Jackie Calmes is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times in Washington, D.C. Before joining The Times in 2017 as White House editor, she worked at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, covering the White House, Congress and national politics. She served as the chief political correspondent and chief economic correspondent at each paper. In 2004, she received the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. Calmes began her career in Texas covering state politics and moved to Washington in 1984 to work for Congressional Quarterly. She was a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. She is the author of “Dissent: The Radicalization of the Republican Party and Its Capture of the Court.”
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The president’s foreign policy is ‘Me, Myself and I’ — strictly transactional and motivated less by national interest than what’s in it, personally and politically, for him.
The president’s attacks are undermining Americans’ trust in the justice system and putting hundreds of judges in physical danger.
The Republicans’ tax cuts combined with their spending plans will help the rich and cost the poor, spiraling the debt and tattering the safety net for everyone.
Crypto is complex, and branding deals are almost subtle, but who can miss what’s going on when a foreign government offers the president a $400-million jet for ‘free’?
The chaos and uncertainty that companies and consumers are enduring are well identified with Trump. The damage should stick to him through the 2026 midterms.
President Trump claims ‘everybody is saying’ his second term had the best start in presidential history. No, they’re not.
In his Easter message, Pope Francis criticized — one last time — the Trump administration’s cruel mass deportation policy.
The Trump administration’s refusal to ‘facilitate’ the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an attack on our most basic expectations of American justice.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt came of age in Germany as Hitler came to power. Her life and writings have a chilling resonance for Americans today.
The Trump administration is trying to force a deal on Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky that would make the imperialists of the past blush.