Houston

After #MeToo, state legislatures make changes

After the #MeToo movement picked up steam in late 2017, dozens of politicians faced sexual misconduct allegations. Statehouses promised change. In early January, three-quarters of state legislative chambers were considering or had implemented changes to their own sexual misconduct policies.

He’s no saint – but Roger Stone insists he’s innocent of Russia collusion

Roger Stone has spent a lifetime cultivating a reputation as a political street fighter of the first order – a no-holds-barred conservative campaign operative fluent in the dark arts of electoral persuasion and deception. This is a rough-and-tumble game,” Mr. Stone told the Monitor during a wide-ranging, two-hour interview at his home here. In perhaps his most ambitious project, Stone began working as far back as 1988 to convince a flashy, combative New York City real estate developer and eventual reality TV star to run for president of the United States.

Would US quitting the INF treaty rekindle a big-power arms race?

An administration with little love for treaties and the limits they place on the exercise of American power is about to scrap another one – this time the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. President Trump told a campaign rally over the weekend that he intends to pull the United States out of what is known simply as the INF treaty, and this week he has dispatched his national security adviser, John Bolton, to Moscow to inform Russian President Vladimir Putin of the US decision. Spurred on by Mr. Bolton – the preeminent hawk in the White House and a longtime critic of the treaty signed with Russia in 1987 – Trump says he’ll withdraw from what he considers another bad international deal for the US, one he and arms control experts agree Russia has been violating for years.

Why a nuclear-arms pact can save Europe

On Sunday, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, asked President Trump to drop his recent call for the United States to leave a nuclear arms treaty that Mr. Gorbachev himself negotiated with President Ronald Reagan in 1987. The pact, which is called the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, has helped keep a relative peace in Europe for more than three decades. It also reflects a growing sentiment among Russians that they can find a home within Europe rather than remain divided over issues such as nuclear threats, the Ukraine conflict, and spy scandals.