Disgruntled forces in US society will coalesce around Trump, says Theda Skocpol

Boris Johnson has come under fire over his attack on the “part-Kenyan” president Barack Obama.

The GOP’s leading candidates for the US presidential nomination are the equally despised authoritarian billionaire Donald Trump and religious zealot Ted Cruz, says Bette Browne

Robert O. Paxton says we should not stick old epithets on those we disagree with, as it absolves us of the responsibility of thinking up new and more suitable labels

The leader of the US House of Representatives, speaker John Boehner, will resign from Congress at the end of October.

Francis urges US to embrace ‘the stranger in our midst’ at Congress

Gender quotas will see more female election candidates in the field but not necessarily in the Dáil and the woman who spearheaded the policy, Joan Burton, could lose out in the capital’s battle royale, writes Shaun Connolly

Bill Schneider thinks that Donald Trump needs to annex the Republican party to win

Donald Trump is ploughing millions of his own dollars into his campaign, but his party is still unsure whether he’s the ace — or the joker — in the pack, writes Bette Browne

Democrat and Republican US presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are constantly sniping at one another and benefitting as a result, says Bette Browne  

The Central American crisis is another spanner in the works for the 11m illegal immigrants in the US, including some 55,000 of whom are Irish, hoping for a path to citizenship.

US House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia lost to a Tea Party challenger in a stunning Republican primary upset that sent shockwaves through Congress and gave the conservative movement a landmark victory.

IRISH-AMERICAN leaders are mounting a last-ditch effort as St Patrick’s Day approaches to win Republican support for immigration reform that would benefit thousands of Irish illegals across the United States.

The risk of a lurch to the right in May’s European elections is vexing global chief executives, who worry the vote will make the bloc harder to govern just as they want it to reform.

US politicians in both houses of Congress have been trying to agree separate plans to reopen the government and avoid a federal financial default that could tip the global economy back into recession.

Republicans and Democrats have hit an impasse in the US senate over spending in their last-ditch struggle to avoid a debt default in just four days and end a partial government shutdown that enters its third week.

Before we begin, let it be said that the looming possibility of the US’s default on its own debt is a not-insignificant issue.

WOULD we even notice if the Irish government shut down?

The US government was on the brink of shutting down last night after the House of Representatives approved a Republican bill seeking to delay President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Over the last decade we have witnessed the results of effectively giving unfettered power to particular groups in the economy and how society as a whole is the worse for the experience.

The Bush family, which has already produced two US presidents, is at odds over whether there should be a third — former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

The 11th-hour US compromise deal satisfied few people fully and saw a vital vote on a $60bn aid package for Sandy victims delayed, giving an outraged Governor Chris Christie a chance to take centre stage, writes Kyran Fitzgerald

Stagnation over the US budget in Congress will have far-reaching consequences, writes Anne-Marie Slaughter

The election of Barack Obama for a second term as US president is, like a curate’s egg, a mixed blessing.

Republicans have lost two seats in the Senate, boosting Democratic prospects for keeping control of the upper chamber.

The female vote will be a huge factor in the US presidential election. Has the tone of the gender debate swung it far enough in President Obama’s direction? John Riordan reports

MITT Romney did what he needed to do in last week’s US presidential debate.

ORDINARILY, it’s fun to watch politicians squirm, but when they’re reeling and writhing, in a desperate attempt to evade responsibility for actually doing the bare minimum required as part of their jobs, it gets quite tiresome.

As the gold-dust settles on one four-year cycle — the London Olympiad — another — the American presidential race — intensifies as its Nov 6 day-of-reckoning approaches.

Mitt Romney is turning away from his primary opponents and towards Democratic President Barack Obama after sweeping three more Republican contests.

MITT Romney, the frontrunner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, is promising Americans deep spending cuts, smaller government, trade penalties on China, a new Federal Reserve chairman and sweeping deregulation.

FIRST of all, it was driving on a deflated tyre which produced a blow-out that tried to do her in, and now it is the fault of anti-Roman Catholic Church voters who misunderstood her.

THE announcement by Sarah Palin that she will not seek the Republican nomination to challenge President Barack Obama in America’s presidential election next year, will provoke relief and disappointment in equal measure.

VETERAN senator Labhrás Ó Murchú is no stranger to controversy and his last -minute bid for the Áras has split opinion once again.

SARAH PALIN’S husband jumped to her defence yesterday after an upcoming book claimed the Republican snorted cocaine off an oil drum and had a pre-marital fling with an African-American basketball star.

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama faces a long re-election campaign, having all but given up on the economy rebounding in any meaningful way before November 2012.

TEA PARTY conservatives scored their biggest political triumph with a debt-ceiling deal that cuts federal spending, but their tactics could risk a voter backlash in the 2012 elections.

THE influence of the fundamentalist Tea Party on the current budgetary impasse in the US cannot be understated and has the potential to plunge the world economy into further chaos.

The US Congress remained dangerously split today in the face of an unprecedented American default on its debt in just six days, as Republicans clashed with Democrats - and with each other - over raising the federal cap on borrowing.

DURING the four decades since the Watergate affair engulfed US president Richard Nixon, politicians have repeatedly ignored the scandal’s main lesson: the cover-up is worse than the crime. Like Nixon, they have paid a higher price for concealing their misdeeds than they would have for the misdeeds alone.