Washington Monthly

03/21/2025

"J.D. Vance Is the Most Disliked New Vice President in History"

The public isn’t taking to J.D. Vance's obnoxious style, which bodes well for politics in the post-Trump era.

02/26/2025

"New York City is in crisis. Only the financial crisis of 1975, when the 'wonderful town' could not pay its bills, borrow, or avoid default, is comparable. Yes, crime is lower than in the graffiti-tagged 1970s and 1980s, and there is no singular horror befalling the city like the 9/11 attacks, but this is very much an emergency."

Crime, corruption, and congestion are all part of a city where no one knows if the mayor may go to jail or Andrew Cuomo could return.

02/25/2025

"...in just a few short weeks, Trump has turned what was once the indispensable nation into another squabbling player in a chaotic world sure to grow even more dangerous and disorderly without American leadership."

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/02/24/donald-trump-and-the-end-of-american-global-leadership/

01/30/2025

"It is hard to overstate the dangers of the constitutional crisis that Trump is trying to provoke. He is pushing back against Congress’s key levers as a co-equal branch: not only its investigative powers but also its primacy in setting national policy, its authority to structure the offices of administration and to regulate their operation, and its power of the purse"

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/01/30/trumps-fusillade-of-tyrannical-orders/

01/30/2025

"Trump’s illegal assertion of executive power echoes the attempt 158 years ago by President Andrew Johnson to fire Secretary of War Edward Stanton"

President Trump won't get impeached like Johnson, but his purge of Inspectors General betrays his felony status.

01/29/2025

"If a commander in chief is too fragile, too much of a snowflake to absorb an uncomfortable moment in a public forum, and if a minister requesting kindness to children is cause for discomfort, even contempt, then what we have is a values crisis that transcends policy."

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/01/28/the-trump-values-crisis/

01/24/2025

"...in his executive order concerning birthright citizenship, he demonstrated his willingness to take autocratic action. Trump assumes the power to decide who can be considered a citizen."

President Trump's flood-the-zone strategy is overwhelming but his setback on birthright citizenship is a good sign.

01/23/2025

"We are barely into the second Trump administration, and we are seeing prominent journalists rewriting history and, in some cases, rationalizing the president’s anti-constitutional tendencies. Here are three unsettling examples."

In Trump's first week, our most venerable media institutions are praising oligarchy and rewriting history.

01/17/2025

"From a regional point of view ... 2024, in many ways, doesn’t look much different from the 2000 election. A quarter century of drama and upheaval—hanging chads, falling towers, forever wars, failing banks, deadly variants—and most of the country’s regional cultures have barely budged their partisan leanings. In most regions, this was Donald Trump’s best election yet, but his ethnonationalist agenda still underperformed George W. Bush’s corporate neo-conservatism"

A quarter century of political, social, and economic upheaval has left little mark on the political behavior of the “American Nations” regions.

01/16/2025

"To get a sense of Hegseth’s future, I had a short chat with a source who has had a decades-long career in the U.S. military and the intelligence community, serving both in and out of government. The source requested anonymity to speak freely..."

A military and intelligence source predicts the rigors of being Defense Secretary will limit Hegseth's tenure.

03/14/2024

"Memo to Pollsters: Stop Including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr." -- Bill Scher argues that candidates should not be included in national polls until they prove their ability to get on most state ballots

And Cornel West and No Labels, too, until they have proven their viability by getting on more state ballots

03/04/2024

Fifty years ago, months before Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, a small group of White House staffers quietly planned for the ascension of Gerald Ford. Not even Nixon or Ford knew.

Heath Brown tells the story of the secret Ford transition:

Fifty years ago, months before Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, a small group of White House staffers quietly planned for the ascension of Gerald Ford. Not even Nixon or Ford knew.

02/29/2024

“Nightmare in America” -- Bill Scher shows how Biden '24 can draw from the Reagan '84 TV ad campaign to attack Trump

In 1984, Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign ran a series of ads that evoked how different life felt in America compared to under his opponent’s administration four years prior. Today, Joe Biden should do the same.

02/28/2024

"How to End Republican Exploitation of Rural America"

-- Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, in an excerpt from their new book "White Rural Rage," map out a strategy for a new rural voter movement

The authors of the upcoming book “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy” explain how rural voters can build a national political movement and improve their local economies.

01/04/2024

"Al Sharpton Stands Up for Israel" -- A remarkable profile from Sharpton biographer Jamal Watson

If you’re surprised that the civil rights leader and MSNBC host has broken with the left on Hamas, you haven’t been paying attention.

12/31/2023

Our final articles of 2023

David Masciotra on “Doppelgänger” https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/12/29/the-paranoid-style-of-naomi-klein/

Garrett Epps & James Zirin on Trump/14th
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/12/26/the-wrong-reasons-to-keep-trump-on-the-ballot/

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/12/27/will-trumps-disqualification-turn-on-whether-an-1869-case-was-wrongly-decided/

Peter Shane on Trump’s immunity https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/12/26/trumps-laughable-claim-of-immunity

Happy new year!!!

Whether presidents may be charged with crimes while in office is a difficult question; whether former presidents may be charged is not.

12/23/2023

“I am worried about the 91 criminal charges against Donald Trump and worried he will not be brought to trial on any of them.” — James D. Zirin

The facts are against him but if he appeals the federal cases brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel, he just might.

12/22/2023

"A Trump Coup Trial Primer" -- Everything you need to know ahead of the most monumental test for the rule of law in American history, from Jonathan Alter & Cliff Sloan

Everything you need to know ahead of the most monumental test for the rule of law in American history.