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2 weeks ago | 
thefp.com | Charles Lane
A “grand bargain” on immigration is about the last thing that comes to mind when you see what has happened in Los Angeles since last Friday—and is now spreading to cities across the United States. Even the idea of a political compromise seems impossible amid the clouds of tear gas, broken concrete hurled at police, burning Waymo robotaxis, arrests, and the arrival of National Guard and Marine troops.
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1 month ago | 
thefp.com | Charles Lane
What Republicans Get Right—and Wrong—About Medicaid The president is worried about the political cost of ‘fucking around with Medicaid.’ But his party is right to grapple with the program’s ballooning costs. Rallying House Republicans to pass a version of his One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) last week, Donald Trump instructed them, “Don’t fuck around with Medicaid.” The White House brandished polls explaining that reforms to the program are politically risky.
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1 month ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Charles Lane
The surprising history of using vehicles as weapons for mass attacks (washingtonpost.com) The surprising history of using vehicles as weapons for mass attacks By Charles Lane 2025052821502100 Another day, another apparent mass murder attempt by someone ramming a car into a crowded public space.
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1 month ago | 
thefp.com | Charles Lane
Donald Trump has upended Republican orthodoxy on everything from free trade to foreign policy. Now he is being tempted with the ultimate GOP heresy: a proposal, bubbling up on the party’s populist wing, to raise taxes on the rich. It has created tensions between advocates such as House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep.
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2 months ago | 
thefp.com | Charles Lane
Harvard Had It Coming. That Doesn’t Mean Trump Is Right. The school is taking a stand for academic freedom. How long will it last?
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2 months ago | 
thefp.com | Charles Lane
Think Congress Will Stop Trump’s Tariffs? Think Again. Trump’s tariff edicts are a sign of how far the United States’ political reality has strayed from its constitutional design. It’s been seven mind-blowing days since President Trump announced his global tariff plan on April 2—“Liberation Day,” he called it—and all of that before the steepest “reciprocal” tariffs take effect today.
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Mar 26, 2025 | 
thefp.com | Charles Lane
Here’s an idea: Let’s create a federally sponsored corporation to spend $89.5 billion a year moving stuff—mostly documents made of paper—from place to place. Let’s hire 635,000 people to do it, grant them expensive health and pension benefits such that personnel costs are 80 percent of the total, then make it almost impossible to lay them off. Let’s keep doing so long after the service has been rendered technologically obsolete, and demand for it has cratered.
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Mar 12, 2025 | 
thefp.com | Charles Lane
The vibe shift is powerful. But is it powerful enough to beat Big Soda and Big Grocery? Obesity and its evil twin—diabetes—are corroding America’s health. These chronic ailments also disproportionately afflict the poor.
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Feb 28, 2025 | 
thefp.com | Charles Lane
Gene Hackman’s grandfather and uncle were small-town newspaper reporters. The abusive father who abandoned Hackman when he was just 13 operated a daily’s printing press. Hackman himself dabbled in journalism school. So it figures that he would have been compelling as Alex Grazier, the worldly but ethical war correspondent at the moral center of Roger Spottiswoode’s 1983 film, Under Fire.
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Feb 19, 2025 | 
thefp.com | Charles Lane
Not only has President Donald Trump attempted multiple sweeping policy changes in fewer than a third of the proverbial first 100 days of his presidency, he is also doing so almost entirely without new legislation. That might come later. For now, he is aggressively using executive orders—66 in total, as of February 13. And he is unleashing Elon Musk’s DOGE—an entity whose own legal status is innovative, murky, or a bit of both—on federal agencies. Trump’s opponents are crying foul.
