Experts in the News | Miller Center

Exclusive: Eric Holder says Trump loosed a "spirit of disunity" in his first month as president

Should President Donald Trump ever roll back voting rights protections, LGBTQ rights or expand the criminal justice system in harmful ways, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will be ready to fight. But the onetime top Obama administration official won't enter that battle alone. That’s part of the reason he was in Atlanta last week for the Miller Center’s national summit on race and civil rights.

In age of Trump, apocalyptic rhetoric becomes mainstream

There’s a difference between those who harshly criticized Mr. Obama because they saw the Affordable Care Act as government overreach and those who cast him as un-American and a tyrant based on false allegations about his race or religion, notes Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

Barbara Perry

How the Trump administration can improve its relationship with federal employees

Despite the rocky start, Chris Lu, the deputy secretary of the Labor Department under President Barack Obama, says listening to the career federal workforce can ensure campaign promises translate into actionable policy.

Chris Lu

Nixon and the Chennault Affair: From Vietnam to Watergate

Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate (2014) by Ken Hughes, a University of Virginia researcher, tells the full story. Anna Chennault, the widow of General Claire Chennault of World War II Flying Tigers fame, and a well-known Republican activist, was at a secret meeting in New York in July 1968 with Nixon and the South Vietnamese ambassador. Nixon told the ambassador that Chennault was his designated link with the South Vietnamese government. The “Chennault affair’ followed by Nixon’s proposed break-in at the Brookings Institution is mentioned in the memoirs of John Dean, H.R. Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman as well as those of Chennault herself and also Theodore White’s “The Making of a President 1968.”

Ken Hughes

Donald Trump appoints General HR McMaster as national security adviser

Beverley O'Connor speaks to author Nicole Hemmer about Donald Trump's appointment of Lieutenant General Herbert Raymond McMaster as his new national security adviser.

Nicole Hemmer

President Pence

For someone who built his political reputation on being erratic, Trump has become fairly predictable. A few tweets during the morning shows, a few to round out the evening, weekends at Mar-A-Lago and a meltdown somewhere in between. But while Trump returns to the rhythms of the campaign trail, the balance of power in the administration is shifting from the Oval Office to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where Vice President Mike Pence works.

Nicole Hemmer