Attention to the Unseen

ABC News reports: Several billionaires with deep ties to Russia attended exclusive, invitation-only receptions during Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities, guest lists obtained by ABC News show. These powerful businessmen, who amassed their fortunes following the collapse of the Soviet Union — including one who has since been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department — were ushered into events typically reserved for top donors and close political allies and were given unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle. Their presence has attracted…

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The New York Times reports: A former aide to Roger J. Stone Jr., the longtime Trump adviser and self-described “dirty trickster,” was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury hearing evidence in the Russia investigation and to hand over documents, and his lawyer moved on Thursday to quash it in court. The aide, Andrew Miller, has not been mentioned before publicly in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. Miller, a registered Libertarian, worked briefly for…

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Jonathan Chait writes: Democrats have won the national vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, which, with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy, will have resulted in the appointment of eight of the Supreme Court’s nine justices. And yet four of those justices will have been appointed by presidents who took office despite having fewer votes than their opponent. Republicans will have increasingly solid control of the court’s majority, with the chance to replace the sometimes-wavering Kennedy with a…

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Gabriel Debenedetti writes: Barack Obama was six months into his post–White House life when Donald Trump found a new way to grab his attention. It was a Tuesday morning deep in the mid-Atlantic summer, and, feeling a world away from the Pennsylvania Avenue grind, the former president was reading the New York Times on his iPad. The previous evening, Trump had visited West Virginia, where he spoke at the annual Boy Scout Jamboree. Addressing a crowd of roughly 40,000, who…

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Simon Tisdall writes: Outright victory in the first round of Turkey’s presidential elections has propelled Recep Tayyip Erdoğan into the foremost rank of global strongman leaders in the style of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. But his unchecked political dominance may mark the beginning of a new dark age for Turkish democracy. Erdoğan’s triumphantly aggressive acceptance speech from the balcony of the Ankara headquarters of his neo-Islamist Justice and Development party (AKP) set an…

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Molly K. McKew writes: A little more than a week ago, as President Trump completed his world mini-tour, my Ukrainian researcher emailed me. She witnessed some of the violence of Ukraine’s latest revolution and tends to be clear-eyed about the state of the things. Watching Trump’s behavior at the G7, and then with Kim Jong Un, she couldn’t shake that something profound had occurred. “Every time I hear fireworks at night,” she wrote from Odessa, “my first thought is that…

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The New York Times reports: Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now. President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn’t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset. But Ms. Anders, 46, a Republican from suburban Loudoun County, Va., with a law degree, a business career, and not a stitch of “Make America Great Again” gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway. “All nuance…

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Jon Lee Anderson writes: The first time that Andrés Manuel López Obrador ran for President of Mexico, in 2006, he inspired such devotion among his partisans that they sometimes stuck notes in his pockets, inscribed with their hopes for their families. In an age defined by globalism, he was an advocate of the working class—and also a critic of the PRI, the party that has ruthlessly dominated national politics for much of the past century. In the election, his voters’…

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