Tag: nation’s capital
D.C.’s Crime Problem Is a Democracy Problem
Matthew Graves is not shy about promoting his success in prosecuting those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. By his count, Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has charged more than 1,358 individuals, spread across nearly all 50 states and Washington, D.C., for assaulting police, destroying federal property, and other crimes. He issues a press release for most cases, and he held a rare news conference this past January to tout his achievements.
Uncancel Woodrow Wilson – The Atlantic
February marks a century since the death of Woodrow Wilson. Of all America’s presidents, none has suffered so rapid and total a reversal of reputation.
Wilson championed—and came to symbolize—progressive reform at home and liberal internationalism abroad. So long as those causes commanded wide support, Wilson’s name resonated with the greats of American history. In our time, however, the American left has subordinated the causes of reform and internationalism to the politics of identity, while the American right has rejected
Finding My Family in the Freedmen’s Bureau Archives
In all my years doing research at the National Archives, I had never cried. That day in fall 2012, I had simply planned to examine documentary material that might help determine how the yet-to-be-built National Museum of African American History and Culture would explore and present the complicated history of American slavery and freedom.
As I read through the papers of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands—the Freedmen’s Bureau, as it’s usually called—I decided to see if
Trump Will Abuse the Presidency to End His Legal Troubles
If, as seems likely, Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee next year, the 2024 elections will be a referendum on several crucial issues: the prospect of authoritarianism in America, the continuation of a vibrant democracy, the relationship between the executive branch and the other two branches of government, and much else of grave significance.
It will also be a referendum on whether Trump will ever be held legally accountable for his actions. Trump faces multiple civil suits and at
The Most Haunting Truth of Parenthood
Do we ever really understand our parents? Certainly not when we’re children. If we’re lucky, we begin to understand them later. We might one day realize, for example, that they carried burdens we couldn’t see. Sometimes I wonder if I might have learned something important about what was to come in adulthood had I been paying closer attention when I was little, but no, I couldn’t have related then. It is only in recent years, when the most maddening, haunting