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The sun sets at the U.S. Supreme Court building the week that the court is expected to hear arguments in a Mississippi case that challenges Roe v. Wade in Washington, U.S., November 29, 2021.
Get ready for the SCOTUS deluge
This is the Supreme Court’s last scheduled week for issuing opinions this term — and they have some big questions to decide. At least 14 cases are still outstanding, with big consequences for the election and the US government.
Here are three to watch:
Trump and Jan. 6: Trump claims he is immune from prosecution for virtually any action he took as president, following the argument that Congressional impeachment is the check on his power, not the courts. It’s a very bold claim, one that lower court judges pointed out could mean a president who orders assassinations of his rivals might face no consequences. The court is expected to split a fine hair here, perhaps protecting some forms of conduct but not others.
Federal regulations: Right now, when Congress doesn’t lay out new regulations in excruciating detail (and they usually can’t), federal agencies can fill in their own interpretations. Courts are supposed to defer to those interpretations if they are “reasonable.” But an association of fishermen claims the practice overreaches and that regulation must stay in the hands of the legislative branch.
The justices look set to upend the status quo, with huge ramifications for how the federal government operates. Congress may ultimately need to set up a whole new regulatory body to do the rule writing that agencies are currently doing in-house.
Abortion: Democrats have successfully hammered the GOP on reproductive rights across multiple races since the Supreme Court struck down nationwide abortion protection in 2022. This case argues that one such ban in Idaho is superseded by the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986, which requires doctors to perform abortions in emergencies.
The conservative justices didn’t seem persuaded during oral arguments, so we’ll be watching to see which law prevails.
For more on this year’s major Supreme Court decisions, watch Ian Bremmer’s interview with Emily Bazelonfor GZERO World on PBShere.
Francis Fukuyama: Americans should be very worried about failing democracy
The prospect of another Trump presidency can be hard to imagine. Still, before we even get there, we must confront the possibility of political violence in the months leading up to November 5.
With the US presidential election on November 5, many Americans are pondering what another four years of a Trump presidency could mean for the country and the world. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The months leading up to November 5 (and the period after the election but before the January 20 inauguration) could be the most consequential in modern history. That's according to Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama, who warns that the capacity for violence amongst Trump supporters is unprecedented.
"In a way, Trump is preparing for this moment when there's massive protests, and he's got a lot of supporters, many of them are armed. And I think that on January 6th, he showed that he was, you know, completely comfortable with calling on his friends to use violence to, you know, support his ends."
Watch the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer episode: Divided we fall: Democracy at risk in the US
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
- Putin has a solution for US democracy ›
- American strife: Will US democracy survive? Fiona Hill explains post-Jan 6 stakes ›
- US democracy after US midterms: polarized voters & Trump's GOP ›
- Cliff Kupchan: We need a national dialogue to save US democracy ›
- Podcast: Not infallible: Russia, China, and US democracy with Tom Nichols & Anne-Marie Slaughter ›
- Al Gore's take on American democracy, climate action, and "artificial insanity" - GZERO Media ›
- In divided America, anything goes in the name of “protecting democracy" - GZERO Media ›
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on what he calls the "continued battle for the Soul of the Nation" in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, U.S.
Biden’s primetime warning kicks off the midterms
President Joe Biden delivered Thursday night a primetime address in Philadelphia — the birthplace of the US republic — with a clear message to the American people: Democracy is under threat.
Throughout the address, classically dubbed the “Speech on the Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation,” Biden called out his predecessor Donald Trump for degrading both democracy and decency, and took aim at “MAGA Republicans,” who he said “do not respect the Constitution.” In noting that “MAGA Republicans have made their choice,” Biden was clearly not trying to reach across the aisle to the 47% of Americans who voted for Trump in 2020.
Rather, eight weeks out from midterm elections (when Democrats are expected to lose control of the House of Representatives, and perhaps also the Senate) the president appealed to his disjointed coalition — made up of centrists, independents, moderate Democrats, and progressives — to turn out and vote.
