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The Paley Center for Media just opened an exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of “The West Wing,” the NBC series I wrote from 1999 to 2003. Some of the show’s story points have become outdated in the last quarter-century (the first five minutes of the first episode depended entirely on the audience being unfamiliar with the acronym POTUS), while others turned out to be — well, not prescient, but sadly coincidental. Gunmen tried to shoot a character after an event with President Bartlet at the end of Season 1. And at the end of the second season, in an episode...

The Republican convention that concluded early Friday was a four-day celebration of the cult of Donald Trump. Night after night, disciples and flatterers portrayed America as a nation in decline and Trump as its savior. But the real focus wasn’t on making America great again. It was on making Trump president again. To prevent that outcome, Democrats must stage a different kind of convention. They need to focus on the needs of the American people. They have to present a plan for getting to a better place. And most important, they cannot spend four days in Chicago celebrating President Biden....

The vast majority of Democratic voters still intend to vote for President Joe Biden despite concerns over his age, according to a recent poll of battleground states. Amid mounting concerns about Biden's age and growing pressure from prominent members of the Democratic Party to get the president to not seek re-election, a breakdown of YouGov polling data provided to Newsweek revealed that in seven key states, between 69 percent and 86 percent of Democratic voters who felt Biden was too old to serve another term as president, said they would still vote for him. YouGov provided Newsweek with the cross...

The seeds of President Joe Biden’s reaction to the Democratic Party’s crisis of confidence in him were planted years ago. Facing an extraordinary push by his friends and allies to end his political career, Biden has responded with defiance. For three weeks, he has dug in, denied polling evidence and vowed to stay in the race, claiming that he is the only one who can defeat former President Donald Trump. Only in the last few days have people close to him said they believe he is more receptive to stepping down. To many of his allies, he is in a...

The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin has argued for the Democratic Party to nominate a Republican as their presidential candidate in a bid to beat Donald Trump. In recent weeks, calls for incumbent president Joe Biden to step down have grown ever louder, amid concerns over the president’s health and cognitive abilities. Current polling suggests that Trump, who was beaten by Biden in 2020 after serving one controversy-laden term in the Oval Office, is on course to win a second term this November. In an essay published by The New York Times, Sorkin drew parallels between real-world events and his...

WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris had one great day in her ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign: her first. Then came a rapid collapse. The freshman senator who announced her candidacy in January 2019 before 20,000 cheering supporters in Oakland, Calif. dropped out in December before a single vote had been cast. Now, Harris may get another shot. As the sitting vice president, she would be a leading candidate to succeed Biden if he succumbs to party pressure and exits the race. Other elected officials might step forward to challenge Harris, dividing Democrats and clouding the general election picture ahead of a November...

Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that former President Donald Trump and Republicans are trying to turn the United States back to Jim Crow days. Clyburn said, “If you want to know how 45 will perform in the future, look at what he tried to do to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. What would that have done to our children and our senior citizens and others? We know what’s in his Project 2025 for his future. He can claim all he wants to they didn’t know what’s in it. He didn’t know...

Daily Readings from the USCCBWhen he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. Mark 6:34Both Jesus and the Twelve Apostles had been working very hard. The Twelve had been out on mission to many of the neighboring towns preaching, healing the sick and casting out demons. Upon the completion of their mission, they returned to Jesus and reported all that they had done. Jesus, in turn, invited them to “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place...

HUMBOLDT, Tenn. — A 12-year-old girl in Tennessee has been charged with murder, accused of smothering her 8-year-old cousin as the younger girl slept. A relative said they had been arguing over an iPhone. A security camera recorded the killing inside the bedroom they shared on July 15 in Humboldt, Tennessee, the county prosecutor said. The recording shows the older child using bedding to suffocate her cousin as the younger girl slept in the top bunk, Gibson District Attorney Frederick Agee’s statement said. After the child died, “the juvenile cleaned up the victim and repositioned her body,” Agee said. [snip]...

Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn slammed Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle for prioritizing a cocktail party over an investigation into the attempted assassination of former President Trump. Cheatle ducked a fuming group of senators who wanted to discuss security lapses that nearly cost Trump his life, but Blackburn and several other lawmakers confronted the embattled security boss Wednesday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. "For her to say her priority was to make certain that people had a nice evening, that people had a nice party, that they were able to enjoy that luxury suite, and she did not have...

A Florida man accused of making threats against former President Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. JD Vance and their families on social media was arrested on Friday, police said. The Jupiter Police Department said in a news release that officers arrested Michael W. Wiseman on charges of written threats to kill. SNIP Detectives said Wiseman had made multiple written threats on Facebook against Trump and Vance, who became the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees, respectively, this week. Threats were also made "concerning bodily harm" against members of the Trump and Vance families, according to police. Multiple people notified local police...

From transcript: Due to a shortage of real Secret Service agents a local school lunch lady named Pat has been deputized to protect the former president. Believing that this would never actually happen, Pat was happy to wear her super cool Secret Service issued sunglasses and chew gum, but then the unthinkable happened. A weird little hobbit radicalized by the media made an attempt on the Donald's life life instantly the real Secret Service agents sprang into action while Pat, the lunch lady, cowed behind a podium longing to be back in the school cafeteria spooning out Sloppy Joe's where...

VIDEOThe accusation about Mike Pompeo by Robert Barnes on the Rebel Capitalist channel sounds beyond belief until you consider that as CIA Director Pompeo sought the assassination of Julian Assange. It's almost as if lawyer Barnes is relishing a lawsuit by Pompeo. The first part of discovery in such a case would be to question the Iowa delegates to the GOP convention that Pompeo spoke to.

Russia’s Su-57 Felon Next-generation Fighter Has Its Wings Clipped: It hasn’t been a good summer for the Russian Air Force, and now the Ukrainians are adding insult to injury. One of Russia’s most vaunted warbirds – the Sukhoi Su-57 Felon – was destroyed by a Ukrainian drone strike in June. The resilient and intrepid Ukrainians have raised the stakes in the war against Russia by using drones in deep attack mode. The destruction of the single-seat twin-engine Su-57 Felon must have created another headache for air force leaders in Moscow because it is one of the jewels in the Russian...

J.D. Vance’s rise to the vice-presidential nomination is a watershed moment in American politics. For young conservatives like myself, the moment feels like a triumph, the culmination of curiosity and organization. For the country, the moment offers the first uncompromising choice for change in a generation. The moment calls for a reflection on how we arrived here and the choice before us. Will middle America forge a new consensus, achieved with echoes of the Jacksonian age? Alternatively, will the great city-states of the Democratic Party stymie the tide of discontent and preserve the neoliberal status quo?

The Secret Service acknowledged Saturday that it had turned down requests of additional resources sought by former President Donald Trump’s security detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination last week, a reversal from earlier statements by the agency denying that such requests had been rebuffed. Almost immediately after a gunman shot at Trump from a nearby warehouse roof while he spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend, the Secret Service faced accusations from Republicans and anonymous law enforcement officials that it had turned down requests for additional agents to secure Trump’s rallies. “There’s an...

Residents of the 33rd Ward, social justice groups and local officials demanded an outside investigation into Chicago police officers with ties to the Oath Keepers extremist group two months after CPD officials chose not to discipline them after what the groups called an “inadequate” investigation. At a news conference outside Horner Park fieldhouse Saturday afternoon, local residents and members of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression called on the city’s inspector general to investigate the officers named in the probe— including Officer Alberto Retamozo, who is assigned to the 17th District, which covers parts of Albany Park and...

WEST PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — At least three people are dead, and six others hurt in a mass shooting at a West Philadelphia party early Sunday morning. NBC affiliate WCAU reports it happened around 2 a.m. when up to 150 people were attending a party at home near the intersection of Alden Street and Girard Avenue. All of the individuals shot are believed to be adult men. Police officials tell WCAU the crime scene spread over half a block, and investigators located around 25-30 shell casings. Investigators have recovered a firearm at the scene. SNIP

After spending 14 years in jail, woman meets the man she falsely accused of rape.