Section: New Republic (USA)
High Crimes
Article IIn his conduct while President of the United States, Donald Trump, in violation of his constitutional oath to execute faithfully the Office of President of the United States, has abused the office of the presidency by employing the powers of the office to advance his own political interests, rather than the interests of the nation, in...
Trump Has Squandered the Legacy of the Berlin Wall
Thirty years ago this weekend, a dour and rumpled East German apparatchik named Günter Schabowski faced a smattering of reporters and cameras for a press conference in East Berlin. Rifling confusedly through a sheaf of papers, Schabowski mumbled details about new travel stipulations for East Germans, hundreds of thousands of whom had recently...
The Republican Plot Against the Popular Will
Democracy’s central principle is that the people should decide their own future by electing their own leaders. A growing number of conservatives disagree. Take this week’s off-year elections, for example. Kentucky Republicans won five out of the six statewide races on Thursday. Steve Beshear, the Democratic candidate for governor, was...
Trump’s Impeachment Allies Are Staring Into The Void
Imagine, if you will, that you’re unlucky enough to be President Donald Trump’s lawyer. Sometime in the next few months, you’ll have to stand in front of the U.S. Senate—not just the chamber itself, but all one hundred senators, patiently sitting at their desks—and give a closing statement in your client’s impeachment...
The Vigilante President
President Donald Trump has often flaunted the brawn of his supporters, adding a baseline of menace to his increasingly embattled presidency. “Law enforcement, military, construction workers, Bikers for Trump … These are tough people,” he said at a 2018 campaign event in St. Louis, Missouri. “These are great people. But they’re...
The Political Corruption Legalized by the Supreme Court
When discussing corruption in the Trump era, it’s easy to focus on the most flagrant examples. The Trump Organization announced last week that it plans to sell its infamous D.C. hotel, which gave businesses and foreign governments seeking the White House’s favor a high-profile mechanism to funnel cash into the Trump family’s...
Keep American Skies Open to Russia
If you’re a nuclear superpower and you’re trying to convince the only other nuclear superpower that you’re not about to attack them, what can you do to build that trust? This was one key problem of the early Cold War, when both the United States and the Soviet Union were in effect learning what nuclear deterrence, competition,...
The Politics of Impeachment Have Reached the Point of No Return
The House’s vote to approve rules for the impeachment inquiry has not only taken us into a new stage of the House’s formal proceedings, but of impeachment politics themselves. Having gathered testimony and evidence from over a dozen witnesses, Democrats are now preparing to build the case for impeachment with public testimony before...
Trump’s Defenders Think We’re Idiots
For the past four weeks, I’ve been monitoring the evolving defenses put forth by President Trump’s allies. They began with flat-out denials of wrongdoing that didn’t survive casual brushes with scrutiny. Some of Trump’s defenders then tried to muddy the waters by normalizing corrupt quid pro quos and claiming that Trump...
Inside the World of Misinformation
For centuries information was scarce. The math was simple: The higher up the societal food chain you were, the better the information you had. And it could be explosive. Information made Microsoft and it brought down Richard Nixon. It helped us navigate the globe and it feeds the Facebook algorithm. But what happens to society when information...
