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Today is the day that the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump gets underway. Proceedings start around 1 p.m. in Washington (go here for places to watch) and are expected to last anywhere from a week to a month (Bill Clinton’s trial in 1999 lasted five weeks). In a vote that proceeded along party lines, President Trump has been charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He is widely expected to be found not guilty by the Senate, in a vote that will also proceed largely, if not completely, along party lines.

Come February, or whenever the pompously self-declared “world’s greatest deliberative body” votes on the matter, we will be right back to where we started, only a little bit more in debt, a little angrier, and a little more behind schedule on nuts-and-bolts things like passing a real budget for the current fiscal year, figuring out how to pay for entitlements, and discerning whether we’re technically at war with various countries.

The impeachment process thus perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong with the federal government. From start to finish, the impeachment is almost purely partisan and political rather than substantive, and it accomplishes nothing other than driving down even further any form of trust or confidence in the presidency, Congress, or even the Supreme Court (Chief Justice John Roberts will preside over the Senate trial). To be fair, impeachment is designed to be a political, rather than legal, process. It’s not about discovering the truth of what happened, or even fully explaining what happened, as you’d expect in a real trial. As Gerald Ford noted just a few years before becoming president himself after the resignation of Richard Nixon (who was faced with his own impeachment trial), an impeachable offense “is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

It’s only fitting, then, that being found innocent will be an equally partisan exercise. Indeed, that seems especially fitting in an election year in which the incumbent shows some of the worst approval numbers in history and still seems to have an excellent shot at winning a second term.

I’ve documented over the years how far and fast trust and confidence in various parts of the federal government has fallen. In 1964, for instance, 77 percent of Americans agreed that they trusted “the government in Washington always or most of the time.” As of last year, that figure stood at 17 percent. When it comes to the presidency, trust has toppled from 73 percent in 1972 to 45 percent.  For Congress, the drop is even worse, plummeting from 71 percent in 1972 to 38 percent in 2019. Trust in the Supreme Court has followed the same general trend, even if its numbers are better. In 1988, 56 percent had a high degree of trust in the Supreme Court but thirty years later, that figure clocked in at 37 percent.

It’s unlikely that the purely partisan impeachment process will do anything but accelerate those trends. For libertarians, this might on its face seem a blessing, as evacuating trust and confidence in the federal government is surely a precondition for radically reducing its growth and power.

But that’s not how things work. Again and again—and in countries all over the world—declines in trust of government correlate strongly with calls for more government regulation in more parts of our lives. “Individuals in low-trust countries want more government intervention even though they know the government is corrupt,” explain the authors of a 2010 Quarterly Journal of Economics paper. That’s certainly the case in the United States, where the size, scope, and spending of government has vastly increased over exactly the same period in which trust and confidence in the government has cratered. In 2018, I talked with one of the paper’s authors, Andrei Shleifer, a Harvard economist who grew up in the Soviet Union before coming to America. Why do citizens ask a government they don’t believe in to bring order? “They want regulation,” he said. “They want a dictator who will bring back order.”

Counterintuitively, the relative size and spending of government in the United States actually flattened or dipped during periods when trust and confidence in government picked up:

From 1994 to 2001, Pew data show upticks in the number of people who trust the government to mostly do the right thing…. Using inflation-adjusted dollars, the feds spent about $250 billion more in [Bill] Clinton’s last year than in his first, a small increase compared to the spending surges seen under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Viewed as a percentage of GDP, federal spending fell significantly during that period. In 1991, it equaled 21 percent. By 2001, it equaled just 17.5 percent.

There were many reasons for minor increases in trust and confidence in government during the 1990s. The end of the Cold War, the rise of the internet, and continual economic expansion all played important roles (especially the latter). While Washington got shriller—virtually all modern forms of hyper-polarization were present or birthed in the ’90s—it also became less important to more people. Clinton famously acknowledged that “the era of big government is over” even as Congress worked in a bipartisan fashion to change welfare, cut capital gains taxes, and slash defense spending. That sort of rapprochement is unimaginable in the current moment.

You can argue that Trump richly deserves to be the third president to face an impeachment trial, that we should be impeaching all the presidents all the time, or that Trump is actually the victim of a coup. You might even win those arguments. But none of that matters if you really care about restraining the size of government. Come the end of the Senate trial that starts today, Trump will almost certainly still be in office, Democrats and Republicans will hate each other even more, and trust and confidence in Washington will be even lower than it already is.

