The news on Wednesday that House Speaker Paul Ryan won’t run for another term wasn’t shocking — it has been rumored for months. It’s also, weirdly, not shocking that Ryan is voluntarily giving up one of the most powerful jobs in politics. That kind of thing should be surprising. But he had several reasons for […]
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): There’s a lot going on, including tons of speculation about who might get the boot from President Trump next. On Tuesday night, in fact, The New York Times reported that Trump tried to fire special counsel Robert […]
To combat the opioid crisis, the Trump administration is calling for drug dealers to face tougher penalties, including capital punishment in some cases. The U.S. Sentencing Commission is also considering proposals for tougher prison sentences in crimes involving fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is many times more deadly than heroin. “If we don’t get tough […]
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Today’s debate will center around this tweet from a political analyst: Everybody always writes columns about why Democrats or Republicans should pay more attention to issue X. It would be actually way more useful if people wrote […]
What are President Trump’s strengths and weaknesses? The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team plays “FiveThirtyEight Family Feud” — a new game we made up — to try to find an answer. The team also debates the merits of the census’s new citizenship question and discusses its potential effects on political representation in the U.S. You can […]