President Donald Trump ripped Wednesday’s bombshell New York Times op-ed as “gutless” and demanded that the paper turn its author “over to government at once!” His press secretary called the unidentified senior administration official “a coward” and urged the person to resign.

Jim Dao, The Times’ op-ed editor, has a very different view. The official, he told POLITICO, clearly believes in a “sense of mission in being in government” and felt “quite strongly that they needed to speak out at an important moment in our history.”

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The first-person opinion piece, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” hit like a thunderclap in Washington — as well as in the Times newsroom, where reporters were blindsided. The op-ed raised a host of ethical and journalistic questions many have never considered before, including whether Times news reporters — who work independent of the editorial department, which published the op-ed — should now set about determining the identity of an anonymous Times opinion writer.

One Times reporter said colleagues were already volleying back and forth with sources, trying to guess the writer’s identity. But for others, a sense of annoyance quickly set in, with some journalists frustrated about the position the Times’ editorial page had put the news section in.

Times reporter Jodi Kantor summed up the conundrum on Twitter, writing, “So basically: Times reporters now must try to unearth the identity of an author that our colleagues in Opinion have sworn to protect with anonymity?” She added: “Or is the entire newspaper bound by the promise of anonymity? I don’t think so, but this is fascinating. Not sure if there’s precedent.”

Ethical questions aside, there might also be strategic concerns for reporters. While the news and opinion sections operate separately, that point could be lost on potential sources, who could be spooked by Times news reporters working to reveal a Times editorial source.

“I don’t think any of us were expecting it,” said Helene Cooper, a veteran Times reporter who covers the Pentagon, adding, “I was shocked when I saw it.” Cooper said that while she was still processing the decision, she was not unhappy about it.

“My first reaction was, ‘Why are we doing this?’” she said. “But the more I think about it, is there any difference between that and when we give anonymity to sources?”

The Times’ opinion section has granted writers anonymity in the past. But that’s typically because the author, such as an undocumented immigrant or Syrian refugee, would be in clear danger if his or her identity were revealed. Dao said it was the first time in “anyone’s memory that we’ve done it with an American official.”

In the op-ed, the Times said it was withholding the author’s identity because the writer’s “job would be jeopardized by its disclosure.” That same justification is frequently used by Times reporters to grant sources anonymity, but Dao said that on the opinion side, editors don’t view an official speaking out in quite the same way that reporters view sources.

“We don’t call these people sources, we call them writers,” Dao said.

“Our mission is a bit different,” he added. “It’s to get people to write as honestly as they can about what they’re experiencing.”

In the piece, the senior administration official described high-ranking staffers as “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of [Trump’s] agenda and his worst inclinations” and having even discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to possibly remove the president from office.

While Trump’s erratic behavior and the concerns of exasperated staffers have been chronicled before, The Times’ framing and first-person perspective helped the piece ricochet quickly across social media. It also appeared amid this week’s frenzy over Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, “Fear,” which, according to The Washington Post, depicts “Trump’s inner sanctum” as trying “to control his impulses and prevent disasters.”

The president already trashed Woodward’s book on Tuesday, claiming the legendary journalist “made up” quotes. (Woodward says he stands by his reporting). On Wednesday, Trump took aim at the “failing New York Times” for running what he called a “gutless editorial.” He later cryptically tweeted,“Treason?”

Dao said the the senior administration official reached out to him through an intermediary. He said that the op-ed page is a platform to “let people express themselves in their own words” and that “there was no effort to hide, mask or otherwise distort the person’s writing voice.”

Across Twitter, internet sleuths pounced, as users fixated on keywords and clues to try to run down the writer’s identity. A few Times accounts even provided unintentional, but inaccurate, clues.

Assistant Managing Editor Sam Dolnick tweeted about an op-ed from a “senior White House staffer”— as opposed to the op-ed itself, which referred much more broadly to a “senior administration official.” He later had to walk his tweet back, saying, “I have zero knowledge about the identity.”

Similarly, The Times’ official Twitter account referred to the writer as “he,” but Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said that the tweet, which remains up, was an error and that the person who posted it does not know the op-ed writer’s identity; only senior opinion editors do.

