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This Is a Constitutional Crisis

David Frum

A cowardly coup from within the administration threatens to enflame the president’s paranoia and further endanger American security.

Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis.

If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.

We're Watching an Antidemocratic Coup Unfold

David A. Graham

Acts of sabotage against the president are perilous to the American system of government. They're also self-serving.

The title of Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, contains a multitude of meanings. For one thing, it describes the attitude of many of President Trump’s own aides toward his judgment.

It’s not just that many sources were willing to tell Woodward damaging stories about Trump: The most stunning examples are those where top aides reportedly thwarted his will. Even more stunning is an anonymous op-ed published in The New York Times Wednesday afternoon written by a purported “senior official in the Trump administration.”

The writer says that senior Trump officials “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.” The official adds: “We believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.”

Congressional Republicans Are the Real Authors of the Anonymous Op-Ed

Peter Beinart

The Constitution demands that the legislature serve as a check on the executive. In its absence, unelected bureaucrats are taking it on themselves to act.

We don’t yet know which senior administration official authored today’s astounding New York Times op-ed suggesting that President Donald Trump’s aides are actively thwarting him in an attempt to protect the country. But in a sense, it doesn’t matter. Indirectly, the op-ed’s real authors are the Republicans of the United States Congress.

In theory, in America’s constitutional system, the different branches of the federal government check one another. When a presidents acts in corrupt, authoritarian, or reckless ways, the legislative branch holds hearings, blocks his agenda, refuses to confirm his nominees, even impeaches him. That’s how America’s government is supposed to work. But it no longer does. Instead, for the last year and a half, congressional Republicans have acted, for the most part, as Trump’s agents. Not only have they refused to seriously investigate or limit him, they have assaulted those within the federal bureaucracy—the justice department and the FBI in particular—who have.

A little girl plays with balloons — Gretchen Ertl / Reuters

How Well-Intentioned White Families Can Perpetuate Racism

Joe Pinsker

The sociologist Margaret Hagerman spent two years embedded in upper-middle-class white households, listening in on conversations about race.

When Margaret Hagerman was trying to recruit white affluent families as subjects for the research she was doing on race, one prospective interviewee told her, “I can try to connect you with my colleague at work who is black. She might be more helpful.”

Modern-day segregation in public schools

To Hagerman, that response was helpful in itself. She is a sociologist at Mississippi State University, and her new book, White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America, summarizes the two years of research she did talking to and observing upper-middle-class white families in an unidentified midwestern city and its suburbs. To examine how white children learn about race, she followed 36 of them between the ages of 10 and 13, interviewing them as well as watching them do homework, play video games, and otherwise go about their days.

A Judge Who Can’t Be Vetted Shouldn’t Be Confirmed

Garrett Epps

If Brett Kavanaugh’s extensive paper trail can’t be fully and publicly disclosed, the simplest solution is to nominate someone else.

The Brett Kavanaugh hearings—such as they are—began on Wednesday to take on a shape that ordinary citizens can understand. When discussing the law, Judge Kavanaugh has been an impressive witness. But anyone watching the hearings Wednesday morning could see the discomfort on Kavanaugh’s face when Senator Patrick Leahy asked him about his potential knowledge of the theft of Democratic-committee emails a decade and a half ago.

From 2002 to 2003, the Republican aide Manuel Miranda, first working on the Senate Judiciary Committee and later in the majority leaders’ office, exploited a computer glitch to access confidential memos written by Senate Democrats on judicial nominees, leaking their contents to friendly media outlets. Senator Orrin Hatch, at the time, called it “improper, unethical, and simply unacceptable.” Kavanaugh was asked at his 2006 confirmation hearing whether, as a White House aide working on judicial nominations at the time, he’d been aware of the breach, and insisted he “did not know about it, did not suspect it.” On Wednesday, though, Leahy suggested that emails available to the committee, but not the public, contradict that—indicating that Miranda had sent Kavanaugh a draft letter written by Leahy but not yet released, among other documents.

A mother sending children off to school — Steven Gottlieb / Corbis / Getty

Why Does the School Day End Two Hours Before the Workday?

Kara Voght

This mismatch creates a child-care crisis between 3 and 5 p.m. that has parents scrambling for options.

This past March, on a Thursday morning before dawn, more than 70 bleary-eyed parents lined up in front of the Parks and Recreation building in South Windsor, Connecticut. Wrapped in heavy coats and clutching Dunkin’ Donuts cups, many of them slouched against the building’s cement walls, while others, exercising a tad more foresight, lounged in foldable camping chairs. Most had arrived around 3 in the morning. The first in line had been there since 11:30 p.m. the night before.

