Amy Davidson Sorkin
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Articles by Amy Davidson Sorkin
Facing the Death Penalty
In recent weeks, tolerance for the death penalty, as it is carried out in the United States, has been sorely tested twice. On September 30th, the state of Tennessee bungled its attempt to kill Christa Pike, who survived two injections of pentobarbital. Eight days later, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gleefully invited the nation to tune in, via live stream, for the death by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, scheduled for December 3rd.
Donald Trump Is Still Trying to Make It Harder to Vote
Donald Trump has never been noted for his vote-counting skills. In January, 2021, during his infamous call to Georgia’s secretary of state looking to find eleven thousand seven hundred and eighty more votes in the Presidential election he’d just lost, he claimed that “fifties of thousands” of his potential supporters had been turned away at the polls, and that five thousand dead people had voted.
Donald Trump Is Still Trying to Make It Harder to Vote
7 hours ago The Alaska community of Old Harbor counts about 200 winter residents, clustered on the mountainous southern shore of Kodiak Island. The island was first colonized by Russians, and, centuries later, the onion domes of a Russian Orthodox church still stand here. What this place, situated near the …
Amy Davidson Sorkin | Donald Trump Is Still Trying to Make It Harder to Vote
The SAVE America Act is just one part of a package that includes an executive order and threats of prosecution, all in an effort to make Trump’s math work. Donald Trump has never been noted for his vote-counting skills.
The Failures of the Fauci Hearing
Fauci, in his opening statement, noted that he had testified before or briefed Congress “well over two hundred times” in his long career, including on COVID-19 and its origins. When he was confronted by Paul at a 2021 hearing, Fauci gave as good as he got. He may feel that he doesn’t have much left to say—asked and answered. But he had a unique role in a traumatic mass experience that is still being felt and assessed. Paul isn’t the only one who’d like to hear more.
The Supreme Court Upheld Birthright Citizenship—but the Fight May Not Be Over
The question, after all, had seemed settled. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, holds that “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” As the Supreme Court affirmed in U.S. v.
What Jill Biden Doesn’t Say in Her White House Memoir
The best rationale for First Lady memoirs is that the domestic details they offer can serve as a lever, lifting the reader from the mundane to reach some larger ideal that is, if not political, at least profound. Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” was, in many ways, a disquisition on how she went from disliking politics—“In my heart, I just believed there were better ways for a good person to have an impact”—to finding real meaning in her role.
Can the Democrats Take Back the Senate?
In a debate for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Iowa this month, one of the moderators, Erin Murphy, asked the candidates, Josh Turek and Zach Wahls, both state legislators, a reasonable, if downbeat, question.
Can the Democrats Take Back the Senate?
Their electoral prospects are finally improving, but opportunities can quickly give way to divisions. Does the Party have a plan? In a debate for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Iowa this month, one of the moderators, Erin Murphy, asked the candidates, Josh Turek and Zach Wahls, both state legislators, a reasonable, if downbeat, question.
J. D. Vance’s Bumpy Ride
As recently as a week or two ago, Vice-President J. D. Vance was talking like a man who felt that the odds were in his favor. He’d flown to Hungary to attend a campaign rally for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the most Trumpian of European leaders, and, before leaving, he told reporters at the airport how kind the Hungarian people had been to him.
Can the Democrats Get It Together?
The fight over the 2028 primary calendar is one of several proxies for a broader battle about the future of the Party—and the search for the best nominee. In December, 2022, President Joe Biden sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee full of soaring language about how the Presidential-primary calendar should reflect the Party’s highest principles.
Can the Democrats Get It Together?
In December, 2022, President Joe Biden sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee full of soaring language about how the Presidential-primary calendar should reflect the Party's highest principles. Democrats needed to make sure that "voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process," and they had to pay attention to the country's "overall diversity"-geographic, economic, and demographic.
The Supreme Court's Complicated Takedown of Trump's Tariffs Original
broughtOn Friday, President Donald Trump asked reporters at the White House to consider how "ridiculous" it was that the Supreme Court had just struck down tariffs that he'd been imposing, unilaterally and gleefully, around the world since last year. As President, he had the right "to destroy foreign countries," Trump said.
