theatlantic--2020-01-29--The Iowans Who Reject Their State’s Special Privilege

Because of their first-in-the-nation position , the Iowa caucuses can change the course of the primary campaign : In each of the past four contested Democratic primaries , the winner has gone on to capture the party ’ s nomination , and every presidential contender knows that a win in the state can help propel them to broader electoral success .
But the voters who determine what happens in the state look nothing like the country as a whole : While about 60 percent of the total U.S. population is white , in Iowa white people make up 85 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ figures .
“ We don ’ t want just one group ’ s point of view , ” Holly Christine Brown , who is Filipina and the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party ’ s Asian/Pacific Islander Caucus , told me .
“ That ’ s what you ’ re getting when you have a state like Iowa go first.
” Brown , a 39-year-old from Cedar Rapids , called for an end to the practice in a November letter published in her local paper .
“ Our country has become more diverse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presidential primaries , in 1972 , Brown wrote in the letter , which was signed by six other activists and party leaders in the state .
“ If we want to say we have become accepting and welcoming of that diversity , then our presidential nominating contest should reflect that.
” The 2020 primary field was , at one point , the most diverse in history .
Senator Kamala Harris , Senator Cory Booker , and former Housing Secretary Julián Castro , three candidates of color , have all dropped out in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ race overwhelmingly white .
The entrepreneur Andrew Yang is the highest-polling nonwhite candidate left—though he is garnering just 4 percent support nationwide .
While Iowa has been blamed for culling candidates of color from the race , it might also be to blame for limiting who runs in the first place , one activist argued .
“ One of the criteria for signing on to be a Democratic candidate for president in this country is How well am I gon na do in Iowa ?
” Reyma McCoy McDeid , a black disability-rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ If we ’ re talking about a state where , by and large , the political landscape is dictated by an aging , white … voting bloc , that obviously is going to be a hugely mitigating factor in determining who decides to run for president , and who ’ s considered to be a viable candidate.
” Many candidates ’ agendas aren ’ t in line with what nonwhite voters living in Iowa deem the most important issues , other activists told me .
Most of them “ don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precisely because they have to spend so much energy in Iowa , said Nadia Ali , a Sudanese refugee living in Des Moines and a co-founder of the Iowa Women ’ s March .
“ They feel like they have to go after the white working class , then they do outreach later to the minority groups .
”

Lynette Cooper cares deeply about politics, and every four years, she embraces the opportunities that come with living in Iowa. In the past two weeks alone, the 38-year-old nurse practitioner has been able to ask questions of candidates at a forum on racial justice; attend a rally for Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; and drop by a town hall for former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
But despite her intense level of engagement, Cooper rejects the idea that she should have these privileges as an Iowan. “As a black person,” she told me this week, “I don’t think that Iowa being first—setting the tone and putting candidates on the stage and propelling them to the candidacy—I don’t think that’s fair.”
Most Iowans are enormously proud of the caucuses, and they view themselves as well qualified for the task of winnowing the Democratic primary field. But a small pocket of Iowans, including many people of color, feel differently: They believe that the state’s overwhelmingly white population makes it utterly unrepresentative of the nation as a whole. Their voices are joining an existing chorus of progressives across the country who have spoken out against the caucuses, and may ultimately encourage the Democratic Party to restructure the primary system—knocking Iowa from its perch at the top of the primary process once and for all.
Because of their first-in-the-nation position, the Iowa caucuses can change the course of the primary campaign: In each of the past four contested Democratic primaries, the winner has gone on to capture the party’s nomination, and every presidential contender knows that a win in the state can help propel them to broader electoral success. But the voters who determine what happens in the state look nothing like the country as a whole: While about 60 percent of the total U.S. population is white, in Iowa white people make up 85 percent of the population, according to census figures.
“We don’t want just one group’s point of view,” Holly Christine Brown, who is Filipina and the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Asian/Pacific Islander Caucus, told me. “That’s what you’re getting when you have a state like Iowa go first.” Brown, a 39-year-old from Cedar Rapids, called for an end to the practice in a November letter published in her local paper. “Our country has become more diverse” since Iowa started voting first in presidential primaries, in 1972, Brown wrote in the letter, which was signed by six other activists and party leaders in the state. “If we want to say we have become accepting and welcoming of that diversity, then our presidential nominating contest should reflect that.”
Ibram X. Kendi: The other swing voter
The 2020 primary field was, at one point, the most diverse in history. Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Cory Booker, and former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, three candidates of color, have all dropped out in the past two months, leaving the primary race overwhelmingly white. The entrepreneur Andrew Yang is the highest-polling nonwhite candidate left—though he is garnering just 4 percent support nationwide.
While Iowa has been blamed for culling candidates of color from the race, it might also be to blame for limiting who runs in the first place, one activist argued. “One of the criteria for signing on to be a Democratic candidate for president in this country is How well am I gonna do in Iowa?” Reyma McCoy McDeid, a black disability-rights activist from Des Moines, told me. “If we’re talking about a state where, by and large, the political landscape is dictated by an aging, white … voting bloc, that obviously is going to be a hugely mitigating factor in determining who decides to run for president, and who’s considered to be a viable candidate.”
Many candidates’ agendas aren’t in line with what nonwhite voters living in Iowa deem the most important issues, other activists told me. Most of them “don’t center minority voices” or priorities precisely because they have to spend so much energy in Iowa, said Nadia Ali, a Sudanese refugee living in Des Moines and a co-founder of the Iowa Women’s March. “They feel like they have to go after the white working class, then they do outreach later to the minority groups.”
Read: Democrats should be worried about the Latino vote
The activists I spoke with also worry that Iowa has artificially inflated support for certain contenders this year, and they suspect that some candidates the state has elevated could crash and burn once the primary moves on to more diverse regions. Buttigieg, for example, is performing well in Iowa, but he has extremely low support among young people and nonwhite voters nationally. “People like Buttigieg and [Senator Amy] Klobuchar wouldn’t be a factor if we started outside of Iowa and New Hampshire,” Cooper said. “They’re getting more shine than they should, considering that they won’t do so well outside of these caucuses.” (Former Vice President Joe Biden, another top contender in Iowa, has led nationally among nonwhite voters, but activists say that this doesn’t negate their argument; black voters in particular like Biden, they argue, because of his affiliation with Barack Obama and because they see him as the most electable Democrat.)
Defenders of the Iowa-first tradition note that residents of the state have a proven track record of propelling worthy candidates to the White House, starting in 1976 with Jimmy Carter. The state’s geographic size and small population, they say, enable candidates on any budget to conduct the kind of intimate, grassroots campaigning necessary for winning a general election. One often-cited fact is that 12 years ago, Iowans chose Obama, the young black senator, over two white presidential contenders. “We have proven that we are diverse in our politics, even if the [state’s demographics] don’t show it,” said Sally Goode, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Latinx Caucus, insisting that Democratic voters in the state are extremely cognizant of the issues that minority voters prioritize nationwide. “The white people have brown skin underneath,” Goode said. (The Iowa Democratic Party did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)
It’s not just Iowa’s primacy that critics want to change for future elections. As I’ve written before, the caucus system itself, which offers no absentee option, is also inaccessible for people with disabilities, who are unable to attend the caucuses easily, and those with inflexible schedules, like shift workers. Even if the activists are unified around their desire to demote Iowa, they’re not in agreement on what to replace it with. Some told me another state should go first. If the primary calendar were reordered according to which states best match the demographics of the Democratic Party, Illinois would go first, followed by New Jersey, New York, and Florida, according to FiveThirtyEight. (New Hampshire and Iowa would become the 34th and 42nd states to vote, respectively.) Others argued that Democrats should push for a national primary, in which every state holds its nominating contest on the same day—a change intended to mitigate any special privileges afforded to certain voters.
“If we want to be responsible citizens not only of Iowa but of the U.S.,” McCoy McDeid said, “we need to let this go.”


theatlantic--2020-01-29--Donald Down the Shore

Donald Down the Shore

Read : One thing about the 2020 election is already clear Cold and gray , with MAGA beanies and cracked-open beers barely concealed in koozies , the scene around town looked more like a football Sunday than a January Tuesday .
Subpoena Colada , MAGArita , Moscow Mueller , and the Sanders ( “ You buy the drink and we give it to someone who doesn ’ t have one !
” ) were a few of the “ Trump Rally Drink Specials ” on offer at the Blue Water Grille .
Trump 2020 and Keep America Great banners peppered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coverage of the president ’ s impeachment trial occupied the mounted TVs .
Cortland Heyniger Sr. and his son , Cortland Jr. , posted up at the bar in matching camo Trump hats and flannel shirts .
“ The other side lies and tries to divide us , ” said Heyniger Jr. , an Asbury Park firefighter .
“ You can see it , you know ?
” Janis Sweeney , a hair stylist from Winslow Township , celebrated her 60th birthday by coming to the rally .
It was her first time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first political event at all .
“ I like his attitude , ” said Sweeney , wearing a leopard-print coat and a pink Women for Trump button .
“ He ’ s a good guy ; he ’ s sensitive.
” She and her husband , Chuck , arrived a full day before the event , tagging each other in and out of the line outside the venue as the wind whipped off the icy Atlantic .
Eighty-four-year-old Dorothy Cobb and her daughter pulled into Wildwood on Sunday .
Cobb sat on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spread across her lap as she clutched a Keep America Great !
sign .
“ A lot of people think he ’ s a bully .
Well , we need a bully , ” Cobb said .
Like others I spoke with , she waved off former National Security Adviser John Bolton ’ s corroboration of a Trump quid pro quo with Ukraine and scoffed at the idea of impeachment as a whole .
“ There ’ s a lot of lying going on , ” Cobb said .
Onstage , the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in January didn ’ t make much immediate sense , then bragged that the event had broken attendance records for the venue .
He gave a brief shout-out to former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie , which was met with a mix of boos and applause .
( Christie was on-site to hear it all . )
He brought up South Jersey–bred Kellyanne Conway to talk about her love of both the president and her home state .
Later , when running out of steam and with some attendees filtering out , Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world “ American greats ” such as Thomas Edison and Frank Sinatra .
At one point , he spoke fondly of the “ beautiful escalator ” he rode down five years ago inside his namesake tower on the day he announced his candidacy for president , the same day he referred to Mexicans as rapists and criminals .
I asked Fernando Fernandez , the president of the Atlantic City Republican Club , about that particular xenophobic comment when we sat down at a table at the Blue Water Grille yesterday afternoon .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ born in Peru and whose parents are Democrats .
“ I have good friends that are Mexicans that are not rapists , ” he said .
“ So the comment doesn ’ t really portray what [ Trump ’ s ] saying.
” Later , Fernandez told me that he is a gay man and that his political affiliation is “ a big turnoff ” to many potential partners .
“ The Republican Party has welcomed me with open arms , 100 percent , ” said Fernandez , wearing a red Trump 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hair sewn into the top .
“ They knew who I was from the beginning .
They might ’ ve raised an eyebrow like everybody else who doesn ’ t know me quite well , but after a couple months they ’ re like , ‘ You ’ re welcome .
You are a part of the Republicans .
’ ”

