Politics | The Atlantic
D.C.'s Crime Problem Is a Democracy Problem
Harry Jaffe
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...
How Hur Misled the Country on Biden's Memory
Adam Serwer
Sign up for The Decision, a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.First impressions stick. After a big story hits, the initial conclusions can turn out to be wrong, or partly wrong, but the revisions are not what people remember. They remember the headlines in imposing font, the solemn tone from a presenter, the avalanche of ironic summaries on social media. Political operatives know this, and it's that indelible impression they want, one that sticks like a greasy fingerprint and that n...
Trump Repeats Obama's Mistake
David A. Graham
Sign up for The Decision, a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.Donald Trump has long detested Barack Obama and sought to present himself as the opposite of his presidential predecessor in every way. But in his takeover of the Republican National Committee, he risks echoing one of Obama's biggest political mistakes.Last night, Trump's handpicked leadership of the RNC took charge and conducted a purge. The new regime, led by the new chair, Michael Whatley; the vice chair, Lara Trump; a...
Are Gen Z Men and Women Really Drifting Apart?
Rose Horowitch
Judging by recent headlines, young men and women are more politically divided now than ever before. "A new global gender divide is emerging," the Financial Times data journalist John Burn-Murdoch wrote in a widely cited January article. Burn-Murdoch's analysis featured several eye-popping graphs that appeared to show a huge ideological rift opening up between young men and young women over the past decade. The implications--for politics, of course, but also for male-female relations and, by extens...
The People Rooting for the End of IVF
Elaine Godfrey
Updated at 4:10 p.m. ET on March 11, 2024Chaos reigns in Alabama--or at least in the Alabama world of reproductive health. Three weeks ago, the state's supreme court ruled that embryos should be treated as children, thrusting the future of in vitro fertilization, and of thousands of would-be Alabama parents, into uncertainty. Last week, state lawmakers scrambled to pass a legislative fix to protect the right of prospective parents to seek IVF, but they did so without addressing the court's existen...
Trump Finds Another Line to Cross
John Hendrickson
Former President Donald Trump, perhaps threatened by President Joe Biden's well-received State of the Union address, mocked his opponent's lifelong stutter at a rally in Georgia yesterday. "Wasn't it--didn't it bring us together?" Trump asked sarcastically. He kept the bit going, slipping into a Biden caricature. "'I'm gonna bring the country tuh-tuh-tuh-together,'" Trump said, straining and narrowing his mouth for comedic effect.Trump has made a new habit of this. "'He's a threat to d-d-democracy...
Katie Britt's Strange Speech
Elaina Plott Calabro
You might not have known it from Katie Britt's State of the Union rebuttal last night--a performance derided by members of her own party as "bizarre" and "confusing"--but up until then, Britt had distinguished herself in the Senate with a reputation for being startlingly, well, normal.As in, she wasn't obsessed with Twitter (or X, as it's now called). She evinced more than a passing interest in policy. For her, conservatism seemed to mean things other than simply "supporting Trump."It was just five...
Can Biden Begin a Reset Tonight?
Ronald Brownstein
As President Joe Biden prepares to deliver his State of the Union address tonight, his pathways to reelection are narrowing. His best remaining option, despite all of the concerns about his age, may be to persuade voters to look forward, not back.In his now-certain rematch against former President Donald Trump, Biden has three broad possibilities for framing the contest to voters. One is to present the race as a referendum on Biden's performance during his four years in office. The second is to s...