Washingtonmonthly

This column is not about anything in the news from the Middle East. My current views are well-represented by Rahm Emanuel’s blistering critique of the Israeli government.

I’m concerned with something simple: ...

In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which invested $80 billion to fix the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The agency produced a 200-page modernization plan, promising a major overhaul of the agency’s pro...

To: President Donald J. Trump
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

From: James Parkinson, M.D.
One York Place
Hoxton, London, England

Dear President Trump,

In 1817, I published a short book, An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, containing the first clear clinical description of the disease that would eventually bear...

For a long time, I’ve been wondering if the war on women—possibly the world’s oldest siege—would ever come to a halt. Recently, it seems as if there’s been a shift in this matter, with many victims coming forward en masse with horrifying accounts of sex crimes—and being heard in new quarters. For decades, there was no safe zone where this could happen, so women rema...

In June, a huge, eight-sided cage went up on the South Lawn of the White House, obscuring the façade of the storied building President Donald Trump has treated as his personal mansion. Intended for an Ultimate Fighting Championship series of mixed martial arts matches held on the president’s 80th birthday, the structure was Trump’s gift to himself, capping a months-long bing...