Cooper said she expected that Times reporters would try to determine the identity of the writer, like journalists at any other outlet.

“That’s our job, right?” she said. “The first thing I wanted to know was who wrote it, but I can guarantee you that the op-ed section is not going to tell us.”

No, the op-ed section isn’t going to tell reporters the writer’s identity — or how they should handle it.

“The Times newsroom is going to do what it’s going to do,” Dao said. “Just as they do not demand we run a certain op-ed, we don‘t tell them what to report on and not report on.”

Wednesday was meant to be Silicon Valley’s day in the Washington hot seat over Republican accusations of anti-conservative bias.

Then Attorney General Jeff Sessions heightened the stakes by announcing that his Justice Department will dig into the topic — an action that follows weeks of complaints by President Donald Trump.

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In news that landed in between the day’s two tech-focused congressional hearings, the DOJ said Sessions will convene a number of states’ attorneys general later in September “to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms.” That development reverberated throughout the tech industry — which scrambled to figure out what, exactly, Sessions was up to.

Some in the industry said the DOJ’s announcement raises concerns about politicization.

“Mixing ‘competition’ and the ‘exchange of ideas’ raises the idea of government using antitrust law to intimidate companies into doing their bidding — into being favorable to the Trump administration,” said Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. “It’s worrisome.” Facebook and Google are both members of CCIA.

Sessions, though, isn’t the first Republican to raise the notion of greater government oversight of online platforms.

“I’m not looking for a lot of regulation, I’m looking for responsibility,” House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said at a February event. “If responsibility doesn’t flow, then regulation will.”

Trump in recent weeks has repeatedly hammered on the idea — one popularized by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other prominent conservatives — that Twitter, Facebook and Google are biased against conservatives. That much is clear. But much of the rest of what the DOJ is doing is a mystery, people in the industry say, including whether the outreach to state attorneys general is bipartisan and whether the DOJ envisions any avenue for applying competition law to questions of partisan discrimination.

The DOJ dropped its notice in between a Senate hearing on election security featuring Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, and a House hearing on alleged bias featuring Dorsey alone. The DOJ said in its statement that it had “listened … closely” to the Senate session, a somewhat confusing note given that bias hardly came up during that hearing.

A DOJ source said the session with Sessions and the local officials is set to take place Sept. 25, and had been scheduled before the hearing to address the attorney general’s longstanding concerns.

Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of the trade association NetChoice, said that his fellow conservatives’ push for more oversight of digital platforms is ill-conceived.

“Conservative values are centered around the idea that businesses should be allowed to do what they think is best for their customers, and that’s exactly what these companies are doing,” said Szabo. Facebook and Google are members of NetChoice.

Asked what sort of legal argument about competition Sessions might be making, “It doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Szabo, a former Federal Trade Commission official on the staff of Republican Orson Swindle.

Sessions’ outreach to state attorneys general is significant — many of the regulatory actions taken against the tech industry in recent years have happened on the local level. California recently passed a set of privacy rules widely opposed by the industry, and Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, a Republican, has announced that he’s investigating Google on antitrust and privacy grounds.

Said Hawley at the time, “I will not let Missouri consumers and businesses be exploited by industry giants.”

Dorsey got a question about the DOJ’s surprise announcement during Wednesday afternoon’s hearing. Florida Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor asked whether the Twitter CEO felt like he was the target of a “manipulation campaign,” especially when the DOJ action comes amid Republican fundraising efforts off the bias complaints.

“Now the Justice Department even says, ‘Boy, this is so serious that we have to investigate it,’” Castor said.

Dorsey didn’t take the bait, saying he appreciated concerns about the platform he heads.

“That’s a very diplomatic answer, I have to say,” Castor shot back.

Democratic lawmakers, though, were quick to say that the huge amount of attention Republicans are paying to alleged social media bias is little more than political grandstanding.

“As reported in the news, the Trump campaign and the Republican majority leader have used the supposed anti-conservative bias online to fundraise,” said New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “This hearing appears to be just one more mechanism to raise money and generate outrage. It appears Republicans are desperately trying to rally their base by fabricating a problem that simply does not exist.”

