Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Trump Will Never Escape the I Word
“The White House in Crisis” blares the afternoon banner on CNN. The visiting Finnish president is treated to a trademark Donald Trump tirade against the press. A mysterious manila envelope is delivered to Capitol Hill and the United States’s former special envoy to Ukraine testifies behind closed doors.The House impeachment inquiry is...
Radio Atlantic: Understanding the Whisteblower
Subscribe to Radio Atlantic: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher (How to Listen)Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan says the decision she made to back an impeachment inquiry reminds her of when she worked at the Pentagon toward the end of the Obama administration, urging that American troops be sent into Iraq to contain ISIS.“If I came home...
The Atlantic Politics Daily: Dirt Doesn’t Vote
Comments or questions? Send us an email anytime. Were you forwarded this email? Sign yourself up here. We appreciate your continued support for our journalism. Today in Politics(Brian Snyder / Reuters)Quick, picture a map of the 2016 presidential election. You may be thinking of an Electoral College map, with each state shaded red or blue.Though...
The Story Behind the One Word Trump Won’t Say
We have, apparently, found a word that President Donald Trump simply will not say: jockstrap.In the midst of a rant against House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, delivered in front of reporters at a press availability yesterday with the president of Finland, Trump displayed a peculiar case of what linguists call “taboo...
The U.S. Government Has a Secrecy Problem
That the U.S. government has a problem with classifying information—the process of identifying and protecting documents and discussions that must be kept secret to preserve national security—was established long before President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal returned the subject to the headlines.Eight blue-ribbon U.S. government...
The Mad King’s Enablers
This morning, President Donald Trump committed an impeachable offense on camera.Responding to questioning from reporters about his effort to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to launch an investigation into one of his Democratic rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump reiterated his demand that Ukraine “start a major...
The White House Lawyer Who Is Ready to Fight
Pat Cipollone had been working as White House counsel for just two months when his boss issued his first performance review. During a private ceremony in the Oval Office, Donald Trump was walking around the room, shaking hands, when he stopped and greeted Cipollone and his former law partner Tom Yannucci. Cipollone introduced his old friend and...
What to Do if Congress Can’t Get More Information
Since the Democrats gained control of the House, the Trump administration has taken the most extreme position on congressional oversight in American history: In essence, it has argued that no demand from Congress, for information about anything, to anyone in the executive branch, is binding on the president. While many presidents have struggled...
All the President’s Conspiracy Theories
If Donald Trump and his supporters weren’t so fond of conspiracy theories, the Ukraine scandal would never have unfolded as it did. In a now infamous July 25 phone call, Trump pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look for evidence that the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike had hidden the Democratic National Committee’s server...
Democrats Must Act Now to Deter Foreign Interference in the 2020 Election
Democrats face a national-security problem without parallel in the annals of American democracy. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has made clear not only that he will remain passive in the face of foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. election—a threat his current and former directors of national intelligence have called the most...