WILDWOOD, N.J.—President Donald Trump casually referred to his reelection campaign as “probably the greatest movement in history” last night. He told the several thousand rally-goers inside the Wildwoods Convention Center—and the scores more partying outside and watching a simulcast—that this country “has tremendous potential if we don’t blow it.” At one point, Trump warned that Democrats want to “close your factories” and “get rid of your cows.” He conceded that there aren’t many cows in this particular beach town.
Why did the president descend on the Jersey Shore in the dead of winter?
The waterslides of Morey’s Piers loomed over the boardwalk, bone-dry. It was too early in the season for 18 holes of mini-golf. No enticing aromas wafted out of the Fudge Factory (though someone did hand out free samples outside the Fudge Kitchen). Why Jersey at all? Democrats have won the state in the past seven consecutive presidential contests. But Trump, the former Atlantic City casino boss, owed a guy a favor.
New Jersey’s Second Congressional District went for Trump in 2016 after twice voting for Barack Obama. Its congressman, Jeff Van Drew, flipped it blue in 2018, then recently flipped himself for Trump: A week before Christmas, Van Drew voted against both articles of impeachment before formally joining the GOP and declaring his “undying support” for the president. Just over a month later, Trump gave him a slap on the back in the form of this off-season Wildwood boardwalk rally, up to and including bringing Van Drew onstage as part of a broader effort to paint the GOP as a “big-tent party.” (Van Drew spoke for but a few minutes before handing the mic back to the president.)
Read: One thing about the 2020 election is already clear
Cold and gray, with MAGA beanies and cracked-open beers barely concealed in koozies, the scene around town looked more like a football Sunday than a January Tuesday. Subpoena Colada, MAGArita, Moscow Mueller, and the Sanders (“You buy the drink and we give it to someone who doesn’t have one!”) were a few of the “Trump Rally Drink Specials” on offer at the Blue Water Grille. Trump 2020 and Keep America Great banners peppered the restaurant, while Fox News’ coverage of the president’s impeachment trial occupied the mounted TVs. Cortland Heyniger Sr. and his son, Cortland Jr., posted up at the bar in matching camo Trump hats and flannel shirts. “The other side lies and tries to divide us,” said Heyniger Jr., an Asbury Park firefighter. “You can see it, you know?”
Janis Sweeney, a hair stylist from Winslow Township, celebrated her 60th birthday by coming to the rally. It was her first time seeing Trump in the flesh, her first political event at all. “I like his attitude,” said Sweeney, wearing a leopard-print coat and a pink Women for Trump button. “He’s a good guy; he’s sensitive.” She and her husband, Chuck, arrived a full day before the event, tagging each other in and out of the line outside the venue as the wind whipped off the icy Atlantic. Eighty-four-year-old Dorothy Cobb and her daughter pulled into Wildwood on Sunday. Cobb sat on the risers inside with a green knit blanket spread across her lap as she clutched a Keep America Great! sign. “A lot of people think he’s a bully. Well, we need a bully,” Cobb said. Like others I spoke with, she waved off former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s corroboration of a Trump quid pro quo with Ukraine and scoffed at the idea of impeachment as a whole. “There’s a lot of lying going on,” Cobb said.
Onstage, the president acknowledged that crashing a Northeast beach town in January didn’t make much immediate sense, then bragged that the event had broken attendance records for the venue. He gave a brief shout-out to former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, which was met with a mix of boos and applause. (Christie was on-site to hear it all.) He brought up South Jersey–bred Kellyanne Conway to talk about her love of both the president and her home state. Later, when running out of steam and with some attendees filtering out, Trump reminded the audience that New Jersey gave the world “American greats” such as Thomas Edison and Frank Sinatra. At one point, he spoke fondly of the “beautiful escalator” he rode down five years ago inside his namesake tower on the day he announced his candidacy for president, the same day he referred to Mexicans as rapists and criminals.
I asked Fernando Fernandez, the president of the Atlantic City Republican Club, about that particular xenophobic comment when we sat down at a table at the Blue Water Grille yesterday afternoon. Fernandez is a naturalized citizen who was born in Peru and whose parents are Democrats. “I have good friends that are Mexicans that are not rapists,” he said. “So the comment doesn’t really portray what [Trump’s] saying.” Later, Fernandez told me that he is a gay man and that his political affiliation is “a big turnoff” to many potential partners. “The Republican Party has welcomed me with open arms, 100 percent,” said Fernandez, wearing a red Trump 2020 visor with a mop of fake blond hair sewn into the top. “They knew who I was from the beginning. They might’ve raised an eyebrow like everybody else who doesn’t know me quite well, but after a couple months they’re like, ‘You’re welcome. You are a part of the Republicans.’”
Read: The new question hanging over the impeachment trial
Will Trump’s big-tent pitch work? A large-scale fracturing of the Democratic Party was a recurring theme at the rally, with Trump zeroing in on Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, characterizing the senators as locked in a progressive arms race. With TV cameras rolling, Trump tried to woo potential voters like Van Drew—Democrats who have had enough! He employed triplicate phrasings that would have been a natural fit in speeches from Obama’s first campaign, deeming the Republican Party “the party of the American worker, the American family, and the American dream.”
He’s still obsessed with perfecting his brand. Inside the venue, red MAGA hats sold for $25, while the newer Keep America Great caps were $30. (Both purchases count as campaign contributions.) Over the past four years, Trump’s various three-word, one-syllable phrases—“Build the wall,” “Drain the swamp”—naturally evolved into refrains, then rally chants, then, finally, T-shirts—the kind you stop to read when sauntering down the Wildwood boardwalk on nights much warmer than this. A handful of shops were open last night, with most sellers slinging special I-was-there merch for this “historic” rally alongside polemics such as “I Support LGBTQ: Liberty Guns Bible Trump BBQ” and simpler visuals such as Baby Yoda in a MAGA hat. One store positioned “Trump 2020: Fuck Your Feelings” adjacent to two shirts honoring Kobe Bryant barely 48 hours after the former NBA star’s death. One hoodie, emblazoned with a stars-and-stripes, all-caps TRUMP, featured a taunting coda that will surely keep cropping up this year: Make the Liberals Cry Again.
Seeing it reminded me of a conversation I’d had earlier in the day with James Mack, a white 47-year-old insurance agent who had driven down from Sewell, New Jersey, with his brother Jonny. “I’ve determined that the president of the United States has little-to-no impact at all on my life, but if I have to watch them on TV, I prefer they were entertaining,” said Mack, who’s tall and has a salt-and-pepper goatee. He wore a red Trump 2020 hat that read Finish the Wall and a dark blazer over a screen-printed tee in the style of Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” poster, but featuring Trump.
I asked Mack: Would the president have a greater impact on his life if he himself were a different nationality or ethnicity?
He looked at me, deadpan.
“Well, I self-identify as a black lesbian, so I think I’m fairly protected,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the perks.”
Trump would likely tell Mack there’s plenty of room in the tent.


theatlantic--2020-01-29--<em>The Atlantic </em>Politics Daily: Texas Isn’t Purple Just Yet

It ’ s Wednesday , January 29 .
The CDC has confirmed another U.S. case of coronavirus .
“ Based on what ’ s known so far , the virus is dangerous , ” James Hamblin writes , “ but not unprecedentedly so.
” On Capitol Hill , the question-and-answer portion of the impeachment trial started on Wednesday .
Meanwhile , Republicans seem poised to block the testimony of new witnesses—including John Bolton .
In the rest of today ’ s newsletter : Republicans come back to life in Texas .
Plus : What Iowans of color really think of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 , Republicans in Texas got caught napping .
Accustomed to one-party rule , the GOP lost control of two House seats and nearly lost a Senate race to Democrat Beto O ’ Rourke .
But this week , Democrats got a rude awakening that Republicans aren ’ t going to easily cede more ground .
In a special election that had captured the attention of national figures in both parties , a Republican candidate for the Texas state House walloped his Democratic opponent .
It ’ s just one election , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it still has lessons for both parties as they head into November .
Democratic operatives I spoke with this morning conceded that it was a stretch to call Texas a winnable state for the party ’ s eventual presidential nominee in 2020 .
( These dampened expectations are a contrast to the hype that built up after 2016 , when the nine-point gap between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Texas was smaller than the gap in Iowa and barely larger than the one in Ohio . )
… In 2018 , O @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a wake-up call for Texas Republicans .
Yesterday , in their first 2020 test , they answered it .
Texas ’ s quickly changing demographics have long given Democrats a sense of hope .
Since 2010 , as Ronald Brownstein writes , Texas has added four times the number of new Latino residents as white residents .