Dorsey found himself in a tight spot throughout his day on Capitol Hill. Complaints that Twitter was meddling with conservative tweets were mixed with calls for him to help improve the quality of public discussions that take place on Twitter.

In pushing back against complaints of bias, many in the tech industry argue that social media has actually been a boon to conservatives. The Tea Party first found traction there, they point out, and Trump is among its most prominent users.

Trump, in fact, often turns to Twitter to voice his complaints about his own administration, including Sessions. On Monday, for example, Trump mocked Sessions for recently bringing charges against two Republican members of Congress shortly before the mid-term elections that will determine the control of Congress. “Good job Jeff…… [sic],” the president tweeted.

Ordinary voters flocking to political protests. Activists channeling their anger at the president and his policies. Several otherwise safe incumbents taken down in primaries.

Nearly a decade after conservative activists turned their anger at then-President Barack Obama and federal spending into the tea party movement, progressive Democrats are staging their own revolt.

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Their primary victories — from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley in the Northeast to Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum in the South — reflect the emerging influence of a younger and more diverse generation of Democrats infuriated not only by President Donald Trump, but by what they view as their own party’s fecklessness in Washington.

Like the Tea Party in 2010, the movement’s first victims are members of a congressional wing that’s seen as out of touch at the grassroots level.

“This is the first wave of an invasion to attack the things that this [younger] generation is experiencing as pain: Student loan debt, lack of affordable health care, the anger and a sense of dis-inclusion,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic strategist based in New York. “It is the generational revolt of the 60s that is occurring in the early part of the 21^st century. And the issue is less so Trump than it is the condition of a society that they believe will have limited options for them.”

He added, “In order to change that, you’ve got to get rid of the old, and bring in the new.”

While Ocasio-Cortez’s toppling of 10-term Congressman Joe Crowley in New York two months ago stunned the Democratic Party, by the time longshot challenger Pressley repeated the feat in Massachusetts on Tuesday, the outcome was far less shocking.

The core of Pressley’s campaign message in ousting Rep. Mike Capuano — that, in a majority-minority district, the promise of a younger woman of color was worth dumping a reliably liberal, older white male incumbent — represented a serious departure from past party practice. But it made perfect sense to a younger and more radicalized Trump-era Democratic electorate in Capuano’s liberal, Boston-area district.



Pressley’s win capped two weeks of party establishment setbacks, including Gillum’s upset last week of former Rep. Gwen Graham in Florida’s gubernatorial primary. On Tuesday, the forces of the progressive tea party appeared to leave their mark in another major race — playing at least a supporting role in Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision not to seek a third term.

The brash Chicago mayor had a difficult, though eminently winnable, reelection campaign ahead. But as a devotee of a vision of Democratic Leadership Council-oriented centrist governance that is no longer in favor — particularly in the nation’s biggest cities — Emanuel’s path to a third term figured to be a painful slog.

Though he had engineered the Democratic Party’s takeover of the House in 2006, back home progressives had long since left his side. And had he won another term, he faced the prospect of a city council fortified with even more progressives.

Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said it would be wrong to characterize progressive momentum as a “left tea party movement.” But he acknowledged a change in approach to elections from within the Democratic Party this year, with voters abandoning concerns about moderation in the primaries.

“There’s no question that people feel we need change. That’s what this whole wave is all about,” he said. “But I don’t characterize it as an anti-establishment movement … The first thing we bring up to our party activists [is] ‘Don’t think that your candidates are going to have a better chance of getting elected because they’re middle-of-the-road candidates.’“

Hinojosa said, “We are going to party activists, to county chairs, to members of clubs, to people who are coming to our trainings, and we’re telling them, if you want to win, discard all these concerns that you had in the past about these labels and brands. You need to talk about what’s important to these people and families, and if people are branded as too progressive, so be it.”

Ideologically, there has been little to separate many of the Democratic Party’s insurgents from their more established foes. But in profile and style, there are wide gulfs between them, marked by the high-profile victories of women and young, non-white Democrats. Their rhetoric echoes complaints made by conservative activists in 2010 about the disconnect between Washington representatives and their constituents — and about the fitness of incumbent politicians to serve.

