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. But Graves’s record of bringing violent criminals to justice on the…

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MoveOn: No Labels’ “Shameful” Decision to Move Forward With Reckless Third-Party Bid Puts Democracy and Our Freedoms at Risk

Dark-money, Trump donor-funded No Labels Commits to Run Third-Party Presidential Ticket That Would Help Donald Trump Win a Second White House Term This November Washington, D.C. – In response to news that No Labels has officially decided to move forward with a reckless third-party presidential ticket that will help Donald Trump get reelected, MoveOn Political Action Executive Director Rahna Epting released the following statement: “The consequences of the next presidential election could not be more serious or more existential, and, despite this, No Labels has put their dangerous, reckless thought…

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Bureaucracy Reform: Presidential Power Struggle or Democracy Boost?

The presidential election is a year away, and an unpopular President Joe Biden is visibly losing mental acuity. “Weekend at Bernie’s III” was a sequel no one made, for good reason. The response from partisans on the left is panic, crowned by Washington Post editor Robert Kagan’s unhinged commentary, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable”—complete with a photo morphing former President Donald Trump into Julius Caesar. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Georgetown University professor Donald Moynihan thinks “Trump Has a Master Plan for Destroying the ‘Deep State.’” He’s…

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Peter Thiel Is Taking a Break From Democracy

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. It wasn’t clear at first why Peter Thiel agreed to talk to me. He is, famously, no friend of the media. But Thiel—co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, avatar of techno-libertarianism, bogeyman of the left—consented to a series of long interviews at his home and office in Los Angeles. He was more open than I expected him to be, and…

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The Threat to Democracy Is Coming From Inside the U.S. House

Representative Jim Jordan may or may not break down the last few Republican holdouts who blocked his election as House speaker yesterday. But the fact that about 90 percent of the House GOP conference voted to place him in the chamber’s top job marks an ominous milestone in the Republican Party’s reconfiguration since Donald Trump’s emergence as its central figure. The preponderant majority of House Republicans backing Jordan is attempting to elevate someone who not only defended former President Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election but participated in…

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How We Got ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’

I should not have been surprised, but I still marveled at just how little it took to get under the skin of President Donald Trump and his allies. By February 2019, I had been the executive editor of The Washington Post for six years. That month, the newspaper aired a one-minute Super Bowl ad, with a voice-over by Tom Hanks, championing the role of a free press, commemorating journalists killed and captured, and concluding with the Post’s logo and the message “Democracy dies in darkness.” The ad highlighted the strong…

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