Jackie Calmes is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times in Washington, D.C. Before joining The Times in 2017 as White House editor, she worked at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, covering the White House, Congress and national politics. She served as the chief political correspondent and chief economic correspondent at each paper. In 2004, she received the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. Calmes began her career in Texas covering state politics and moved to Washington in 1984 to work for Congressional Quarterly. She was a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. She is the author of “Dissent: The Radicalization of the Republican Party and Its Capture of the Court.”
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Latest From This Author
Why has Congress ground to a halt? Radical Republicans turned a once-proud “small-government” party into a dangerous, nihilistic “anti-government” party.
Oct. 4, 2023
When voters hear that former President Trump’s targets must pay for protection against his followers, they shrug.
Oct. 3, 2023
The senator from New Jersey is innocent until he is found guilty, but like the former president, he’s already proved himself unworthy of the public’s trust.
Sept. 28, 2023
Kevin McCarthy’s rebellious extremists in the House seem to believe they have the leverage to force their far-right budget and policy demands into law. They don’t.
Sept. 22, 2023
Don’t blame Democrats for tit-for-tat impeachments. It’s Republicans who are normalizing the most extreme check on the presidency.
Sept. 21, 2023
It’s unfair that Biden and Trump are neck and neck in the polls. But it’s not unfair that the president is taking a hit with voters because of Hunter Biden’s troubles.
Sept. 8, 2023
Remember when the House speaker valiantly compromised with President Biden on the debt ceiling and averted a government shutdown? He started backtracking almost immediately.
Sept. 7, 2023
High prices and Trump’s revisionism are making it hard for President Biden to change the public’s mind about the economy.
Sept. 4, 2023
Republicans used to rag Democrats for bad-mouthing America. Now they want voters to give them control of a dystopian nation they love to loathe.
Aug. 29, 2023
A cocky entrepreneur with no political experience looks in the mirror and sees Trump 2.0. What could go wrong?
Aug. 23, 2023