Tag: democratic process
In Defense of Partisanship – The Atlantic
My most vivid memories of my early years at sleepaway camp, when I was 10 and 11, focus on the bizarre institution of color war. The campers were divided randomly in half for a wide-ranging competition between teams defined around no common identity, status, experience, or prior allegiance—just pure partisan competition. For one entire day, half of my bunkmates and possibly one or both of my brothers would become the sworn opposition. Despite knowing these divisions were both temporary and
The Biggest Takeaway from the January 6 Report
The congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection delivered a comprehensive and compelling case for the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump and his closest allies for their attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
But the committee zoomed in so tightly on the culpability of Trump and his inner circle that it largely cropped out the dozens of other state and federal Republican officials who supported or enabled the president’s multifaceted, months-long plot. The committee downplayed the involvement of the legion
Is Gmail Silencing Republicans? – The Atlantic
It started as strange conflicts sometimes do: with a couple of older people telling their son that something is wrong with their shared email account. “My parents, who have a Gmail account, aren’t getting my campaign emails,” Representative Greg Steube of Florida told Google CEO Sundar Pichai in July 2020, during a congressional hearing that was ostensibly about antitrust law. “My question is, why is this only happening to Republicans?”
Though this exchange was widely regarded as goofy and kind
Barack Obama on Disinformation and Ukraine
When they last sat down for an interview, in November 2020, Barack Obama told Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg that disinformation is “the single biggest threat to our democracy.” The threat was not a new one, he said, but it was accelerating. It has continued to accelerate since. A month and a half after that conversation, a violent mob stormed the Capitol, driven by the false belief that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump and
The Supreme Court Has Neutered the Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act regime as we knew it is gone, and it’s not coming back.
Once thought of as the crown jewel of the Second Reconstruction, the VRA has lost its luster. For the past decade or so, the Supreme Court has systematically reduced the scope and reach of the law. The Court’s decision last week in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee is only the latest case, and certainly will not be the last, to interpret the act in