The Bulwark

Sam Stein and Michael Weiss take on Steve Witkoff’s groveling meeting with Vladimir Putin, the growing power struggle inside Trump’s administration over Russia, and why CIA Director John Ratcliffe is emerging as a counterweight to Witkoff’s approach. Plus, Weiss explains why the reality on the battlefield may be considerably worse for Putin than the conventional wisdom suggests.Related Links:Financial Times — US spy chief prepares for greater role in Russia-Ukraine talksh

(Photo Illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE decided this spring against hosting a midterm convention to counterprogram the one Republicans are set to have this evening and the next.The choice was semi-controversial. By deciding against a convention, the party forfeited an opportunity to rally the base and showcase a new crop of party leaders ahead of the midterms. But the party also faced significant fundraising challenges, and

With Republicans in tight races stripping Trump’s name off their campaign websites, the president is in need of some love from Republicans he has summoned to Dallas to celebrate him. The fake convention also conveniently serves as a distraction from the surging price of oil. Plus: Vance may be the source who’s leaking about the missile depletions, Fox is giving more leeway for criticism of Trump, anti-Muslim hysteria is driving the complaints about Mamdani attending the 9/11 memorial

(Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)HAVING MADE A MESS of its “emergency” docket at Donald Trump’s behest, the Supreme Court now finds itself in a high-stakes game of ping-pong over whether he gets to illegally meddle with the midterms. On Sunday, for the third time in six weeks, he asked his pals in the high court’s majority for an exit ramp from Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which states that the “Tim

I want to kvell about my best friend today. Thank you for your indulgence.(Photo: Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark)1. Sarah Is Always RightLast night Sarah and I did a show at the famous 92nd Street Y in New York. We were there to celebrate her book, How to Eat an Elephant, which I’m sure you’ve already ordered. But if not, go ahead and do it now.Get Sarah's Book on AmazonGet It on BookShop.orgI’m so proud of her. Proud that she did the book. Proud that she wrote it herself instead of

Ben Parker and Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) look back at 9/11, Trump’s bizarre remarks at a commemoration, and the lessons Hertling wishes America had learned over the last 25 years. Then they turn to the escalating Iran war, attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, Pete Hegseth’s sidelining of Gen. Christopher Donahue, and the Pentagon’s effort to identify and remove transgender service members through their medical records.Links:Mark Hertling: “A Letter to Myself on 9/11&#

It’s Convention Day! Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and a coterie of administration and congressional bigwigs will descend on Dallas today to apply themselves to the work of re-convincing the American people that the Trump experiment is working, that America is the hottest country in the world, and that they just need a little more time to get this thing really popping off. For some reason, Trump will be speaking both Wednesday night and Thursday night. And for some reason, the two speeches wil

Hwang Jung-min (left) and Jung Ho-yeon in Hope. (Courtesy Neon)HOPE IS A MOVIE THAT’S VERY COMFORTABLE with tossing audiences into the deep end and letting them sink or swim on their own. Writer-director Na Hong-jin never feels the need to stop and explain what’s going on; this is an admirable quality in a filmmaker, albeit one that leads to some real whiplash in this particular movie.We start in what feels like the middle, with the local police chief Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) inv

Sam Stein and Will Sommer preview Trump’s strangely low-energy midterm convention, where Republicans are skipping town, lawmakers are being asked to cough up $25,000, and even the convention website has become an embarrassment. Plus, they discuss the increasingly bizarre campaign attacks coming from Elon Musk’s PAC and Ken Paxton—and what they say about the GOP’s plan for 2026.A quick note: The Bulwark will be watching the convention so you don’t have to—inclu

Tim, Sarah, and JVL discuss Trump's Labor Day Weekend with his favorite person, Corey Lewandowski's possible ‘light extortion,’ and whether Trumpworld will circle the wagons around him. Plus: why the GOP's midterm convention shows Trump losing his fastball, ABC News's bizarre framing of Rudy Giuliani's Islamophobic comments about Zohran Mamdani, and John Fetterman's total lack of interest in doing the job of a U.S. senator.Watch, listen, and leave a comment.Show links:Get your ticket

