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WASHINGTON — In a cheerfully decorated common room at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, with floral paintings adorning violet walls, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania begins most days meeting with his chief of staff, who arrives around 10 a.m. carrying a briefcase full of newspaper clips, statements for him to approve, legislation to review and other business of the day. The contents of that briefcase encompass the majority of Fetterman’s connection to the outside world these days, as the first-term Democrat from Pennsylvania finishes his third week in the hospital being treated for severe clinical depression. Doctors caring...

WASHINGTON — At John Fetterman’s desk in the Senate chamber, there is a newly installed monitor that rises or lowers, depending on whether he sits or stands, and provides closed captioning so he can follow the proceedings. At the center dais, a custom desk stand has been built to accommodate the same technology for when he takes his shifts presiding over the Senate. The sergeant-at-arms has arranged for live audio-to-text transcription for the committees on which Fetterman serves, and plans to expand the service to all Senate hearings. But his adjustment to serving in the Senate has been made vastly...

… The attack on Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, on Friday, which left him with a fractured skull and appeared to be part of a planned attack on the speaker herself, came after a yearslong campaign by Republicans to demonize and dehumanize Nancy Pelosi in increasingly ugly ways. For the better part of two decades, Republicans have targeted Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American politics, as the most sinister Democratic villain of all, making her the evil star of their advertisements and fundraising appeals in hopes of animating their core supporters. The language and images have helped to fuel the...

The attendees' acceptance of Trump is all the more surprising given the theme of this year's annual WEF meeting: "Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World." Trump, after all, is a climate-change denier, although he seems to have kept his denial under wraps in his prepared address. He limited his barbs at environmentalists (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-world-economic-forum-davos-switzerland/) to urging a rejection of "the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse," including "an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the '70s and an end of oil in the 1990s." The change of heart toward Trump may have something to...

LONDON — President Trump sat down in a gilded chair beside President Emmanuel Macron of France on Tuesday, prepared for what has become a ritual of sorts on his home turf at the White House: He holds forth as another leader is left to smile stoically through his jokes, jabs and insults. But Mr. Macron changed the script. By the time their 45-minute appearance at the American ambassador’s residence in London was over, the French leader had managed a rare role reversal, putting Mr. Trump on the defensive about his vision for NATO and his handling of a military conflict...

WASHINGTON — Days after a pair of deadly mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump said he was prepared to endorse what he described as “very meaningful background checks” that would be possible because of his “greater influence now over the Senate and over the House.” But after discussions with gun rights advocates during his two-week working vacation in Bedminster, N.J. — including talks with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association — Mr. Trump’s resolve appears to have substantially softened, and he has reverted to reiterating the conservative positions on the gun issue he has...

President Trump told aides to deny that his internal polling showed him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in key states, according to a new report from The New York Times. Later, when the polling in 17 states conducted by Tony Fabrizio leaked, Trump told aides to tell reporters that other data showed him doing better, according to the Times story written by Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman. The polling reportedly showed Trump behind Biden in a number of the states he needs to take to win reelection, though the Times report did not identify them. Beyond Trump's internal polling,...

Ruh-roh: sounds like the Dems have a hesitant, ill-prepared accuser on their hands in the person of Christine Ford. On this evening's Hardball, Politico reporter Annie Karni said: "She is not used to the public spotlight. She is not used to Washington politics. She is from what I understand not yet at all ready for this kind of grilling that she's going to be walking into. Which is part of the delay, which is part of the back and forth whether she wants to do it or not."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

The polls point to the promised land. But she'll have to get past Trump and WikiLeaks first.___ The final three weeks should have been an anxious but happy time for a Hillary Clinton team on the cusp of making history. Her odds of victory, according to most prediction experts, sit north of 80 percent, and she has solidified modest but durable leads over Donald Trump in most battleground states. But Clinton's final sprint has become a joyless, nail-gnawing slog through Trump Tower’s moat of mudslinging — and the day-to-day worries of WikiLeaks’ dump of internal emails from campaign chairman John...

Almost nothing screams political elitism louder than holding a Clinton campaign fundraiser hosted by Chelsea at the Tribeca SoulCycle in Manhattan almost on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. The funniest thing about the Politico article describing the yoga pants Hillary supporters fundraiser is that author Annie Karni seems to be completely unaware of how politically damaging it appears as she gushes about the upcoming trendie event: 

While Hillary Clinton talks about Donald Trump on the trail, her allies are going after the GOP contender Democrats see as the real competition — Ted Cruz. David Brock, one of Clinton’s most important allies and fundraisers, is preparing a campaign against the Texas conservative that will attack his character as well as his policy positions....

A month ago, Bernie Sanders tried to square a circle by claiming a political affiliation heretofore unnamed in the US. When pressed whether he supported capitalism at all or stuck to his Socialist affiliation, Sanders proclaimed himself a Democratic Socialist. When asked to explain what that means, Sanders offers only fuzzy platitudes and class-warfare sloganeering, but no ideological or economic details. When repeatedly asked how he will pay for his $18 trillion Democratic Socialist agenda, he grows even fuzzier, but promised to offer a detailed explanation in the near future. He’s still looking for an explanation …. or enough OPM...