A special election jolts Democrats back to reality about their immediate prospects in the state.
It’s Wednesday, January 29. The CDC has confirmed another U.S. case of coronavirus. “Based on what’s known so far, the virus is dangerous,” James Hamblin writes, “but not unprecedentedly so.”
On Capitol Hill, the question-and-answer portion of the impeachment trial started on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Republicans seem poised to block the testimony of new witnesses—including John Bolton.
In the rest of today’s newsletter: Republicans come back to life in Texas. Plus: What Iowans of color really think of the state’s caucuses.
*
« TODAY IN POLITICS »
(BEN SKLAR / GETTY)
Texas Isn’t Purple Just Yet
In 2018, Republicans in Texas got caught napping.
Accustomed to one-party rule, the GOP lost control of two House seats and nearly lost a Senate race to Democrat Beto O’Rourke.
But this week, Democrats got a rude awakening that Republicans aren’t going to easily cede more ground. In a special election that had captured the attention of national figures in both parties, a Republican candidate for the Texas state House walloped his Democratic opponent.
It’s just one election, but as my colleague Russell Berman writes, it still has lessons for both parties as they head into November.
Democratic operatives I spoke with this morning conceded that it was a stretch to call Texas a winnable state for the party’s eventual presidential nominee in 2020. (These dampened expectations are a contrast to the hype that built up after 2016, when the nine-point gap between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Texas was smaller than the gap in Iowa and barely larger than the one in Ohio.) … In 2018, O’Rourke’s near-upset of Cruz was a wake-up call for Texas Republicans. Yesterday, in their first 2020 test, they answered it.
Texas’s quickly changing demographics have long given Democrats a sense of hope. Since 2010, as Ronald Brownstein writes, Texas has added four times the number of new Latino residents as white residents.
So far this cycle, however, Democrats haven’t exactly done a great job of reaching Latino voters who could help deliver the state for them, as my colleague Christian Paz writes:
Some of the Latino political organizers I spoke with described the primary season so far as a master class in “political malpractice”—as one person phrased it—with candidates struggling to engage Latino voters, address issues beyond immigration reform, and treat Latinos as the influential voting bloc they are.
Read here about why Democrats should be worried about the Latino vote.
—Saahil Desai
*
« SNAPSHOT »
(Andrew Harnik / AP)
John Delaney is still running for president. Less than a week out from the Iowa caucuses, the millionaire former Maryland congressman is still pouring his own money into a campaign in which he’s not even breaking 1 percent in the national polls.
« IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS »
(SPENCER PLATT / GETTY )
1. “They believe that the state’s overwhelmingly white population makes it utterly unrepresentative of the nation as a whole.”
What do Iowans of color think about their state’s outsized role in the presidential-primary process? Elaine Godfrey spoke with a handful of nonwhite activists in the state who worry that it’s too white to go first.
2. “The number of people who are dissatisfied with democracy is greater than the number of people who are satisfied with it.”
A new report on the health of democracy around the world backs up a worrying trend: More people living in democracies are growing disenchanted with democracy as a form of government. In some countries, including the United States, those unsatisfied actually outnumber those who are satisfied with it, Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa write.
3. “Two impeachments and an internet later, impeachment polls have become …‘a form of cultural hysteria.’”
While polling helps show how Americans feel about their commander-in-chief, the president’s popularity should not be a key factor in determining if he should be removed from office, Jane Chong argues.
*
« EVENING READ »
Supporters of President Trump peruse campaign memorabilia before a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey. (SETH WENIG / AP)
Donald Down the Jersey Shore
President Donald Trump’s latest rally brought him to a New Jersey beach town in the dead of winter. Why did he make the trek to a deep-blue state in an election year?
John Hendrickson explores:
New Jersey’s Second Congressional District went for Trump in 2016 after twice voting for Barack Obama. Its congressman, Jeff Van Drew, flipped it blue in 2018, then recently flipped himself for Trump: A week before Christmas, Van Drew voted against both articles of impeachment before formally joining the GOP and declaring his “undying support” for the president. Just over a month later, Trump gave him a slap on the back in the form of this off-season Wildwood boardwalk rally, up to and including bringing Van Drew onstage as part of a broader effort to paint the GOP as a “big-tent party.”
Read John’s Jersey Shore dispatch here.
*


theatlantic--2020-01-30--The Staggering Vulnerability of Global Elites

Yet even if Bezos wasn ’ t hacked in the way FTI indicates he likely was , that doesn ’ t mean the scenario the company sketched out couldn ’ t happen .
The fact remains that states currently have largely unfettered ability to purchase digital-surveillance technology from a growing number of private companies , and can exploit it for their own ends .
Security experts at the University of Toronto ’ s Citizen Lab have accused the Saudi government of deploying advanced spyware against journalists and dissidents , and these groups have been similarly targeted by other governments as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bezos ’ s phone is “ almost impossible to trace and it has the capacity to self-destroy , so finding the source with 100 percent certainty is never possible , ” Callamard said , underscoring the peril of such stealthy technologies in the hands of so many actors angling for access to sensitive information .
( Consider , for example , the head-spinning speculation that MbS himself could have been hacked . )
She urged a moratorium on the global trade in commercial surveillance tools until an international framework is created for preventing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 150 such tools are now on the market , a Washington Post editorial this week proposed that the framework involve governments requiring “ vendors to certify that clients pass human rights muster , and that they don ’ t abuse a tool after purchase.
” Such a regulatory framework , however , is unlikely to be erected .
And even if one is , as Callamard acknowledged , “ there will always be bad apples.
” Rigorously policing the kind of spyware that may have infiltrated Bezos ’ s phone will be challenging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who has the resources to develop or acquire this technology and access to valuable targets—two conditions that most governments meet—will not hit many obstacles along the way .
`` There are enough powerful players in this space who want these capabilities that they will continue to be created and sold , ” Rid said .
“ But that does n't mean we should n't do anything about it.
” While Rid , who has written a forthcoming book on the history of disinformation and political warfare , said he sees value in seeking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also noted that efforts to raise awareness about the tools risk going too far .
When “ we overstate the threat , we are creating more of it .
It 's a self-fulfilling prophecy , ” he explained , pointing to how exaggerated characterizations of the effectiveness of Russian disinformation efforts during the 2016 U.S. election encouraged other countries to invest in those capabilities .
“ I have absolutely no doubt that a lot of intelligence agencies , a lot of powerful players in the world are thinking [ after high-profile incidents such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is interesting … I want one of those , ” Rid said .
And some of those new players will develop much more sophisticated operations than the one allegedly prosecuted against Bezos .
These days , he said , “ I am trusting my phone less and less .
”