“We committed to running a campaign for those who don’t see themselves reflected in politics or government, and are forever told that their issues, their concerns, their priorities can wait,” Pressley told cheering supporters on Tuesday.

“These times,” she said, “demanded more from our leaders, and from our party.”

And while Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez did not carry the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag of the tea party movement, the warlike framing of the primaries have been in full effect.

At her victory party on Tuesday, Presley said voters understood that “with our rights under assault, with our freedoms under siege, that it’s not just good enough to see the Democrats back in power, but it matters who those Democrats are.”

“Are you ready to bring change to Washington?” she asked, leading the crowd in chants of “Change can’t wait!”

Sal Russo, a former Reagan aide and Tea Party Express co-founder, said Wednesday that as he watched Democrats’ angst about Trump unfold last year, he initially did not see a resemblance to the tea party.

But a year later, Russo said, “Now there’s an agenda … Repeal the tax cut, Medicare for all and free higher education.”While maintaining that such policy positions will not resonate widely in November, he said progressive Democrats are “a lot more focused” than in 2017.

Howard Kaloogian, another Tea Party Express co-founder and a former California state lawmaker, described the Democratic Party’s current political climate, as for Republicans in 2010, as reflecting an “anti-establishment mood,” while noting the “great dissimilarity in the direction that the anti-establishment movement is taking.”

So far, the force of the progressive left on the midterms has not yet fully matched the pandemonium the tea party wrought on the GOP in 2010. And many Democrats loathe the comparison.

“This is just the base showing up,” said Michael Blake, a New York assemblyman and vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “This is more about a very granular, grassroots approach in a midterm election that we haven’t seen before … The base is not just going to show up when Obama’s on the ballot. People are ready to go.”

While Democrats are recoiling from Trump, Blake said they are also animated by new causes and candidates.

“People are genuinely excited about Ayanna,” he said. “They are genuinely excited about Andrew. They are genuinely excited about Alexandria. Being angry is not enough.”

In November, Blake said, “this election is going to be an opportunity to demonstrate, for the first time in a lot of ways … that people are mobilized and focused.”

In fact, Republicans have seized on the Democratic Party’s leftward shift, much as Democrats once sought to frame tea partiers as extremists. Rep. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican candidate for governor, has whacked Ocasio-Cortez as a “socialist” — she describes herself as a “democratic socialist.”

The Republican Governors Association greeted Gillum’s primary victory with a statement that repeatedly referred to him as a “far-left radical.”

And Trump, framing Gillum’s contest against DeSantis, amplified the point on Twitter last week, “Not only did Congressman Ron DeSantis easily win the Republican Primary, but his opponent in November is his biggest dream….a failed Socialist Mayor named Andrew Gillum who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his city. This is not what Florida wants or needs!”

Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez are heavily favored to win election. But as with conservatives in the tea party, the test for progressive Democrats more broadly is to extend their appeal beyond base primary voters — and, if successful, remake the Democratic establishment in their image.

‘The question is, can the Democrats sustain this and can they govern with new faces in a very disparate and diffuse party,” Sheinkopf said. “If they try to govern, their coalition is going to be very difficult to manage … The rules with which we normally define American politics are changing.”

In his concession speech Tuesday, Capuano acknowledged the shifting winds within the party — and the disillusionment catching incumbent Democrats in its wake.

“Clearly the district wanted a lot of change,” he said. “Apparently the district just is very upset with lots of things that are going on. I don’t blame them. I’m just as upset as they are.”

He added, “So be it. This is the way life goes.”

President Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court refused repeatedly to say how he would rule on abortion, or whether he would uphold the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling at the center of the nation’s long and fierce political fight over reproductive rights.

Brett Kavanaugh, facing his first day of questioning from the Senate Judiciary Committee, stressed he respects Supreme Court precedent and understands the importance of Roe. But he parried a series of questions about his views toward abortion, or even on that case.

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Kavanaugh, a conservative who would tip the balance of the court to the right, fell back on the same assurances offered by past high court nominees that he would respect prior decisions that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right. During his testimony, which was interrupted by protesters throughout the day, he emphasized the importance of precedent, noting the high court has reaffirmed Roe “many times over the past 45 years.”

