We Can’t Curb the Presidency Without Fixing Congress

“The constitutional Presidency … has become the imperial Presidency.” The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. delivered that complaint in 1973,...

Democracy Is the Only Solution

Impeachment Did Not Prevail, But Trump Still Lost

The Incompetence Lasted to the Very End

Trumpism Is Violence

There Is No Defense—Only Complicity

Trump’s Lawyers Lost the Day

Impeachment Is Working—Just Not as the Framers Expected

The Night of the Rubber Knives

Swamp Thing

Conservatism Reaches a Dead End

Remove Trump Tonight

Trump Crosses a Bright Red Line

Is America Still the ‘Shining City on a Hill’?

The Truth Is Our Only Defense Against Trump

How Long Can This Continue?

13 Things Trump Got Right

Trump Pardoned Flynn to Save Himself

Here’s the first and most important thing to understand about the crime for which President Trump just pardoned former National Security Adviser...

McConnell’s First Act of Sabotage

Sixteen months ago, in the pre-coronavirus summer of 2019, President Donald Trump announced his candidates to fill two vacancies on the Federal...

There Is No Trumpism Without Trump

In the November issue of The Atlantic, Barton Gellman reported that Republican legislators in Pennsylvania were quietly discussing a seemingly mad...

The American System Is Broken

Americans woke up today to an even more destabilized reality, one shadowed by dangerous uncertainties. The United States has lived through the largest...

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...

Trump Doesn’t Care

You’re losing. You’re losing bad. You’re out of money. Your ads are coming off the air in must-win states. Here it is, the last chance to speak...

How to Defend Against a Lame-Duck Trump

The polls are grim for President Donald Trump. His campaign faces a big and worsening money disadvantage. His closing arguments appeal only to the...

The Final Season of the Trump Show

In a nightmare alternate universe, Americans find hope by viewing films from a different dimension where life unfolds as normal. That’s the plot of...

The Man Who Pretended Not to Notice

“It’s a visual medium.” So often said the late Roger Ailes about television. He said it to justify hiring women who looked a certain way and...

Americans Need to Know Who’s Running the Country

On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot as he entered his limousine after a speech at a Washington hotel. Reagan’s condition soon...

What Did You Expect?

There is a great deal you have every right to expect at this moment of crisis, and no reason at all to believe that Donald Trump or his White House...

Trump’s Theory of the Debate Was All Wrong

President Trump arrived at the first debate with a theory and a plan. The theory was that American voters crave dominance, no matter how belligerent...

Trump Is Just Another Moocher

This matters. Remember: Back in 2015, when Donald Trump announced his campaign for president, about one-third of Republicans and Republican-leaners...

Disclosure Doesn’t Work on a Shameless President

Again and again, President Donald Trump has violated, evaded, or ignored the law. The Constitution says a president cannot accept payments from...

Four Reasons to Doubt Mitch McConnell’s Power

To use power, you must have it. On the night of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that a Trump...

Trump Made a Bad Bargain With Woodward

A Bob Woodward book is a record of a sequence of transactions. In exchange for access and information, Woodward offers Washington power holders the...

Everyone Knows It’s True

Donald Trump generates a lot of noise. He talks. He tweets. He is echoed and amplified by a vast claque, on TV and online, made up of Americans and...

I Crossed Back Into a State of Denial

On the Fourth of July, I drove across the border from the United States into Canada. Two months later, I drove the other way. Both times, I crossed at...

Trump Is a Secessionist From the Top

President Trump read a boring speech badly last night. The long recitation was punctuated by odd comprehension errors. At one point, “walled-off...

The Lie at the Heart of Melania’s Speech

In order to fill the White House Rose Garden for Melania Trump’s Tuesday night speech, COVID-19 safety procedures were ignored. Attendees did not...

The Platform the GOP Is Too Scared to Publish

Republicans have decided not to publish a party platform for 2020. This omission has led some to conclude that the GOP lacks ideas, that it stands for...

Democrats Nail the COVID Convention

Richard Nixon pulled the American political convention into the television era. COVID-19 has pulled the convention into the social-media era. Before...