Section: The Atlantic (USA)
The World Putin Made
Illustration by Celina Pereira; BStU; Ulrich Hässler / Ullstein Bild / GettyIt was December 1989, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and in Dresden, crowds were gathering outside the headquarters of the Stasi, the East German secret police, shouting insults and demanding access. Nearby, frantic KGB officers—the Soviet advisers whom the Stasi had long...
Trump Is Putting On a Show in Portland
The very idea seems, on the face of it, sheer madness. In Portland, Oregon, federal security officers dressed for combat—wearing jungle-camouflage uniforms with unclear markings, carrying heavy weapons, using batons and tear gas—are patrolling the streets, making random arrests, throwing people into unmarked vans. The officers do not come from...
The Traditional Interpretation of the Pardon Power Is Wrong
When Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering, Judge Amy Berman Jackson concluded, “He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.” Stone was scheduled to be incarcerated on July...
Presidents Leave. Czars Stick Around.
American presidents customarily leave office when voters reject them. Czars, emperors, and would-be prime ministers for life do whatever they can to hold on to power. To extend his rule until 2026, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently held a referendum to amend his country’s constitution. While some Russians publicly opposed the...
Roger Stone’s Commutation Was Inevitable
Forget Bernie Kerik, Scooter Libby, Michael Milken—even Sheriff Joe Arpaio. This was the presidential reprieve President Donald Trump’s critics feared most.Trump’s move tonight to commute the sentence of his longtime associate Roger Stone, nearly five months after a federal judge sentenced him to more than three years in prison, was...
Trump Is Successfully Running Out the Clock
Fifty-five days ago, President Trump was supposed to file his annual personal financial disclosures, which give a broad snapshot of his money situation. The White House gave its employees 45 extra days to file the report, citing the coronavirus pandemic, making the new deadline June 29.That was 10 days ago, and Trump still hasn’t released...
A First Draft of a History-Textbook Entry for the Year 2020
History never ends. But history textbooks must. As deadlines for new editions loom, every textbook writer lurches to a sudden stop. The last chapter always ends in uncertainty: unfinished and unresolved. I’ve experienced this many times myself, as a co-author on several history textbooks.By now it seems clear that we are all living through...
Republicans Are Political Distancing From Trump
Donald Trump has never been much for encouraging social distancing. He might end up getting political distancing as a result.This week, five senators announced that they will skip the Republican National Convention in August. A Republican governor up for reelection said he wouldn’t attend a Trump rally in his state. And Senator Lindsey...
Trump’s Blank Vision for a Second Term
For a president who narrates his fleeting thoughts, Donald Trump has been conspicuously silent about one looming question: what he might do in a second term. There’s civic value, of course, in telling voters how he might dig out of the current economic calamity or end a pandemic that’s worsening by the day. But the emptiness of...
Trump Is Struggling to Run Against a White Guy
Eight months into Barack Obama’s first term as president, the right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, who was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump earlier this year, warned that Obama’s election had ushered in a dangerous inversion of power.“Obama’s America—white kids getting beat up on school buses...