Anyone can get hacked. But when it happens to the rich and powerful, the stakes can be extraordinarily high.
After United Nations officials aired allegations that Jeff Bezos’s phone had likely been hacked in the course of his WhatsApp communications with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the logical next question was whether other rich-and-famous pen pals had been maliciously spammed too.
An aide to Jared Kushner did not respond to my queries about whether Donald Trump’s son-in-law was worried about his own devices being compromised as a result of his reported WhatsApp correspondence with the Saudi leader. A spokesperson for Virgin confirmed that its billionaire founder, Richard Branson, had communicated with the crown prince (known as MbS) by phone, but told me the company had nothing more to add. Twitter, whose CEO, Jack Dorsey, has met with MbS, declined to comment.
But focusing on the specific individuals who may or may not have come into the crown prince’s crosshairs risks missing the larger lesson of this episode: that these people could conceivably come into his crosshairs at all.
Read: What Jeff Bezos’s reported phone hack says about billionaires
In this dystopian digital age in which we’re desperately trying to salvage some semblance of privacy, we have become accustomed to raised alarms about companies mining people’s data and about governments waging elaborate cyberattacks against their adversaries. But this is different terrain: a powerful state actor allegedly infecting a powerful non-state actor as their personal relationship soured. It’s the specter of cyberwarfare at its most atomized and human, the end of our collective innocence about adding a “new contact.”
Many observers have noted that if a hack like this can happen to as well-resourced a figure as Bezos—the head of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post, who enjoys the additional distinction of being the wealthiest person in the world—it can happen to anyone. But the more significant takeaway may be that if it can happen to anyone, it can happen to the rich and powerful, and with extraordinarily high stakes, convulsing international relations and global business in the process.
As my colleague Alexis Madrigal wrote, “You and I could chat on WhatsApp, but we would not have a cyberattack team able to craft us a virus for hacking each other’s phones, nor would our beef contribute to the collapse of certain Silicon Valley business models” predicated on Saudi investments. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden put it another way: “If the Saudi government had access to Jared Kushner’s phone, it'd be practically like putting a bug in the Oval Office.”
“That is the real story here. That is the most amazing story,” Thomas Rid, an international-security expert at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “Bezos, one of the richest and most influential businesspeople in the United States, on the planet, is using the same technology—an iPhone X and WhatsApp—that all of us are using.” And even with all of his money and clout, he’s still struggling to get "proper visibility into whether his phone was hacked."
Agnes Callamard, one of the two UN human-rights rapporteurs who released the statement on the Bezos allegations last week, told me the announcement was intended as a “warning” to the world that a no-holds-barred battle is brewing over information and that mechanisms need to be put in place to scale it back. Callamard invited “individuals who feel that they may have been compromised or their phone may have been compromised” by state-sponsored cyberattacks to approach her office confidentially, whereby they could be connected with cybersecurity experts.
The UN statement also called for further investigation by U.S. and other relevant authorities into what Callamard and her colleague, David Kaye, deemed a credible forensic analysis of Bezos’s iPhone, which the businessman had commissioned from the consulting firm FTI. That probe concluded with “medium to high confidence” that a malware-laced video sent from a WhatsApp account belonging to MbS secretly siphoned data from the businessman’s device. The Post had been publishing columns critical of Saudi leaders by the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who in 2018 was murdered by agents of MbS’s government. But several information-security experts have questioned the FTI report. Rid, for instance, argued that FTI’s findings are “a very potent lead for further investigation” but not conclusive. The Saudi government, for its part, has dismissed the claims as “absurd.”
Yet even if Bezos wasn’t hacked in the way FTI indicates he likely was, that doesn’t mean the scenario the company sketched out couldn’t happen. The fact remains that states currently have largely unfettered ability to purchase digital-surveillance technology from a growing number of private companies, and can exploit it for their own ends. Security experts at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab have accused the Saudi government of deploying advanced spyware against journalists and dissidents, and these groups have been similarly targeted by other governments as well.
The malware that allegedly breached Bezos’s phone is “almost impossible to trace and it has the capacity to self-destroy, so finding the source with 100 percent certainty is never possible,” Callamard said, underscoring the peril of such stealthy technologies in the hands of so many actors angling for access to sensitive information. (Consider, for example, the head-spinning speculation that MbS himself could have been hacked.)
She urged a moratorium on the global trade in commercial surveillance tools until an international framework is created for preventing their misuse. Noting that more than 150 such tools are now on the market, a Washington Post editorial this week proposed that the framework involve governments requiring “vendors to certify that clients pass human rights muster, and that they don’t abuse a tool after purchase.”
Such a regulatory framework, however, is unlikely to be erected. And even if one is, as Callamard acknowledged, “there will always be bad apples.” Rigorously policing the kind of spyware that may have infiltrated Bezos’s phone will be challenging; the depressing truth is that anyone who has the resources to develop or acquire this technology and access to valuable targets—two conditions that most governments meet—will not hit many obstacles along the way. "There are enough powerful players in this space who want these capabilities that they will continue to be created and sold,” Rid said. “But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about it.”
While Rid, who has written a forthcoming book on the history of disinformation and political warfare, said he sees value in seeking to rein in these technologies, he also noted that efforts to raise awareness about the tools risk going too far. When “we overstate the threat, we are creating more of it. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he explained, pointing to how exaggerated characterizations of the effectiveness of Russian disinformation efforts during the 2016 U.S. election encouraged other countries to invest in those capabilities.
“I have absolutely no doubt that a lot of intelligence agencies, a lot of powerful players in the world are thinking [after high-profile incidents such as the Bezos case], This is interesting … I want one of those,” Rid said. And some of those new players will develop much more sophisticated operations than the one allegedly prosecuted against Bezos. These days, he said, “I am trusting my phone less and less.”
Read: Cancel billionaires
What makes this an especially confounding public-policy issue is that today’s unparalleled connectedness is both irresistibly alluring and profoundly dangerous, nowhere more so than in the circles MbS and Bezos inhabit. As the heir apparent to the Saudi throne since 2017, the crown prince initially dazzled luminaries around the world with demonstrations of his accessibility and determination to get down to business unencumbered by bureaucracy. The Wall Street Journal reports, “WhatsApp was a key tool of the young prince’s global charm campaign.” MbS “handed out his WhatsApp contact information to visiting dignitaries, businessmen, academics and some journalists so often that his phone streamed messages day and night,” which he would read and respond to regularly, the paper notes.
During a whirlwind tour of the United States in 2018, MbS met with influential figures including the media mogul Oprah Winfrey and Michael Bloomberg, now a Democratic candidate for president. He swapped phone numbers with Bezos during a dinner party in Los Angeles, which gave way to chats about business partnerships. Soon enough, the crown prince was referring to Bezos as “my friend.”
For billionaires, exchanging numbers must seem like a wonderful way for them to construct an ecosystem of influential friends. But it’s just as much a foolhardy way of stripping themselves of whatever enhanced protection their respective positions afford. As the journalist Richard Waters wrote in the Financial Times, attacks like the one Bezos allegedly suffered “play on weaknesses in the human operating system that can’t easily be patched”; electronic channels of communication, and the trust and personal networks they help build, are essential in the highest echelons of business and government. “For anyone aspiring to power and influence in the world, this prompts deeply uncomfortable questions,” Waters noted. “For instance, which is worse: that a future head of state hasn’t been sending you internet memes over WhatsApp, or that he has?”
Securing the intimate access granted by a phone number may seem like an unqualified good. Having the email address of a powerful person is one thing; it’s quite another to be able to make the Saudi crown prince’s hand vibrate. But the connection cuts both ways. It can, as Bezos and his investigators now suspect, amount to handing over the keys to your digital life.


theatlantic--2020-01-30--Democrats Never Found Their Hero

Democrats Never Found Their Hero

When Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz submitted a somewhat tortured hypothetical query about whether it would have been acceptable for President Barack Obama to urge the Russian government to conduct an investigation into Mitt Romney ’ s son if he knew the younger Romney were being paid $ 1 million a year by a corrupt Russian company—a not-so-veiled reference to Hunter Biden ’ s service on the board of Ukrainian energy company—Schiff ’ s bottom line was simple : Presidents asking foreign governments “ to target their political opponent is wrong and corrupt , period.
” Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long before the trial began , and the chance that Democrats might garner the 51 votes required to call more witnesses had all but evaporated by yesterday afternoon , despite former National Security Adviser John Bolton ’ s reported corroboration that Trump told him he was withholding security assistance to Ukraine until it agreed to investigations into the president ’ s Democratic rival .
“ Probably no ” was Schumer ’ s own assessment of the likelihood of witnesses after one potential GOP target after another either opposed the idea or signaled they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political calculation behind it , was summed up neatly by Josh Holmes , a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell , who tweeted : “ More witnesses = Hindenburg .
None of it changes ultimate acquittal.
” So as the hours ticked past , and senators on both sides of the aisle stood and stretched , Schiff appeared to be speaking not only to them but to posterity , as he argued that new information about Trump ’ s actions on Ukraine was continuing to surface almost daily , and would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ahead .
“ Don ’ t wait for the book !
” he said , referring to Bolton ’ s memoir .
Responding to a question from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island about whether senators should consider the White House ’ s refusal to produce witnesses an “ adverse inference ” against the president ’ s innocence , under long-standing judicial practice , Schiff was emphatic .
“ Should you draw an adverse inference ?
You ’ re darn right you should !
” But he added , “ There is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just a need for a subpoena.
” But throughout the Capitol all day yesterday , it grew ever clearer that embattled Republican senators such as Cory Gardner of Colorado would rather face the wrath of swing voters who think this truncated trial is unfair than risk prolonging it for even a week or two by calling witnesses and courting the president ’ s wrath .
“ I think we can all see what ’ s going on here , ” Schiff said shortly after 8 .
“ And that ’ s , If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ witness ... we are going to make this endless ; we , the president ’ s lawyers , are going to make this endless .
We promise you , we ’ re going to want Adam Schiff to testify , we want Joe Biden to testify , Hunter Biden … We will make you pay for it with endless delay.
” But Schiff insisted , “ We ’ re not here to indulge in fantasy or distraction .
We ’ re here to talk about people with pertinent and probative evidence … So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this claim … You can ’ t have a fair trial without witnesses.
” Indeed , the House managers have spent more than a week noting that no Senate impeachment trial has ever concluded without calling some witnesses .
But in this , as in so many other matters involving the political ascendancy and presidency of Donald John Trump , Schiff and his colleagues , in invoking the power of history ’ s example , seem poised instead to suffer one more painful lesson in its limits .

