After the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on Russian interference with the U.S. election, I had to renew my press credentials and took the elevator down to the private subway that runs beneath the Capitol. As the train approached and the glass doors opened, I imagined a shirtless Alex Jones screaming that this […]
Baynard Woods
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Democracy in Crisis: Paul Ryan’s No Good, Very Bad Day
Friday afternoon, after a dramatic capitulation, House Speaker Paul Ryan walked out before the press and conceded defeat on what had been his party’s primary concern for the last seven years. “Obamacare is the law of the land,” Ryan said. “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.” It was stunning. Even […]
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Democracy in Crisis: Congress Is Losing Its Sh*t Over Russia
Like the rest of the country, Congress has gone crazy. “The idea that Russia could come in and interfere with our election, all of us should be going berserk,” U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, said Thursday, summarizing the mood on at least half of the Hill. On Monday, the House Intelligence Committee questioned FBI Director […]
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Democracy in Crisis: Republicans Seek Leaks, Raise Possibility of Prosecuting the Press
Republicans collectively twisted themselves into knots Monday in order to ignore what was really happening in the hearings on Russian election hacking and tried to use it as an opportunity for another attack on the free press. In case you missed it: FBI Director James Comey confirmed during the House Select Intelligence Committee hearing that […]
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Out of Standing Rock, the Birth of a New Environmental Movement
It’s snowing in Washington—strange in early March after an insanely warm winter, but nothing compared to the cold many of the activists and tribal members gathered here endured in North Dakota while fighting against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Kristen Tuske, a thirty-nine-year-old Sioux woman from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, stands with […]
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Red Menace or Redneck: Russia, Race, and Jeff Sessions
Washington these days has the paranoid atmosphere of a John Le Carré novel, with whispers of shady Russian connections lingering in the air like stale cigarette smoke and old tweets. Existential dread is the dominant mood—not only the dread of nuclear annihilation, but also of continuing to exist under a regime so topsy-turvy it makes […]
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Reorganizing the Executive Branch and Deconstructing the Administrative State
On Monday, Donald Trump signed an executive order christened a “comprehensive plan for reorganizing the executive branch.” The order directs the “Director of the Office of Management and Budget (Director) to propose a plan to reorganize governmental functions and eliminate unnecessary agencies (as defined in section 551(1) of title 5, United States Code), components of […]
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Democracy in Crisis Podcast: An Interview with Shane Bauer of Mother Jones on Private Prisons
In this week’s episode, Shane Bauer joins hosts Baynard Woods and Marc Steiner to talk about private prisons in the Trump era. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo supporting the federal government’s continuing use of private prisons, rescinding an Obama administration directive last year that aimed to reduce and eventually phase out […]
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From Skater to Hater: General Michael Flynn’s Epic Wipeout
Unlike Milo Yiannopoulos, who lost everything at once, retired General Michael Flynn wasn’t entirely ruined when he resigned as national security adviser on February 13. “For your information, we are not throwing Mike Flynn off the Water Brothers surf and skate team,” Sid Abruzzi, owner of the Water Brothers surf and skate shop in Newport, […]
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Democracy in Crisis: Stoned Reflections on a Day at CPAC
I am stoned at CPAC. I am in hell. Here’s how it happened: Shortly after Steve Bannon laid out his vision of nationalism and the deconstruction of government on the first day of CPAC, I was writing a story over a beer at the National Press Club. On the television was Sean Spicer, who said […]
