Benjamin Wittes
A specialist in law and national security, he is the author of several books. Most recently, he co-wrote Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office. He previously served as a member of The Washington Post’s editorial-page staff, where he focused on legal affairs.
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Drew Angerer / Getty Being an Actual Authoritarian Is Too Much Work for Trump
The president doesn’t like constraints on his power, but he doesn’t exactly like using his power either.
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MANDEL NGAN / AFP / GETTY Trump’s Allies Know He Has Failed
Defenders of the president seem to have settled on the excuse that the White House botched its pandemic preparations because it was too distracted by the drama on Capitol Hill.
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Tasos Katopodis / Getty This Isn’t All Trump’s Fault (But He Isn’t Helping Either)
Even with perfect leadership, the pandemic was always going to be bad. But the president has caused the crisis to be far worse.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters Trump Can’t Even Imitate a Normal President
He couldn’t keep the impression going for an entire press briefing.
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Joshua Roberts / Reuters Trump Seems to Be Missing His Old Scandals
Why would the president, in the midst of an enormous public-health crisis, want to reignite the story of the Russian-collusion investigation that dominated his first two years in office?
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Tom Brenner / Reuters Incompetence Exacerbated by Malevolence
The coronavirus has dangerously inverted a long-standing White House theme.
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Carlos Barria / Reuters Trump’s Playbook Is Terribly Ill-Suited to a Pandemic
The president cannot rely on his usual strategies of lying and bullying to fight the spread of the coronavirus.
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Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Trump’s Most Dangerous Destruction Yet
What the president is doing to America’s intelligence community could have enormous repercussions for the 2020 election and the country’s preparedness for threats from around the world.
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Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Imagine If a Democrat Behaved Like Bill Barr
What would the attorney general say were a future administration to follow his lead?
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Joshua Roberts / Reuters The Oversight Wars Are Not Going Away
Impeachment may be over, but other skirmishes between Trump and the House will come to a head over the next few months.
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Andrew Harnik / AP The Crime of Doing the Right Thing
The former National Security Council staffer Alexander Vindman joins the club of honorable people whom the president has targeted for telling the truth.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters 23 Dangerous Propositions the Senate Just Ratified
In voting to acquit President Trump, the Senate has legitimated legal and moral claims that will not serve America well.
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Erin Scott / Reuters The Utter Ridiculousness of the U.S. Senate
The world’s greatest deliberative body? Really?
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Klara Auerbach / The Atlantic The Disintegration of the American Presidency
The president’s job is to oversee the whole of the executive branch, but under Trump the inverse is happening.
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Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Trump’s Impeachment Brief Is a Howl of Rage
The document released by the president’s lawyers reads more like the scream of a wounded animal than a traditional legal filing.
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Loren Elliott / Reuters The Senate Trial Will Be Totally Predictable—With One Potential for Surprise
Prepare for peak tedium.
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Carlos Jasso / Reuters Pelosi and McConnell Are Playing High-Stakes Poker
A guide for the perplexed to the House-Senate standoff over impeachment
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Associated Press Jews Under Attack Deserve Better Than Selective Outrage
If you’re not willing to confront the diversity of anti-Semitism, you’re just not being serious.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters The Serious Silliness of Impeachment
The constitutional drama now playing out may feel like a circus, but the antics of the two parties are more than mere jousting: They are efforts to shape how the story will be understood for years to come.
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Erin Schaff / The New York Times The Remedy for Mitch McConnell
The Senate majority leader seems uninterested in fulfilling his constitutional duties.
