Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Why the 2020s Could Be as Dangerous as the 1850s
If Joe Biden beats Donald Trump decisively next week, this election may be remembered as a hinge point in American history: the moment when a clear majority of voters acknowledged that there’s no turning back from America’s transformation into a nation of kaleidoscopic diversity, a future that doesn’t rely on a backward-facing...
The Raw Desperation of the Republican Party
I doubted that Mitch McConnell could do it, but he did. With only a week remaining before Election Day, McConnell crammed through the confirmation of a sixth conservative justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. The people who tally such things reckon that Amy Coney Barrett is the first justice since 1869 to receive not a single vote from the minority...
The Press Is Giving Trump a Free Pass, Again
You can teach old journalists the occasional new trick, but two? Forget it.The 2016 election persuaded the press to avoid publicly presuming that Donald Trump will lose and the Democrat will win. The very cautious news coverage about Joe Biden’s chances, despite his formidable advantage in polls, makes this plain.But even though reporters...
The Internet Speaks American
LONDON—Sharing the internet with America is like sharing your living room with a rhinoceros. It’s huge, it’s right there, and whatever it’s doing now, you sure as hell know about it.This month, Twitter announced that it would restrict retweets for a few weeks, and prompt its users to reconsider sharing content which has been...
The Smears Against Biden Don’t Need to Make Any Sense
On Tuesday, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham broke some news: An “investigative journalist” named Matthew Tyrmand had uncovered a cache of 26,000 emails belonging to Hunter Biden’s disgraced business partner Bevan Cooney, who is now in jail. Tyrmand claimed that he had gotten hold of the emails via a person in the same facility as Cooney (a...
Trump Is Betting His Reelection on Ginning Up an Investigation
Donald Trump is trying to run his favorite play one more time: spreading unverified but salacious accusations, demanding that they be investigated, and then using the fact of the investigation to convince the public that something must be wrong. The biggest unanswered question of this election, with just 11 days to go, is whether he can pull it...
The Politicization of the State Department Is Almost Complete
I worked at the State Department for nearly four decades, in the later years as a four-time ambassador overseas and as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. I have watched as Pompeo and his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, have weaponized the institution for the Trump administration’s domestic political objectives. On October 9,...
L’état C’est Trump
Although arrogant men have often occupied the Oval Office, the nation has never suffered a presidential ego quite so expansive as Donald Trump’s. In his mind, he is the state, his interests indistinguishable from those of the nation. When Trump looks at the federal bureaucracy, he sees hired help.Endless examples capture this selfish view...
Trump Has Nothing Else Up His Sleeve
When voters say they want politicians to run the government like a business, they should stipulate which business. Surely not the Trump Organization. A blockbuster New York Times report yesterday suggests that either the president’s real-estate empire is a boondoggle that’s losing millions of dollars a year, or it’s a massive...
Can Foreign Powers Help the Belarus Prodemocracy Movement Without Undermining It?
When Alexander Lukashenko began to face the biggest challenge yet to his 26-year rule of Belarus, he attributed it to only one thing: Western meddling.“We have managed to take steps to anticipate and thwart a major plan to destabilize Belarus,” the longtime president said in the run-up to last month’s disputed elections. “The masks have...
