Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and the Director of its Center for Effective Public Management; author of Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates and Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again; Hillary Clinton superdelegate
The Democrats in Philadelphia: Looking for Brotherly Love Bernie Sanders will address the convention tonight, along with Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Warren. But even before tonight's opening session, the Democratic Convention has seen its first casualty. National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz took the fall for some 20,000 leaked emails showing some staff members favored Hillary Clinton and wanted to sabotage Bernie Sanders.
Will Party Concessions Put Out "The Bern?" Hillary Clinton calls Donald Trump "a divider, not a uniter." But it's Bernie Sanders who's dividing her own Party. Hoping to make peace, the Democrats have given him a big voice in the party platform…only to have him promise to make the process "messy." His appointees include a supporter of Palestinian rights and one of President Obama's harshest African-American critics. So, as the campaign heats up in California, the battle continues — despite Clinton supporters who warn that it's making life easier for Donald Trump.
Is the threat from Russia missing from the Russia meddling probe? There's much being made about the Trump administration's possible ties with Russia. But the bottom line is Russia's effort to influence American democracy. Do the President and his aides care enough to take action before voters go back to the polls?
Trump's 'America First' goes missing abroad In the Middle East, President Trump is changing some policies of the Obama Administration—and reversing his own campaign attacks on Islam as a religion that "hates us." We hear about his visit to Saudi Arabia and what's at stake for the rest of his foreign excursion.
Who's to blame for the opioid crisis? Some of the lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are now going after Big Pharma. It’s all about the deadly epidemic of opioid use. Are the drug companies to blame? What about the users? Later, on today’s Talking Point: making sense of Britain’s upset election.
Terrorism and tweets, hate speech and murder Just days before an election, Britain is coping with a rash of deadly terrorism, and Prime Minister Theresa May is on the defensive. And again today, President Trump has tweeted criticism of the Mayor of London. Later, a double murder in Portland, Oregon has revealed the ugly past of a supposedly “progressive” city. One immediate question: is “hate speech” protected by the First Amendment?