We still don’t know the details of a whistle-blower’s recent complaint about Trump’s conversation with a foreign leader, but the inspector general of the intelligence community considered the complaint credible enough to refer it to Congress. It seems to involve Ukraine, which raises the possibility that Trump is continuing to use foreign governments to meddle in American elections. Whatever it involves, I hope congressional Democrats are aware that their next attempt to hold the president accountable needs to be better than their last.

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Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg Opinion points out that Republicans could stop Trump’s lawlessness whenever they choose: “Republicans have been okay with all this, presumably because they’re getting what they want on policy. Or perhaps out of pure partisanship. Or maybe because they’re so deep in the conservative information-feedback loop that they’ve convinced themselves none of it is real. But they should be taking stock now of just how much lawlessness they’re willing to tolerate.”

The Times editorial board writes: “The No. 1 task of America’s intelligence and law-enforcement communities is to identify and deal with threats to national security. The problem, as explained by Jack Goldsmith, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush, is that Mr. Trump’s behavior has repeatedly revealed ‘the extent to which our constitutional system assumes and relies on a president with a modicum of national fidelity, and decent judgment and reasonableness.’”

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