Biden was at his most passionate in deriding the “divisive culture wars.” But platitudes like calling on a “coalition of goodwill to defend democracy” might not appeal to independent voters in Michigan or Georgia. Biden told Americans that a vote for the GOP in November is a vote for Trump and against democracy. Will it be enough?
Former US President Donald Trump
What We’re Watching: Mar-a-Lago "under siege," US pitches Africa, Italy’s left falters, Greek spy scandal
Trump claims FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago
Former US President Donald Trump said Monday that the Feds were searching his sprawling residence in Palm Beach, Florida. In a statement, Trump complained that his swanky Mar-a-Lago estate is "currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents." If his claim is true, the raid would be a big escalation in efforts by the Department of Justice to investigate the former president for trying to overturn the 2020 election result and inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol building in Washington, DC that resulted in several deaths. It could also be related to a separate DOJ probe into 15 boxes of classified documents that Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office. Although federal law prohibits moving classified material to unauthorized locations, Trump might argue that, in his final days as president, he got to make the final call on declassifying the files. Either way, the raid — which has not yet been confirmed by the DOJ — will surely cause political ripples in the coming days: the former president and his fans will cite the search as proof that the so-called "deep state" is trying to stop him from running again in 2024, while Democrats and never-Trump Republicans likely hope that the FBI was indeed looking for evidence linked to the Jan. 6 committee hearings that could help indict Trump.
Blinken goes to Africa
The battle for Africa continues. This week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on a three-nation tour of the continent. Currently in South Africa, Blinken will soon head to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, where he’ll seek to shore up support for the West’s position amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. Blinken’s tour comes just weeks after his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, wrapped up a multination African tour focused on reassuring African allies – many of whom rely on Russian arms exports – of Moscow’s commitment to alleviating the global food crisis. Indeed, US-South Africa relations have been somewhat rocky in recent years, in part due to former President Donald Trump reneged on Washington’s commitment to helping developing countries meet their climate goals. In recent years, China became Pretoria’s largest trade partner, something else Washington is keen to address. Blinken is also expected to try and bolster regional efforts to enforce a truce between the DRC and Rwanda amid ongoing clashes on the border. The US wants to present itself as a more reliable and valuable partner at a time when both Russia and China have made significant inroads throughout the continent. The problem? Many African states don't want to have to choose.
Italy’s left in turmoil
Italy’s far-right was dealt another boon after a centrist party pulled its support for its rival left-wing coalition. Carlo Calenda, leader of the Azione (Action) Party and Italy’s former permanent representative to the EU, ditched the left-leaning bloc led by the Democratic Party after its leader, Enrico Letta, signed a parallel deal with the Sinistra Italiana and Europa Verde parties (two anti-establishment leftist groups) in a bid to build a bulwark against the right ahead of general elections on September 25. The far-right – made up of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy Party, Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigrant Lega Party, and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia – would now win a combined vote share of 46%, compared with the left’s 30%, according to recent polls. Calenda said he refused to run with the two parties that had long sought to destabilize outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government, leading to his eventual resignation last month. (Sinistra Italiana and Europa Verde notably both voted against Finland and Sweden joining NATO.) If the far-right prevails next month as expected, it could stonewall efforts to make the structural reforms needed to unlock billions of euros in pandemic relief that Italy’s inflation-hit economy desperately needs.
Watergateopoulos in Athens
The Greek government is reeling from a spying scandal that has already seen two high-level resignations from the center-right government of PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis. It appears that the spy agency, which reports directly to Mitsotakis’s office, used spyware to tap the cellphone of his most prominent political rival, Nikos Androulakis, who heads the social democrat Pasok Party. Androulakis evidently discovered the breach during a routine scrub of his devices by the European Parliament, of which he is a member. Mitsotakis says the eavesdropping was an unforgivable mistake that he didn’t know anything about and wouldn’t have allowed. So far his spy chief and his nephew, a trusted aide, have both stepped down in a bid to keep the scandal from ensnaring their boss directly. The news comes after revelations that the state may also have spied on two journalists, reviving bad memories of the country’s 20th century military dictatorship.Opinion: Has the Jan. 6 committee killed Trump’s 2024 chances?
