Slate Voice

It is a remarkable fact of American life that hordes of men are now defending sexual assault. It’s not immediately clear why. It seems like the very definition of an unforced error.

What’s striking about the many defenses of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the face of a credible accusation of sexual assault when he was a teenager is how they put broad concerns over accountability and impunity into sharp relief.

The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, faces uncertainty this week after more details were revealed about accusations of attempted rape that were made by a former high school acquaintance, Christine Blasey Ford. Ford is a California-based professor.

Has American democracy been hijacked by the passions of its people, now a dangerous and untamable majority undermining the republic? In a new issue of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Rosen, head of the National Constitution Center, says yes. “[James] Madison’s worst fears of mob rule have been realized—and the cooling mechanisms he designed to slow down the formation of impetuous majorities have broken.

Andrew Cuomo didn’t need to do much to discredit Cynthia Nixon as a gubernatorial candidate. As soon as the actress and activist announced she was challenging the Democratic governor in March, social media feeds filled with jokes about the bawdy exploits of the lawyer Nixon played on Sex and the City. It was an obvious comparison; Miranda Hobbes was easy to imagine in public office, and it’s by far Nixon’s most-famous role.

The resignation of Les Moonves, CBS’ chairman and chief executive, took many of us by surprise. In the weeks since sexual misconduct allegations against him first broke, we had begun to think Les Moonves wouldn’t go. And that—our pessimistic assumption that big men still get to do as they like—is worth interrogating. Why wouldn’t Moonves go? The accusations against him were credible and well-sourced.

Can journalists on the right honestly fact-check journalists on the left? That question erupted this week in a fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The fight, as promised, has exposed media bias. But in this case, the bias is on the left. The dispute centers on an article published on Sunday by ThinkProgress.

Since the end of World War II, an informal rule has existed in American politics: Ex-presidents don’t play partisan against their successors. Truman didn’t campaign against Eisenhower; Eisenhower didn’t speak out against Kennedy; Johnson left the game under Nixon; Carter left Reagan in peace. This continued uninterrupted into the 21st century.

On Friday, Andrew Cuomo celebrated the opening of a new bridge named for his father, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, by driving Franklin Roosevelt’s black Packard east over the Hudson. This bit of primary-season fanfare was short-lived; later that night, the new span was closed over fears that the old bridge being disassembled next door might fall on it. “It is not our bridge.

An anonymous New York Times op-ed written by a senior Trump administration official was published on Wednesday. The person says they are working to frustrate the president because he is amoral, unprincipled, inconsistent, and dangerous. This author described themselves as an unsung hero who is part of the resistance, and the damning essay comes on the heels of an explosive new book about the Trump White House from award-winning journalist Bob Woodward.

Susan Collins talks a big game about reproductive rights. The Republican senator from Maine has said, for instance, that she wants her party to be “as synonymous with protecting a woman’s right to choose as the Democratic Party is with expanded government or raising taxes.

Ratified in 1967, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution allows the vice president and a majority of sitting Cabinet secretaries to remove the president if they decide he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Crafted in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, it’s been cited recently in response to President Donald Trump and mounting evidence that he’s not equipped to handle the office of the presidency.

Framing—the act of constructing a way of viewing an issue—is a fascinating political skill. And in the days leading up to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, I couldn’t help but get a kick out of the disparate ways Republicans and Democrats were framing their answers to the same question: How many pages of Kavanaugh’s records from his time in the George W.

On Tuesday, Florida Democrats nominated Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, as their candidate for governor. Gillum, who is African-American, ran an impressive come-from-behind campaign to defeat former congresswoman Gwen Graham; in the fall, he will face Rep. Ron DeSantis, a Trump admirer who kicked off the general election by saying that voters shouldn’t “monkey this up” by voting for Gillum.

The Catholic Church is exposed. A number of wide-ranging, deeply researched reports of molestation, rape, abuse, corruption, and concealment have been released in close enough time to one another that the magnitude of the horror might actually—for the average American, anyway—sink in. It all feels monumental, if also powered in part by coincidence.

One of the #MeToo movement’s lasting effects has been to highlight the strategies routinely used to delegitimize accusers. We know now that people—mostly men—accused of sexual misconduct will typically take several steps: They’ll clamor for “due process” that they privately try to game, usually with secret help from powerful friends.

On Tuesday night, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum won Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary in an upset, startling the political establishment and earning immediate comparisons to upstart congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In retrospect, though, Gillum’s unexpected defeat of his closest rival, Gwen Graham, probably shouldn’t have been shocking.

As the specter of impeachment creeps into conversations about where President Donald Trump’s scandals may be heading, it’s worth recalling the specific “high crimes and misdemeanors” that ousted Richard Nixon from office in 1974. On July 27, the House Judiciary Committee approved, and voted to send the full House, three articles of impeachment, which charged Nixon with 15 separate acts of obstructing justice and abusing power.

I did not expect to be so torn up upon Sen. John McCain’s death. It’s difficult to sum up the counter-narrative against the hagiographic portrayal of McCain’s political career, but let’s try: He was overrated, in some ways dangerously. On domestic policy, he ably served the business community of Arizona. But that was never what mattered to him.

Despite President Donald Trump’s high disapproval rating, it’s almost a certain that his U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, will be confirmed to the high court. And it’s no surprise—former President Ronald Reagan took steps to make the court a major issue for Republican voters, something that lead to the rise of the conservative Federalist Society, which has spent years sourcing and grooming potential justices.