Representative Adam Schiff played every card he had in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, but none seemed to work.
As the final sliver of daylight faded over the Capitol dome last night, it was clear that Democrats’ long, frustrated quest to compel a deus from the machina of impeachment would end in disappointment. Instead, there was only Representative Adam Schiff, the party’s tireless point man in the impeachment trial, who stood in the well of the Senate making an 11th-hour argument that Trump’s political-dirt-for-military-aid squeeze on Ukraine was too egregious to ignore.
“If you accept the argument that the president of the United States can tell you to pound sand when you try to investigate his wrongdoing, there will be no force behind any Senate subpoena in the future,” Schiff warned the senators. It was his response to a long written statement cum question from his fellow Californian Kamala Harris, who had asked how Trump’s acquittal would “undermine the U.S. system of justice.”
Since Election Night 2016, Democrats have been searching for a savior, no matter the party or rank of the individual.
First there was James Comey, the self-righteous former FBI director impervious to Trump’s attempts to co-opt his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Then there was Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to take over the Russia inquiry after Trump’s abrupt dismissal of Comey produced a furor, but whose final report was an inconclusive punt. Next came House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, who said last summer that Trump deserved to be impeached because he’d “violated the law six ways from Sunday.”
There was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose reluctant conversion to the impeachment cause put Trump in the dock in December. There was Chief Justice John Roberts, whose stated reverence for institutions and the rule of law raised hope that he might conduct the Senate trial with a firmer hand than what he has thus far shown. There was the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, whose demand for additional witnesses and documents sparked a fleeting hope of persuading four moderate Republicans to join in seeking more evidence of Trump’s misdeeds.
Now, with the defendant’s foregone acquittal in sight as soon as tomorrow, it’s all come down to Schiff, the terminally earnest chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff’s powers, while formidable, have proved just as un-super as everyone else’s in the near-lockstep partisan loyalty that fear of Trump has produced.
Read: The new question hanging over the impeachment trial
In the House managers’ presentation of their case last week, Schiff spoke some 60,000 words over three days, nearly three times the amount uttered by his next-loquacious colleague, according to an analysis by National Journal Daily. Yesterday, he answered five of the first 13 questions directed to Democrats, usually with only the barest reference to prepared notes, almost always taking the full five-minute limit the chief justice has allotted—a pace he kept up as the evening dragged on.
One of the president’s lawyers, the former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, insisted, “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected—in the public interest—that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” Schumer immediately asked Schiff to respond to the claim. “All quid pro quos are not the same,” he said. “Some are legitimate and some are corrupt, and you don’t need to be a mind reader to figure out which is which.” By 6:30 p.m. ET, when he asked the senators if they really wanted a president “who can abuse his office” and “do so sacrificing national security and undermining integrity of elections and there’s nothing Congress can do about it,” Schiff had grown hoarse.
The trial’s question-and-answer phase, which continues today, has injected some new energy—or at least some new motion—into the proceedings. Young pages in blue suits ferry each small buff-colored card of written questions to the chief justice in the presiding chair by marching solemnly down the chamber’s center aisle. Roberts then reads the questions aloud.
But the trial’s semifinal stage has produced not a shred more bipartisan agreement on the gravity of the president’s conduct, as both Republicans and Democrats asked questions mostly of their own side in an effort to bolster arguments already endlessly rehearsed.
The format nevertheless has played to Schiff’s strengths as a former prosecutor. While his fellow managers read scripted answers from prepared three-ring binders, in response to mostly friendly questions from Democrats that feel well prepared if not outright planted, Schiff has handled even the occasional hostile query from Republicans with extemporaneous aplomb.
When Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz submitted a somewhat tortured hypothetical query about whether it would have been acceptable for President Barack Obama to urge the Russian government to conduct an investigation into Mitt Romney’s son if he knew the younger Romney were being paid $1 million a year by a corrupt Russian company—a not-so-veiled reference to Hunter Biden’s service on the board of Ukrainian energy company—Schiff’s bottom line was simple: Presidents asking foreign governments “to target their political opponent is wrong and corrupt, period.”
Trump’s acquittal has been a foregone conclusion since long before the trial began, and the chance that Democrats might garner the 51 votes required to call more witnesses had all but evaporated by yesterday afternoon, despite former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s reported corroboration that Trump told him he was withholding security assistance to Ukraine until it agreed to investigations into the president’s Democratic rival.
“Probably no” was Schumer’s own assessment of the likelihood of witnesses after one potential GOP target after another either opposed the idea or signaled they might. That reality, and the political calculation behind it, was summed up neatly by Josh Holmes, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who tweeted: “More witnesses = Hindenburg. None of it changes ultimate acquittal.”
Read: Error and trial
So as the hours ticked past, and senators on both sides of the aisle stood and stretched, Schiff appeared to be speaking not only to them but to posterity, as he argued that new information about Trump’s actions on Ukraine was continuing to surface almost daily, and would keep coming in the months and years ahead. “Don’t wait for the book!” he said, referring to Bolton’s memoir.
Responding to a question from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island about whether senators should consider the White House’s refusal to produce witnesses an “adverse inference” against the president’s innocence, under long-standing judicial practice, Schiff was emphatic. “Should you draw an adverse inference? You’re darn right you should!” But he added, “There is no need for inference here. There is just a need for a subpoena.”
But throughout the Capitol all day yesterday, it grew ever clearer that embattled Republican senators such as Cory Gardner of Colorado would rather face the wrath of swing voters who think this truncated trial is unfair than risk prolonging it for even a week or two by calling witnesses and courting the president’s wrath.
“I think we can all see what’s going on here,” Schiff said shortly after 8. “And that’s, If you want to hear from a single witness ... we are going to make this endless; we, the president’s lawyers, are going to make this endless. We promise you, we’re going to want Adam Schiff to testify, we want Joe Biden to testify, Hunter Biden … We will make you pay for it with endless delay.” But Schiff insisted, “We’re not here to indulge in fantasy or distraction. We’re here to talk about people with pertinent and probative evidence … So don’t be thrown off by this claim … You can’t have a fair trial without witnesses.”
Indeed, the House managers have spent more than a week noting that no Senate impeachment trial has ever concluded without calling some witnesses. But in this, as in so many other matters involving the political ascendancy and presidency of Donald John Trump, Schiff and his colleagues, in invoking the power of history’s example, seem poised instead to suffer one more painful lesson in its limits.


theatlantic--2020-01-30--2020 Democrats Are Already Giving Up on Congress

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is reportedly considering dozens of executive orders he could sign to go around Congress , and he ’ s already promised to implement major parts of his immigration plan unilaterally if it stalls on Capitol Hill .
Before dropping out of the race late last year , Senator Kamala Harris of California vowed to enact her gun-control agenda herself if Congress didn ’ t act within 100 days of her inauguration .
Even former Vice President Joe Biden , who has campaigned as a legislative consensus-builder and has been dismissive of his rivals ’ plans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aggressive use of executive orders .
This embrace of executive authority has disappointed , but not surprised , advocates who want to reverse a decades-long shift in power from a largely dysfunctional legislative branch to an ever more muscular executive .
“ Executive-branch circumvention of Congress is what everyone expects by now , ” says Philip Wallach , a senior fellow in governance at R Street , a libertarian think tank .
It has been a decade since Congress last enacted a major new policy program , aside from a few big tax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Read : The alarming scope of the president ’ s emergency powers The past three presidents have tried to push the bounds of executive authority .
In the years after 9/11 , civil libertarians and some Democrats criticized the George W. Bush administration for its expansive interpretation of the president ’ s power to act in the name of national security .
Republicans took President Barack Obama to court over his move to grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants after Congress refused to pass a comprehensive bill providing a path @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rejected an even wilder idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin to obviate the need for Republican votes to raise the debt ceiling . )
Congress is at fault too .
Over the years , lawmakers have written overly broad laws that have given executive agencies wide latitude to interpret and implement them as they see fit , argues Elizabeth Goitein , the director of the liberty-and-national-security program at the Brennan Center for Justice , a left-leaning think tank .
Many disputes over such laws end up in the courts , leading to years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case with the Affordable Care Act , for example .
“ Congress has essentially abdicated the job of lawmaking and has left that to the president , ” Goitein told me .
“ Presidents have also taken to stretching the bounds of those delegations and going beyond what Congress has authorized.
” Warren ’ s advisers told me she views Congress as a partner , noting her support for repealing the authorizations of military force that were passed in 2001 and 2003 and that presidents have used to justify military actions across the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Warren is also a candidate who conceived of and built from scratch an entire federal agency , the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , that was designed to be insulated from congressional sabotage and oversight .
For years , she has pushed the executive branch to be more aggressive about using its vast power to improve people ’ s lives .
“ She has really thought deeply about how you can use all the tools of government to actually deliver for people , ” Bharat Ramamurti , the campaign ’ s deputy director for @ @ @ @ @ @

