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The Future of the American Idea

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  • Mike Segar / AP

    A Supreme Court Case Could Liberate Trump to Pardon His Associates

    Gamble v. United States isn’t related to the Russia investigation. But the outcome—which one senior Republican senator has tried to influence—could still have consequences for the probe.  

  • Most Popular on The Atlantic
    • Carlos Barria / Reuters

      The World Just Laughed at Donald Trump

      The president has often warned that the United States has become the butt of global jokes, and with a silly boast on Tuesday, he demonstrated it.

      Everyone’s got their own recurring nightmare—naked in class, teeth falling out, whatever. For Donald Trump, that nightmare is that the world is laughing at the United States, and on Tuesday at the United Nations General Assembly, the nightmare came true.

      The president’s public remarks are littered with warnings that America is, or might be, the butt of the globe’s jokes.

      “The world is laughing at us,” Trump said on the stump in October 2016. “We don’t win at the borders. We don’t win with taking care of our vets. We don’t win with anything. We don’t win anymore. We will start winning again like you’ve never seen before.” He’s kept it up since entering office. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?” he asked in June 2017. “The world is laughing at us. The world is laughing at the stupidity of what we have done with immigration,” he said in August.

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    • duncan1890 / Getty

      The Not-So-Great Reason Why Divorce Rates Are Declining

      What’s changed isn’t marriage, but the types of people who are likeliest to get married.

      In the past 10 years, the percentage of American marriages that end in divorce has fallen, and in a new paper, the University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen quantified the drop-off: Between 2008 and 2016, the divorce rate declined by 18 percent overall.

      After accounting for the rising average age of married Americans and other demographic shifts during that time, Cohen found “a less steep decline—8 percent—but the pattern is the same.” That is, the divorce rate in 2016 was still lower than one would have predicted if the demographics of married people were the same then as in 2008.

      When I asked Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University, how to make sense of this trend, he opened his explanation with something of a koan: “In order to get divorced,” he said, “you have to get married first.”

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    • The campus of Yale University
      Michelle McLoughlin / Reuters

      The Abandoned World of 1982

      The year Brett Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted Christine Blasey Ford at a party saw the first stirrings of a revolution in how American girls were raised, and how they would regard themselves.

      We are invited now to consider the late adolescence and early young manhood of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. It seems to be a trajectory that follows a classic pattern, familiar to us from literature as well as from its pale reflection, life. Call it a very modified version of the Prince Hal–to–Henry V flight plan: from wastrel youth with low companions to hero capable of leading men into battle. Call it something older than that: When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

      It is the judge who has claimed this narrative for himself, choosing august occasions to tell esteemed audiences about his glamorous, rebellious youth. During a 2015 speech at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, he reflected that three of its graduates had been classmates of his in high school. “Fortunately,” he said, “we’ve had a good saying that we’ve held firm to to this day, as the dean was reminding me before the talk, which is, ‘What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep.’ That’s been a good thing for all of us, I think.” In a 2014 speech to the students of Yale Law School, he fondly remembered “falling out of [a] bus onto the front steps of the Yale Law School at about 4:45 a.m.” It seems almost that he doesn’t even want us to regard his youthful self as Prince Hal, but as Falstaff.

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    • A river view from Potomac, Maryland
      Michael S. Williamson / The Washington Post / Getty

      My Rapist Apologized

      The Kavanaugh allegations led me to reach out to the man who had assaulted me decades before.

      On Friday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted that he has “no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents.”

      Let me tell you what life was like as a girl in Montgomery County, Maryland, in the early 1980s. I am a year older than Christine Blasey Ford and a year younger than Brett Kavanaugh. I grew up in Potomac, Maryland, a few miles from both Holton Arms, Ford’s school, and Georgetown Prep, which Kavanaugh attended, but I went to my local public high school, Churchill. Never mind that any girl who was in high school in Potomac during that era knew, through the whisper network, not to go to a Georgetown Prep party alone. That was a given. What was also a given is that “date rape,” as a term, was in its infancy. Most of us thought getting our bodies groped at a high-school party—or anywhere—was the unfortunate price we paid for having them, not something we would ever go to the police to report.

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    • Mike Segar / AP

      A Supreme Court Case Could Liberate Trump to Pardon His Associates

      Gamble v. United States isn’t related to the Russia investigation. But the outcome—which one senior Republican senator has tried to influence—could still have consequences for the probe.  

      A key Republican senator has quietly weighed in on an upcoming Supreme Court case that could have important consequences for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

      The Utah lawmaker Orrin Hatch, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, filed a 44-page amicus brief earlier this month in Gamble v. United States, a case that will consider whether the dual-sovereignty doctrine should be put to rest. The 150-year-old exception to the Fifth Amendment’s double-jeopardy clause allows state and federal courts to prosecute the same person for the same criminal offense. According to the brief he filed on September 11, Hatch believes the doctrine should be overturned. “The extensive federalization of criminal law has rendered ineffective the federalist underpinnings of the dual sovereignty doctrine,” his brief reads. “And its persistence impairs full realization of the Double Jeopardy Clause’s liberty protections.”

