The death of scandal

Watergate and Teapot Dome — in broad daylight

Science History Images / Alamy

What happens when a society loses its capacity for scandal?

That may feel like a ridiculous question in the United States in 2025. Perhaps no word has defined the Donald Trump era more than “scandal.” From Jeffrey Epstein to Stormy Daniels to two impeachments — for extorting Ukrainian allies and for attempting to overthrow the constitutional order of the United States — we’re on year nine of a cycle of cartoonish wrongdoing and outrage. These days, almost everything feels like a scandal.

That may be precisely the problem.

When everything’s a scandal, nothing is. In the last decade, as one outrage morphs into another, we seem to have lost something fundamental. Scandal no longer seems to have its historical power to provide accountability, to stem corruption, to constrain people in power, and to help course-correct when our government goes awry.

For example, look at just this past week. Two different administration scandals — the firing of a prosecutor and an alleged bribery cover-up — closely mirror the two most notorious episodes in U.S. history. But instead of era-defining bombshells, they feel more like daily news stories. They’re happening largely in the open and with no apparent shame or accountability for those in power.

Like so many things, the polarization and anger of the Trump era has burnt out our capacity for shared outrage at corruption and political wrongdoing.

Still, though, the power of scandal may not be lost forever.

Maybe — just maybe — the next era of U.S. history could be a cleansing counterreaction. If you squint, you can see a path from these days of constant scandal to something new, something better. That together we could build a politics defined by opposition to corruption, not acquiescence to it.

Donald Trump’s Saturday Truth Social Massacre

Watergate, the most notorious scandal in American history, was fundamentally about the abuse of power — the Nixon administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice and other law enforcement powers for political ends.

The breaking point happened on Saturday, Oct. 20, 1973, when President Richard Nixon fired DOJ leadership one-by-one until he found someone who was willing to follow his orders to interfere with the Watergate special prosecutor. The “Saturday Night Massacre” broke open the floodgates of the scandal, and Nixon’s impeachment proceedings began 10 days later.

This week, Donald Trump engaged in an equally brazen attempt to politicize justice.

He forced out Erik Siebert — the career prosecutor he had installed less than five months before as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia — for apparently failing to manufacture criminal cases against the president’s perceived opponents, especially former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. A White House aide and former Trump personal lawyer with no prosecutorial experience, Lindsey Halligan, was installed in Siebert’s place. She apparently had clear orders to bring those indictments, come hell or high water.

Dutifully, Halligan obliged. Comey was indicted last night.

The biggest difference between Nixon and Trump is that Trump did all this out in the open, posting his demands that the DOJ go after his enemies on Truth Social. (It was, by coincidence, also a Saturday.)

Tom Homan’s modern Teapot Dome

Before Watergate, the biggest scandal in American history happened in the 1920s.

President Warren Harding’s secretary of the interior, Albert B. Fall, took approximately $400,000 in bribes from two oil executives, Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair, in exchange for bypassing competitive bidding processes and granting their companies favorable leases for oil fields in Wyoming and California.

The scandal — which came to be known as “Teapot Dome” for a geological feature near the Wyoming oil field — permanently tarred the Harding administration. Albert Fall became the first cabinet member in U.S. history to be convicted of a felony committed in office.

White House border czar Tom Homan seems to have done something similar with the modern-day equivalent to 1920s oil leases: lucrative immigration-related government contracts. (ICE has to spend that new $28 billion somehow.)

Homan reportedly accepted a $50,000 cash bribe, in a takeout food bag, in exchange for a promise to help certain companies win contracts should Donald Trump return to the White House.

How is this different from Teapot Dome?

Mainly that Homan — at least in this case — apparently didn’t know who he was accepting a bribe from. It was, it seems, really an undercover FBI agent. And he was apparently on video.

The administration is currently routing no-bid contracts to at least two former clients of Homan and Attorney General Bondi. There are legitimate questions about whether Homan’s alleged bribe was part of a much larger pattern. But instead of digging into this scandal, the FBI quashed the investigation. Instead of asking him to resign, the White House has decided to “stand by Tom Homan 100%” and refuses to release the video.

(For what it’s worth, Homan has not denied accepting the cash, just claiming that he “did nothing illegal” and that his family faces hardship. “I’m back on a government paycheck,” he said. “Not only did I sacrifice, my family sacrifices.”)

Why scandal lost its bite — and how to bring it back

There are many potential explanations for why the accountability power of scandal has grown so muted:

• The fragmentation of the media and information environment has eroded our shared sense of reality on what counts as an outrage. A 24-hour, social media-fueled news cycle has hypersaturated our collective consciousness, bombarding us with stories of wrongdoing until it all feels like white noise.

