OPINION

Administration sources insist this new Latin America policy is not just to get out the vote. Once the election is over, the White House is vowing to use all the tools of national power to raise the pressure on the leaders of these three governments.

OPINION

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has decided to retire, a development that is profound not only for her nation but also for Europe. There are also significant international implications.

OPINION

New ideas are now at last emerging, but they are complicating the Democrats’ political calculus and threaten to divide the party.

OPINION

No sensible person would want him to leave the job, but that’s partly because people believe he will speak out if the military is being misused for political purposes.

OPINION

Democratic House gains of at least 30-40 seats surely would constitute an electoral wave and a clear message of dissatisfaction with the president and his party.

OPINION

The perfect storm of events that engineered the global interest in Khashoggi’s murder is unique.

OPINION

There are many tight races where the “Oh, there’s an election?” vote will decide the outcome.

OPINION

Republicans know what Trump just proposed is beyond anything Obama attempted, and the fact that more of them aren’t saying what Ryan said is pretty hypocritical.

Military Update

By inserting two words — “deductibles, coinsurance” — into the revised rule, VA successfully neutralized the impact of the 2016 Staab decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims to save the department billions of dollars.

OPINION

Those of us trying to remain sane amid the rising din of digital-age politics must keep one thing always front-of-mind: Extremism has become a business.

OPINION

One can dislike the president’s unpleasantly evocative phraseology without thinking the dark night of fascism must therefore be almost upon us.

OPINION

I used to live a few miles from here, when I started my career as a journalist, and Pittsburgh is one of those places that never entirely leaves you, even when you go away.

OPINION

If we go down the road of assigning blame for violence to political figures, that trail travels in both directions and public figures left, right and center will never be certain which words they use will set off which single one of their millions of followers to violence.

OPINION

If you oppose Trump, you may reasonably wish to punish congressmen for being close allies of his. Put too much stock in these percentages, though, and you may punish the wrong things.

OPINION

Amid the dispiriting bid to curb voting, something else is happening: For the first time in years, citizens have responded with a robust push to expand democratic rights.

OPINION

If the president does not always think of himself as the president, then expecting any kind of lasting, unifying rhetoric is a fool’s errand.

OPINION

Although the sovereignty of the states continues to diminish under the growing power of the federal government, the United States, as the name implies, is in fact a collection of states, each with its own social and geographic interests.

OPINION

The end result is that the United States has foreign policy that is characterized by unpredictability, which might be an asset if only it were it deliberate.

OPINION

It’s no surprise that O’Connor devoted herself to civics education after her retirement from the court. She always believed that citizenship demanded compromise and mutual respect.

OPINION

Saudis are more supportive of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman because he’s under attack, says a pillar of the Saudi establishment.

Military Update

This was to be the month that the 5-year-old Defense Health Agency assumed management responsibility for all Army, Navy and Air Force health care facilities. The restructuring of the military health system continues and the deadline has been extended.

OPINION

Whatever faint hopes the Democrats still cherish of winning a majority in that chamber on Nov. 6 dwindle to nil if she can’t hold her seat.

OPINION

One could argue that increasing the number of Republican women in Congress would be good for the country as a matter of balance and diversity.

OPINION

For better or worse, tolerating the killing of Khashoggi is the kind of foreign-policy decision that the U.S. has been making for many decades.

OPINION

Even within a specific state, the strategies preferred by progressive leftists and centrist pragmatists can both make sense electorally,

OPINION

In these low-inflation days, there aren’t many businesses that would dare impose an overnight price increase of 10 percent on their best-known product — and that would simultaneously cut prices 29 percent on a similar but less popular product.

OPINION

Trump is not the first president to bet on the wrong foreign leader. But he should now use the United States’ considerable influence to steer the king toward a new succession plan.

Opinion

When it comes to the real barometer of presidential truthfulness — keeping his promises — Trump is a paragon of honesty. For better or worse, since taking office, Trump has done exactly what he promised he would do.

OPINION

The lofty rhetoric Trudeau has used to justify this new regime of legalization presupposes a government prepared to own all the problems of a society in which pot is now explicitly condoned by the state.

