For our latest cover story, we collaborated with
@ColumbiaSpec
, tasking some of the student reporters, writers, editors, and photographers at the forefront of protest coverage to revisit the events that started it all.
This may have been the Trumpiest moment of the last four years. Writes
@jonathanchait
: "He was siding with a foreign dictator against his own country. He was shirking blame. He was acting very, very stupid while thinking he was smart."
"He wants to lose," says a friend of President Trump. "He’s out of money. He worries about being arrested. He worried about being assassinated. It hasn’t been a great experience for him."
@Olivianuzzi
reports on election week at the White House
Rudy Giuliani has been working with Andriy Derkach, an active Russian agent, to smear Joe Biden.
Giuliani’s reason for not suspecting Derkach as a Russian agent is that he didn’t tell him he was a Russian agent.
@jonathanchait
writes
Rev. William J. Barber II was arrested for protesting on behalf of higher minimum wages in front of McDonald’s corporate headquarters at about the same time as he learned he had been awarded a MacArthur “genius grant”
A private poll fielded by Kanye West’s campaign early in the process found that the rapper would receive 1 percent of the vote nationally and hurt Trump more than he hurt Biden,
@bencjacobs
reports
Trump's former White House valet – the man who had to respond every time the president pressed his famous Oval Office Diet Coke button – provided key evidence that led to the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August.
@_NYMarg
writes
"The contrast, I think, isn’t only between what it feels like in a hot spot and in a place like this, but between what it feels like inside a hospital and literally anywhere else," notes
@PeteButtigieg
about coronavirus perceptions
Elon Musk Have Been A Little Too Antisemitic This Time. Apple, IBM, and others have pulled ads from X after Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy suggesting Jews ‘push hatred’ against white people. The White House also condemned Musk.
“You are doing nothing,” said Beto O’Rourke, interrupting Governor Greg Abbott during a press conference on Wednesday. “You’re offering us nothing. You said this is not predictable. This is totally predictable.”
After a year of smear campaigns, fake private intelligence agencies, and using his mom’s phone to spread his Mueller hoax, the 21-year-old is now facing a felony charge in California
Jeff Sessions’s departure, and his replacement with Mark Whitaker, is Trump’s plan to corrupt the Department of Justice. It's the most dire threat to the republic since Trump’s election itself, writes
@jonathanchait
Texts from Hunter Biden reportedly show that in 2019 the president’s son threatened to withhold back pay from a legal assistant unless she had sex with him on FaceTime
More than four months into his administration, Joe Biden is shaping up to be the first president to escape serious vilification from his opponents in at least 30 years.
@gdebenedetti
writes
Rick Scott’s threat to Social Security and Medicare has damaged Republicans so badly that even Mitch McConnell seems ready to give up on his seat.
@ed_kilgore
writes
Legal luminary J. Michael Luttig convinced Mike Pence not to join Donald Trump’s election coup. Now he says Republicans are perfecting the tactics they used in 2020
.
@AWeissmann_
on the legacy of the Mueller investigation at its two-year anniversary and why it's critical for the Manhattan DA to flip Donald Trump's accountant
This isn’t the first time observers thought the GOP was facing an existential crisis from which it might not recover. But there are important differences between the end of Richard Nixon's presidency and the end of Donald Trump's.
@ed_kilgore
writes
The raid is an extraordinary measure: Giuliani served as Trump’s lawyer as president and prosecutors have a high bar for going after an attorney over work he might have done for a client
"He wants to lose," says a friend of President Trump. "He’s out of money. He worries about being arrested. He worried about being assassinated. It hasn’t been a great experience for him."
@Olivianuzzi
reports on election week at the White House
In 1992, thousands of furious, drunken cops descended on City Hall to rage against David Dinkins.
