Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, allegedly had a drug in his system and addressed police with slurred speech during his arrest on May 28.

What do you get when you cross big-money politics and tepid progressive positions? A look back at the career of Nancy Pelosi, who’s now poised to retake [and has] the House Speaker post. By Branko Marcetic.

The scheme is hitting the poorest Americans—and making less money than IRS in-house collectors. By Max de Haldevang, Justin Rohrlich.

Progressives should recognize the likely House speaker as a symptom of a calcified party hierarchy that is beginning to lose its grip. By Norman Solomon.

“We are about to drive a lot of dark money donors into the light—it’s gonna look like the climax of a Harry Potter movie where the creatures shrivel in the sun.” By Jon Queally.

The case for and against national Democrats intervening in primaries. By Ella Nilsen.

The EPA is granting specific private-sector wishes as it moves to roll back, alter or delay rules. By Rachel Leven.

Michael Lewis goes to Washington in search of Trump and winds up watching the State of the Union with Steve Bannon.

Denying a modern candidate this database is a hamstringing move, virtually guaranteeing their failure. By Cory Doctorow.

It took all of five minutes for Tom Perez to quote Hamilton. By Jacob Silverman.

The Democratic Party this week plans to name 75 people including lobbyists and political operatives to leadership posts that come with superdelegate votes at its next presidential convention, potentially aggravating old intraparty tensions as it struggles to confront President Donald Trump. By Jennifer Epstein.

In one of the last, most powerful vestiges of Tammany Hall-style politics, New York party bosses pick the politicians when vacancies occur. By Shane Goldmacher.

The UAE’s man in Washington enjoys a cozy relationship with a top Beltway pundit. By Ben Norton.

When the sister of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner promoted investment in her family’s new skyscraper from a Beijing hotel ballroom stage earlier this month, she was pitching a controversial American visa program that’s proven irresistible to tens of thousands of Chinese. By Nomaan Merchant.

While Jared Kushner’s family company apologized this week for mentioning the White House adviser’s name when wooing Chinese investors to fund a New Jersey real estate project, one Chinese immigration agency was touting its role in the deal. By Alexandra Harney.

Many academics claim, against all odds, that money doesn’t matter in politics. Now we can see exactly what it costs to buy a congressional vote. By Jon Schwarz. (May 4, 2017)

"We don’t get to keep him. We don’t get to keep the first black president. We don’t get to let that be ours; we have to reject it, in the same way we’d have to reject the first female president had Hillary won…" By Caitlin Johnstone.

Many of its proposals are lifted straight from the recommendations of an elite ultra-conservative D.C. think tank: the Heritage Foundation. By Zaid Jilani.

The new plan is tax cuts and deregulation. By Matthew Yglesias.

The Office of Congressional Ethics was saved from the landfill, but few noticed a change that did make it into the new House rules passed Tuesday [January 3rd]. By Ashley Balcerzak. (Jan. 5, 2016)