(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)MOST PARENTS HAVE STRAIGHTFORWARD IDEAS for what to give their teenaged son for his birthday: a pair of new sneakers, or headphones, or a game to play on his Xbox.Not Maryam Tahmasebi. She just wants her son to be able to celebrate outside the detention center our country has trapped them in. Her aspirations for him have been reduced to this. She just wants him to be free.For five months, Tahmasebi and her son have bee

From politics to sports, business, and tech, the rich are breaking the rules, looking out for their friends, and still getting rewarded in the end—maybe with the help of a little trip to the White House with a POTUS gift in hand. For the midterms and beyond, Adam is bullish in his new book about the Dems' prospects to win on a grand scale and pass the kind of policies that help regular people. Part of the trick is cooling it on the purity tests over fraught issues like Israel. And in this

(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Shutterstock)Gird your loinsHouse Speaker Mike Johnson is a big touter. He loves specifically to tout the successes of the 119th Congress under his stewardship, regularly promoting to anyone with a recorder or camera the number of bills passed out of his chamber and the significant items—tax cuts and border enforcement funding, mainly—that have become law.“I have been saying for months . . . this has literally been the m

(Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photos: Shutterstock)1. FatherlandsWhenever I write about the age of nuclear proliferation that Donald Trump is inciting, I say something like:There will have to be an independent European nuclear deterrent and, as the biggest economy in Europe, Germany will have to own a piece of those nukes. What could possibly go wrong?In response, I always get an email from some well-meaning German reader saying,What are you talking about? Germany is a respon

(Photo Illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)THE ADVANTAGE—AND PERHAPS THE BURDEN—of looking back across a quarter century is knowing how little we understood then about how profoundly those few hours would change the country, the military, my family, and millions of other Americans. I wish I could tell that version of myself what I know now.I was one of a very few Americans whose 9/11 story began before September 11, 2001. In the late summer, I was a

Andrew Egger and Bill Kristol discuss Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic social media posts, his proposed triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery, and the GOP’s Trump-centered midterm convention in Dallas as the elections draw closer. They also consider the expanding Senate battlefield, looming Supreme Court decisions affecting voting, and what a possible wave election could mean for Republicans.Leave a commentPlus, we have huge news about the Bulwark’s Fall tour: Pete

(Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photo: Getty)THERE’S ONE QUESTION I’VE GOTTEN more than any other from media and political types about the focus groups during the Trump era: What do swing voters think about [whatever the latest Washington scandal happens to be]. Maybe it’s some legal problem of Trump’s, or an ally America abandoned somewhere, or an unqualified nominee Trump selected, or any of the million other democracy-shattering scandals that have def

Labor Day is in the rearview mirror, and the midterms are suddenly only fifty-six days away. Keep your head on a swivel. Happy Tuesday.Join Bill and Andrew for Morning Shots Live at 10:00 a.m. EDT today on Substack and YouTube.President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One on August 14, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)The People vs. Mad King Donaldby William KristolI trust you all had a better Labor Day weekend than Donald Trump

With just under two months until Election Day, Tim and Bill revisit the run-up to the midterms in 2006 and 1994, two major wave election cycles where the bottom just fell out from under the party in power. The 1994 blowout was more about the end of an era, while 2006 was about an unpopular war in the Middle East, a scandal, and a disappointed base. What do those wave elections suggest about the prospects for a big blue year in 2026? Plus: Do not miss either the war stories from Tim as a young Re

Hey guys, it’s Sarah. Tomorrow’s the day. My first book, How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time, is officially coming out. And I’m so excited to share it with the world.First and foremost: Thank you to everyone in The Bulwark community who made this possible.As I say in the book, I wrote this for you guys—all the people who come up to us at live shows, asking how they can get involved, what they can do to help. Truly you helped get us here.Second: If you haven’