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    • Klaus Vedfelt / Getty

      The Girls Who Live in an All-Boys World

      Until schools help boys understand personal accountability, they are tacitly endorsing the misogyny that still thrives in some elite classrooms.

      Three years ago, I sat in a quiet library speaking with a young woman about her experience at the boarding school she attended. She was a senior and she was more than ready to graduate, she explained, because though the school had been coed for years, to her it still felt like the all-boys school it had been for most of its existence.

      “Why?” I asked.

      “Because it’s all about them. It’s like we’re here for their benefit.”

      Teachers and administrators at the school described her as a student leader, a young woman with a promising future. But as I listened to her explain her school’s social hierarchy and culture, her promising future seemed to have less to do with the elite education she’d received than the spirit of survival she had needed to develop in her four years there.

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    • Illustration: Mike McQuade; Janek Skarzynski / AFP / Getty; Kacper Pempel / Reuters

      A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come

      Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well.

      On December 31, 1999, we threw a party. It was the end of one millennium and the start of a new one; people very much wanted to celebrate, preferably somewhere exotic. Our party fulfilled that criterion. We held it at Chobielin, the manor house in northwest Poland that my husband and his parents had purchased a decade earlier, when it was a mildewed ruin. We had restored the house, very slowly. It was not exactly finished in 1999, but it did have a new roof. It also had a large, freshly painted, and completely unfurnished salon—perfect for a party.

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      The guests were various: journalist friends from London and Berlin, a few diplomats based in Warsaw, two friends who flew in from New York. But most of them were Poles, friends of ours and colleagues of my husband, who was then a deputy foreign minister in the Polish government. A handful of youngish Polish journalists came too—none then particularly famous—along with a few civil servants and one or two members of the government.

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    • Danny Tanner from Full House with Michelle Tanner
      ABC Photo Archives / ABC via Getty

      The Dad-Joke Doctrine

      What’s black and white and read all over? This article, hopefully.

      Every time we drive through farm country in my dad’s home state of Indiana, we know it’s coming. As soon as he spots it in his peripheral vision from the driver’s seat, it’s like clockwork: “Hey, you know a guy died in there?” he says, feigning nonchalance as he points to the round barn just off the highway.

      There is silence, maybe a mutual here we go glance shared between the rest of us, as my dad gets a merry little gleam in his eye. Eventually he can’t resist any longer, and he lets the punch line rip: “Couldn’t find a corner to pee in!”

      My dad, once a farmer, told me this joke for the first time when I was about eight. When I interviewed my father for this story, he told me he’d heard it from his dad, also a farmer, when he was about eight. (He also boasted that he’d told my mom this joke, to her great amusement, when they were dating as teenagers; my mom then yelled into the phone that she had in fact heard it before, even at the time. Probably from her own dad, a farmer.)

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    • Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty

      Full Transcript: Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly

      “The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship,” the president said. “We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”

      Madam President, Mr. Secretary General, world leaders, ambassadors, and distinguished delegates:

      One year ago, I stood before you for the first time in this grand hall. I addressed the threats facing our world, and I presented a vision to achieve a brighter future for all of humanity. Today, I stand before the United Nations General Assembly to share the extraordinary progress we have made.

      In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country. America is so thrilled. [Laughter] I did not expect that reaction, but that’s okay. [Applause] America’s economy is booming like never before. Since my election, we have added $10 trillion in wealth. The stock market is at an all-time high in history, and jobless claims are at a 50-year low. African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American unemployment have all achieved their lowest levels ever recorded. We have added more than 4 million new jobs, including half a million manufacturing jobs. We have passed the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history. We have started the construction of a major border wall, and we have greatly strengthened border security. We have secured record funding for our military, $700 billion this year and $716 billion next year. Our military will soon be more powerful than it has ever been before. In other words, the United States is stronger, safer, and a richer country than it was when I assumed office less than two years ago. We are standing up for America and the American people.

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    • Jacob Stern

      Yale Law School’s Reckoning Over Brett Kavanaugh

      Students and faculty staged a sit-in Monday in protest against President Trump’s nomination of the conservative appellate-court judge, a 1990 Yale Law graduate, to the Supreme Court.

      NEW HAVEN, Conn.—On most Monday mornings, the main corridor at Yale Law School bustles with students. Thirty years ago, a young Brett Kavanaugh was one of them.

      On this Monday morning, as the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., wrestled with new allegations against Kavanaugh, everything here was still.

