After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in September, Vice President JD Vance got lost in conspiracy theories. That’s what New York Times journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman wrote in their new book, Regime Change, which looked at the internal workings of President Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and the first year of his second term in office. The pair mentioned how Vance describes himself as a “doomer” who is “always latching onto the most negative possibilities,” and after Kirk, who Vance considered one of his friends, was killed, the vice president went off the deep end. Vance’s “instincts told him that there was a larger plot behind the murder,” Swan and Haberman wrote. “He went down countless online rabbit holes, becoming so consumed by the videos and the theories that his wife, Usha, told him she was worried about him.”This new revelation is worrying. Vance is the immediate successor to the presidency if anything happens to President Trump, who has visible health problems. Besides that, Trump has reportedly chosen Vance as his successor to run for president in 2028. Future presidents should not be diving into internet conspiracy theories and YouTube rabbit holes, and vice presidents should not have that much time on their hands. How is Vance able to get into the weeds with his position? While he didn’t create a specific policy portfolio, he has taken on some important duties, helping with peace negotiations with Iran and representing the U.S. in different international trips. Evidently, that hasn’t kept him away from crazy internet theories.
“The American Dream is Back,” President Trump boasted during his July 4, 2026, speech on the National Mall. This is the same man who said, “I love the inflation,” as he constantly assures us that affordability is a Democratic hoax. Trump no longer even pretends to give lip service to addressing the economic issues he [...]
Paul Preston’s new biography recounts the once-revered monarch’s “sleazy activities in almost as much detail as his political ones,” the Financial Times wrote.
The boundaries of heterosexuality are bending for women but not for men, who appear to have less room to explore and are bound to a more rigid, traditional concept of masculinity.
How will Democrats in Congress deal with the DSA-affiliated candidates likely to join their ranks in the new year? There are lessons from the tea party’s challenge to traditional GOP values.
Millions of people are estimated to be participating in the multiday state funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Iran this week. After ruling the Islamic Republic of Iran for over three dozen years, Khamenei was killed by a joint Israeli-U.S. airstrike on February 28. Now viewed as a martyr by both his religious base and the wider Iranian public, Khamenei has taken on a “new identity” as “the leader of the resistance movement, the leader in the fight against U.S. imperialism,” says Tehran-based journalist Reza Sayah, who has been reporting on the funeral proceedings. Sayah also discusses the absence of Khamenei’s son and chosen successor Mojtaba Khamenei from the public eye, the Iranian government’s position on the thousands of protesters killed by security forces in the early months of 2026 and more.