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Checks and Balance newsletter: The post-post-Watergate era

President-elect Donald Trump on stage in front of a 'TRUMP' sign in Greenvale, New York, USA.
Photograph: AP

This is the introduction to Checks and Balance, a weekly, subscriber-only newsletter bringing exclusive insight from our correspondents in America.

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Luigi Mangione is escorted by police to his arraignment at the Blair County Courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pennysylvania

An Ivy League graduate is charged over Brian Thompson’s murder

He appears to be an unusual sort of radical

Portrait of Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy.

America’s best-known practitioner of youth gender medicine is being sued

A patient of Johanna Olson-Kennedy thinks she has been negligent


Illustration of Kash Patel as a wizard putting the FBI HQ in a flaming cauldron and casting a spell

Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s wizard, wants to reform the FBI

But his list of political enemies would be a scary place to start


Dinesh D’Souza admits his documentary was fiction

An influential political documentary was based on falsehood

The US Supreme Court appears likely to uphold a medical ban affecting trans youth

At oral arguments, the justices divided on ideological lines

The FDA does not know what chemicals are added to foods

A rule concocted in the 1950s for vinegar and spices has had unintended effects