And the spending of the federal government, what Milton Friedman said was the purest measure of its power, will continue to set new records. All impeachment will have done is add more fuel to the perpetual dumpster fire that is Washington and pushed the calendar back a month or so when it comes to the fiscal reckoning that awaits us in the new decade.

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Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his entire cabinet resigned last week in the wake of what The New York Times‘ Andrew Higgins calls “sweeping constitutional changes.” This is the first major alteration of Russia’s constitution since the 1990s, and it would effectively secure President Vladimir Putin’s control of the state.

At a glance, it’s clear that Putin’s intention is to stay in power after 2024, the year he’s constitutionally required to step down after two consecutive terms. But his changes also indicate a methodical plan to conserve power in the executive branch, which sets a dangerous international precedent.

In his address to the Federal Assembly, Russia’s national legislature, Putin proposed to move some key powers from the executive branch to the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and the State Council, an advisory body that handles issues deemed of the highest importance to the state. The most significant constitutional changes would allow the Duma to appoint members to the prime minister’s cabinet and allow the State Council to oversee the appointment of the heads of Russia’s security agencies.

In addition to giving the State Council constitutional status, Putin also intends to limit the supremacy of international law.  The amendments would ban foreign citizenship and foreign residency permits for judicial and legislative officials and require presidential candidates to have had permanent residence in Russia for at least 25 years.

“Is this a coup? Absolutely,” says Elena Lukyanova, law professor at Russia’s Higher School of Economics. She adds that the amendments would allow the Russian government to refuse to fulfill its obligations under international treaties.

But why has Putin taken a more subtle approach to maintaining his autocracy as opposed to simply removing term limits from Russia’s constitution? Maria Snegovaya, post-doctoral fellow at John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, compares Putin’s transfer of power to that of Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s president, in 2019. Nazarbayev had distributed some elements of presidential authority to the Kazakh Senate and Security Council. Nazarbayev then put his daughter in charge of one body and himself in charge of the other.

“Putin’s goal is to avoid concentrating too much power under a singular institution outside of his control, lest it diminish his authority or even threaten his rule,” Snegovaya writes.

Peter Dickinson, editor of Atlantic Council’s Ukraine Alert, notes that Putin’s constitutional proposals clearly indicate his intentions to retain control while also creating an illusion of change:

Putin’s last constitutional conjuring trick, which saw him return to the presidency in 2012 after a farcical four-year handover to Dmitry Medvedev, sparked mass protests in Moscow that left the regime rattled. With his approval rating currently in the doldrums, Putin knows he must tread carefully as he seeks to extend his reign beyond 2024. Much will now depend on the public reaction to Putin’s plans. Large-scale protests are unlikely but cannot be ruled out as Russians face up to the reality of a stagnating economy and the prospect of Putin in power for another generation.

Putin’s actions should alarm the international community. They pose a grave threat to the rule of law.

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On the weekend of January 18, 2019, a short video appeared on Twitter that purported to show a group of Catholic high school boys—one young man, Nicholas Sandmann, in particular—harassing a Native American elder named Nathan Phillips on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

One year later, the media’s reckless mishandling of the story stands as an important warning against the kind of agenda-driven, outrage-mongering clickbait that unfortunately thrives in the world of online journalism.

But no less noteworthy was the news cycle that followed the initial flawed coverage, which featured a host of ideologically-motivated partisans doubling down on their initial assumption, digging for new information to justify it, and reassuring themselves that they were right all along. Sandmann and his MAGA hat-wearing friends had identified themselves as members of Team Trump, and thus the national shaming they endured was deserved, this thinking went. Indeed, those who had defended the boys by disputing some aspects of the encounter—including me, in an article for Reason that changed many people’s minds about what had happened—were engaged in “gaslighting“: trying to make people think that something they saw hadn’t really happened.

Sandmann’s subsequent lawsuits have kept the Covington-sympathetic public focused on several of the outlets that misreported the initial story: CNN, The Washington Post, and others. Indeed, these publications certainly deserve criticism, independent of the merits of the individual lawsuits. But these outlets’ Covington-related sins pale in comparison to those who continued to malign the teens long after the additional video footage was available.

