Jim Antle, the magazine’s executive editor, brings to life the pages of the Washington Examiner magazine in the show Inside Scoop. Each episode features exclusive insight from the article authors and expert analysis.
Jim Antle gives his take on Peter Laffin’s article asking whether Secretary of State Marco Rubio should consider a serious run for president.
“On the Republican side, the assumption is Vice President JD Vance is the overwhelming front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination,” Antle said.
But after Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, many people started talking about whether Rubio might be a better representative for the Republican Party in 2028. Antle says Democrats suffered from not battle-testing former Vice President Kamala Harris in a primary.
“Would it be better, even if Vance ultimately ends up being the nominee, to have real competition?” Antle asks. “The president is going to have a lot to say about who his successor might be, and he does keep raising Vance and Rubio, or some combination thereof, as a good ticket to replace him.”
Washington Examiner’s Editorial Director Hugo Gurdon and Antle discuss the possible transformation of the Middle East following the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran. Gurdon highlights Israel and President Donald Trump‘s goal of neutralizing Iran’s threats, including its nuclear program and missiles.
“President Trump, in first announcing the attacks, called on the Iranians, after the bombing campaign is over, to take control of their own government,” Gurdon said. “The question is, what comes afterwards? Most people would think it can’t get much worse than a regime which has had ‘death to America’ as its principal guiding light or slogan for all this time.”
Gurdon believes Iran’s attacks on the moderate Arab Gulf nations will encourage other Arab countries to join the Abraham Accords and allow the U.S.’s involvement in the conflict to be short-term.
“Is this war one which will end or diminish America’s need constantly to go back into the Middle East, or is it one which actually just gets us bogged down?” Gurdon asked. “[If] Arab countries and Israel will establish a sort of a different kind of Middle East, not so dominated by the Islamists, which would allow America to turn its attention to other fields, such as its confrontation with China.”
Next in the show, Antle sits down with Washington Examiner’s Commentary Editor Conn Carroll to discuss the article he wrote about comparing and contrasting two major blue cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Carroll explains how San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has taken the city down a more conservative path, despite being a Democrat.
“It has translated San Francisco into increased tourism, decreased crime, decreased homelessness, decreased vacancies throughout the city’s storefronts,” Carroll said. “When [Lurie] came into office, he said, ‘We’re not going to tolerate open air drug markets. We’re not going to tolerate tent cities.’ And he is taking them down. They are now prosecuting people who break into cars. Things that past administrations just let slide.”
Carroll explains why he believes Karen Bass is not making as much progress in Los Angeles.
“Karen Bass is a machine politician who is controlled by government unions,” Carroll said. “Because of that, she is just not able to make the reforms that Lurie is able to come in and do because she is beholden to these power interests in Los Angeles.”
Our in-depth report this week, by Jay Cost, explains how the Supreme Court’s tariffs ruling can reveal a lot about judicial power.
In February, a 6-3 Supreme Court decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, struck down a wide array of tariffs Trump imposed last spring.
“This case confronts not just a question of executive power, but judicial power,” Cost said. “Is a fight like this really the proper domain of the Supreme Court?“
Cost says in Federalist 51, James Madison does not mention the court directly. Instead, Madison explains checks and balances as granting the executive and legislative branches “the means and motives to resist the encroachments of the others.”
“From this perspective, the court really has no role to play,” Cost said. “The two branches work out their relationship, and if one breaches trust, the other can respond.”
Tune in each week at washingtonexaminer.com and across all of our social media platforms to go behind the headlines in the Washington Examiner’s magazine show, Inside Scoop.
