Dealmakers at the Gate: America’s CEOs Fly Into History

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(Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)

A president does not bring the chief executives of Apple, Tesla, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Boeing, Citigroup, Mastercard, Visa, Micron, Meta, GE Aerospace, Blackstone, Qualcomm, Cargill, Coherent, and Illumina to a foreign capital unless he is trying to say something. What Donald Trump is saying, in the language of delegation lists and boarding manifests, is this: America means business. Air Force One touched down at Beijing Capital International Airport on Wednesday, greeted by a brass band and flag wavers as Trump descended the steps. The choreography was unmistakably deliberate — and so was the passenger list It marks Trump’s first visit

The Shutdown Racket Has a New Cure, If the Senate Will Take It

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(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Something has shifted in Washington, and not for the better. The government shutdown — once a rare and dramatic last resort, a sign that the system had genuinely broken down — has become routine. A tool. A tactic. A lever pulled with increasing comfort by those who calculate that chaos serves them. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., wants to change the calculus. Quietly, without fanfare, he set up a vote this week on a resolution from Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., that is simple in concept and pointed in implication: if the government shuts down, senators don’t get paid. Kennedy,

Dinner Gunman Enters Not-Guilty Plea as Defense Targets Pirro’s Entire Office

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(Photo by U.S. Department of Justice/Getty Images)

Cole Tomas Allen said nothing. Handcuffed, shackled, dressed in an orange jail uniform, the 31-year-old from Torrance, California, stood before a federal judge Monday morning and let his lawyer speak for him. The plea was not guilty. The charge: attempted assassination of the President of the United States. Allen is accused of breaching a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on April 25, armed with guns and knives, and firing a shotgun at a Secret Service officer who moved to stop him. The officer — struck once in a bullet-resistant vest — survived. Allen was injured in

Virginia’s High Court Delivers a Blunt Verdict on Redistricting

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(Photo by Mike Kropf/Getty Images)

Something important happened in Virginia on Friday, and it deserves more than a passing glance. The Supreme Court of Virginia — sharply divided, 4 to 3 — struck down a set of congressional maps that Democrats had engineered through a referendum last month. The court called the process unlawful. It voided the new districts. It reinstated the map drawn after the 2020 census, the one voters and politicians had lived with for years. That’s the legal story. But the political story is larger. The maps Democrats pushed through were not modest corrections to reflect population shifts. Analysts warned the new

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