It’s important to recall that the mainstream media’s textbook rush-to-judgment about the Covington teens relied on two key pieces of faulty evidence. The first was the misleading video clip, which did not contain important context about what had happened immediately before the encounter between Sandmann and Phillips.

The second was Phillips’ brazenly inaccurate statements to the press: He claimed that he had intervened to protect the third group, the Black Hebrew Israelites, from the “predatory” boys, even though the boys were not threatening anyone. He also claimed he had heard a “build the wall” chant, even though no evidence of this has emerged in any of the additional footage. Phillips, it turned out, was a false witness: an on-the-ground source whose information seemed credible, but wasn’t. (In fact, Phillips is a charlatan with a long history of allowing the media to misrepresent him as a Vietnam War veteran, even though he never served abroad or saw combat.)

Since journalism in the modern era moves at a rapid pace, irrespective of the need to double- and triple-check facts, these two pieces of evidence were sufficient to launch dozens of stories in mainstream press that essentially indicted Covington’s students as racists. These stories employed some cautious language—allegedly, seemingly, etc.—and attributed the stronger statements to Phillips, which provided a veneer of objectivity, even though readers were given little reason to think there might be more to the story.

A truly discerning reader would have wondered why a trivial encounter that involved no one of significance and resulted in zero injuries or property damage was worthy of so much coverage at all. But no matter: The actions of Sandmann and his friends, as described by the media, generated apoplectic denunciation by conservatives, liberals, Catholics, celebrities, politicians, and virtually everyone else. Even ideological allies of the boys, who had come to Washington, D.C. to attend the anti-abortion March for Life rally, were quick to condemn them.

In hindsight, the slanted nature of the coverage is almost comical. The Detroit Free Press described the video as depicting “Phillips peacefully drumming and singing, while surrounded by a hostile crowd” and suggested that this “illustrates the nation’s political and racial tensions.” The Daily Beast‘s story was filed under “AWFUL” and described the video as “disturbing.” Its first several paragraphs quote directly from Phillips. NPR asserted that the boys had mocked the Native American man. In story after story, news outlets claimed the Covington kids had shouted “build the wall.” Again, the sole source of this claim was Phillips.

The news stories, at least, were edited; Twitter is not. Thus the reaction on social media was even more unhinged. Reza Aslan, a scholar and television pundit on CNN, tweeted that Sandmann had a “punchable” face. His CNN colleague Bakari Sellers agreed. BuzzFeed‘s Anne Petersen tweeted that Sandmann’s face reminded her of Brett Kavanaugh’s—and this wasn’t intended as a compliment.Vulture writer Erik Abriss tweeted that he wanted the kids and their parents to die. Kathy Griffin said the high schoolers ought to be doxxed. As a USA Today retrospective noted, “comedian Patton Oswalt called the students in the video ‘bland, frightened, forgettable kids who’ll grow up to be bland, frightened, forgotten adult wastes.’…Writer Michael Green, referring to Sandmann’s apparent smirking at the Native American man, wrote: ‘A face like that never changes. This image will define his life. No one need ever forgive him.’…Huffington Post reporter Christopher Mathias explicitly compared the students to violent segregationists.”

Within 48 hours, the truth had emerged. A longer video, which showed the Covington boys’ prior harassment at the hands of the Black Hebrew Israelites, made it clear that the kids had not directed racist invectives at Phillips’ crowd—they were cheering in order to drown out the Black Hebrew Israelites. Phillips then entered the teens’ midst, drumming and chanting at them. Some thought he was joining their cheer, a small few made inappropriate tomahawk gestures, while others seemed confused or even wary—correctly wary, since Phillips and his entourage had not come in good faith.

I wrote about the additional footage, and, over time, many commentators backpedaled. The mainstream media did as well. Case in point: The New York Times went from “Viral Video Shows Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Surrounding Native Elder,” to “Fuller Picture Emerges of Viral Video of Native American Man and Catholic Students.”

But less well remembered than the mainstream media’s belated mea culpa was the absurd effort to re-legitimize the initial narrative.

