IT WAS a “big win” tweeted Donald Trump on April 25th, as he congratulated the Republican winner of a special congressional election in Arizona’s eighth district. And yet, he complained: “Press is so silent”. Neither of these claims was true.

IN THE words of Herbert Stein, chairman of Richard Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisors, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” The uncertainty over Ronny Jackson’s future could not go on forever.

ON APRIL 24th, Donald Trump suffered a third setback to his effort to undo Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The programme, introduced by Barack Obama in 2012, shields undocumented immigrants brought to America as children from deportation.

ORAL arguments at the Supreme Court often make for excellent theatre: an hour of well-prepared lawyers clashing over an issue fundamental to American democracy, lashed by questions from merciless justices sitting a few feet away.

IN CASE anyone should think American white evangelicals are actually in favour of extra-marital affairs with porn stars, Robert Jeffress, a well-known pastor from Texas, offered a helpful explainer last month. “Evangelicals still believe in the commandment, Thou shall not have sex with a porn star”, he told Fox News.

THE Democratic wave that propelled the party to surprise victories in special elections in Alabama and Pennsylvania seems unlikely to reach Arizona’s eighth congressional district.

BILLIONS of dollars and long-standing interstate e-commerce rules are at stake in a case that came before the justices on April 17th. The case revisits an old Supreme Court rule that retailers shipping goods to states where they have no physical presence cannot be forced to collect sales tax from their customers.

IN A televised interview on April 15th, James Comey tore into the president who sacked him as FBI director last year.

IN 1986, “American Women in Transition”, a study by the Russell Sage Foundation, described the vast changes then afoot in American society.

ON THE morning of April 10th, a day after the FBI raided the office and home of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump declared on Twitter: “Attorney-client privilege is dead!” Moments later he tweeted, “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!” It is true that communications between a lawyer and client are ordinarily protected from t…