OPINION

Republicans in Washington have no agenda beyond confirming President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, and have not had one for all of this year.

OPINION

Modern nations aren’t confined to their geographic borders. Leaving one’s country for extended periods is no longer unusual, and it shouldn’t mean breaking off civic ties.

OPINION

Every time identity politics is in the headlines — rather than, say, wages or health care — Donald Trump’s re-election chances go up.

OPINION

If Democrats take control and then make similar mistakes, their reign will be short.

OPINION

We go about our lives stretching our intellectual capacity to bend the possibilities of nature to meet our desires. And we ignore the human-made crises we inflict upon our planet because they are inconvenient to our lifestyles.

Military Update

U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss dismissed legal arguments from an association of for-profit colleges, which succeeded for more than a year to block Obama administration rules to bring financial relief to defrauded student borrowers and to strengthen federal protections against deceptive school practices.

OPINION

OPINION

If Trump knows anything, it’s branding — and he had painted a big P (not for president) in the middle of Warren’s forehead.

OPINION

Putting a lid on a murder investigation won’t be easy, even for a brashly confident prince.

OPINION

With less-than-tolerant ideological factions dominating everything from town hall meetings to Twitter, the far larger percentage of Americans who do see nuances, and who do favor policy compromise, keep their heads down.

OPINION

What Americans bought there was certainly not glamorous; one might even call it boring. But what it lacked in flash it made up for in reasonable prices and solid quality that lasted.

OPINION

Each year, Saudi Arabia employs, through consultants or otherwise, a host of retired American generals, diplomats, intelligence experts and others. Until now, they could assure themselves this was a win-win: lucrative for them, to be sure, but also enhancing mutual understanding with an important U.S. ally.

OPINION

When Donald Trump was unexpectedly elected president, two nations in the Middle East that had been particularly aggrieved by the policies of the Obama administration rushed to take advantage. They were Saudi Arabia and Israel — and they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

OPINION

Sen. Ben Sasse’s new book argues that Americans are richer, more informed and “connected” than ever — and unhappier, more isolated and less fulfilled.

OPINION

The Democrats are the ones who pushed for Obamacare’s burdensome regulations and expensive mandatory coverage, which upended the health insurance market.

OPINION

Once a party has squandered civility, it’s very, very hard to get it back. Republicans are going to be learning that well after Trump has left politics.

OPINION

Most of all, I am disoriented by the speed at which major news events pass into the rearview mirror in contemporary America.

OPINION

Things are better than they were a year ago. They are also more contentious. That is how social change works.

OPINION

Dissatisfaction with this aspect of constitutional design fits in with leftover frustration over the Electoral College in 2016.

OPINION

What Trump is doing here isn’t subtle. He’s trying to bolster his low approval ratings by doing some clumsy sleight of hand.

OPINION

In decades of writing about politics, I’ve run across few with Haley’s innate talents.

OPINION

For U.S. intelligence officials, revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

OPINION

It’s possible that even as Zuckerberg and others at Facebook apologize at every turn for violating the public’s trust, they still don’t really grasp how much they violated the public’s trust. It wouldn’t be the first time that Facebook’s instincts are wrong.

OPINION

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's aim is to modernize the Saudi monarchy so as to render it sustainable under the new economic and geopolitical conditions of the 21st century — with the 33-year-old MBS on top for a long, long time.

OPINION

In reality, like her Republican colleagues, Collins either didn’t believe Ford was telling the truth or didn’t particularly care what the truth might be.

OPINION

Between the election in May and the recent protests in Basra, Iraqis are making it clear that they don’t want to be a vassal state of Iran.

OPINION

It’s hard to imagine Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei succumbing to Trump’s punch-them/hug-them strategy and doing a deal.

OPINION

The Russian president can’t afford to look fallible, but he increasingly does. Simply trying to wait out one unfavorable news cycle after another won’t fix the problem.

OPINION

Daniel Brazzell knows what PTSD can do to a person. Thanks to Jason Kander, he also knows that going forward, it’s OK to raise a hand and say, “I need help, too.”

OPINION

This course correction in the U.S.-China relationship is absolutely necessary to protect American interests and values and must be carefully managed to avoid unintended consequences.