An Unhappy Anniversary: Trump’s Year in Office
Paper and clocks are associated with first wedding anniversaries, or so the gift guides say. As the United States reaches the one-year mark in its increasingly dysfunctional and abuse-laden political marriage with Donald J. Trump, though the President has made it clear that he will take almost any sort of gift—even, and maybe especially, someone else’s Nobel Peace Prize medal.
The Supreme Court Gets Back to Work
There are distinctive aspects to both of the transgender-athletes cases. For one thing, Hecox has changed her mind about bringing the case—she has said that she no longer wants to play sports at B.S.U., and that the Supreme Court should consider the matter moot. The Justices have said that they will decide on that question after oral arguments.
Is the Supreme Court Unsure About Birthright Citizenship?
The big prize for the White House, of course, would be an end to birthright citizenship, which many conservatives and opponents of immigration have come to deeply resent, with talk of “anchor babies” and demographic doom. Unfortunately for them, birthright citizenship is not some misty, novel concept or expansion of ill-defined rights.
If the Legal Campaigns Against Donald Trump Had Ended Differently
“Injustice” largely ignores those cases. Its drama is tightly enclosed within the D.O.J.—illuminatingly but also, at times, suffocatingly so. Bragg’s prosecution gets a little more than a page, in which Leonnig and Davis dismiss it as “tawdry.” Obviously, January 6th is a bigger deal than paying off a porn star.
THE TRIAL THAT WASN'T
The New Yorker | November 24, 2025 Would the January 6th case, or any of the failed prosecutions of Donald Trump, have made a difference? For anyone looking at the wreckage of America’s legal and political landscape and wondering how we got here, it’s tempting to daydream about all sorts of counterfactuals. What if President Joe Biden had dropped his reëlection bid sooner? What if Vice-President Kamala Harris, the eventual nominee, had distanced herself from him?
Who Can Lead the Democrats?
October 20, 2024, was the ninety-first day of Vice-President Kamala Harris’s Presidential campaign and also, as it happened, her sixtieth birthday—a fact that members of her staff had not forgotten. When she boarded her campaign plane that afternoon, she found that it had been festooned with streamers and that a German chocolate cake, her favorite, was waiting for her. People were wearing party hats.
Who Can Lead the Democrats?
Kamala Harris Goes Scorched Earth On Trump White House With 4-Syllable Curse Word The Democrat emphasized to the people in the audience ― many of whom were creators — that “we are living history right now." Kamala Harris isn’t mincing words about Donald Trump’s White House these days. In fact, the former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate even described the …
What to Do When the Supreme Court Rules the Wrong Way
The blows have been coming weekly, as Trump tries to ransack the Constitution. Yet recent Court history shows that what feels like the end can be a beginning. In February, 1983, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union in Georgia faced a dilemma. After years of looking, they believed that they had found the ideal plaintiff to challenge a state law against “the offense of sodomy,” which carried a sentence of one to twenty years.
What to Do When the Supreme Court Rules the Wrong Way
In February, 1983, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union in Georgia faced a dilemma. After years of looking, they believed that they had found the ideal plaintiff to challenge a state law against “the offense of sodomy,” which carried a sentence of one to twenty years.
What to Do When the Supreme Court Rules the Wrong Way
State regulators have subpoenaed Brant Frost V — the son of the founder of First Liberty Building & Loan — after he launched a new lending firm amid …
“Lovely One,” Reviewed: Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson’s Memoir
“Fools” is one of Neil Simon’s lesser plays. It involves a schoolmaster who, in some imaginary past, is sent to a Ukrainian village whose residents are burdened with a curse of stupidity. The comedy is broad. But in the nineteen-eighties a member of the Miami Palmetto Senior High School speech-and-debate team performed an extract, complete with an Eastern European accent, to great effect.
