TRB is the ghostwriter name used by the editorial "leader

Editorial

An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...

" of The New Republic

The New Republic

The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

magazine.

The writer most identified as being TRB is Richard Strout

Richard Strout

Richard Strout was an American journalist and commentator. He was national correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor from 1923 and wrote The New Republic's "TRB from Washington" column from 1943 to 1983....

, who wrote TRB's column from 1943 to 1983. Other TRB columnists include Michael Kinsley

Michael Kinsley

Michael Kinsley is an American political journalist, commentator, television host, and pundit. Primarily active in print media as both a writer and editor, he also became known to television audiences as a co-host on Crossfire...

, Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Michael Sullivan is an English author, editor, political commentator and blogger. He describes himself as a political conservative. He has focused on American political life....

, Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart

-Early life and education:Beinart was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of South African immigrants. His mother, Doreen, works at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and his father, Julian Beinart, is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His stepfather is theatre...

, and Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait is a writer for New York magazine. He was previously a senior editor at The New Republic and a former assistant editor of The American Prospect. He also writes a periodic column in the Los Angeles Times.- Personal life :...

. As of September 2011, Timothy Noah had taken over the position. It is also the pen name of a former Stars and Stripes reporter who writes on Cape Cod.

Richard Strout on the origin of the name "TRB":

Bruce Bliven invented that. They wanted it -- the magazine was published in New York at that time and they wanted an inside column from Washington, and they wouldn't have a name on it because they wanted to alternate it with various newspapermen. Frank Kent

Frank Kent

Frank Richardson Kent was an American journalist and political theorist of the 1920s and 1930s. Although a Democrat, by the 1930s he was one of the leading conservative critics of the New Deal of Franklin D...

 was the first one, so they decided they would put some initials on it, and they waited and waited and finally the composing room man came to them said, "You've got a half an hour to think what you are going to sign on it, the initials." And Bruce Bliven had just come over from Brooklyn on the Brooklyn Rapid Transit, BRT, so he just changed it around from BRT to TRB.

In 1923, Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company was acquired in bankruptcy court by Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation

Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation

The Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation was an urban transit holding company, based in Brooklyn, New York City, United States, and incorporated in 1923. The system was sold to the city in 1940 and today, together with the IND subway system, form the B Division of the New York City Subway...

(BMT), so by 1943 "BRT" was already 20 years obsolete.