Attention to the Unseen

David Frum writes: “The constitutional Presidency … has become the imperial Presidency.” The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. delivered that complaint in 1973, just ahead of a wave of reforms that sought to cut the presidency down to size. The War Powers Act of 1973, the Anti-Impoundment Act of 1974, the creation of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in the mid-1970s: These and other measures aimed to restrain the presidency and restore power to Congress. Following the presidency of Donald…

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The New York Times reports: Erik Ortiz, a 41-year-old hip-hop music producer in Florida, grew up poor in the South Bronx, and spent much of his time as a young adult trying to establish himself financially. Now he considers himself rich. And he believes shaking off the politics of his youth had something to do with it. “Everybody was a liberal Democrat — in my neighborhood, in the Bronx, in the local government,” said Mr. Ortiz, whose family is Black…

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BuzzFeed News reports: In a recent indictment of nine people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, federal prosecutors went to great lengths to describe the magnitude of the day’s events, the alarming threat to democracy their actions posed, and the powerful influence that one charismatic leader had in shaping their beliefs. They took care, however, not to refer to that man by name. Instead, they refer to him as “Person One.” Elmer Stewart Rhodes III — a one-time Army…

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Jonathan Chait writes: Glenn Greenwald’s long intellectual journey from center left to far left to, well, somewhere is a subject of fascination in elite circles. Greenwald comes out of a tradition of progressive journalism that focused primarily on attacking liberals and the Democratic Party from the left. Like many progressives, he latched on to Bernie Sanders’s two presidential campaigns as a righteous crusade to liberate the Democratic Party from the nefarious grip of its corporate, neoliberal masters. After that, things…

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Freedom House reports: As a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world in 2020, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny. Incumbent leaders increasingly used force to crush opponents and settle scores, sometimes in the name of public health, while beleaguered activists—lacking effective international support—faced heavy jail sentences, torture, or murder in many settings. These withering blows marked the 15th consecutive year…

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Ronald Brownstein writes: The most explosive battle in decades over access to the voting booth will reach a new crescendo this week, as Republican-controlled states advance an array of measures to restrict the ballot, and the U.S. House of Representatives votes on the federal legislation that represents Democrats’ best chance to stop them. It’s no exaggeration to say that future Americans could view the resolution of this struggle as a turning point in the history of U.S. democracy. The outcome…

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The Guardian reports: A Guardian investigation of a website leak from the American Patriots Three Percent shows the anti-government militia group have recruited a network across the United States that includes current and former military members, police and border patrol agents. But the leak also demonstrates how the radical group has recruited from a broad swath of Americans, not just military and law enforcement. Members include both men and women, of ages ranging from their 20s to their 70s, doing…

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The New York Times reports: For the first time in its postwar history, Germany has placed its main opposition party under surveillance, one of the most dramatic steps yet by a Western democracy to protect itself from the onslaught of far-right forces that have upset politics from Europe to the United States. The decision by the domestic intelligence agency will now allow it to tap phones and other communications and monitor the movements of members of the far-right Alternative for…

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Annie Lowrey writes: Two years ago, the city of Stockton, California, did something remarkable: It brought back welfare. Using donated funds, the industrial city on the edge of the Bay Area tech economy launched a small demonstration program, sending payments of $500 a month to 125 randomly selected individuals living in neighborhoods with average incomes lower than the city median of $46,000 a year. The recipients were allowed to spend the money however they saw fit, and they were not…

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The New York Times reports: The F.B.I. director warned senators on Tuesday that domestic terrorism was “metastasizing across the country,” reaffirming the threat from racially motivated extremists while largely escaping any tough questions about the bureau’s actions before the siege of the Capitol. The director, Christopher A. Wray, who had largely remained out of public view since the riot on Jan. 6, condemned the supporters of former President Donald J. Trump who ransacked the Capitol, resulting in five deaths and…

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