Politics

Joseph R. Biden Jr. was addressing an elite audience, describing how as a young senator he had learned to work with Jesse Helms, the right-wing North Carolinian known for his fierce opposition to civil rights and his open loathing of gay people. He once believed Mr. Helms had “no redeeming social value,” Mr. Biden said, […]

At times, candidates flashed revealing glimpses of their interior lives. When we asked, for instance, where they would travel on their first foreign trip as president, it was immediately apparent which Democrats had spent time envisioning that trip in their heads. Former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas instantly named Mexico, while Senator Cory Booker of

“I don’t think that people should be jumping down the president’s throat for wanting to think this through and make sure that neither side miscalculates and we don’t inadvertently end up in a war with Iran,” he said. For Republicans, the reaction to Mr. Trump’s Iran indecision is a reprise of a familiar dispute between

WASHINGTON — President Trump nominated Mark T. Esper, the secretary of the Army and former West Point classmate of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on Friday to be the next defense secretary. If confirmed, Mr. Esper, an Army infantryman who fought in the Persian Gulf war of 1991 before becoming a lobbyist for Raytheon, would

So far, this isn’t your typical oil crisis. Previous moments of tension in the Persian Gulf region, like Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, once caused a major kink in oil supplies, igniting spikes in prices. After all, the Gulf provides around a third of the world’s oil, and much of that crude passes through

“Having this all out in the public open like this is not ideal if your goal is to apprehend people and detain them,” said Ms. Brown, the director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “If your goal is to put fear in people and make them afraid, mission accomplished.” While President Trump said

Syria’s use of chemical weapons violated international norms, while Iran’s actions were rooted in Mr. Trump’s decision in May 2018 to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and impose sanctions on Iran, driving down its oil exports and throttling its economy. It is, to a great extent, a crisis Mr. Trump manufactured. How well

WASHINGTON — He has been called the shadow White House chief of staff, but Sean Hannity also sought to assist Paul Manafort as he defended himself from the special counsel’s investigation, according to court documents unsealed on Friday. Mr. Hannity, a Fox News host who is a close ally of President Trump, advised Mr. Manafort

[Sign up for our politics newsletter, and we’ll send you a reminder about our live chat on debate night.] COLUMBIA, S.C. — Nearly every Democratic presidential candidate converged in South Carolina on Friday to pay homage to the state party’s most powerful political kingmaker and court black voters and women — two of its crucial

“I don’t think that’s what was decisive for the president,” General Keane said, but it contributed to the decision, which he said was mainly driven by the casualty concern. “What was decisive for him was the comparison for him, compared to destroying missile batteries and killing people, of shooting down a drone.” By this point,