Cristina Maza

4 days ago | nationaljournal.com | Cristina Maza |Charlie Cook

The question on a lot of minds today is what impact the U.S. military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities this past weekend will have on President Trump’s standing with the public. Some no doubt will point to the surge in President George H.W. Bush’s approval rating to 89 percent after the 1991 victory in the Persian Gulf War. They might also point to his son, President George W. Bush, soaring as high as 90 percent approval after the 9/11 attacks.

6 days ago | lazoletters.substack.com | Cristina Maza

It’s been a strange week to tour around the Brussels bubble and visit NATO headquarters. As interesting as our meetings were, they seemed oddly disconnected from current events, given that what appears to be a full-scale war is breaking out across the Middle East. I was at the European Commission on the day the European High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy gave a brief press conference about the latest events between Israel and Iran.

1 week ago | lazoletters.substack.com | Cristina Maza

By the time you read this, I will be arriving in Brussels for a reporting trip. French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, is on his way to Greenland to help reinforce “European sovereignty” over the island. Other world leaders (I’m not implying that I'm a leader of any world other than my own) are headed to Canada today for the G7 Summit, where they will discuss the possibility of lowering the price cap on Russian oil from $60 a barrel to as low as $45.

2 weeks ago | lazoletters.substack.com | Cristina Maza

I never really believed that I’d reach this age. It’s not that I harbored long-held fantasies about dying young. Although death, including fear of a premature death, is something that regularly haunts me. Instead, I couldn’t quite imagine what life would look like at this age. Forty. It’s the age my parents were during my first formative memories. To my young mind, they seemed unfathomably old.

2 weeks ago | nationaljournal.com | Cristina Maza |Ledyard King |Bella Timmerding

Western leaders, including congressional Republicans, have a plethora of ideas about how to make Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine more costly for Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, some appear to be frozen in inaction as they wait for President Trump to figure out how—and whether—he plans to pursue peace. A sanctions bill in Congress, introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, currently has over 80 cosponsors, and support for a House version of the bill is also growing.