Max’s best-selling biography of Ronald Reagan, Reagan: His Life and Legend, will be released in paperback on October 20. It was selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2024. You can purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore. Also please subscribe to Max’s Substack newsletter, The Long View.
The Senate’s Russia sanctions bill has two big problems
Its tariff proposals could affect other countries more than Russia.
By MAX BOOT
Washington Post
July 31, 2026
The Senate last week voted 86-12 to advance the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026, named after the late South Carolina Republican who co-authored the legislation. I’m a staunch supporter of Ukraine, and I have long argued for ramping up sanctions on Russia. But I don’t know whether to cheer or jeer as the bill nears passage. There are a lot of good provisions in the legislation but also two bad ones. It’s far from clear whether the good outweighs the bad, or vice versa.
Republican efforts to scapegoat Dr. Fauci for the Covid-19 pandemic are risible
By MAX BOOT
Substack
July 30, 2026
There are many appalling spectacles in Washington these days but, for sheer grotesquerie, it is hard to beat yesterday’s Senate hearings in which one Republican senator after another competed to see who could make the most far-fetched and offensive allegations against Dr. Anthony Fauci.
He is a true American hero who has been on the frontlines combatting every major epidemic since AIDS. Presidents of both parties once lined up to praise him. Yet Republicans want to make him out to be a criminal as part of their effort to scapegoat him for all the problems associated with Covid-19, a once-in-a-century pandemic.
