idea of running for a third term. Unless he’s doing it in 1940 when Franklin D. Roosevelt did, it’s unconstitutional. I don’t mean unconstitutional for Judge Boasberg or Judge Chutkin or some zealot in robes in San Francisco or Seattle. I mean unconstitutional in capital letters for any judge, including a 9-0 vote on the Supreme Court. The legal background here is straightforward. When FDR ran for a third term in 1940 and for a fourth in 1944, there was no legal or constitutional prohibition against doing so. There was simply a well-established norm, begun when George Washington returned to Mount Vernon after two terms. That norm was respected by every subsequent president. Until FDR.

Maybe the surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump yanked Elise Stefanik’s nomination to become ambassador to the United Nations. It’s that he hasn’t pulled America out of the organization. But perhaps that outcome is in the offing as Trump ponders whether he should select anyone to succeed her abortive nomination. Trump decided to leave Stefanik in Congress because of the slender Republican majority in the House – 218-213, plus four vacancies. “I have asked Elise, as one of my biggest Allies, to remain in Congress to help me deliver Historic Tax Cuts, GREAT Jobs, Record Economic Growth, a Secure Border, Energy Dominance, Peace Through Strength, and much more, so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Most people use groupchats to share memes, organize brunch or gossip. The Trump administration plans air strikes. After Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently included in the "Houthi PC small group" Signal chat by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, administration officials were eager to stress that no classified information was included in the unofficial chat. As a result, Goldberg published screenshots of the full conversation this morning. The messages offer a glimpse into not just the views of various cabinet members on foreign affairs; they reveal the texting styles of some of the most consequential government officials in the world. Some are relatable. "Having read thru the full Houthi PC small group logs, I've come to the sad realization that I'm the J.D.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz spoke to the press this afternoon for the first time since the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg described how Waltz had inadvertently added him to a Signal groupchat in which air strikes on Yemen were planned. Waltz claimed that he'd “never met, don’t know, never communicated with” Goldberg. The only problem: Goldberg says in his report that the pair has met before. So who's lying? The Atlantic reported Monday how Goldberg was granted access to “precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing” from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, two hours before the US attack on Yemen targets on March 15. “There are a lot of lessons,” Waltz told the press while meeting with President Donald Trump and US ambassadors.

Ex-Media Matters influencer Kat Abughazaleh announced a run for the US Congress today, telling Democrats, “It’s time to drop the excuses and grow a fucking spine.” Abughazaleh is fed up with the Democrats “cowering to Trump,” and says the party should be “standing up to authoritarians, not shrinking away when the fight gets tough.” So she decided to run herself. I'm Kat Abughazaleh and I'm running for Congress. pic.twitter.com/tEtaNcc5xL — Kat Abughazaleh (@abughazalehkat) March 24, 2025 The young graduate of George Washington University is bidding for the House seat of the 9th district of Illinois, where she will be facing off against 80-year-old incumbent Jan Schakowsky, who has now served the Prairie State for more years than Abughazaleh has been alive.

On March 23, 1775, a month before the first shots would ring out at Lexington and Concord, Patrick Henry entered Saint John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia to deliver a bold conviction. “The war is actually begun,” he said, “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” Henry’s rallying cry remains one of the most iconic speeches in American history and is one of my personal favorites. Indeed, multiple times since we moved to northern Virginia in 2021, my family and I have made the drive south to see Henry’s speech reenacted. The message remains as compelling as ever, and this year, on its 250th anniversary, I believe it is especially relevant to our current political moment. We are facing a struggle for ordered liberty.