Attention to the Unseen

Julia Davis writes: Russian state media have welcomed enthusiastically the recent U.S. Senate acquittal of President Donald J. Trump. Having predicted this outcome for his impeachment trial, Russian experts and state-media pundits are anticipating beneficial side effects for the Kremlin as Trump is more Trump—and more Russia’s Trump—than ever. Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of Russia’s popular Sunday news program Vesti Nedeli, said, “Democrats are openly raging, but while they’re licking their wounds, Trump can now objectively afford to pursue a…

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U.S. News & World Report reports: President Donald Trump has proposed a 25 percent cut to the signature military fund designed to offset Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, according to the Defense Department’s budget documents unveiled Monday. Budget proposals for fiscal 2021 released Monday afternoon call for $4.5 billion for the European Deterrence Initiative, a fund started by the Obama administration in the aftermath of Russia’s 2014 invasion of parts of eastern Ukraine and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, which…

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The Washington Post reports: For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades, navigating waves of technology from mechanical gears to electronic circuits and, finally, silicon chips and…

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Russell Berman writes: If Senator Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday, it’ll likely be thanks to voters who are—like him—not actually Democrats. The Vermont senator’s lead in several public polls is bolstered by his strong support among independent, or undeclared, voters, who are welcome to participate in New Hampshire’s primary and could make up as much as 40 percent of the electorate. Beyond New Hampshire, Sanders’s advantage among independent voters could be his secret weapon…

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George T. Conway III writes: “So we’ll probably have to do it again.” So said the already-once-impeached President Trump on Thursday in the East Room, musing about the possibility he could become the first president to be impeached more than once. And on the very next day, as though he were competing for it, Trump showed precisely why he could be destined to achieve that ignominious fate. With essentially no pretense about why he was doing it, the president brazenly…

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Siobhán Fenton writes: For almost a century, political power in Ireland has been held by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The two centrist parties have ruled in some form or another, be it through coalitions or confidence-and-supply arrangements with other smaller parties. Saturday’s general election has upended this political duopoly. Sinn Féin topped the poll in first-preference votes for the first time, with a share of 24.5%. Fianna Fáil received 22.2%, while Fine Gael, in government since 2011, came third…

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Matt Bai writes: For months now, a lot of Democrats have been telling us that Buttigieg inspires them. They love the idea of a Rhodes scholar with military credentials, a gay candidate who doesn’t let identity define him, a candidate who came of age with social media and isn’t pushing 80. They just wish Buttigieg were even five years older or that he was the mayor of, you know, a real city. They’d like to be able to vote for…

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Rory Carroll reports: Sinn Féin’s breakthrough in Ireland’s general election was decades in the making, but not even Sinn Féin saw it coming. Once a revolutionary party associated with guns and balaclavas, a toxic brand, it slowly edged from the fringe into the mainstream, inch by inch, and then on Saturday made a giant leap. An exit poll gave Sinn Féin 22.3% of the vote, a statistical dead heat with Fine Gael on 22.4% and Fianna Fáil on 22.2%, two…

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The New York Times reports: President Xi Jinping strode onstage before an adoring audience in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing less than three weeks ago, trumpeting his successes in steering China through a tumultuous year and promising “landmark” progress in 2020. “Every single Chinese person, every member of the Chinese nation, should feel proud to live in this great era,” he declared to applause on the day before the Lunar New Year holiday. “Our progress will not…

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Benjamin Wittes writes: [Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman] is an active military officer, rotating through the NSC on assignment. The president can put quotation marks around lieutenant colonel, as he did in today’s tweets, in an effort to demean Vindman’s service, but there is nothing to demean about his service, which has been in all respects honorable. The conduct for which his career has been attacked, what the president calls Vindman’s “insubordination,” was exceptionally brave truth-telling—both in real time and later…

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John Gans writes: On Friday, the White House announced that it was transferring Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified during the House impeachment hearings, out of the National Security Council. The move is unsettling, petty and vindictive. But it’s not a surprise: The dismissal is just one part of a campaign by the national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, to trumpify one of the most powerful and important institutions in government. Over the last six months, while impeachment dominated the news,…

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