‘A xenophobic autocrat’: Adam Schiff on Trump’s threat to democracy

The California Democrat's new memoir, Midnight in Washington, examines his life before politics as well as his leading roles in impeachment and other dramas on Capitol Hill

Great crises in American political life often produce a new hero, someone whose courage and charisma capture the imagination of the decent half of the country.

In the 1950s, when Joe McCarthy terrorized America with wild claims of communists lurking in every army barracks and state department corridor, it was an attorney, Joseph Walsh, who demanded of the Wisconsin senator: At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?"