Not long ago, if a president wanted to hide bad news — or even a crime — there was at least some effort to keep it hidden. Coverups were carried out quietly, in the shadows. Donald Trump does it in broad daylight.

Once, bad economic numbers were spun, massaged, or explained away. Now they’re simply denied — and the people who produce them are punished. That’s why Trump ousted the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last week, while accusing her and other career civil servants — without a shred of evidence — of “rigging” the data against him.

It’s one more data point suggesting we’ve entered a new phase in the attack on American democracy. It’s not just that the assault on truth, the rule of law, and a free society has accelerated. It’s that the assault is now carried out openly, witho

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