The Mueller report is vital reading about our challenged democracy

On this momentous day for our country, we recommend you look elsewhere for the most important reading about our challenged democracy.

Consider it an obligation of good citizenship to digest all you can of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. You can read it here. And for explanation and context there are plenty of credible news organizations to rely on – employers of legions of journalists who've already proven their worth with so much reportorial depth and analytical rigor.

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The stunning impressiveness of Russian efforts to influence the last presidential election, and the extraordinary approaches Donald Trump has taken to the aftermath, are sure to make the history books because they say so much about the fragile state of democratic norms in our time.

And, to be sure, these stories touch on all these topics we are committed to covering:

• The pervasive role of big-money special interests in American politics
• The questionable reliability of our election mechanics
• The skepticism about whether our voting rules give everyone an equal say
• The consequences of politicians being able to pick their constituents, not the other way around
• The wobbly state of ethics in public life
• The fading primacy of facts, thanks to the spread of propaganda, in shaping our discourse
• The intensifying imbalance of power in favor of the executive and at the expense of Congress

But there is no unique reporting or analysis we can add at this moment. So it seems best for us to get out of the way while the significance of the Mueller report, released Thursday, starts to sink in.

The American political system was dysfunctional before the Trump administration and seems destined to remain so afterword. Our mission is to cover the efforts to make the system work better. We still have an enormous amount to write.

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