• Growing two-party polarization, a product of our electoral system, means that scandal is increasingly cabined to one side of the aisle. Both sides reflectively defend their own, with Republicans especially feeling compelled to defend the Trump administration.

• The attention economy’s incentives for political conflict have perversely rewarded certain “scandalous” tendencies as some politicians seek the limelight of controversy.¹

• Politicians have learned that many scandals are potentially survivable, if only they are brazen enough to power through them. A long string of perceived failures of accountability across administrations — from the Clinton impeachment to the Iraq War to the financial crisis to the effort to overturn the 2020 election to, yes, Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection — have contributed to a widespread impression that all politicians are tainted (regardless, obviously, the relative fault).

• Many voters see corruption extending far beyond government to the private sector, healthcare, education, and more. According to Ipsos, 69 percent of voters believe the economy is “rigged to advantage the rich and powerful.”

• Structural aspects of our political system — the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, and our two-party, winner-take-all electoral system — tend to insulate elected officials from majority opinion, so long as they can maintain the support of a core partisan base.

• Donald Trump gleefully capitalized on (and turbocharged) all of these dynamics, betting that voters would excuse his wrongdoing so long as he, first, did it in public and, second, claimed to be breaking norms on their behalf. It worked. Now he, singularly among American political figures, has built a sort of scandal force-field with his partisan base.

Together these all add up to a depressing picture. No one involved in our system — the press, Congress, law enforcement, or voters themselves — acts like scandals really matter all that much anymore. We live in a nihilistic time that goes beyond fragmentation. The country behaves like there is no real truth, everyone is corrupt anyways, and nothing matters.

That’s not just vibes; the numbers back this up. A majority of voters see bribery and corruption as baked-in. 73 percent of voters think a member of Congress would be likely to accept a bribe if offered one. By a significant margin, our country’s top fear is “corrupt government officials.”

Berkeley’s Democracy Policy Lab asked almost 3,000 Americans what one word or phrase they would use to describe their government. Here’s a word cloud of their responses:

Maybe the reason scandals have lost their bite is that many Americans have simply lost hope that politicians will ever offer them anything better.

That’s as depressing as can be. But it also suggests a status quo extremely ripe for disruption.

I keep thinking about this article by political scientist Adam Bonica arguing that our country’s widespread cynicism over corruption presents a massive political opportunity:

Across decades and continents, corruption has been the fatal weakness of authoritarian regimes. From Manila to Cairo, strongmen who seemed immovable were suddenly swept aside — Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, when millions revolted against his family’s kleptocracy, and Hosni Mubarak in 2011, when mass protests over corruption and cronyism ended his three-decade rule. Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity erupted when mass protests over corruption, oligarchic influence, and Yanukovych’s betrayal of EU-alignment forced his removal from power. Malaysia’s seemingly unshakeable Najib Razak fell in 2018 when voters rebelled against the 1MDB scandal. In Guatemala, President Otto Pérez Molina resigned in 2015 amid the La Línea customs fraud scandal and was soon jailed on corruption charges. Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina resigned in 2024 after student-led demonstrations against corruption. Most recently, mass protests in Nepal toppled Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and installed former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, widely viewed as an anti-corruption reformer, as interim leader. Even in democracies, corruption scandals have toppled ruling parties, from Italy’s Tangentopoli in the 1990s to South Korea’s Candlelight Revolution in 2017, when mass protests over influence-peddling led to President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment.

Bonica argues for the Democratic Party to reinvent itself as a genuine anti-corruption movement. Beyond making anti-corruption a central rhetorical issue, he argues for an “authentic commitment to self-reform” through “cleaning up deceptive fundraising practices, breaking free from billionaire donors, and supporting popular reforms like banning congressional stock trading.”

Bonica’s recommendations are fundamentally partisan ones aimed at capital-D Democrats — but his analysis also holds, I think, in a nonpartisan, lowercase-d sense.

We can either accept that this era of perpetual scandal, corruption, and abuse is going to be permanent — that we’re condemned to ever more polarization and apathy about our leaders’ misdeeds. Or we can believe that what appears to be nihilism is actually a sleeping giant, an untapped source of pro-democracy energy sufficient to both overcome the authoritarian movement and build a better democracy on the other side.

I choose to believe the latter.

We’ll have more in future weeks with some thoughts about how to possibly build an anti-corruption movement in the United States. But for now, let us know what you think in the comments — can this work? Or is it hopeless?

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Generals must be prepared to uphold their oaths

On Tuesday, hundreds of U.S. generals and admirals are scheduled to attend an emergency meeting called by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Here is Protect Democracy’s Alexandra Chandler, a former intelligence analyst, on the stakes:

The highly unusual and secretive nature of this assembly has prompted alarm because the agenda is unknown. This lack of transparency has opened the door to speculation as to the purpose of the meeting. The possibilities range widely. It could be an expensive, operational risk to deliver a haranguing lecture on topics like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or media contacts.

