Author: Lance Garrison
This was most apparent during the 1868 impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, in which members of Congress routinely characterized the president as a constitutional officer. “The electors may elect a president and vice president, but the Senate only can remove them,” Senator John Sherman of Ohio said during the trial. “The president and the Senate can appoint judges, but the Senate only can remove them. These are the constitutional officers, and their tenure and mode of removal are fixed by the Constitution.”The authors of the brief also assemble evidence to show that the framers of the original Constitution of 1787…
A few days ago, Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota — a MAGA hard-liner sometimes mentioned as a potential running mate for Donald Trump — warned that President Biden is “remaking” America, turning us into Europe. My first thought was: So he’s going to raise our life expectancy by five or six years? In context, however, it was clear that Noem believes, or expects her audience to believe, that Europe is a scene of havoc wrought by hordes of immigrants.As it happens, I spent a fair bit of time walking around various European cities last year, and none…
You can crisscross North Dakota from Fargo to Bismarck to Minot and never see a Walgreens, Rite-Aid or Walmart pharmacy. With narrow exceptions, a 1963 state law prohibits drugstores that aren’t majority-owned by a pharmacist. (CVS Health, whose predecessor company was already in the state in 1963, is grandfathered in.) To “buy local” people, this is very heaven. Stacy Mitchell, a co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Portland, Maine, wrote to me that North Dakota is “the state with the most pharmacies per capita, the largest share of rural Census tracts served by a pharmacy, and, in its…
To the Editor:Re “Jury Says Trump Owes $83 Million” (front page, Jan. 27):The huge damages award provides the perfect ammunition for Donald Trump to play the grievance card to his base and even beyond. The free publicity triggered by Mr. Trump ranting against the system (“This is not America”) fuels the MAGA message.At the end of the day, Mr. Trump may be a net winner from this entire defamation episode. Unabashedly, Mr. Trump raises funds off what he calls this “ridiculous” result.We struggle to understand Mr. Trump’s appeal, just as we struggle to realize that the E. Jean Carroll award…
For months, battered by President Biden’s dismal 2024 re-election polls, Democrats have been undergoing a kind of collective nervous breakdown over Mr. Biden’s re-election prospects against Donald Trump.Following Mr. Trump’s victory in New Hampshire and with the unofficial start of the general election campaign, there is no reason for the Biden team to panic. Polls at this stage of the race are almost always a referendum on the incumbent instead of a clear choice. Still, the president’s bad polls and a stubbornly low approval rating are, or should be, more than just grist for Mr. Biden’s critics. They’re proof that…
Every child I have ever known is drawn to water — to running creeks and meandering rivers, to buzzing ponds and gently lapping lakes and echoing swamps and cool, mossy fens. Even toddlers who find the ocean overwhelmingly huge and alien will merrily splash in a tidal pool, dabbling their dimpled fingers in the water. To children, a puddle is for stomping. A marshy place is for barefooting, testing the ooze and suck of mud, peering through waving grasses at wild eyes peering back at them.Last week Nashville got its first truly drenching rains in months, and the rain fell…
For many Americans who support abortion rights, the election in November will most likely come down to a choice between voting for President Biden and staying home. They won’t vote for the man who ensured Roe v. Wade’s demise, but many of them are unenthusiastic about the prospect of Mr. Biden being the Democratic nominee.So for the Democratic Party, motivating voters on this issue will be key. Mr. Biden’s advisers clearly know this and have sent him and Vice President Kamala Harris on something of a speaking tour this month to highlight their commitment to reproductive rights.But it’s odd how…
There once was a small home in the city of Jabalia in northern Gaza filled with love and life, established by the sweat of a young man seeking stability for his family. It was a precious kingdom, embracing you with its warmth as soon as you walked inside. Every corner held a memory, and every tile told a story.Yaqeen Baker, a Palestinian mother living in Gaza, on the loss of her family’s home I was the ruler of this kingdom. To me, there was no home like ours, and its value to our family was beyond measure. It was my…
Ms. Carroll got her break in journalism in the 1980s, at a time when few women were doing the kinds of first-person stunts for magazines like Rolling Stone and Esquire that she was. Her assignments often put her into precarious situations: trekking through the mountains of Papua New Guinea for a Playboy article, “In Search of Primitive Man,” or in a hot tub with Hunter S. Thompson, who sliced off her clothes with a knife (she has said they were “semi-intimately involved” and did acid together).Part of what made her so good at the work was her thick skin, her…
Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. It’s fair to say that Nikki Haley has next-to-no chance of beating Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Give her your best advice: Give up now? Fight a guerrilla campaign right up to the G.O.P. convention? Or join forces with someone like Joe Manchin in a third party?Gail Collins: Third parties are for people who don’t care who wins the election as long as they’ve got their name on the ballot. I’d like to think she’s better than that.Bret: A third-party run with her and Manchin might subtract more votes from Trump than from Biden. I…