Last summer, Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled legislation to wipe out as much as $50,000 in student-loan debt for tens of millions of Americans. Pushing the $640 billion measure through even a Democratic-controlled Congress would be a punishing task, but the presidential hopeful had secured a big Capitol Hill backer in Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, a power broker in a key early-primary state and the third-ranking Democrat in the House.
Earlier this month, however, Warren effectively cut Clyburn, and the rest of Congress, out of her debt-relief plan. On the eve of the most recent Democratic primary debate, she announced that on her first day as president, she would order the cancellation of the student debt herself, using a broad interpretation of existing laws. Lawmakers could sit back and watch. “We can’t afford to wait for Congress to act,” she wrote.
Most Democratic presidential candidates, including Warren, have vowed to show more deference to Congress in seeking authorization for the use of military force, and they’ve condemned President Donald Trump for shirking checks on his executive authority.
But as they confront the possibility that their grand progressive plans could stall out on Capitol Hill, several of the party’s past and present White House contenders have signaled that they share Trump’s expansive view of presidential authority and his impatience with—if not his outright disregard for—the legislative branch. And that has caused alarm among Democrats who don’t want their party to mimic a man who famously declared, “I alone can fix it.”
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is reportedly considering dozens of executive orders he could sign to go around Congress, and he’s already promised to implement major parts of his immigration plan unilaterally if it stalls on Capitol Hill. Before dropping out of the race late last year, Senator Kamala Harris of California vowed to enact her gun-control agenda herself if Congress didn’t act within 100 days of her inauguration. Even former Vice President Joe Biden, who has campaigned as a legislative consensus-builder and has been dismissive of his rivals’ plans to circumvent Congress, has proposed an aggressive use of executive orders.
This embrace of executive authority has disappointed, but not surprised, advocates who want to reverse a decades-long shift in power from a largely dysfunctional legislative branch to an ever more muscular executive.
“Executive-branch circumvention of Congress is what everyone expects by now,” says Philip Wallach, a senior fellow in governance at R Street, a libertarian think tank. It has been a decade since Congress last enacted a major new policy program, aside from a few big tax cuts and spending bills, he notes.
Read: The alarming scope of the president’s emergency powers
The past three presidents have tried to push the bounds of executive authority. In the years after 9/11, civil libertarians and some Democrats criticized the George W. Bush administration for its expansive interpretation of the president’s power to act in the name of national security. Republicans took President Barack Obama to court over his move to grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants after Congress refused to pass a comprehensive bill providing a path to citizenship. (The Obama administration rejected an even wilder idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin to obviate the need for Republican votes to raise the debt ceiling.)
Congress is at fault too. Over the years, lawmakers have written overly broad laws that have given executive agencies wide latitude to interpret and implement them as they see fit, argues Elizabeth Goitein, the director of the liberty-and-national-security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning think tank. Many disputes over such laws end up in the courts, leading to years of litigation, as has been the case with the Affordable Care Act, for example. “Congress has essentially abdicated the job of lawmaking and has left that to the president,” Goitein told me. “Presidents have also taken to stretching the bounds of those delegations and going beyond what Congress has authorized.”
Warren’s advisers told me she views Congress as a partner, noting her support for repealing the authorizations of military force that were passed in 2001 and 2003 and that presidents have used to justify military actions across the globe in the decades since. But Warren is also a candidate who conceived of and built from scratch an entire federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that was designed to be insulated from congressional sabotage and oversight. For years, she has pushed the executive branch to be more aggressive about using its vast power to improve people’s lives. “She has really thought deeply about how you can use all the tools of government to actually deliver for people,” Bharat Ramamurti, the campaign’s deputy director for economic policy, told me.
Still, none of the candidates’ domestic proposals for executive action would have near the fiscal impact of Warren’s cancellation plan for student debt, which would rival the $700 billion bank bailout Congress approved under duress in 2008. Her pledge to act unilaterally annoyed Democrats like Representative Scott Peters of California, a leader of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, who warned his party’s contenders against trying to match Trump’s contempt for the balance of powers. “We do not need another wannabe monarch,” he tweeted after Warren unveiled her plan.
Experts at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, in a seven-page letter released by the Warren campaign, argued that legal authority to cancel student debt without congressional action exists under the Higher Education Act. The law, they wrote, grants the secretary of education “unrestricted authority to create and to cancel or modify debt owed under federal student loan programs.” On day one of her presidency, Warren said, she would direct her education secretary to use that authority to wipe out up to $50,000 in debt for borrowers on a sliding income scale. That a president could erase $640 billion worth of unpaid loans with barely more than the stroke of a pen was news to Clyburn and other co-sponsors of the debt-relief legislation in Congress. “She didn’t indicate that to me at all,” Clyburn told me.
In all likelihood, conservatives would immediately challenge such a move in court, leading to a lengthy legal fight. But whether the law is ultimately on Warren’s side is beside the point, Representative Peters told me. “Certainly something that big has to come to the Congress,” he said. Peters, who noted that Obama acted on immigration only after he had made an extensive effort to pass a bill on Capitol Hill, found it particularly galling that Warren planned to cancel such a large amount of student debt before even trying to build legislative support as president. “Whatever happened to the first 100 days?” he asked. “Enough of the dictators, whether they’re left or right. That’s not what this country is about.”
Representative Ro Khanna of California, a Sanders supporter who co-sponsored Warren’s bill in the House, told me it was his “strong preference” that a new president first try to enact student-debt relief legislatively. “If there are actions that she could take to provide some relief that she's convinced will be upheld as constitutional in the courts, then I’d support that,” he said. “But I think what could be a blow is if we tried something and then it’s held as unconstitutional and we don't have a legislative strategy.”
Khanna noted that although the laws Obama passed through Congress have largely survived, Trump has reversed much of the progressive policy his predecessor enacted through executive action and by chipping away at regulations. “If you want the policy to stand the test of time, it usually means the legislative branch,” he said. “I don't think we should compromise our respect for the congressional branches, and we should recognize the dangers of executive overreach.”
Warren’s advisers told me her plan to act “on day one” did not mean she was giving up on the legislation she introduced with Clyburn. "Her student-debt legislation is complementary to the executive action, and she will continue to fight with Representative Clyburn to pass it,” said Julie Morgan, the campaign’s deputy director of domestic policy. “Just like she wants legislation to break up Big Tech while also having regulators use existing authority to unwind anticompetitive mergers. It’s not an either/or.”
As for Clyburn, the 28-year veteran of the House may have been taken aback by Warren’s abrupt announcement that she could enact their student-debt plan all by herself if she wins the presidency. But he wasn’t offended by the idea, nor was he necessarily opposed to it. “I would remind you that slavery was ended by executive order,” Clyburn replied when I asked him whether he was worried about executive overreach. “The armed forces were integrated by executive order. So I'm the last person to criticize anybody for using the executive order to do that which Congress won’t.”


theatlantic--2020-02-04--The Atlantic Politics Daily: There’s an App for That

As news about the tallying problems unfolded , a procession of conspiracy theories took hold online , amplified by everyone from the president ’ s campaign manager to at least one Democratic member of Congress to an opinion writer at The New York Times .
My colleague David A. Graham has this to say about why Americans seem so primed to fall for this kind of misinformation .
We ’ ll leave you with this final note , since we don ’ t have a final winners list for you : Sometimes , you just don ’ t really need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political world , the Iowa caucus chaos a reminder that new tech isn ’ t the panacea it ’ s sometimes touted to be .
At five months old , Shadow was tasked with one of the biggest jobs in politics .
Alexis Madrigal on our technology desk explores how such an unproven company ended up building such an important app .
As my colleague Andy Ferguson , writing for our Ideas section , puts it : “ How ’ s this for quirky ?
” A caucus goer in Iowa looks at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ caucus site in Des Moines on Monday ’ s caucus night .
1 .
“ Hopefully he won ’ t do that again.
” That ’ s what Republican Senator Lamar Alexander told NPR ’ s Steve Inskeep while explaining his decision to oppose Trump ’ s removal .
But Trump is likely to read acquittal as “ complete and total exoneration , ” just as he did the Special Counsel ’ s investigation , Inskeep argues .
So what ’ s the point of a mild , congressional censure ?
2 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep a republic ’ ?
” There ’ s a difference between civility and civic virtue—one asks for mere politeness while the other calls for self-restraint , truthfulness , and “ disinterested concern ” for the American experiment , Adam J .
White argues : Holding up the republic relies on virtuous public leaders , not well-written laws .
The law professor Daniel Markovits has this deep dive on the socioeconomic impact of the company central to some of fiercest scrutiny the 2020 Democratic contender Pete Buttigieg has faced in his recent campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ model requires a cadre of managers who possess the capacity and taste to work with the intensity demanded of top executives today .
At the same time , corporate reorganizations have deprived companies of an internal supply of managerial workers .
When restructurings eradicated workplace training and purged the middle rungs of the corporate ladder , they also forced companies to look beyond their walls for managerial talent—to elite colleges , business schools , and ( of course ) to management-consulting firms .
That is to say : The administrative techniques that management @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precisely the services that the consultants supply .
This is where the recent history of American management intersects with Pete Buttigieg ’ s life story .
Today ’ s newsletter was written by Saahil Desai , an associate editor on the Politics desk and Christian Paz , a Politics fellow .
It was edited by Shan Wang , who oversees newsletters .
You can reply directly to this newsletter with questions or comments , or send a note to politicsdaily @ theatlantic.com .
Your support makes our journalism possible .
Subscribe here .

Though not a working one for tallying Iowa caucus results: As of tonight, the winner of Monday’s voting remains unclear. Plus: how to save a republic.
It’s Tuesday, February 4. President Trump delivers the State of the Union tonight at 9 p.m. EST, on the eve of a Senate vote to remove or acquit him.
In the rest of today’s newsletter: What went wrong in Iowa? More than just an app. Plus: a republic, if America can keep it.
*
« TODAY IN POLITICS »
Caucus-goers in Des Moines, Iowa (JORDAN GALE / THE NEW YORK TIMES)
There was an app for that. Did there need to be?
The official winner of the Iowa caucus is ______________ (sorry, we don’t know yet either). A day after the highly anticipated affair officially kicked off the 2020 primary, the Democratic results are still being a tallied and an official winner hasn’t been announced. At least for now, Pete Buttigieg seems to hold a narrow lead.
Last night’s results-reporting failure was colossal flub, and one that, considering the state’s outsize role in the primary, could make a lasting imprint on the rest of the race.
An app the state’s Democratic Party developed to tally the results crashed. The name of the company behind it is—we kid you not—Shadow. The party was so worried about outside (Russian) hacking that it didn’t properly test the app, which it gave Shadow only two months to build. As Zeynep Tufecki writes, the current debacle is the worst of the possible outcomes.
As news about the tallying problems unfolded, a procession of conspiracy theories took hold online, amplified by everyone from the president’s campaign manager to at least one Democratic member of Congress to an opinion writer at The New York Times.
My colleague David A. Graham has this to say about why Americans seem so primed to fall for this kind of misinformation.
We’ll leave you with this final note, since we don’t have a final winners list for you: Sometimes, you just don’t really need an app for that. For the political world, the Iowa caucus chaos a reminder that new tech isn’t the panacea it’s sometimes touted to be. At five months old, Shadow was tasked with one of the biggest jobs in politics. Alexis Madrigal on our technology desk explores how such an unproven company ended up building such an important app.
As my colleague Andy Ferguson, writing for our Ideas section, puts it: “How’s this for quirky?”
—Saahil Desai
*
« SNAPSHOT »
(Bryan Snyder / Reuters)
A caucus goer in Iowa looks at a hand-written formula for viability at her caucus site in Des Moines on Monday’s caucus night.
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« IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS »
(MATT ROURKE / AP)
1. “Hopefully he won’t do that again.”
That’s what Republican Senator Lamar Alexander told NPR’s Steve Inskeep while explaining his decision to oppose Trump’s removal. But Trump is likely to read acquittal as “complete and total exoneration,” just as he did the Special Counsel’s investigation, Inskeep argues. So what’s the point of a mild, congressional censure?
2. “What does it take to ‘keep a republic’?”
There’s a difference between civility and civic virtue—one asks for mere politeness while the other calls for self-restraint, truthfulness, and “disinterested concern” for the American experiment, Adam J. White argues: Holding up the republic relies on virtuous public leaders, not well-written laws.
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« EVENING READ »
(THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION / GETTY / THE ATLANTIC)
How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class
The law professor Daniel Markovits has this deep dive on the socioeconomic impact of the company central to some of fiercest scrutiny the 2020 Democratic contender Pete Buttigieg has faced in his recent campaign.
Running a company on a concentrated model requires a cadre of managers who possess the capacity and taste to work with the intensity demanded of top executives today. At the same time, corporate reorganizations have deprived companies of an internal supply of managerial workers. When restructurings eradicated workplace training and purged the middle rungs of the corporate ladder, they also forced companies to look beyond their walls for managerial talent—to elite colleges, business schools, and (of course) to management-consulting firms. That is to say: The administrative techniques that management consultants invented created a huge demand for precisely the services that the consultants supply. This is where the recent history of American management intersects with Pete Buttigieg’s life story.
Read the full accounting.
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theatlantic--2020-02-05--Are We Ready for Trump 2.0?

