U.S. Presidency

What if a blackout were to happen in a major city in one of America's swing states on Election Day 2020? Or if an error occurred while tabulating electronic ballots? How would the electorate respond if one of the candidates refused to concede the election? These are all scenarios that law professor and Election Law Blog founder Richard Hasen considered while writing his new book, Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust and the Threat to American Democracy.

The New Yorker's David Rohde says Barr acts as Trump's political "sword and shield," which has made him the most feared, criticized and effective member of the president's cabinet.

Wash. Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker discuss presidential rages, erratic decision-making and other troubling tendencies of the Trump presidency. Their new book is A Very Stable Genius.

Reporters Joe Palazzolo and Michael Rothfeld won a Pulitzer for their investigation of Trump's 2016 hush money payments to Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels. Their new book is The Fixers.

How the Trump and Kushner families immigrated to the U.S. and built their fortunes, a talk with Andrea Bernstein, author of American Oligarchs.

CNN analyst Peter Bergen reflects on Trump's soured relationships with Generals Mattis, McMaster and Kelly. "He's gotten rid of the most competent people he had in his circle," Bergen says.

Time correspondent Simon Shuster recently spoke with Ukraine's president. After six months in office, Shuster says Volodymyr Zelensky is "quite cynical" and feels "there are no reliable allies."

During the '16 campaign, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch hired former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele to investigate Trump's involvement with Russia. Their new book is Crime in Progress.

The Trump administration's pressure on Ukraine is the center of the impeachment inquiry, but foreign influence expert Ben Freeman says the influence also worked in the opposite direction.

New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz spent years with far-right online extremists, embedding with them and watching them spread false news by exploiting social media. His new book is Antisocial.

New York Times Magazine writer Emily Bazelon talks about impeachment and the Constitution: "The kind of polarization that we have right now is something that the founders really didn't grapple with."

New York Times reporter Andrew Kramer says impeachment puts Volodymyr Zelensky in a tough spot: "He may be dealing with a President Biden next year, or he may be dealing with President Trump."

Ronan Farrow's 2017 exposé of the sexual misconduct allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein in The New Yorker earned him a Pulitzer Prize and helped usher in the #MeToo movement. Now, in his new book, Catch and Kill, Farrow writes about the extreme tactics Weinstein allegedly took in an attempt to keep him from reporting the story.

Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green says Trump fell for a media campaign on Ukraine designed to help him: "The irony is that the target was supposed to be the Bidens, not the president."

Christopher Wylie was a research director at Cambridge Analytica. When he joined the company its goal was countering extremists who were using social media to recruit followers. But then the company began collecting personal data from Facebook users, and used it to target people susceptible to conspiracy theories and disinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign. Wylie left the company and became a whistleblower.

President Trump made building a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico a cornerstone of his 2016 presidential campaign. But when, after the election, efforts to build the wall stalled, he turned to other possible options — including constructing a trench filled with snakes and alligators — according to a forthcoming book.

Mitchell, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News and anchor of her own MSNBC show, looks back on her career in journalism. She's receiving a lifetime achievement Emmy on Sept. 24.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Fahrenthold says in the past, an honor system helped keep presidents from using the office to benefit themselves. Not Trump: "He exploits honor systems."

In a new book, Christopher Leonard chronicles how Koch Industries acquired huge businesses, limited its liability and created a political influence network to remake the GOP.

Journalist Michael Isikoff hosts a new podcast exploring the motivation and methods of those who promoted wild conspiracy theories about Rich, who was killed in a suspected failed robbery in 2016.