Attention to the Unseen

Jonathan Chait writes: In June 14, 2016, the Washington Post reported that Russian hackers had broken into the Democratic National Committee’s files and gained access to its research on Donald Trump. A political world already numbed by Trump’s astonishing rise barely took notice. News reports quoted experts who suggested the Russians merely wanted more information about Trump to inform their foreign-policy dealings. By that point, Russia was already broadcasting its strong preference for Trump through the media. Yet when news…

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John Cassidy writes: In the two years since a narrow majority of Britons voted to leave the European Union, the planning of the country’s actual departure has often looked like a disaster unfolding in slow motion. In the past few days, as an anonymous public servant, displaying the sangfroid for which British mandarins used to be famous, put it, “we have at least now reached the kinetic phase of the car crash.” Prime Minister Theresa May—facing the thankless, and maybe…

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Margaret Sullivan writes: It’s pretty much an inviolable rule of journalism: Protect your sources. Reporters have gone to jail to keep that covenant. But Marcy Wheeler, who writes a well-regarded national security blog, not only revealed a source — she did so to the FBI, eventually becoming a witness in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of President Trump’s possible connections to Russia. “On its face, I broke one of the cardinal rules of journalism, but what he was…

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The Guardian reports: Arron Banks’ Leave.EU campaign team met with Russian embassy officials as many as 11 times in the run-up to the EU referendum and in the two months beyond, documents seen by the Observer suggest – seven more times than Banks has admitted. The same documents suggest the Russian embassy extended a further four invitations to Brexit’s biggest funder, but it is not known if they were accepted. It is the third time the number of such meetings…

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Richard Milne writes: Every July, Sweden provides one of the world’s great democratic displays. Politicians of all hues descend on the Baltic island of Gotland for the annual Almedalen festival (1-8 July), meeting voters and debating issues ranging from forestry and fake news to immigration and imams in schools. But in advance of the general election on 9 September, a spectre haunted this year’s Almedalen. Swedish politics is facing its most severe test for decades. The consensual, egalitarian model that…

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The New York Times reports: Faced with a court-imposed deadline to reunite families separated at the southwest border, federal authorities are calling in volunteers to sort through records and resorting to DNA tests to match children with parents. And they acknowledged for the first time Thursday that of the nearly 3,000 children who are still in federal custody, about 100 are under the age of 5. The family separations, part of an aggressive effort by the Trump administration to deter…

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Jamelle Bouie writes: Under the Trump administration, even naturalized citizens are now a target. The government agency that oversees immigration applications is hiring lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of immigrants suspected of obtaining citizenship through fake identities or other false information on their applications. Cases would be referred to the Department of Justice, where offenders could lose their citizenship or legal status. “We finally have a process in place to get to the bottom of all these bad…

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The Associated Press reports: Some immigrant U.S. Army reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a promised path to citizenship are being abruptly discharged, the Associated Press has learned. The AP was unable to quantify how many men and women who enlisted through the special recruitment program have been booted from the Army, but immigration attorneys say they know of more than 40 who have been discharged or whose status has become questionable, jeopardizing their futures. “It was…

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Jedediah Purdy writes: In his late may commencement address at the Naval Academy, President Trump chose to remind the graduating cadets and their families of a particular aspect of American history. “Our ancestors conquered a continent,” he said. This point is part of a larger attack on “cynics and critics” who “denigrate America’s incredible heritage.” Like many of Trump’s actions as president, the speech was a reminder that his particular brand of nationalism takes a keen interest in the meaning…

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Murtaza Hussain writes: Despite being one of the United States’s founding statesmen and its second president after independence from Britain, John Adams was quite skeptical of democracy. “Democracy never lasts long,” Adams reflected in an 1814 letter. “It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.” The United States that existed when Adams wrote the letter was not very worthy of being described as a democracy in any case. Millions of…

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Christian Caryl writes: A few days ago, reporters on Air Force One asked President Trump if he would accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. They had good reason to do so. As Trump prepares for his July 16 summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, there have been signs that the U.S. president might be considering some sort of grand bargain that might entail recognition of Moscow’s claims. You’d think that the journalists’ question would be an easy one…

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