A Public Defender’s Radical Approach to Representing the January 6th Rioters
“You can see the Capitol from here,” Heather Shaner, a criminal-defense lawyer, says as she walks with her client Jack Griffith, a.k.a. Juan Bibiano, a.k.a. Liberty Dragon, to his sentencing hearing at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse, in Washington, D.C. “It’s beautiful, right?” “It is beautiful,” Griffith replies, as they pause to look at the vista, down one of D.C.’s wide streets. His hair is styled in a double-braided mohawk, half red and half blue.
Trump’s Got Troubles
His campaign is careening, his poll numbers are slipping, and, after something of a summer lull, he is due for several confrontations in court. On August 7th, as thousands of people gathered at an airfield in Michigan to see Vice-President Kamala Harris and her just-announced running mate, Governor Tim Walz, Donald Trump signed paperwork notifying the federal government that he would be suing the Department of Justice for a hundred million dollars.
Trump’s Got Troubles
On August 7th, as thousands of people gathered at an airfield in Michigan to see Vice-President Kamala Harris and her just-announced running mate, Governor Tim Walz, Donald Trump signed paperwork notifying the federal government that he would be suing the Department of Justice for a hundred million dollars.
The Supreme Court Needs Fixing, But How?
Politics, more than many fields, can be unjust.
Who Should Kamala Harris Pick as Her Running Mate?
It now seems almost certain that Vice-President Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee to face Donald Trump in November. But no one runs for President alone. Harris has the endorsement of President Joe Biden, after he withdrew from the Presidential race on Sunday, and of a list of notables that seems to be growing by the minute. Small donors have been flooding ActBlue, the Democratic fund-raising platform.
In Trump’s Documents Case, Aileen Cannon Tells Jack Smith to Go Away
In November, 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he had asked Jack Smith to serve as a special counsel.
The Supreme Court’s Immunity Ruling is a Victory for Donald Trump
On Monday morning, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6–3, handed Donald Trump, who is under indictment in multiple jurisdictions, a victory by declaring that former Presidents have a great deal of immunity from criminal prosecution related to their actions while in office.
The Supreme Court Steps Back from the Brink on Guns Original
One day, in December, 2019, a woman known in court documents as C.M. was berated by Zackey Rahimi, a man with whom she had a young child, in a parking lot in Arlington, Texas. C.M. tried to get away, but Rahimi allegedly grabbed her and dragged her to his car and forced her inside, hitting her head against the dashboard in the process. Before he could drive off, Rahimi noticed that another person in the parking lot had witnessed his assault.
What’s Holding Up Trump’s Florida Case?
On Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon, of the Southern District of Florida, said that she simply does not know when Donald Trump will go to trial in her courtroom. Jack Smith, the special counsel, had charged Trump with thirty-two counts under the Espionage Act, for allegedly hoarding national-security documents at Mar-a-Lago, and with another eight counts involving obstruction and false statements. The trial had tentatively been set for May 20th.
The Supreme Court Asks What Enron Has to Do with January 6th-and Trump
On Monday, October 15, 2001, an executive assistant arrived for work at the Houston office of Arthur Andersen, at the time one of the Big Five accounting firms, to find that the break room was a mess. “There was food everywhere,” she later said, “like they had been there the whole weekend.” Near the remnants of meals were bags stuffed with paper strips.
The Supreme Court Asks What Enron Has to Do with January 6th—and Trump | Flipboard
1 day ago Most of the justices seem to want to make it harder to prosecute January 6 rioters. The Supreme Court spent about an hour and a half on Tuesday morning arguing over whether to make it much harder for the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people who joined the January 6, 2021, attack on the …
Donald Trump’s Very Busy Court Calendar
The mass of motions, hearings, arguments, and gag orders related to the four criminal cases against Donald Trump can feel like a pile of jigsaw-puzzle pieces. They all fit together somehow, but the arrangement is unclear. In Florida, in the case involving Trump’s alleged hoarding of classified documents, Judge Aileen Cannon and Jack Smith, the special counsel, have been engaged in a bitter fight over jury instructions—even though there is as yet no jury, let alone a trial date.
