october 1930

It was a pair of feather earrings that helped Ann Miceli get out from underneath strangers’ cars. For years, Miceli had worked as an auto mechanic and picked up shifts in her spare time at Indianapolis restaurants. One day, she came across those earrings, and “it kind of sparked something.” Miceli bought a pair, and then some supplies to make her own. She listed some of her creations in a shop on Etsy and named it PrettyVagrant.

That was in 2011. In the intervening years, Miceli has sold nearly 30,000 of her handmade earrings and feather hair extensions, all of which she assembles by hand at home. After a couple of years, Miceli quit her job as a mechanic. Etsy “has given me the opportunity to work from home and watch my grandkids,” she told me. Everything was humming along nicely until last summer, when the site began implementing a new search algorithm that gives priority to sellers who guarantee free shipping. Those who charged even a few dollars, like Miceli, were removed from their spots on the first page of search results. In August, Miceli’s revenue was down 40 percent from the previous year—a huge dip that she blames on the free-shipping finagling.

Last month, a source emailed a colleague of mine with a complicated theory that, the source claimed, proved Pete Buttigieg had been in the CIA. “The American people have the right to know if he was ever an agent or officer,” the person wrote, with the kind of baseless confidence that lives on the internet.

By then, Buttigieg’s critics on the left had started to focus more on what the South Bend, Indiana, mayor could have been doing at McKinsey, a company that seems to look worse with each passing week. Progressives, and in particular the Elizabeth Warren campaign, pounced: What was Buttigieg doing at McKinsey for two and a half years? How many people had lost their jobs because of him? How shady was the work conveniently hidden behind a standard McKinsey nondisclosure agreement?

Walk down a barely marked stairway into a basement in New York’s East Village on a Sunday morning, and you may find yourself in a hub of Ukrainian American life. Members of the vast Ukrainian diaspora regularly gather here, at a church-run restaurant called Streecha, trading the latest on Ukrainian politics over plates of pierogi and bowls of borscht. As formal impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump were finally getting under way recently, several of the patrons here told me that America had lately been feeling more like home—and not in a good way.

The allegations involved in the impeachment inquiry embody a central tension of the Trump administration. Diplomats and officials as prominent as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have attempted to revive Ronald Reagan–style rhetoric about America’s role as the world’s foremost defender of liberty and freedom, including signaling support for Ukrainian self-determination. Meanwhile, the president and his associates appear to be more invested in courting power and personal gain, from Trump’s cozy press conferences with Russian President Vladimir Putin to his attempt to get the Ukrainian government to investigate the family of former Vice President Joe Biden.

This year, a graffiti slogan began to appear on walls across Wales. Typically spray-painted in white letters on a red background, it read Cofiwch Dryweryn—“Remember Tryweryn.”

The phrase first appeared half a century ago, on a wall in a Welsh seaside village, and the mural quickly became a local landmark. It commemorated the village of Capel Celyn in the Tryweryn Valley, which was flooded in 1965 to create a reservoir. The “drowned village” was Welsh, as were the 70 residents who were forced to leave their homes. The water supply was destined for the English city of Liverpool. Remember Tryweryn: Remember what England does to Wales.

The destruction of the village was a deep enough wound to feature on the most recent season of Netflix’s royal drama The Crown: Over dinner with his tutor Edward Millward, a Welsh nationalist, Prince Charles sees a photograph of Capel Celyn. “I have so many places to visit,” he says, wistfully. “You wouldn’t be able to visit anymore,” is Millward’s brisk reply.

Tomorrow, the House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on two proposed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. One article accuses him of abuse of power, the other of obstructing Congress. When the House leadership released the articles, there was plenty of grumbling about how short the list was, given the ample evidence of other Trumpian excesses—including the obstruction of justice by the president in connection with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Yet two articles of impeachment are enough to describe how Trump has worked to undermine the American system of government. If approved by the House, they will concisely pose a question to Republicans: Which of these destructive acts are you willing to excuse? If Trump isn’t removed on the basis of these two charges—which is a virtual guarantee, given the Republican majority in the Senate—our representative democracy is in serious trouble. But at least Democrats will have forced each Republican senator to put his or her complicity on the record forever—and sent a warning to the voting public that grave abuses of power can occur in the United States with impunity.