Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Trump’s True Relationship With Russia Has Never Been Revealed
Getty / Arsh Raziuddin / The AtlanticFate offered Peter Strzok a place in history that he never sought. The son of an Army officer, Strzok also served in the United States military before joining the FBI’s counterintelligence operation in 1996. He excelled at his job: In 2001, he was part of the team that tracked and arrested a network of...
Read Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ‘Women’s Rights’ Speech From 1995
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered the following address to the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing, 25 years ago. Then the first lady of the United States, Clinton famously declared that “women’s rights are human rights,” while criticizing the Chinese government’s coercive...
Trump Has a Different Definition of Corruption
On Wednesday, in response to criticism that Donald Trump and other administration officials violated federal law by using government resources at the Republican National Convention, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows declared, “Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares. They expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values.”If...
Trump Is Flaunting His Impunity
Incumbent presidents have two goals for their renomination convention: Show voters what they’ve achieved in their first four years, and tell them what they want to do with another four.Donald Trump and his Republican Party have skipped the second part—the president has repeatedly whiffed on articulating a second-term agenda, and the...
The Republican National Coronation
In a normal presidency, this would be a week spent wooing that elusive band of independent voters, unspooling new policy ideas, or putting forward a message that caters to some part of the electorate beyond the loyalists hell-bent on voting for Donald Trump no matter what.That’s the convention Trump needs, but not the one he wants. What the...
Russiagate Was Not a Hoax
Rereading the Mueller report more than a year after its publication is an exercise in disappointment. One gets the feeling that Robert Mueller didn’t press his inquiry to its end. Instead of settling the questions that haunt the 2016 campaign, he left them dangling, publishing a stilted document riddled with insinuation and lacunae. He...
Just How Far Will Trump Go?
President Donald Trump’s open admission yesterday that he’s sabotaging the Postal Service to improve his election prospects crystallizes a much larger dynamic: He’s waging an unprecedented campaign to weaponize virtually every component of the federal government to partisan advantage.From the Postal Service to the Census Bureau,...
Forest Fires Are Setting Chernobyl’s Radiation Free
In the clear, calm, early hours of May 15, 2003, three miles west of the hulking ruins of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Vasyl Yoschenko was bustling around a stand of Scotch pines planted 30 years earlier. The trees were spindly and closely spaced, but he was skinny enough to move easily among them, taking samples of biomass and litter. Just...
How to Beat Populists When the Facts Don’t Matter
A few weeks ago, I went to a political rally in a farmyard. The Polish presidential candidate Rafał Trzaskowski was speaking; in the background, a golden wheat field shimmered in the late-afternoon sun. The audience was enthusiastic—the host, a local farmer, had spread news of the candidate’s visit only the day before—but the juxtaposition...
China Has Squandered Its First Great Opportunity
Foreign-policy observers have long debated: What if Beijing were handed a golden opportunity to strut on the world stage, absent a more powerful United States? Would it seize the opportunity, acting for the good of all and convincing the globe of its peaceful intentions? Or would it pursue a cramped vision of national interest? The world has...
