Experts in the News | Miller Center

Elizabeth Warren’s Fans Want to Know: Can She Do It Again at Tonight’s Debate?

“I don’t know how to put it other than she was a badass,” said Jennifer Lawless, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia and former director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University.

Jennifer Lawless

Coronavirus outbreak

Senior Fellow Chris Lu is interviewed on CNN.

Chris Lu

Market plunge over coronavirus fears underscores political risk to Trump

For a president who has governed “by tweet and circus,” a potential global health crisis that blunts economic growth could expose one of Trump’s main weaknesses as he prepares to face voters in November, said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “Having hollowed out the senior leadership of so many departments of the government — especially in the scientific community — he is now in desperate need of professional guidance among people he has abused for three years,” Riley said. “If the markets continue to drop and the medical news gets very bad, then this president is singularly ill-prepared to deal with it in a rational manner.”

Russell Riley

DNC Superdelegate: Bernie Just As Electable As Others

Chris Lu, Former Deputy Secretary of Labor and Senior Fellow at the University of Virginia Miller Center, discusses Bernie’s decisive win at the Vegas caucus and how it impacts the election. Hosted by Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney.

Chris Lu

The Trump impeachment episode: Party wars and the Constitution

The House impeachment and Senate trial of President Trump—only the third episode of its kind in American history—raise a number of fascinating and troubling questions about American democracy. Did the Trump administration’s actions warrant Congress’ use of this rarely invoked constitutional authority? Did the hope of many scholars and pundits that impeachment would educate the American people about the dangers of executive power disintegrate into partisan theater? How did the Trump impeachment compare with the impeachment investigations of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton? How will the impeachment and acquittal of Trump affect his and future presidents' exercise of executive power? How will the Trump impeachment—the first to charge a president running for reelection—affect the 2020 election?

Sidney Milkis

Presidential Pardons Through History: Who’s Received Them?

Early on, the framers had debated which branch of the government should have the power to pardon — the president or Congress. “There was this fear about a too-powerful president,” Barbara A. Perry, the presidential studies director at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said in an interview this week.

Barbara Perry