Historian Timothy Snyder: “It’s pretty much inevitable” that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy Yale historian and author of the new book “On Tyranny” says we may have one year left to save American democracy Donald Trump; Timothy Snyder  (Credit: Getty/Aude Guerrucci/Penguin Random House/Ine Gundersveen) By Chauncey DeVega, Slate American democracy is […]

There are many questions raised and unanswered by this article from The Washington Post, but it also offers a partial answer to a nagging question: why many on the Republican right have shifted their sympathies from anti-Soviet to pro-Russian. A CNN/ORC poll cited by The Guardian found that the percentage of Republicans who see Russia as an unfriendly state […]

White House of Grifters DOUG MILLS / The New York Times Michael Flynn, far left, with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at a press conference at the White House in February. Timothy Egan, The New York Times They dress nice and probably smell good and most of them don’t even muss the furniture. Wealth gives them the […]

Keep your eyes on Russia ALEXEI DRUZHININ, SPUTNIK, KREMLIN POOL PHOTO VIA AP Vladimir Putin By the Editorial Board, The Boston Globe, APRIL 29, 2017 A FOG HAS DESCENDED on Washington, a kind of perpetual smoke screen created by President Trump that keeps his latest antics on the front page. By intent or accident, though, each day’s news […]

Living in the Trump Zone Paul Krugman, The New York Times, APRIL 28, 2017 In a “Twilight Zone” episode, a town was terrorized by an immature child with superpowers. Hmm. That sounds like what it must feel like working in the Trump administration. CreditCBS/Photofest  Fans of old TV series may remember a classic “Twilight Zone” episode titled “It’s […]

  Why won’t Congress really investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia? From The Washington Post By Douglas L. Kriner and Eric Schickler, April 27 at 7:00 AM Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) Politicians, pundits, and scholars alike routinely call Congress the “broken branch.” Most often, they note its abysmally low level of legislative productivity recently, a trend that even […]

On the one hundredth day I’ll be glad that we: Haven’t yet had a “Reichstag fire,” a dramatic event used to frighten the public into accepting an extraordinary loss of freedoms, Haven’t seen mass arrests of Latino workers and Muslim immigrants, Haven’t seen large-scale political violence, Have only bruised but not yet buried the Constitutional […]

Reuters Exclusive: A New York hotel deal shows how some public pension funds help to enrich Trump  By Julia Harte, Reuters, WASHINGTON Public pension funds in at least seven U.S. states have invested millions of dollars in an investment fund that owns a New York hotel and pays one of President Donald Trump’s companies to run it, […]

The president doesn’t read history. So one must hope that his more learned associates will tell him the story of the USS Pueblo. His defense secretary Jim Mattis and national security advisor H.R. McMaster could do it. The Pueblo is a permanent exhibit at the Pyongyang Victorious War Museum, the only commissioned U.S. Navy vessel […]

THE CONTINUING FALLOUT FROM TRUMP AND NUNES’S FAKE SCANDAL By Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker, April 18, 2017 Representative Devin Nunes is under investigation for possibly leaking classified information, but the bigger scandal is the coördinated effort to manufacture an excuse for President Trump’s wiretapping allegation.PHOTOGRAPH BY J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE / AP Recently, several members and staffers on […]