@nahmias
reports on how the riot was a formative experience for two future mayors — and the city’s likely next mayor, too
Questioning the current orthodoxy is not transphobic, as so many reflexively charge, and what we need is an open debate about what’s best for gender dysphoric children and teens, writes
@sullydish
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell walked into the West Wing holding what looks like a plan for a coup. One of the people named tells
@bencjacobs
he has no idea what's going on
New York City regulators hit the Kushner family real-estate company with a $210,000 fine this week, after finding that the firm routinely falsified construction applications
"Trump fears a “redo,” i.e., Mueller having the chance to summarize his own work, rather than having his loyal attorney general do it for him," writes
@jonathanchait
Federal agents executed a search warrant on the Manhattan apartment of Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday morning as part of a Justice Department investigation into his dealings in Ukraine
Omicron data from South Africa is no longer all that tentative, and it is very, very encouraging, says
@BallouxFrancois
. But he says it's still too early to safely project the experience in that country onto others
Noted bibliophobe Donald Trump, who reportedly has difficulty reading even brief summaries on notecards, claims to have read Bob Woodward’s 466-page book in one night
Joe Biden is currently ahead in enough states to make him president if he wins them — and the composition of the uncounted votes strongly positions Biden to expand his Electoral College lead
The Mehmet Oz campaign staged an event at which he consoled a woman — who was actually a paid staffer — whose family members were killed in a shooting.
@MatthewStieb
writes
By including Hunter Biden speaking fondly of his brother’s memory and his father’s future, the
#DemConvention
presented him as an actual person, rather than a Fox News caricature
"It’s just like walking on the beach. Most of the time you see rocks or seashells, but every now and then you see a plastic bottle that is artificially made. This could be junk like that."
In the latest episode of ‘On With Kara Swisher,’ Kara talks with famed attorney Roberta Kaplan about the E. Jean Carroll verdict, Trump’s appeal chances, and how to drive the former president insane.
Viktor Orban identified schools and universities as a source of dissent, and set out to seize ideological control by placing his allies in charge. Ron DeSantis is doing the exact same thing in Florida.
@jonathanchait
writes
Federal agents reportedly seized electronic devices as part of a Justice Department investigation into Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine, which involved efforts to dig up dirt on Joe Biden to benefit Donald Trump in the 2020 election
Panagis Galiastatos, a pulmonary and critical-care physician at Johns Hopkins, notes that Trump being administered remdesivir means he is already suffering from a “moderate” or “severe” case of COVID-19
Nikki Haley wants to impose a five-year “term limit” on federal employees. The idea is even worse than Donald Trump’s plan to gut the federal government.
Donald Trump, who has suggested on many occasions that people who invoke their right against self-incrimination are guilty, took the Fifth on Wednesday
A group of bright Sarah Lawrence undergrads fell under the sway of a classmate’s conspiracy-minded father.
@ezra_marc
and
@MrJDWalsh
report on Larry Ray, and the students who came under his spell
In the deep south, Bernie Sanders found an audience of black voters receptive to his updated critique of class and race disparity.
@briebriejoy
reports
A little more than three weeks before the election, potentially contagious and freaking everybody out, Trump faces what looks like the end of his presidency.
@Olivianuzzi
reports from inside the White House circus
Trump is openly mocking constitutional constraints on the presidency even as he abuses his office — and it's prompted only indifference among Republicans and exhaustion among Democrats.
@sullydish
writes
Economist
@elerianm
thinks a (self-inflicted) recession is coming. He spoke with
@jenwieczner
about how bad it's likely to be and what he’s doing with his money now. (Spoiler: He’s not buying Bitcoin.)
President Trump's most dangerous and authoritarian act is hiding in plain sight.
@jonathanchait
writes on how he's turned the power of the state into a weapon of intimidation against the free press
No one can predict posterity’s judgments, but if the past is any guide at all, this is not going to end well for Trump’s collaborators.
@frankrichny
writes
"In its most heightened state, Trumpism granted license to followers to indulge desires most adults are compelled to hold in check — the desire to live a fantasy, to be 'presidential' in a cinematic, superhero way."
@rkgar
writes
What is happening inside the Supreme Court is not the triumph of the American people but rather the success of a well-funded minoritarian faction.
@onesarahjones
writes
Jamison Bachman wasn’t a typical squatter. Rather, he seemed to relish the anguish of those who had taken him in without realizing that they would soon be pulled into a terrifying battle for their home
"As he gazes down at the likes of Graham, Cruz, Rubio, and Carson nestled comfortably at his feet, why wouldn’t Trump conclude that his bullying works?"
@jonathanchait
writes
Each new revelation about Brian Kemp’s conduct as Georgia's secretary of State further exposes him as one of America’s premier subverters of the democratic process.
@zakcheneyrice
writes