Opinion: Has the Jan. 6 committee killed Trump’s 2024 chances?
Donald Trump remains the most popular and strongest figure in the Republican Party. The former president is almost certainly going to announce his 2024 candidacy in relatively short order, and if you made me bet right now, I’d say he is more likely than not to clinch the GOP nomination.
But it's a close call.
Trump is more politically vulnerable than he was just a few months ago. Roughly half of Republican voters say they would support a candidate other than Trump. Recent polls show that Trump would lose in a rematch against President Joe Biden, even though the latter is historically unpopular and most Americans currently prefer a Republican president in 2024. And Trump’s endorsement record in GOP primary elections has been mixed at best.
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Some of the erosion in Trump’s support is natural. He is no longer president, meaning he doesn’t have the platform he had when he commanded the bully pulpit and the airwaves. He is banned from Twitter and Facebook, his most significant megaphones in the past. Truth Social, the social media network he created, has been a flop. As a result, he’s lost a significant amount of attention and visibility. Even his speeches and rallies are not drawing the crowds they used to.
Some of it, however, can be attributed to the impact of the January 6 House select committee.
I know what many of you will say: the committee is nothing more than a partisan witch hunt, it’s a rigged show trial/kangaroo court that violates Trump’s due process rights, Democrats didn’t let pro-Trump Republicans on the committee to cross-examine witnesses and defend Trump, what about the Democrats/Biden/Hunter/Hillary/Obama/Pelosi/BLM...
I’ll happily grant that the committee would have been perceived as a much less partisan—and therefore much more legitimate—affair had there been full participation from across the political spectrum. There’s no question about that.
But let’s not forget it was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Cal.) decision to pull Trump allies from the panel—after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) vetoed two of his five picks for being election deniers and, potentially, material witnesses—that ensured only the solidly conservative but anti-Trump Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) would participate (to great personal cost, I should add). Trump himself acknowledges McCarthy’s mistake and reportedly blames him for it.
More importantly, many of the people who have testified are hardly Democrats. In fact, many of the panel’s witnesses were unrepentant Trump loyalists until January 6. The list includes White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Trump’s deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, his deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger, his chief of staff’s top aide Cassidy Hutchinson, his campaign spokesman Jason Miller, his campaign manager Bill Stepien, his attorney general Bill Barr, and even his own daughter Ivanka.
These are people who not only voted for him in 2020, but who also stood by him through numerous scandals. Yet even for them, Trump’s conduct on January 6 was a bridge too far. This, I think, is one of the key reasons why the hearings have resonated despite the committee’s political imbalance.
Now, let me be clear. The rank and file of the Republican Party still thinks this whole thing is a nothingburger. Only 18% of Republicans believe Donald Trump deserves a good deal or more of the blame for what happened at the Capitol—barely 4% more than in December before the hearings, an increase that’s within the poll’s margin of error.
But independent voters have shifted against Trump, with 57% now blaming him for January 6 compared to 48% before the hearings. Nearly two out of three independents have an unfavorable impression of the former president.
So has Rupert Murdoch, the powerful owner of Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post who had been a staunch Trump ally and booster since 2016. These outlets were all-in for Trump in 2020, and suddenly that’s not true anymore. Following the committee’s second prime-time hearing on Thursday, the editorial board for the Post called Trump “unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.” On the same day, the Journal’s editorial board accused him of lacking “character.” Fox News, meanwhile, has stopped carrying Trump’s rallies, and its daytime coverage—unlike opinion shows like Tucker Carlson’s and Sean Hannity’s—has shifted in tone ever so slightly against the former president.
At the very least, we can now say Trump’s hold on the GOP is weakening, and he is no longer a shoo-in for the 2024 nomination. It’s increasingly likely that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the most popular non-Trump choice among Republican voters, will run against him. Fox News has certainly been showering him with positive coverage in recent months. Of course, with a year and a half to go, DeSantis could also be the latest in a long line of candidates to peak too early. At this point in the 2016 contest, the leading contenders for the GOP nomination were Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush. But there will be other candidates, too. Trump won’t have a clear path.