However, the unprecedented nature of the summons — pulling hundreds of flag officers worldwide from their commands — is fueling fears that the meeting could be a prelude to demanding personal loyalty pledges or overly broad confidentiality agreements. Such demands would severely chill dissent, impede Congressional oversight, and fundamentally corrupt the military’s non-political character. These generals and admirals must be prepared for the worst-case scenario, standing ready to defend the Constitution against demands that compromise their professional integrity.

During my 13 years at the Office of Naval Intelligence, I worked as an analyst focused on weapons of mass destruction proliferation, North Korea, Iran, and other pressing issues. My role required me to brief many flag officers — mostly admirals, but some generals too — a task that was often routine within the intelligence world. Yet it gave me a firsthand view of many of these individuals.

It was during certain high-stakes occasions that I witnessed the critical, life-or-death decision-making power of some of these leaders. I saw them rapidly digest complex intelligence — sometimes persuasive, sometimes conflicting — and distill it to make a call under pressure. Crucially, I also saw their ability to refuse to be pressured into a decision they were not yet ready to make or felt was wrong for their sailors and soldiers. This pushback, sometimes against the very intelligence I was presenting, taught me the essential nature of informed, deliberate judgment.

On Tuesday, they may not be deciding on a military operation, but on an issue just as vital: the integrity of their institution. They must lean on that internal strength now. Their ultimate loyalty is to the Constitution, not to any single political figure. Standing firm against inappropriate demands is not an act of defiance, but an affirmation of their sworn duty to protect the U.S. military’s apolitical foundation.

More next week.

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ABA task force champions reform

A long-awaited report from the American Bar Association’s Task Force for American Democracy is out. This is the most important legal organization in the country — and the task force is bipartisan, co-chaired by Jeh Johnson and Michael Luttig.

The report is 98 pages long and has 34 recommendations, many of which align closely with Protect Democracy’s work.

For example, the report encourages states to adopt rules-based reforms to counter the slide toward authoritarianism. Perhaps the most potent one is the revival of “fusion” voting and parties, as it’s a party-system reform of the type we wrote about in February.

I asked my friend Dan Cantor of the Center for Ballot Freedom about why the report matters:

The recommendation is important. But better still, it’s timely. There is litigation in three states right now — New Jersey, Kansas, and Wisconsin — that seeks to have the bans on fusion voting and fusion parties declared unconstitutional. The task force members clearly appreciate that our zero-sum, hyperpartisan, two-party “doom loop” is itself an accelerant for authoritarianism.

These are not high-profile cases, but the stakes themselves are quite high. If the courts rule in favor of the plaintiffs, a long overdue multi-party democracy will start to take shape in those states. The reason is simple: People want more options, and there are no wasted or spoiler votes when you vote for a fusion party. And of course multi-party democracies are much less susceptible to authoritarian takeover. Positive rulings could easily inspire citizens in other states to organize new parties and bring new litigation. And finally, as these are state constitutional claims, any decisions will not be subject to review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Protect Democracy is involved in the first two lawsuits noted above. Learn more about why and how we’re working to revive fusion voting here.

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What else we’re tracking:

• Listen to Gregg Nunziata, the executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law, explain the danger of retaliatory prosecutions and why DOJ independence shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

• Every living former Federal Reserve chair (Greenspan, Bernanke, and Yellen) has joined several former Treasury secretaries and White House Council of Economic Advisers chairs who served presidents of both parties in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court warning a ruling against Fed governor Lisa Cook’s ability to stay in her job would significantly erode Fed independence.

• The White House’s growing attacks on free speech and dissent look a lot like McCarthyism and the red scare. Ezra Klein: Trump is building the blue scare.

• White House budget director and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought is threatening more mass firings of government employees if the government shuts down next week. It’s a new development in the shutdown fight — but it’s not really news. The Trump administration has a long pattern of legally dubious layoffs regardless of what’s happening in Congress. Read our explainer: Office of Management and Budget shutdown reduction-in-force memorandum is new, but not news.

• Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum decrying the “anti-fascist lie” and ordering that the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) coordinate “a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt,” among others, domestic “institutional and individual funders, and officers and employees of organizations, that are responsible for, sponsor, or otherwise aid and abet … criminal conduct.” This may very well be the vehicle for the coming wave of repression we have been warning about.

• A new report from Protect Democracy’s Alex Tausanovitch explains how we can restore some functionality to Congress by empowering “sub-parties.” Read more: To break two-party gridlock, democratize Congress.

1. For example, here’s POLITICO on how a congressional censure has, perversely, become a badge of honor.