Washington

Allen Abel: In declaring a national emergency, the president veers from impromptu slam poetry to claiming he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. But, hey America, everything’s okay.

Adnan R. Khan: Politicians chant ’U.S.A.!’ But the reality is plain: average education, poor health care and infrastructure, average incomes, moderate happiness.

Allen Abel: If the state of the union is so happy and prosperous, why are the country’s politics so angry and noxious? Answer: the man at the rostrum.

Trump will deliver his second State of the Union address, this time with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over his shoulder. Watch it here.

Back as House Speaker after several years fighting a Republican majority, Pelosi has found her new political mission

Image of the week: A close advisor to Donald Trump, and a self-professed ’dirty trickster’, Stone was the latest to be swept up in the Mueller investigation

Will it last, asks Allen Abel, or will Trump use the last bullet in his revolver to shoot himself in the foot?

Andray Domise: A person openly signals kinship with Donald Trump when they put on that garish red hat in public—Trump, who once referred to African nations as ’shithole countries’

Republicans and Dems both claim to sympathize, but the bureaucrats aren’t hungry enough for either side to stand down

Adnan R. Khan: If the president’s wildly uninformed decision about Syria is the new norm for U.S. foreign policy, the world is in for a rough ride