      More than 300 demonstrators dressed in black gathered at around 9:30 a.m. for a silent sit-in to protest Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court and to support the two women who have accused him of sexual misconduct: Christine Blasey Ford, who knew Kavanaugh in high school, and Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate whose allegations first appeared in The New Yorker on Sunday night. Some professors canceled classes on Monday to allow students to attend the demonstration or to travel to Washington, to protest outside the Supreme Court.

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    More Popular Stories
  • Jacob Stern

    Yale Law School’s Reckoning Over Brett Kavanaugh

    Students and faculty staged a sit-in Monday in protest against President Trump’s nomination of the conservative appellate-court judge, a 1990 Yale Law graduate, to the Supreme Court.

  • Joshua Roberts / Reuters

    Elizabeth Warren’s Ambitious Fix for America’s Housing Crisis

    The Massachusetts Democrat introduced legislation that takes aim at segregation, redlining, restrictive zoning, and the loss of equity by low-income homeowners.

  • Chris Wattie / Reuters

    Brett Kavanaugh's Unprecedented Fox News Interview

    Faced with sexual-assault allegations, the would-be justice has been more aggressive in fighting for his Supreme Court nomination than most of his predecessors.

  • Newsletter
    Carlo Allegri / Reuters

    The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: Laugh and the World Laughs With You

    In his second address before the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump blasted "globalism" and instead underscored the importance of sovereignty. The audience laughed during Trump's speech.

  • Politics Daily
    Evan Vucci / AP

    The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: Acts of Rod

    Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will meet with President Trump on Thursday following reports that he once suggested secretly recording the president and discussed invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

  • Andrew Harnik / AP

    The White House Is Scrambling to Calm Its Supporters Over the New Kavanaugh Allegations

    Republicans in Washington are committed to getting Trump’s Supreme Court nominee confirmed, fearing their voters will stay home in November if they can’t seal the deal.

  • Andrew Harrer / Getty

    Anonymity Is Having a Moment

    But when is it justified?

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  • Leah Millis / Reuters / Katie Martin / ...

    What Rosenstein’s Exit Would Mean for Mueller's Russia Investigation

    His departure could have consequences for the special counsel’s probe.

  • Joshua Roberts / Reuters

    The Republican Rush to Confirm Kavanaugh Backfired

    Three new allegations against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee show the dangers of a hasty process.

  • Brendan McDermid / Reuters

    Trump Signals an Openness to Talks With Iran

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley appeared on Sunday morning’s news shows and took a hard line on Iran, but said the president would react favorably if Iran expressed interest in meeting.

  • Yuri Gripas / Reuters

    Christine Blasey Ford and the Search for a Standard of Proof

    The Sunday shows were filled with commentary on the 51-year-old research psychologist’s expected testimony against the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, but no one could quite define what a fair hearing should look like.

  • Dale G. Young / Detroit News via AP

    A Grassroots Call to Ban Gerrymandering

    Voters Not Politicians gathered an astounding 425,000 signatures in Michigan to secure a spot on the November ballot for a proposed constitutional amendment creating a citizens’ commission for redistricting.

  • Joshua Roberts / Reuters

    Christine Blasey Ford Agrees to Testify as Frustrated Republicans Ask ‘When?’

    Attorneys for the woman who has accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault said she would testify this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee without specifying a date or final terms.  

  • Alex Wong / Reuters

    Christine Blasey Ford Weighs the Risks and Rewards of Testifying

    There’s almost no way the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault can adequately prepare for a high-pressure appearance Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

  • Evan Vucci / AP

    Donald Trump Might Be the ‘Client From Hell’

    The president doesn’t seem to understand what lawyers do—including the ones trying to defend the presidency.

  • Politics Daily
    Andrew Harnik / AP

    The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: Oh My Rod

    Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly suggested secretly recording President Trump and invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

  • Evan Vucci / AP

    Who Stands to Benefit From the New Leak About Rod Rosenstein?

    The New York Times reported Friday that the deputy attorney general had talked about secretly recording the president and invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

  • Micah Walter / Reuters

    A Conservative Judge Takes Aim at Roe v. Wade in Face of a Shifting Supreme Court

    Judge Bobby Shepherd of the Eighth Circuit has upheld, for now, two Missouri laws restricting abortion that are virtually identical to those struck down in 2016 by the Supreme Court.

  • Leah Millis / Reuters

    The Kavanaugh Confirmation Process Is Getting Even Uglier

    After several days of comparative restraint, President Trump argued that if his Supreme Court nominee had really tried to assault Christine Blasey Ford, she would have filed a police report.

  • Joshua Roberts / Reuters

    Big Spenders Come Out in Anticipation of the 2018 Midterms

    Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Richard Uihlein, George Soros, and Bill Maher all made political contributions in August.