One-house budgets are coming

With help from Shawn Ness Both houses of the state Legislature are planning to introduce their one-house budget proposals next Monday then pass them sometime before they adjourn for the week on March 14. That will frame the debate around the $233 billion spending plan proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul as lawmakers ramp up talks […]

Biden’s State of the Union address is seriously high stakes

The State of the Union may be one of the most vastly overrated speeches in all of politics. But not this year. The address President Joe Biden is set to deliver on Thursday night will come as the president faces intensifying worries about his age and vitality and a host of confounding international crises and […]

Fighting the GOP Civil War, Texas Style

BEAUMONT, Texas — Forget the anti-climactic finale of the presidential primary, the most revealing Super Tuesday campaigns are taking place in Texas — and none more than in this swamp-and-refinery filled corner of the state, where the House speaker is at risk of falling victim to Washington-style political tribalism. Speaker Dade Phelan, the scion of […]

The most important governor’s race of 2024 is about to have its own version of Trump

Former President Donald Trump paved the way for Mark Robinson. Robinson, a candidate in North Carolina’s GOP primary for governor Tuesday, has done all the things that would normally make someone a toxic general election candidate: He’s called homosexuality “filth,” made antisemitic remarks about Hollywood controlling Black people and expressed retrograde views about women. And […]