Are We Ready for Trump 2.0?

“ He will see this as absolute vindication for everything he has done and how he has done it , ” Ryan Crocker , a six-time U.S. ambassador who served under Republican and Democratic presidents , told me .
Invoking an old dictum along the lines of “ If you strike at the king , it ’ s best not to miss , ” Crocker said : “ We ’ re going to see the king unchained after that trial is done.
” That ’ s a core argument Democrats have made in calling for Trump ’ s removal .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a House manager , in the Senate cafeteria one afternoon during a break in the trial as he was pushing back a meatball sandwich ( no cheese ) .
I asked Nadler whether he thought that Trump will again enlist foreign leaders in domestic political schemes .
He pointed to Trump ’ s gaggle with reporters on the South Lawn in October , in the thick of impeachment proceedings , when he called on the Chinese to investigate the Biden family .
“ He has said he ’ ll do it again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a nervous aide whisked him out of the place , plate in hand .
Margaret Taylor : The Founders set an extremely high bar for impeachment People around the president told me that it ’ s reasonable to assume he won ’ t change his approach to politics now that the impeachment saga is done .
They pointed to his age , 73 , and to his hardwiring as a New York real-estate magnate accustomed to transactional dealings .
But if any impediment might cause Trump to pull back , it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time .
“ The fact that he will be the third president in American history with an asterisk by his name that says he was impeached is something he ’ s very cognizant of , ” Fernando Cutz , who was a deputy to Trump ’ s second national security adviser , H. R. McMaster , told me .
Explaining her decision to acquit the president , Senator Susan Collins , a Republican from Maine , told CBS News that he would be “ much more cautious ” in his dealings in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; experience has shown otherwise .
Read : Donald Trump is all alone Chasing down Senator Lindsey Graham , a Trump ally , as he returned to his office from the trial one recent afternoon , I asked whether the president should continue deploying Giuliani as an overseas surrogate working outside the diplomatic corps .
“ If I were the president , I would appreciate Rudy ’ s service , but no , ” Graham told me .
“ Anything Rudy or anyone else finds needs to be scrutinized by the intelligence community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a stretch to think the Russians and others could be influencing the content of what you ’ re seeing.
” Have you told Trump that ?
I asked .
The two men often play golf and dine together .
“ No , ” Graham said .
Should Trump again press foreign leaders for help in investigating domestic political rivals ?
I asked .
“ I would say , when you have legitimate concerns about corruption , come up with a different system , ” Graham said .

After his acquittal in the Senate, the president may double down on the same behavior that led to his impeachment in the first place.
President Donald Trump has survived the latest and most serious crisis of his own making. As ever, he seems to have learned nothing from the ordeal.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted today to keep Trump in office. Breaking with his party, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah cast the lone Republican vote convicting Trump of one of the two impeachment articles—abuse of power. The president comes out of the ordeal emboldened, with a free hand to push the boundaries of executive propriety even further.
Read: How Mitt Romney decided Trump is guilty
What’s to stop him? Not contrition. There’s no hint in the life of the 45th president that his own conduct has left him chastened. Trump still believes that his July phone call with Ukraine’s president, in which he pushed for an investigation into his political rival former Vice President Joe Biden, was “perfect.” He’s never apologized for converting his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani into an off-the-books diplomat scrounging for evidence that might discredit the opposition. In Trump’s eyes, today’s Senate acquittal likely validates the notion that he’s been unfairly persecuted.
We’ve been here before. Last year, Trump claimed that the Russia investigation—remember the Russia investigation?—ended in his “complete and total exoneration.” It did not. One day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller explicitly told Congress that he hadn’t cleared Trump of wrongdoing, the president made his ill-fated call to Ukraine, beginning the chain of events that led to impeachment.
“He will see this as absolute vindication for everything he has done and how he has done it,” Ryan Crocker, a six-time U.S. ambassador who served under Republican and Democratic presidents, told me. Invoking an old dictum along the lines of “If you strike at the king, it’s best not to miss,” Crocker said: “We’re going to see the king unchained after that trial is done.”
That’s a core argument Democrats have made in calling for Trump’s removal.
I sat down with Representative Jerry Nadler, a House manager, in the Senate cafeteria one afternoon during a break in the trial as he was pushing back a meatball sandwich (no cheese). I asked Nadler whether he thought that Trump will again enlist foreign leaders in domestic political schemes. He pointed to Trump’s gaggle with reporters on the South Lawn in October, in the thick of impeachment proceedings, when he called on the Chinese to investigate the Biden family. “He has said he’ll do it again!” Nadler told me, before a nervous aide whisked him out of the place, plate in hand.
Margaret Taylor: The Founders set an extremely high bar for impeachment
People around the president told me that it’s reasonable to assume he won’t change his approach to politics now that the impeachment saga is done. They pointed to his age, 73, and to his hardwiring as a New York real-estate magnate accustomed to transactional dealings.
But if any impediment might cause Trump to pull back, it’s the prospect of getting impeached a second time. “The fact that he will be the third president in American history with an asterisk by his name that says he was impeached is something he’s very cognizant of,” Fernando Cutz, who was a deputy to Trump’s second national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, told me. Explaining her decision to acquit the president, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, told CBS News that he would be “much more cautious” in his dealings in the future. That’s her hope; experience has shown otherwise.
Read: Donald Trump is all alone
Chasing down Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, as he returned to his office from the trial one recent afternoon, I asked whether the president should continue deploying Giuliani as an overseas surrogate working outside the diplomatic corps. “If I were the president, I would appreciate Rudy’s service, but no,” Graham told me. “Anything Rudy or anyone else finds needs to be scrutinized by the intelligence community, because it’s not much of a stretch to think the Russians and others could be influencing the content of what you’re seeing.”
Have you told Trump that? I asked. The two men often play golf and dine together. “No,” Graham said.
Should Trump again press foreign leaders for help in investigating domestic political rivals? I asked. “I would say, when you have legitimate concerns about corruption, come up with a different system,” Graham said.
With impeachment behind him, Trump’s next test is reelection. He may see the 2020 campaign as the ultimate referendum on his methods. If he felt few restraints heading into impeachment, and if his acquittal reinforces his gut instincts, a reelection victory could sever whatever frayed thread still connects him to traditional standards of presidential behavior.
Formidable challenges lie ahead. Conflict with Iran could escalate into a shooting war, depending on whether Tehran retaliates further for Trump’s killing of General Qassem Soleimani. The coronavirus outbreak has spread beyond China and poses unknown risks. Trump is confronting such potential crises with a hollowed-out government. A recent analysis by the Brookings Institution reported a “cascade of departures” at the White House’s National Security Council, whose purview includes the coronavirus, the Iran conflict, and every other threat to the nation’s security.
If acquittal legitimizes Trump’s practices—defying congressional subpoenas and inviting foreign governments to meddle in U.S. elections—Republicans may come to regret the outcome. What’s to prevent a Democratic president from deploying these same tools, at the Republicans’ expense?


