Tag: former president
Don’t Call the F.B.I. Search of Trump’s Home a Raid
Two days after FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, details about the underlying investigation are still scarce. News reports suggest that it is connected to concerns around presidential record-keeping—that Trump White House documents that should have been in the hands of a professional archivist somehow ended up on vacation at the former president’s Florida home.
No search warrant has been made public yet (though many were quick to point out on Twitter that the former president’s team could
Does the Jason Kander Story Have a Third Act?
There’s a saying, though it’s more of a whisper, that politicians are damaged people. That those who run for office have a pathological need for validation, that they’re willing to go to obscene lengths to get attention, even if it means putting themselves or their family at risk. Jason Kander is ready to admit that all of this is true.
You may remember Kander as the Millennial Afghanistan veteran who emerged on the national stage just under a
How Britain Wants to Rebuild the World
With Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces bogged down in Ukraine, apparently unable to defeat one of the poorest nations in Europe, and China locking up millions of people in a seemingly never-ending battle to contain COVID-19, the once-ubiquitous idea of inevitable Western decline has suddenly been called into question. Out of nowhere, the free world once again stands for something, and is even showing signs of shaking itself out of its decades-long torpor.
That, at least, is the message
How the Last Establishment Republican Survived Trump
On the afternoon of March 3, 2020, Governor Mike DeWine stepped to a lectern inside the Ohio statehouse to announce his most difficult pandemic decision. Ohio, the governor announced, would bar most spectators from the upcoming Arnold Classic, a bodybuilding and fitness festival hosted annually by Arnold Schwarzenegger that draws a quarter of a million people from 80 countries to Ohio’s capital city. “Everything in life is a risk,” DeWine said. “We all make calculated decisions. We don’t eliminate
Executive Privilege Doesn’t Have to Be Lawless
In a decision late yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump had no power to assert executive privilege to prevent the National Archives from turning over hundreds of pages of documents to the House committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021. The Court was right to do so; executive privilege permits a president to withhold information only when disclosure would harm the public interest. But Trump is not president, and thus has no authority to act
Why the January 6 Investigation Is Weirdly Static
It was almost a year ago that rioters forced their way into the United States Capitol, smashing windows, threatening the lives of Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress, and aiming to overturn the results of a democratic election in order to keep Donald Trump in power. In the intervening months, the Justice Department has filed charges against more than 680 people out of the “approximately 2000” whom the FBI estimates were involved in the attack. Meanwhile, the House
The Michigan Republican Who Decided to Tell the Truth
VULCAN, Michigan—Right around the time Donald Trump was flexing his conspiratorial muscles on Saturday night, recycling old ruses and inventing new boogeymen in his first public speech since inciting a siege of the U.S. Capitol in January, a dairy farmer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula sat down to supper. It had been a trying day.
The farmer, Ed McBroom, battled sidewinding rain while working his 320 acres, loading feed and breeding livestock and at one point delivering a distressed calf backwards
There’s No Good Way to Protect the Presidency Anymore
When President Joe Biden announced in the weeks before his inauguration that he was committed to reestablishing an independent Justice Department, he didn’t say that it was going to be easy. During the first few months of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s tenure, the department has sparked ire among its critics on the left—and prompted annoyed statements from the White House—by taking a series of positions that seem, to some, uncomfortably close to the aggressive approaches staked out by the Trump