Still, the 53-year-old nominee refused to say whether he believed the case was correctly decided, assuring lawmakers only that he understands the passions surrounding Roe. And he declined to comment on a pending lawsuit challenging Obamacare on the same day a federal judge in Texas heard oral arguments on whether the entire health care law should be thrown out.

Supreme Court nominees typically go out of their way to avoid declaring how they would rule on future cases, especially ones addressing abortion. Chief Justice John Roberts during his confirmation hearings declared that Roe was “settled law” — just as Kavanaugh did Wednesday — while Justice Samuel Alito ahead of his confirmation called it a “precedent entitled to respect.”

Democrats and activists working against Kavanaugh’s nomination have spent weeks portraying him as a threat to Roe, hoping to rally public opposition and peel off two Senate Republican votes needed for Democrats to have a shot at sinking his candidacy.

But his statements on Wednesday likely won’t raise any alarm with the two Republican senators who favor abortion rights, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), though they aggravated Democrats who failed to pin down his views on abortion or Obamacare.

“I think knowing going into it how you make a judgment on these issues is really important to our vote on whether to support you or not,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

Kavanaugh defended his dissenting opinion in a case last fall in which he argued for delaying an abortion for an undocumented immigrant teen who was being held in federal custody. That opinion — his only abortion ruling in 12 years on D.C.’s appellate court — has provided grist for Democrats’ warnings that Kavanaugh would provide the decisive fifth vote in a number of pending cases that could erode abortion access.

Seemingly in an effort to allay those concerns, Kavanaugh pointed out that Roe was subsequently confirmed by another case in the early 1990s — Planned Parenthood v. Casey — effectively making it a “precedent on precedent,” he said.

“It’s not as if it was a run-of-the-mill case,” Kavanaugh said of Roe.

Kavanaugh also referred on multiple occasions states’ ability to restrict abortion as long as it doesn’t place an “undue burden” on women’s right to choose, the standard established in the Supreme Court’s Planned Parenthood decision. However, Kavanaugh didn’t define how he saw that threshold.

He allowed that precedent is only one factor that goes into deciding a case, albeit a “critically important” one. In defending his opinion on the undocumented teen’s request for abortion, he argued for the need to weigh other precedents dealing with parental consent alongside women’s abortion rights.

Senate Republicans have largely dismissed Kavanaugh’s potential impact on Roe and other longstanding precedents, accusing Democrats of straying beyond traditional limits of questioning to try to sink a nominee who’s largely viewed as well-qualified for the Supreme Court.

“If you answer those questions about your views on specific Supreme Court cases or public controversies of the day, you’d be showing the opposite of independence,” Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said.

But Democrats insist that Kavanaugh faces a higher burden on abortion issues, largely because Trump campaigned on only nominating “pro-life” judges.

His testimony on Wednesday did little to soothe abortion rights advocates who have led the charge against Kavanaugh’s nomination.

“He gave no affirmations or indications that he will defend our most essential rights,” NARAL Pro-Choice America said in a statement.

Dozens of protesters disrupted the nomination hearings over the first two days, urging senators to oppose Kavanaugh as Capitol Police dragged them out. Many warned he would overturn Roe or strike down Obamacare. Some appealed specifically to Collins and Murkowski, who aren’t on the committee, to derail Kavanaugh’s candidacy.

Lawmakers have largely ignored interruptions, though Grassley said Wednesday morning that the public had the right to protest. Others were more dismissive. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) at Tuesday’s opening hearing derided the protesters as “screamers.”

Collins and Murkowski have remained publicly undecided on Kavanaugh. They’ve faced increasing pressure from reproductive rights activists to oppose him, warning that Kavanaugh’s comments on respecting precedent don’t guarantee he wouldn’t vote to uphold abortion restrictions or overturn Roe entirely.

There are two dozen cases related to reproductive rights now winding their way through appeals courts, including those challenging states’ ability to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, Obamacare’s birth control mandate, and federal efforts to shift a key teen pregnancy program in a more conservative direction.

“All you need to do is look at the math,” said Helene Krasnoff, the vice president for public policy litigation and law for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “This is not just about protecting Roe v. Wade, but the entire line of cases.”