theatlantic--2020-02-05--How Mitt Romney Decided Trump Is Guilty

How Mitt Romney Decided Trump Is Guilty

In the end , the evidence was inescapable .
“ The president did in fact pressure a foreign government to corrupt our election process , ” Romney said .
“ And really , corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution—and one 's oath—that I can imagine .
It 's what autocrats do.
” According to Romney ’ s interpretation of Alexander Hamilton ’ s treatise on impeachment in “ Federalist No .
65 ” —which he says he ’ s read “ multiple , multiple times ” —Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president in interfering with the 2020 election clearly rose to the level of “ high crimes and misdemeanors.
” ( He told me he would not vote to convict on the second article of impeachment , obstruction of Congress . )
Romney ’ s vote will do little to reorient the political landscape .
The president ’ s acquittal has been all but certain for weeks , as Republicans have circled the wagons to protect Trump .
But the Utahan ’ s sharp indictment ensures that at least one dissenting voice from within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the record—and Romney seems to believe history will vindicate his decision .
He also knows his vote will likely make him a pariah on the right .
Already , he says , he ’ s experienced firsthand the ire of the base .
At an airport recently , a stranger yelled at him , “ You ought to be ashamed !
” During a trip to Florida with his wife this past weekend , someone shouted “ Traitor !
” from a car window .
Eight years ago , he was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nominee for president .
Today , he has become accustomed to a kind of political loneliness .
Romney famously opposed Trump ’ s candidacy in 2016 , and while the rest of his party has fallen in line since then , he has remained stubbornly independent—infuriating Trump , who routinely derides him in public as a “ pompous ass ” and worse .
As I wrote last year , this dynamic seems to have liberated the senator in a way that ’ s unlike anything he has experienced in his political career .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to his Capitol Hill office yesterday , I was unsure what he would reveal .
Romney had been largely silent throughout the impeachment proceedings , giving little indication of which way he was leaning .
I half-expected to find a cowed and calculating politician ready with a list of excuses for caving .
( His staff granted the interview on the condition that it would be embargoed until he took to the Senate floor . )
Instead , I found Romney filled with what seemed like righteous indignation about the president ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at his party , and bracing for the political backlash .
Romney confessed that he ’ d spent much of the impeachment trial hoping a way out would present itself : “ I did not want to get here.
” In fact , that was part of the reason he wanted former National Security Adviser John Bolton to testify about what Trump had told him .
“ I had the hope that he would be able to say something exculpatory and create reasonable doubt , so I would n't have to vote to @ @ @ @ @ @

Mitt Romney didn’t want to go through with it.
“This has been the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my life,” he told me yesterday afternoon in his Senate office. Roughly 24 hours later, Romney would deliver a speech announcing that he was voting to convict President Donald Trump on the first article of impeachment—abuse of power. For weeks, the senator from Utah had sat silently in the impeachment trial alongside his 99 colleagues, reviewing the evidence at night and praying for guidance. The gravity of the moment weighed on him, as did the pressure from members of his own party to acquit their leader. As his conscience tugged at him, he said, the exercise took on a spiritual dimension.
Romney, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, described to me the power of taking an oath before God: “It’s something which I take very seriously.” Throughout the trial, he said, he was guided by his father’s favorite verse of Mormon scripture: Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good. “I have gone through a process of very thorough analysis and searching, and I have prayed through this process,” he told me. “But I don’t pretend that God told me what to do.”
In the end, the evidence was inescapable. “The president did in fact pressure a foreign government to corrupt our election process,” Romney said. “And really, corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution—and one's oath—that I can imagine. It's what autocrats do.”
According to Romney’s interpretation of Alexander Hamilton’s treatise on impeachment in “Federalist No. 65”—which he says he’s read “multiple, multiple times”—Trump’s attempts to enlist the Ukrainian president in interfering with the 2020 election clearly rose to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” (He told me he would not vote to convict on the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress.)
Romney’s vote will do little to reorient the political landscape. The president’s acquittal has been all but certain for weeks, as Republicans have circled the wagons to protect Trump. But the Utahan’s sharp indictment ensures that at least one dissenting voice from within the president’s party will be on the record—and Romney seems to believe history will vindicate his decision.
He also knows his vote will likely make him a pariah on the right. Already, he says, he’s experienced firsthand the ire of the base. At an airport recently, a stranger yelled at him, “You ought to be ashamed!” During a trip to Florida with his wife this past weekend, someone shouted “Traitor!” from a car window.
Eight years ago, he was the leader of the Republican Party, its nominee for president. Today, he has become accustomed to a kind of political loneliness. Romney famously opposed Trump’s candidacy in 2016, and while the rest of his party has fallen in line since then, he has remained stubbornly independent—infuriating Trump, who routinely derides him in public as a “pompous ass” and worse. As I wrote last year, this dynamic seems to have liberated the senator in a way that’s unlike anything he has experienced in his political career.
Read: The liberation of Mitt Romney
Still, when the senator invited me to his Capitol Hill office yesterday, I was unsure what he would reveal. Romney had been largely silent throughout the impeachment proceedings, giving little indication of which way he was leaning. I half-expected to find a cowed and calculating politician ready with a list of excuses for caving. (His staff granted the interview on the condition that it would be embargoed until he took to the Senate floor.)
Instead, I found Romney filled with what seemed like righteous indignation about the president’s misconduct—quoting hymns and scripture, expressing dismay at his party, and bracing for the political backlash.
Romney confessed that he’d spent much of the impeachment trial hoping a way out would present itself: “I did not want to get here.” In fact, that was part of the reason he wanted former National Security Adviser John Bolton to testify about what Trump had told him. “I had the hope that he would be able to say something exculpatory and create reasonable doubt, so I wouldn't have to vote to convict,” Romney said.
Still, he found the case presented by the president’s defense team unpersuasive. Romney had a hard time believing, for example, that Trump had been acting out of a desire to crack down on corruption when he tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The Bidens’ alleged conflicts of interest may have been “ugly,” Romney said, but it was never established that they warranted a criminal investigation. “No crime was alleged by the defense, and yet the president went to an extreme level to investigate these two people … and for what purpose?” The only motive that made sense, he determined, was a political one.
Romney was similarly unmoved by the Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz’s contention that a president who believes his reelection is in the national interest can’t be impeached for pursuing a political advantage. “I had Professor Dershowitz for criminal law in law school,” Romney said, “and he was known to occasionally take his argument to its illogical conclusion.” Nor was the senator swayed by the theory that a president can be impeached only for breaking a statutory law. “To use an old Mormon hymn phrase, that makes reason stare,” he said. “The idea that Congress would have to anticipate all of the offensive things a president could possibly do, and then make them a statute?” Romney posed a hypothetical: What if the president decided to pardon every Republican in prison nationwide, while leaving every Democrat locked up? “There’s no law against that!” he said. “So it’s not a crime or misdemeanor. But it’s obviously absurd.”
Adam J. White: A republic, if we can keep it
When I asked Romney why none of his fellow Republicans had reached the same conclusion, he attempted diplomacy. “I’m not going to try and determine the thinking or motives of my colleagues,” he said. “I think it’s a mistake for any senator to try and get in the head of another senator and judge them.” But as he discussed the various rationalizations put forth by other Republican senators, he seemed to grow exasperated. He took particular issue with the idea—currently quite trendy in his caucus—that Trump’s fate should be decided at the ballot box, not in the Senate.
“I would have liked to have abdicated my responsibility as I understood it under the Constitution and under the writing of the Founders by saying, ‘Let’s leave this to the voters.’” But, he said, “I’m subject to my own conscience.”
When I asked how it felt to be formally disinvited from this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he laughed and noted that he hadn’t attended the conference since 2013. But it seems clear that his journey from GOP standard-bearer to party supervillain has been jarring.
“I was under the misimpression that what brought Republican voters together was conviction in a certain number of policy points of view,” Romney said. He recalled a political strategist during one of his early campaigns explaining how to court the three main factions of the GOP coalition—social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and foreign-policy hawks. Much of Romney’s career since then has been spent trying to win over ideological purists on the right. In 2012, he said, some Tea Party activists refused to support him, because he didn’t have a plan to balance the federal budget within a single year.
Now the conservative movement is ruled by a president who routinely makes a mockery of such litmus tests. Deficit reduction? “There’s no purchase for that,” Romney said. Foreign policy? “The letters with Kim Jong Un didn’t seem to frighten people away … The meeting with the Russian ambassador in the White House right after the election didn’t seem to bother people.” Somehow, Romney said, he is the one constantly being told that he needs to “be with the president.”
“I get that a lot—‘Be with the president,’” Romney told me, sounding slightly perplexed. “And I’ll say, ‘Regardless of his point of view? Regardless of the issue?’ And they say yes. And … it’s like, ‘Well, no, I can’t do that.’”
Read: Mitt Romney is not joining the resistance
For now, Romney said, he is bracing for an uncertain political future. He said he can’t predict whether Trump will emerge from the impeachment battle emboldened or constrained, but he doubts the experience has shaken him: “I think what’s fair to say about the president is that he doesn’t change his ways a lot.” Nor is he expecting that their relationship will be easily repaired. (“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” he joked.) Romney acknowledged that his vote to convict may hamper his own ability to legislate, at least for a while. “I don’t know how long the blowback might exist or how strenuous it might be, but I’m anticipating a long time and a very strong response.”
Though he said he won’t make an endorsement in this year’s presidential election, Romney was clear that he will not cast a ballot for Trump. But, he said, “under no circumstances would I vote for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to become president of the United States.” In 2016, he wrote in his wife’s name, and he told me, “She’ll probably get [a] second vote.”
For months, Romney’s detractors on both the right and the left have searched for an ulterior motive to his maneuvering, convinced that a secret cynicism lurked beneath his lofty appeals to conscience and principle. Just last week, the Washington Examiner ran a story speculating that the senator might be positioning himself for a presidential run in 2024. When I asked Romney about the report, he erupted in laughter. “Yes! That’s it! They caught me!” he proclaimed. “Look at the base I have! It’s going to be at least 2 or 3 percent of the Republican Party. As goes Utah, so goes the nation!”
The truth is that Romney’s decisive break with Trump could end up hurting him even in Utah, a red state where the president is uncommonly unpopular. What that means for his reelection prospects, the senator couldn’t say. (He doesn’t have to face voters again until 2024.) But as he thought about it, another hymn came to mind. “Do what is right; let the consequence follow,” he recited. “And I don’t know what all the consequences will be.”