That’s also true, by the way, of Biden’s road to 2024. The president is currently the most unpopular he’s ever been, with approval ratings firmly under 40%. He’s fighting a losing battle against record-high inflation, a slowing economy, and a resurgent pandemic. He’s also looking increasingly slow and ineffectual owing to his advanced age, leading many to question his competence for office. That’s making two-thirds of Democrats wonder about whether Biden represents their best chance at holding the White House.
Both Trump and Biden, then, are increasingly vulnerable to serious primary challenges. As far as the nation is concerned, though, the identity of the Republican nominee matters much more than that of the Democratic nominee. That’s because whether it’s Biden or another Democrat that wins, it won’t make much of a difference to the integrity and stability of America’s political system or to its global standing. Given the former president’s exceptional moral turpitude and his indifference to the rule of law, the same cannot be said about the impact of Trump relative to any other, more mainstream, Republican.
Again, if you made me bet right now, I would still say Trump gets the nomination. But the likelihood that he becomes president for a second time has gone down significantly. That’s a good thing for America.
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Opinion: January 6 failed but the threat to U.S. democracy is far from over
Opinion: January 6 failed but the threat to U.S. democracy is far from over
The select congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol kicked off a series of public hearings last Thursday to make the case to the American people that former President Donald Trump was directly involved in a violent and coordinated attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Already the initial proceedings have made two things clear, a stark reminder of just how divided and dysfunctional our political system is.
The first conclusion is that Donald Trump enthusiastically pushed the “big lie”—the debunked conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from him—even when he should have known it was false, that he was at the center of a systematic effort to unlawfully stop the transfer of power and overturn the election, that he deliberately encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol, and that he did little to stop the violence that predictably ensued, even going as far as expressing approval for chants to “hang Mike Pence.”
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In short, the former president was indeed responsible for the events of Jan. 6, in my view constituting the gravest violation of the oath of office by any president in the history of the nation.
Fortunately for us, Trump’s moral turpitude was hamstrung by his incompetence. The main reason January 6th failed to overturn the election and subvert the democratic order is not that the former president lacked the will or the power to do it—it’s that he was bad at it.
But while Jan. 6 failed, it still caused lasting damage. The event shattered democratic norms, fueled tribalism, deepened our crisis of truth, normalized political violence, delegitimized our system of governance, and pushed us closer to democratic failure than we’ve been since the failed election and constitutional crisis of 1876. Recent polls show that majorities of Democrats and Republicans doubt the other party will accept negative election results in states they control in the future, and 64% of Americans now believe US democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.”
The second conclusion is that the political impact of the January 6 committee will be next to zero, convincing few who hadn’t made up their minds in advance and having little effect on the electorate other than deepening their pre-existing feelings about Trump. Much like the two impeachment proceedings of the former president, this process is also broken and hyperpolarized—not along ideological partisan lines but along the Trump sympathy-antipathy axis.
The committee is actually bipartisan in the traditional sense of the word: it includes both Democrats and Republicans and is vice-chaired by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), a bona fide conservative who has voted with former president Trump and with the Republican Party more than 90% of the time.
But polarization in the United States today is driven by feelings toward Trump more than it is by party affiliation. And although the correlation between the two is high, it is far from perfect. My own antipathy toward Trump, for instance, has nothing to do with him identifying as a Republican and everything to do with him being unfit for political office. My views of Trump as a human being were equally negative when he was a Democrat!
This disconnect will render the committee moot. It doesn’t matter how conclusively it is able to prove that the former president tried to subvert American democracy; if half of the country doesn’t buy into the legitimacy of the committee in the first place, nothing at all will change.
That’s dangerous.
January 6 was the result of decades of growing anti-establishment sentiment boiling over, a product of declining equality of opportunity, of a weak safety net that lets so many of our fellow citizens fall through the cracks, of political institutions that are widely seen as rigged, and of the wholesale loss of faith in the system’s ability to self-correct. Trump or no Trump, those conditions are still present and growing.