The Shameless Oral Arguments in the Supreme Court’s Abortion-Pill Case
Even some conservative Justices seemed unpersuaded by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine’s claims. There were times, during the oral arguments on Tuesday in the Supreme Court case about mifepristone, an abortion pill, when the Justices seemed struck by the shamelessness of what the litigants trying to limit access to the drug were demanding.
The Shameless Oral Arguments in the Supreme Court’s Abortion-Pill Case
There were times, during the oral arguments on Tuesday in the Supreme Court case about mifepristone, an abortion pill, when the Justices seemed struck by the shamelessness of what the litigants trying to limit access to the drug were demanding. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put it, “I’m worried that there is a significant mismatch in this case between the claimed injury and the remedy that is being sought.” The case, Food and Drug Administration v.
What the Abortion-Pill Battle Is Really About
The briefs that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has filed with the Supreme Court in its effort to restrict access to mifepristone—a drug that has been used for decades, with demonstrated safety, in medical abortions—contain some remarkably dubious assertions. One is that the Justices are only being asked to uphold a very “modest” lower-court order.
A Tactical Decision at Arapahoe High School
At Arapahoe High School, in Colorado, a student walked in just around lunchtime “and immediately asked for the location of a very specific teacher,” Sheriff Grayson Robinson said, at a press conference on Friday. By the time Robinson spoke, a few hours had passed, and that student was dead. He had, it seems, been what reports called an “active shooter”; he had injured two other teen-agers and then, as far as one can tell now, had killed himself.
The Supreme Court Keeps Donald Trump on the Ballot Original
The Supreme Court has ruled that Colorado cannot keep Donald Trump from running for the Republican nomination for President because of his role in the events of January 6th. That bottom-line decision is per curiam—or by the full court—and unanimous, with both liberal and conservative Justices agreeing. It comes just in time for the Colorado primary, on Tuesday.
Yet More Donald Trump Cases Head to the Supreme Court
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Yet More Donald Trump Cases Head to the Supreme Court Original
There is uncertainty in every Presidential race, but an extraordinary number of questions about Donald Trump’s candidacy are ending up at the Supreme Court. For example, any reckoning of the odds that he will come out of the month of March as the presumptive Republican nominee has to factor in both his dominance in the primaries and the outcome of Trump v.
Trump's Wild Pursuit of Presidential Immunity
The former President has already lost the immunity case twice, but he has also won something. In an application to the Supreme Court filed on Monday in a federal criminal case related to January 6th, Donald Trump’s lawyers make an extraordinary claim: “Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist.” It’s the kind of sentence that raises questions about Trump’s view of the Presidency—does he think that to do the job he has to be able to commit crimes?
Trump’s Wild Pursuit of Presidential Immunity
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Trump’s Wild Pursuit of Presidential Immunity Original
In an application to the Supreme Court filed on Monday in a federal criminal case related to January 6th, Donald Trump’s lawyers make an extraordinary claim: “Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist.” It’s the kind of sentence that raises questions about Trump’s view of the Presidency—does he think that to do the job he has to be able to commit crimes? And yet there is an aspect of truth to it.
Trump’s Wild Pursuit of Presidential Immunity
Trump attorney Alina Habba had an interview on Fox News on Friday, and the internet has been having fun with the lawyer's phrasing. Habba, who …
What SCOTUS Has to Decide About Trump and Disqualification Original
Here is a look at how the Supreme Court Justices might view the text of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Colorado Supreme Court cited in its decision to keep Donald Trump off that state’s Republican primary ballot. The Court will hear oral arguments on February 8th. What does Section 3 say? At first glance, it’s easy to understand why Section 3 seems so relevant to the case of Donald Trump. Didn’t he take an oath when he became President?
The Trump Veepstakes Has Begun
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The Trump Veepstakes Has Begun
“We need a President who will restore law and order!,” Senator Tim Scott, of South Carolina, bellowed from a stage in Concord, New Hampshire, ahead of that state’s primary last week. “We neeeed Donald Trump!” And Donald Trump, barring a major plot twist, will soon need a running mate. Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, and until recently a candidate for the Republican nomination himself, appears to be well aware of that prospect. He’s not the only one.
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