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White male power controls every branch of our government

White male power controls every branch of our government

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Bonnie Mann writes: The uproar over the Kavanaugh hearings — even more powerful than the one that followed the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape during the presidential campaign, on which Donald Trump boasted about committing sexual assault — has plunged the nation into a sort of civil war. As a philosopher, I am inclined to see this as a war between two epistemic worlds. By “epistemic world” I mean a broadly shared framework for knowing in which emotions, moral…

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Cruelty is the social glue that unites Trumpworld

Cruelty is the social glue that unites Trumpworld

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Adam Serwer writes: The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse more than 193,000 American children of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration, that the Department of Homeland Security had lied about creating a database of children that would make it possible to unite them with the families the Trump administration…

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Don’t expect Federalist Society members, Wray and Rosenstein, to protect the FBI this time

Don’t expect Federalist Society members, Wray and Rosenstein, to protect the FBI this time

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Nelson W. Cunningham writes: In President Donald Trump’s long and strange war on the FBI and Justice Department, we have become accustomed to the sight of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein bravely standing up to the president. Again and again, these men have been objective tribunals standing up for independence, thoroughness and freedom from political interference. Now it seems they might have another reason to speak up, as reports swirl that political figures at the…

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I know Brett Kavanaugh, but I wouldn’t confirm him

I know Brett Kavanaugh, but I wouldn’t confirm him

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Benjamin Wittes writes: [I]f I were a senator, I would vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. I would do it both because of Ford’s testimony and because of Kavanaugh’s. For reasons I will describe, I find her account more believable than his. I would also do it because whatever the truth of what happened in the summer of 1982, Thursday’s hearing left Kavanaugh nonviable as a justice. A few days before the hearing, I detailed on this site the advice I would…

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How New York Times journalists uncovered the original source of Donald Trump’s wealth

How New York Times journalists uncovered the original source of Donald Trump’s wealth

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The New York Times reports: In the three years since Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president, there has been plenty of investigation into his financial history — especially because he broke with tradition and declined to release his tax returns. In 2016, David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner of The New York Times obtained his 1995 tax returns, showing that he could have avoided paying taxes for nearly two decades. And for their article on Wednesday’s front…

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How Trump is trying — and failing — to get rich off his presidency

How Trump is trying — and failing — to get rich off his presidency

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Forbes reports: When Donald Trump opened Trump Tower in 1983, it marked a seminal moment in American retail, as six stories of glitzy shops like Harry Winston and Cartier beckoned luxury buyers who strode past a live pianist and a 60-foot indoor waterfall. “We got the highest rents ever, anywhere,” says former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res, standing in the pink atrium four decades after she helped build it. Times have changed. Gazing around, almost all the tenants are now…

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How Trump enriched himself by helping his parents dodge taxes

How Trump enriched himself by helping his parents dodge taxes

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The New York Times reports: President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found. Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help. But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove…

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To all the fathers of all the silent victims

To all the fathers of all the silent victims

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Monica Hesse writes: A man emailed recently in response to something I’d written about street harassment. He was so glad, he said, that his college-age daughter never experienced anything like that. Less than a day later, he wrote again. They had just talked. She told him she’d been harassed many, many times — including that week. She hadn’t ever shared this, because she wanted to protect him from her pain. For all the stereotypes that linger about women being too…

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All the ways a Justice Kavanaugh would have to recuse himself

All the ways a Justice Kavanaugh would have to recuse himself

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Laurence H. Tribe writes: Much might be said about Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s possible confirmation to the Supreme Court: in terms of his still only partly disclosed professional record, the allegations of sexual assault and his candor, or lack of it, in testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But apart from all that — and apart from whatever the reopened F.B.I. investigation might reveal — the judge himself has unwittingly provided the most compelling argument against his elevation to that court….

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Fury and fear rises in Grumpy Old Party in defense of Kavanaugh

Fury and fear rises in Grumpy Old Party in defense of Kavanaugh

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The Washington Post reports: The sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh have sparked a wave of unbridled anger and anxiety from many Republican men, who say they are in danger of being swept up by false accusers who are biased against them. From President Trump to his namesake son to Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the howls of outrage crystallize a strong current of grievance within a party whose leadership is almost entirely white and overwhelmingly…

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Trump personally directed effort to silence Stormy Daniels after he took office as president

Trump personally directed effort to silence Stormy Daniels after he took office as president

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The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump personally directed an effort in February to stop Stormy Daniels from publicly describing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, people familiar with the events say. In a phone call, Mr. Trump instructed his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to seek a restraining order against the former adult-film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, through a confidential arbitration proceeding, one of the people said. Messrs. Trump and Cohen had learned shortly before that Ms….

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Trump administration tries to boost corporate profits by exposing Americans to radiation and toxins

Trump administration tries to boost corporate profits by exposing Americans to radiation and toxins

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The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration is quietly moving to weaken U.S. radiation regulations, turning to scientific outliers who argue that a bit of radiation damage is actually good for you — like a little bit of sunlight. The government’s current, decades-old guidance says that any exposure to harmful radiation is a cancer risk. And critics say the proposed change could lead to higher levels of exposure for workers at nuclear installations and oil and gas drilling sites, medical…

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Under Trump, America’s global image has plummeted

Under Trump, America’s global image has plummeted

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Pew Research Center: America’s global image plummeted following the election of President Donald Trump, amid widespread opposition to his administration’s policies and a widely shared lack of confidence in his leadership. Now, as the second anniversary of Trump’s election approaches, a new 25-nation Pew Research Center survey finds that Trump’s international image remains poor, while ratings for the United States are much lower than during Barack Obama’s presidency. The poll also finds that international publics express significant concerns about America’s…

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Kavanaugh’s problem with alcohol

Kavanaugh’s problem with alcohol

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Jessica Francis Kane writes: Alcoholism runs through my family, and what I saw every time Kavanaugh was questioned about his drinking was achingly familiar. The defiance, the casual references to “liking beer,” the mentioning of a friend who has a real problem, the insistence that he was the “Ralph King” because he has a “delicate stomach,” the turning the question on the questioner—all are tactics of the person with alcoholism who has been cornered. I’ve seen this scene before—in a…

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Kavanaugh in 2015: A judge must keep ’emotions in check’ and not be a ‘political partisan’

Kavanaugh in 2015: A judge must keep ’emotions in check’ and not be a ‘political partisan’

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David Corn writes: At Thursday’s historic and dramatic Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Judge Brett Kavanaugh issued a fiery and angry response to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of sexually assaulting her more than three decades ago. An upset Kavanaugh—who alternated between bursts of belligerence and tear-suppressing sniffles—assailed the hearing as “a calculated and orchestrated political hit.” He railed against “outside left-wing opposition groups” and claimed this “circus” was a Democratic plot fueled by “revenge on…

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Rachel Mitchell’s former colleague slams her Kavanaugh memo as ‘absolutely disingenuous’

Rachel Mitchell’s former colleague slams her Kavanaugh memo as ‘absolutely disingenuous’

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Mother Jones reports: A former colleague of Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes prosecutor hired by Senate Republicans to question Christine Blasey Ford, blasted Mitchell for writing a memo casting doubt on Ford’s allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Matthew Long, a former sex crimes prosecutor who was trained by Mitchell in the Maricopa County, Arizona, attorney’s office, told Mother Jones the memo was “disingenuous” and inconsistent with Mitchell’s own practices as a prosecutor. “I’m very disappointed in my former…

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