Trump's bogus indictment of former FBI director Comey is unlikely to stand up to scrutiny for more than about 30 seconds. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

A country where the leader can order up a prosecution of his political foe for revenge is not a liberal democracy. We're about to find out if the United States still is one. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/u...

Let's just remember the word for a president who goes through prosecutors until he finds one who will indict his political enemies, with or without evidence of a crime: CORRUPT. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

At @theunpopulist.net, @jonrauch.bsky.social's superb review of Bill Galston's new "masterpiece" insists that the fault, Dear Brutus, is not in liberalism if the American experiment is in trouble, it's in us that we are such underlings. You'll want to read it. www.theunpopulist.net/p/why-is-the...

A brilliant new book channels Aristotle and Orwell to explain, better than anyone yet, how Trump and MAGA hijacked American politics. www.theunpopulist.net/p/why-is-the...

Here's the ten-step plan MAGA is using to hollow out our democracy, as borrowed from Hungary and Turkey. Detailed, disturbing. youtu.be/g-8A4jTRSJg?...

There's a truly brilliant little book about this problem written in the early 1990s by @jonrauch.bsky.social Kindly Inquisitors: The New (and Old) Attacks on Free Thought youtu.be/pFVRRP-J9mI

This is what losing our freedom looks like. www.axios.com/2025/09/17/a...

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MUST READ @judgeluttig.bsky.social for Constitution Day 2025 open.substack.com/pub/telos/p/...

"There can now be little doubt that the world leader who is most pleased that Donald Trump is in the White House again, apart from Trump himself, is President Xi Jinping." How China exploits Trump's blunders. billemmott.substack.com/p/the-china-...

This should be the No. 1 story right now. Without due process or any finding of law, the U.S. just extinguished 11 civilian lives. www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-sta...

Long read that's well worth it: political scientist Steve Teles's taxonomy of the abundance movement. There's more to it than you think...substantively AND politically. www.niskanencenter.org/abundance-va...

It's not international socialism. It's...nationalist socialism. Hmm. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/03/c...

David Frum and I discuss Trump's tsunami of lies, half-truths, exaggerations, and conspiracy theorists...and how reality can prevail. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Report implies that religious charities with federal contracts can't feed or shelter undocumented persons with public _or_ private dollars. This requires Christians to repudiate Christ's injunctions. Will evangelicals finally see that MAGA is not their friend? www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025...

I'm one of the 37 targeted below by DNI Tulsi Gabbard. I haven't had a clearance nor worked in government since 2013. This is political theater & a dangerous example of government abusing its powers to punish private citizens for openly exercising their 1st Amendment rights. My full statement:

"The top 400 Americans paid an estimated 23.8% [US tax] from 2018 to 2020—down from roughly 30% before the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, in 2017. Their tax rates were lower than the average paid by all American households." OBBBA cuts these rates further. www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

Years ago, the campus left developed the claim that protected speech is actually discriminatory harassment... justifying speech codes, bias policing, etc. Now the Trump admin is using the same theory...and taking it to the next level. www.thefire.org/news/finding...

The LDS church is doing some of the most interesting civic thinking of any religious organization in the U.S. Learn more on Sept. 5... www.faithmatters.org/p/honoring-p...

The situation at Trump's Justice Department is so much worse than you think... www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

Bill Galston's new book does more than anything else I've read to explain America's turn toward the dark side. It will be a classic. Hear us discuss it live at Brookings on September 10. www.brookings.edu/events/anger...

There's a word for this: *corruption*. Outright extortion from the Trump administration. No pretense of due process, proportionality, or a policy. Now controlled directly by the White House. So much for antisemitism, eh? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...

"Ford projects that it will lose $2 billion in profits this year alone because of higher tariffs; General Motors forecasts losses of $4 billion to $5 billion by the end of the year." The deal of the century. www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

This is what policy success looks like: marriage is integrated into LGBT people's life plans, same as for other Americans. LGBT teenagers don't have to dread the loveless or furtive life I foresaw for myself in the 1970s and 1980s. Thank you, America! www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Looks like the public has figured out that only one side is in the right and only one side wants peace. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/for-...

So Canadians' disapproval of Trump right up there with...Putin. That took some doing.

Best thing I've read on the food crisis in Gaza. No, it's not genocide. That would be a lot simpler than the actual situation. quillette.com/2025/08/12/a...

Why does a Jewish Israeli favor Christian nationalism in America? Because it advances Jewish nationalism in Israel. Insightful essay by Rabbi Michael Holzman. www.theunpopulist.net/p/yoram-hazo...

Here's hoping Trump will gets annoyed with Putin. That's what U.S. policy making has come down to: the expression of one unstable person's emotional state. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Meet the postmodern right. Definitely not your father's conservative movement. A lot more like...the postmodern left. And moving just as fast. www.persuasion.community/p/the-woke-r...

Just pause briefly to notice that there is no rational or coherent policy process here. Just the capricious will of one man. No meaningful check or balance. This is the presidency our Founders feared. apnews.com/article/trum...

Firing Line, 1/1980. Buckley: What would you do as president if a riot broke out in Detroit? Reagan: "It really is a local problem. Until the local authorities felt the need for help, I think it would be undue interference for the federal government to move in." www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTyZ...

How can we recover the mutually cooperative understanding between religious faiths and liberal democracy? An upcoming LibCon2025 panel—featuring Mustafa Akyol, @jonrauch.bsky.social, @michaelrwear.bsky.social, and Rabbi Gideon Sylvester—will explore. Register: form.jotform.com/251499093035...

I know we're already tracking more worries than we can keep up with, but this belongs on your radar. DOJ's demands for voter data are (a) unprecedented in scope and (b) of questionable legality. apnews.com/article/just...

If the rule of law continues, it will be because of people like Erez Reuveni. Play this inspiring interview and pass it to friends. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/p...

Uh-huh. Nothing to see here. Convicted sex offenders are moved to minimum security all the time, without explanation, after meeting with senior Justice Dept officials who were also the President's personal lawyer... www.cnbc.com/2025/08/01/j...

This gets pretty technical, but worth noting the bottom line: Trump has made an unlawful appointment, asserted unlimited executive authority, and attacked judges as "rogue" for following the law. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what...

Get ready for Supreme Court Justice Emil Bove. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

"Blackmailing was nearly ubiquitous. Across five different frontier AI models from five different companies, the best behaving AIs chose blackmail 79 percent of the time. The worst behaved blackmailed in 96 percent of cases." I'm sorry, Dave; I can't do that. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/ai-m...

Marriage is rebounding. I assume opponents of same-sex marriage--who insisted it would harm marriage and kids--will acknowledge that they were wrong? www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Google's AI has an interesting idea here, actually.

The petty vindictiveness of this is almost unbelievable. www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

Join me and a stellar cast at the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism's second annual conference on how to understand and defend our endangered liberal democratic experiment. Last year's featured thoughtful speakers and good hallway conversations. conference.ismaglobal.org#speakers

Seems like news, if true. www.memri.org/reports/pale...

What have we learned from the $200 million Columbia University settlement with the Trump Administration? Should we be relieved…or alarmed? Micro-essay!

Just a coincidence. "Two senior NOAA officials were just placed on leave. Both led ‘Sharpiegate’ inquiry." sg.news.yahoo.com/two-senior-n...

"Reviving a 19th-century patronage model, the Trump administration seeks to replace the civil service’s merit-based system with one that rewards loyalty. This patronage system threatens to erode the expertise on which state capacity depends." www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...