On the next day, January 21, the New York Daily News published a contemptible hit piece attributed to its sports staff titled: “SEE IT: Covington Catholic High students in blackface at past basketball game.” The first sentence read: “This won’t help Nick Sandmann’s case,” as if the story was some sort of indictment of him. In fact, it had nothing to do with him, or any of his classmates at the Lincoln Memorial. The “blackface” incident was from a Covington basketball game years before, in which some attendees had painted themselves black to show school spirit. Ill-advised, in today’s rage-charged climate? Sure. An example of racial harassment? Probably not. In either case, it had nothing to do with Sandmann.

Not to be outdone, Ben Kesslen of NBC News published a story the next day with the headline: “Gay valedictorian banned from speaking at Covington graduation ‘not surprised’ by D.C. controversy.” Kesslen’s piece included critical remarks from the gay valedictorian, as well as a local Native American activist group for good measure. The Covington kids “were not blameless,” said the valedictorian. Readers who consumed the article too quickly may have missed that this student hailed from a different Covington school (albeit one in the same diocese), rendering his subjective impression of what may or may not have happened at the Lincoln Memorial fairly useless.

Then there was another video clip—this one just eight seconds long—that was widely cited as evidence that perhaps the Covington boys were up to no good, after all. It allegedly depicted a separate incident near the Lincoln Memorial, involving a group of boys who may or may not be students from Covington. The appear to yell something—perhaps “MAGA”—at a passing girl. It’s not clear what prompted this. It’s not clear if the girl initiated a conversation with the boys. It’s not clear if they meant to harass her. It’s not even clear that these boys are the same ones who encounter Phillips. It’s an eight-second video.

For some reason, Vox‘s Emily Stewart embedded the short clip in her January 24 piece about Covington. This isn’t even the most astonishing failing of the piece: She also uncritically cited Phillips throughout.

“Phillips told the Post that even before the confrontation, he and other Native American activists had issues with the students during the day,” wrote Stewart. “And it wasn’t just him and the Hebrew Israelites—a video surfaced on Twitter purporting to show the Covington boys harassing a group of girls as they walked by.”

Stewart’s piece is shockingly devoid of pushback, failing to note that Phillips’ account was misleading—even though the piece was written four days after his narrative had fallen apart. She made note of my piece, and a few others from those in the Fox News orbit, but her bolded points were “We’re probably never going to know exactly what happened on the Lincoln Memorial steps” and “These kids still don’t look great.”

On the latter point, she linked to a piece by Slate‘s Ruth Graham, who wrote, “There’s no mistaking the core dynamics of the encounter: Sandmann smugly grins in Phillips’s face and declines to step backward, and he’s backed by dozens of boisterous teens who are jeering and mocking the much smaller group of Native marchers.”

In a previous piece, she had referred to Sandmann’s face as “punchable and untouchable.” Her new piece contained no apology—indeed, she hardly changed her mind about him at all.

“The new facts about this small encounter this weekend in Washington are important, and worth clarifying,” wrote Graham. “But they don’t change the larger story, the one that caused so many people to react so viscerally to the narrative’s first, and simpler, draft.”

The most obnoxious entry in this series was penned by Deadspin‘s Laura Wagner, who actually attempted to shame those who had changed their mind about the Covington kids in the face of new evidence. “Nothing about the video showing the offensive language of Black Israelites changes how upsetting it was to see the Covington students, and Sandmann in particular, stare at Phillips with such contempt,” wrote Wagner. “I don’t see how you could watch this and think otherwise unless you’re willing to gaslight yourself, and others, in the service of granting undeserved sympathy to the privileged.”

That’s right—people who were sorry for making a snap judgment and condemning a teenager for not smiling the right way while caught in a confusing moment with a bad-faith interloper were “granting undeserved sympathy to the privileged.” (I responded to Wagner’s piece shortly after it was first published.)

One year after the Covington debacle, it’s actually the gratuitous cruelty of the Laura Wagners and Ruth Grahams that sticks out to me as worthy of ongoing criticism—far more than the significantly flawed but at least summarily retracted news articles by the likes of Washington Post and CNN. Covington is a story about a viral outrage-addicted media succumbing to a bad impulse and make horrible mistakes. But as the better-known news outlets continue to garner the lion’s share of the opprobrium, it’s important to remember that there are plenty of commentary writers who continue to think—wrongfully, and shamefully—that the media had it basically right the first time.

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