That’s why there’s every reason to think something resembling Jan. 6 can and will happen again in the future. Two-thirds of Americans see the events of that day as a harbinger of increasing political violence rather than an isolated incident. More young Americans than ever now say they would support a political revolution even if its ends were violent in nature, and most people expect the upcoming presidential elections to involve violence regardless of who wins.The same can be said for the two Republican members of the committee, Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who often agree with Trump on policy issues but are nevertheless transparently and deeply anti-Trump. That’s why you’re not hearing any dissenting opinions in the hearings or seeing any efforts to defend the former president’s actions. Not even Fox News—the only network not to carry the June 9 prime-time hearings live—is trying very hard to defend him, instead choosing to not focus on the issue at all.
That’s obviously not the case for the rest of the country, which remains massively divided over the issue. Far from repudiating the events of Jan. 6 and Donald Trump for his role in them, polls show that the Republican base has embraced Trump, excused the insurrection, and doubled down on the myth of the stolen election, with three-fourths of Republicans refusing to hold Trump accountable, 58% believing Biden is an illegitimate president, and 40% saying violence against the government can sometimes be justifiable.
If we don’t get serious about fixing our social contract and our politics, the next time someone tries to overturn an election—and there will be a next time—they may actually succeed.
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US political violence increases; Democrats seek Jan 6 accountability
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares his perspective on US politics:
What was the biggest takeaway from the first January 6th hearing?
The House Committee investigating the January 6th riot at the Capitol hosted its first hearing last night. And while a major focus of the committee is making the case for the criminal culpability of former President, Donald Trump, for his role in instigating the riots, much of the facts revealed last night were already well known through leaks from the committee and are unlikely to change any minds for either supporters or detractors of the former president.
The committee also spent significant resources uncovering a connection between two nationalist groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, in their role in deliberately stoking violence that day. The committee showed video evidence that group members coordinated in advance to attack the Capitol and disrupt the certification of a completely valid election. And they were egged on by Donald Trump's appearance at the White House that morning. The existence of these nationalist groups and their ability to organize online is going to be an ongoing challenge in the United States, which is starting to see elevated levels of political division and outright political violence.
While political violence was relatively common in the 1960s and 1970s, the trend had subsided for several decades before an uptick in recent years, both in the form of lone-wolf attacks and less successful group plots. The January 6th riot was the most high profile, explosive and important example of this trend, which has included assassination attempts against policymakers and judges, violent protests over police violence across the country in 2020, a mass assassination attempt at a Congressional baseball practice in 2017, a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a violent standoff between federal agents and militia members in Oregon in 2016, the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, and just this week, a barely thwarted attempt to kill Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh at his home.
Polling shows Americans are increasingly open to the idea of political violence, with one in four saying it is sometimes okay in early 2022. Other studies suggest these results may overstate the actual level of support for political violence. Though, as was the case in the 1960s, it only takes one successful lone-wolf willing to commit epoch-defining political violence, such as the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King in the 1960s.
So while one key goal of the committee is to keep the violence of January 6th and the Republican Party's connection to it on top of mind for voters as Democrats face a very challenging political environment in November, equally important will be holding these groups accountable for their role in trying to disrupt the democratic transition of power, and demonstrating to Republicans, who continue to play down the violence of that day, that this is a serious threat to the security of the United States that must be met with condemnation and potentially reforms to make sure it can't happen again.
A year after Jan. 6, U.S. democracy is in more trouble than ever
A year after Jan. 6, U.S. democracy is in more trouble than ever
Today marks the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
This unprecedented act of sedition was the worst attack on US democracy since the Civil War. It was the first disruption of the peaceful democratic transition of power since 1876, and the only one to be instigated by a sitting president. I’d argue Trump’s role in it constitutes the gravest violation of the oath of office by any president in the history of the nation.
Thankfully, the insurrection failed to stop the certification of the vote and subvert the democratic order. It was destined to fail—and was not, indeed, an attempted coup—because the military, the courts, then-VP Mike Pence, former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, key state and local officials, and a majority of GOP senators ultimately sided with rule of law and the Constitution. Most of our key institutions held firm. We should be grateful for that.
