Section: The Atlantic (USA)
The Atlantic Politics Daily: Family Matters
It’s Friday, November 22. In today’s newsletter: what are the Democratic voters who made the trek to Capitol Hill for impeachment hearings thinking? Plus, the Medicare for All rallying cry.*” TODAY IN POLITICS »People wait in line to get into the hearing room ahead of former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony...
Trump’s Crime Against America
Over the past two weeks, a parade of sober and coldly furious civil servants have come forward to testify before Congress about President Trump’s decision to withhold congressionally approved aid to Ukraine.Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor emphasized that “the security assistance we provide is crucial to Ukraine’s...
Democrats Know Trump Isn’t Going Anywhere
The first sound that greeted me, rounding the corner outside the hearing room in the Longworth House Office Building, was the eerie echo of Representative Adam Schiff’s voice emanating from the several dozen cellphones blasting live-stream footage of the testimony going on inside.With the public phase of the impeachment inquiry starting...
The Atlantic Politics Daily: If Democrats Can’t Win Over Will Hurd
It’s Thursday, November 21. In today’s newsletter: What Joe Biden can’t bring himself to say. Plus, what about the moderate Republicans?*” SPECIAL PREVIEW »(Mark Peckmezian)Joe Biden’s seemingly never-ending series of verbal stumbles—most recently on display at Wednesday night’s Democratic debate—have led to...
A Reminder: Donald Trump Has Been Credibly Accused of Rape
To watch the public impeachment hearings of Donald Trump is to experience a very particular form of whiplash. The House inquiry has featured a series of small collisions, between Democrats and Republicans, yes, but also between accountability and its opposite. Here is a proceeding partly led by lawmakers who have, when it comes to the president,...
The First Impeachment Witness to Go After Republicans
Through four long days of impeachment hearings, witness after witness had sat passively by as Republican lawmakers responded to their detailed testimony by arguing that President Donald Trump had a legitimate reason to be suspicious of Ukraine because he believed the country “tried to take me down” in 2016.That silence from the witness table...
What We’re Talking About When We Talk About Military Aid to Ukraine
When Adam Schiff asked Bill Taylor, the first witness in the House’s public impeachment hearings, to explain to Americans why U.S. security assistance to Ukraine matters for their own security, America’s top diplomat in Kyiv went big. Really big.“It affects the world that we live in, that our children will grow up in and our...
Bribery Is Right There in the Constitution
The word bribery is suddenly at the center of the House’s impeachment inquiry. Last week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi accused President Donald Trump of bribery when he offered “to grant or withhold military assistance” in exchange for a public statement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about pursuing investigations related to...
Trump’s War on Expertise Is Only Intensifying
In the fierce struggle over impeachment, Donald Trump and his Republican defenders are escalating their war on expertise.As an array of career diplomatic and military officials offer damning testimony against Trump—a procession that will continue today with the appearance of former National Security Council adviser Fiona Hill—the GOP is reprising...
What’s Driving Apolitical Diplomats to Get Political
Battered by haphazard decisions and neglect, the State Department has seen a mass exodus of diplomats during the Trump administration. Now some former diplomats are so worried about what another Trump term would mean—further erosion of alliances, more loss of credibility with friends and foes alike—that they are for the first time taking their...