OPINION

What changed in the 20th century was the emergence of a far more systematic use of it during ethnic cleansing campaigns and other conflicts — a disturbing development with impacts that took decades to be fully understood.

OPINION

Particularly in the area of consumer privacy, we should be wary of pre-emption that could lock in place federal standards that are soon obsolete.

OPINION

The number of women working their way into combat positions is indeed small, but they continue to increase even as women face obstacles to entering them.

OPINION

Sen. Jeff Flake served the nation, its highest tribunal, constitutional morality and even his ungrateful party by not being a team player.

OPINION

Americans shouldn’t suffer from the delusion that the attempted ruin of Kavanaugh, his career and family has solely to do with Christine Blasey Ford.

OPINION

The daily ratcheting-up of rhetoric is driving people away from ordinary political conversation. It is too freighted with potential for disproportionate responses to talk candidly about such things as one’s views of the Kavanaugh hearings.

OPINION

Such an examination would probe Kavanaugh’s denials of sexual misconduct, and would also examine other features of his testimony that may call his credibility into question.

OPINION

Like a lot of people who have lived with or been friends with people who love beer a little too much, I experienced some familiar, unpleasant emotions as I watched the Supreme Court nominee’s behavior disintegrate Thursday in his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

OPINION

We must continue to explore promising treatment modalities like MeRT to address the growing veteran suicide rate. The current treatment options used by the VA are clearly not doing enough.

OPINION

No matter what is decided about Kavanaugh, that it has reached this point is an indictment of our entire political class.

OPINION

America watched three searing versions of reality television this week. They all demonstrated that under the glare of the lights and the stress of questioning, character reveals itself.

OPINION

Hardwired in the DNA of many Chinese officials is a belief that a problem for the United States constitutes an advantage for China.

OPINION

We hear the slogan “believe women” a lot, but even its strongest media proponents can’t really mean it literally, because journalists know how often people tell them things that aren’t true.

OPINION

President Donald Trump sees the international system as a way for the world to constrain America.

OPINION

Russia’s spies in Europe, at least those with the GRU military agency, might be well advised to look for new passports.

OPINION

President Donald Trump looks eager to overrule his top advisers who warn of the risks of declaring peace before North Korea gets serious about eliminating its nuclear arsenal.

OPINION

The confirmation process has followed the crumbling, descending path the rest of American politics has taken into the depths of cynicism, faux outrage and pandering to the parties’ hysterical bases.

OPINION

It turns out more people in more places seeing more things isn’t an unequivocal good. And because it isn’t, platforms can’t pretend they’re neutral overseers any longer — no matter how many haphazard rules they put in place.

OPINION

In at least some quarters, you are ridiculed, dismissed and labeled a liar, a lunatic — or both. Even some friends, family and colleagues are not supportive and instead question why you needed to stick your head out at all.

OPINION

Many hard-line U.S. military and national-security officials remain skeptical.

OPINION

All of this was predictable from the moment Trump took office and, despite many Republican fantasies, failed to magically become presidential.

OPINION

It is discouraging that a major media outlet would excuse cowardice — that is the right word — under the cloak of anonymity.

OPINION

Polish President Andrzej Duda’s offer to call a military base “Fort Trump” if the U.S. agrees to set one up in his country was, of course, a joke — but not entirely.

Military Update

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, met with Robert Wilkie to try to coax the new VA secretary out of his department’s newly stiffened opposition to a House-passed bill that would extend VA health care and compensation to tens of thousands of former sailors and Marines with Agent Orange-associated ailments. “We haven’t convinced him yet,” Brown said.

OPINION

American policymakers can’t seem to say no to the use of lethal military power — even when it is painfully evident the use of force will likely fail to attain the strategic aims for which it is intended.

OPINION

Washington should start by vowing to retaliate in the event of any indiscriminate use of violence by Assad against his own people, in a manner of our choosing. That could be done without dramatically escalating U.S. involvement in the war.

OPINION

The Chinese geopolitical dream is not revolution or conquest; it is simply a much weaker America.

OPINION

We need to be prepared to leave expensive platforms that don’t fit the new priorities on the cutting-room floor, no matter their proud history or political constituencies.