But just because Jan. 6 failed, it doesn’t mean it didn’t cause lasting damage. The event shattered democratic norms, fueled tribalism and polarization, deepened our crisis of truth, normalized political violence, delegitimized our system of governance, and pushed us closer to democratic failure than we’ve been since, well, the Civil War. Recent polls show that majorities of Democrats and Republicans doubt the other party will accept negative election results in states they control in the future, and 64% of Americans now believe US democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.”
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More importantly, the fact that Jan. 6 failed doesn’t mean that it can’t happen again. Quite the opposite, in fact. Most Americans expect it will. The response to Jan. 6 has revealed just how fragile and broken our polity is. Perhaps that’s why 68% of Americans see the insurrection as a harbinger of increasing political violence rather than an isolated incident.
Far from repudiating the events of Jan. 6 and Donald Trump for his role in them, polls show that the Republican base has embraced Trump, excused the insurrection, and doubled down on the myth of the stolen election. Despite President Trump getting impeached for an unprecedented second time, and despite an ongoing House select-committee investigation into his role that day, 72% of Republicans think the former president bears little responsibility for Jan. 6, 67% want Trump to stay on as a national figure (up 10 points since last January), and 54% say they are more likely to vote for a GOP congressional candidate if they questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Recent polling also found that 6 in 10 Republicans believe Mike Pence should’ve used his role to overturn the election and over 7 in 10 are convinced that Biden stole the election.
This is mass delusion. There is zero evidence that the 2020 election outcome was in any way rigged, stolen, or conditioned by widespread fraud. But tens of millions of Republican voters believe this fiction, in large part thanks to the efforts of right-wing media outlets, influencers, elected officials, and Trump himself to perpetuate the Big Lie and deny, equivocate and excuse what happened
The problem doesn't begin and end with the Big Lie; what's troubling is how vulnerable they were to buy into this fiction in the first place, and how ready they are to treat their political opponents as mortal enemies. As Fiona Hill put it to me in an interview for the upcoming episode of GZERO World:
In many respects, [January 6] was just one episode in an ongoing struggle that we're in the midst of right now on the societal-political level about the future of the country. It was a manifestation of the deep divisions, the partisan infighting, the polarization within our society.
That’s why there’s every reason to think something resembling the Jan. 6 insurrection can and will happen again in the near future, because the conditions that led to it are still present and growing.
What happened at the Capitol wasn’t really about Trump. It was the result of decades of growing anti-establishment sentiment boiling over, a product of declining equality of opportunity, of a weak safety net that lets so many of our fellow citizens fall through the cracks, of political institutions that are widely seen as rigged, and of the wholesale loss of faith in the system’s ability to self-correct.
Don’t get me wrong, Trump was the perfect foil to tap into this anti-establishment sentiment. But if it hadn’t been him leading the charge, it would’ve been someone else. As I said on the day of the insurrection, Trump is but a symptom of something much deeper. What ails our nation long pre-dates him and will surely outlast him.
It pains me to write this because I love my country, but we as a nation haven’t done a great job at protecting our people from the vagaries of a government that no longer works for the average American. The US is richer and more powerful than ever, but it’s also the most divided, unequal, dysfunctional, and politically delegitimized it’s ever been. The forces that led to January 6 had been a long time coming. Containing them is a generational challenge.
If we don’t get serious about fixing our social contract and our politics, the next time someone tries to overturn an election—and there will be a next time—they may actually succeed. There’s no guarantee that the military, the courts, state and local officials, a future VP and majority leader, etc. will stand firm with democracy again. If there’s something the Trump presidency should have taught us, it’s that guardrails work until they don’t.
This could happen sooner than you think. Just look at the GOP’s efforts to take control of the electoral mechanisms and Trump’s ongoing campaign to purge the Republican Party of anyone who doesn’t support the Big Lie. Given how things are going now, the 2022 midterms are increasingly likely to leave Republicans in control of the House and the Senate at the federal level and with unified control of government in precisely the six states that decided the 2020 election (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania).
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