29 June 2017

How to Deal With North Korea

There are no good options. But some are worse than others.


Watergate Fueled Conspiracy Theories, Too

Both today and back in the 1970s, defenders of the president wove wacky tales to explain away wrongdoing. And the myths just kept going.

David Greenberg

21 June 2017

This profile of Trump's budget director has an unintentionally revealing anecdote

Mulvaney was a US representative for South Carolina for nearly six years before being appointed to the Trump administration and calls himself a “policy wonk and government junkie.” Just not a jobs data junkie, perhaps.

Tara Golshan


We’re Not Even In Kansas Anymore

But what we’re getting instead is a raw exercise of political power: the GOP is trying to take away health care from millions and hand the savings to the wealthy simply because it can, without even a fig leaf of intellectual justification.

Paul Krugman

20 June 2017

A tweet from Trump’s legal team shows he doesn’t understand what being president is about

Trump, in short, ran the public company as if it were for his private benefit. And his legal team seems to think it’s okay for him to run the American government in the same way.

Matthew Yglesias


Watching the Detectives

As the Waldorf Astoria transforms into posh condos, there’s one luxury amenity it’s unlikely to get back: its intrepid in-house sleuths.

Katrina Gulliver


15 June 2017

Trump Can Commit All the High Crimes He Wants. Republicans Aren’t Going to Impeach Him.

The conservative movement takeover of the Republican Party began in the 1960s and took decades to complete. Conservatives still have not lost their sense of being an insurgent movement that might at any moment be betrayed by the party Establishment. Conservatives think of their role as quasi-independent, but they also imagine it as focusing exclusively on enforcing fealty to their doctrine by politicians who might otherwise be inclined to wander. The scenario they are built to fight against is the Republican president who colludes with Democrats, not one who colludes with foreign dictators. If the president is fighting against the opposition party, they assume he is acting correctly. Conservative organs like National Review originally viewed Richard Nixon with hostility, and — perverse as it may sound — came to his defense because of Watergate.


07 June 2017