The scene closely resembled the crowds that gather before the release of a new iPhone or outside the box office for Hamilton tickets, but the reward for waiting wasn’t anywhere near as flashy. The parents had lined up for the chance to register their kids for a before- and after-school program sponsored by the town. The 4th “R,”—a play on the old-fashioned saying “reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmatic,” with the added “recreation”—serves elementary-school students whose parents’ work schedules don’t align with the school day’s 8:45 a.m. start and 3:20 p.m. finish. And braving the cold to stand in line didn’t even guarantee the parents a spot for their kids—the program had filled up earlier that week, thanks to a rule that prioritized siblings of current attendees. When the office opened its doors and began accepting registration requests at 8 a.m., many of the parents knew they’d endured the line simply to put their child on the wait list.

Woodward’s Account of Trump’s Mock Interview With Prosecutors Isn’t Pretty

Natasha Bertrand

In his new book, Fear, the legendary reporter writes that Trump stumbled over questions about Michael Flynn.

“I’m not sure.” “I don’t know.” “I can’t remember.” In a mock interview with President Trump to prepare him for a possible sit-down with the special counsel’s office, Trump’s lawyer reportedly found that there was a lot Trump couldn’t remember about key events relevant to the Russia investigation.

In a new book, Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward, obtained by The Atlantic ahead of its release next week, Woodward offers the first detailed look at the way the president might handle an interview with the experienced prosecutors on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. “If the questions seem harmless, don’t treat them that way,” Trump’s then-lawyer, John Dowd, advised the president during the mock interview in January, according to Woodward’s account. “And I want you thoroughly focused on listening to the words.”

It’s Time for the Press to Stop Complaining—And to Start Fighting Back

Chuck Todd

A nearly 50-year campaign of vilification, inspired by Fox News's Roger Ailes, has left many Americans distrustful of media outlets. Now, journalists need to speak up for their work.

I’ve devoted much of my professional life to the study of political campaigns, not as a historian or an academic but as a reporter and an analyst. I thought I’d seen it all, from the bizarre upset that handed a professional wrestler the governorship of Minnesota to the California recall that gave us the Governator to candidates who die but stay on the ballot and win.

But there’s a new kind of campaign underway, one that most of my colleagues and I have never publicly reported on, never fully analyzed, and never fully acknowledged: the campaign to destroy the legitimacy of the American news media.

Bashing the media for political gain isn’t new, and neither is manipulating the media to support or oppose a cause. These practices are at least as old as the Gutenberg press. But antipathy toward the media right now has risen to a level I’ve never personally experienced before. The closest parallel in recent American history is the hostility to reporters in the segregated South in the 1950s and ’60s.

Donald Trump with sheriffs — Susan Walsh / AP

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: The Calls Are Coming From Inside the House

Elaine Godfrey, Madeleine Carlisle, and Olivia Paschal

The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed in which a senior official in the Trump administration claims that there is a “resistance” within the administration.

Written by Elaine Godfrey (@elainejgodfrey), Madeleine Carlisle (@maddiecarlisle2), and Olivia Paschal (@oliviacpaschal)

Today in 5 Lines

The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed in which a senior official in the Trump administration claims that there is a “resistance” within the administration, and that many Trump appointees have vowed to thwart the president’s “more misguided impulses.” The White House issued a statement denouncing the op-ed.
During the second day of his confirmation hearings, Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh stressed the importance of judicial independence and declined to answer whether a sitting president could be subpoenaed.
Trump dismissed the new tell-all book by journalist Bob Woodward in which administration officials and aides are quoted criticizing the president. “The book means nothing,” Trump told reporters.
The White House is reportedly discussing potential replacements for Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who was quoted in Woodward’s book making disparaging comments about Trump. Mattis called the book “fiction” on Tuesday.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

A Plane Quarantine in New York Started Out Like a Sci-Fi Nightmare

Sarah Zhang

100 supposedly sick passengers ended up only being 10. But the story tapped into potent fears about flying.

Updated on September 5, 2018 at 5:58 p.m. ET

It really did sound like the beginning of a zombie movie.

On Wednesday morning, a flight from Dubai landed in New York City, and passengers were not allowed to leave. A hundred people on the plane, initial reports claimed, had fallen ill. Ambulances and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials rushed to meet them.

For a couple hours, before any more information emerged, the scenario conjured up scenes from The Hot Zone, where a passenger with an Ebola-like virus hands a bag of bloody vomit—“bulging and softening, threatening to leak”—to a flight attendant. Or the novel Station Eleven, where a plane lands from a quarantined region of the world and no one ever disembarks.