America faces a crisis of democracy, as the intellectual soil of the Republican Party has eroded. Authoritarian sentiments have overtaken the country’s conservative movement, which has come to realize it lacks the numbers to succeed democratically. Long-held laissez-faire conservative policies have no answers for modern problems like the climate crisis, global pandemics, monopolization, or wealth inequality. Social conservative policies on race, gender, and religion have no answers for a diverse, increasingly secular society where two incomes are required to make ends meet. Conspiracy...…America faces a crisis of democracy, as the intellectual soil of the Republican Party has eroded. Authoritarian sentiments have overtaken the country’s conservative movement, which has come to realize it lacks the numbers to succeed democratically. Long-held laissez-faire conservative policies have no answers for modern problems like the climate crisis, global pandemics, monopolization, or wealth inequality. Social conservative policies on race, gender, and religion have no answers for a diverse, increasingly secular society where two incomes are required to make ends meet. Conspiracy...WW…

Over the last decade, if you wanted to know where the Republican Party was heading you wouldn’t look to the conservative columnists in major newspaper. You wouldn’t look to the sitting legislators responding to the existing pressures of the base. You wouldn’t even look to Fox News, regurgitating a sanitized version of the material percolating on Breitbart and 4Chan.No, you would go to the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC. CPAC has often been treated as the fun carnival show of the conservative movement, a place for the Right’s biggest celebrities and grifting...…Over the last decade, if you wanted to know where the Republican Party was heading you wouldn’t look to the conservative columnists in major newspaper. You wouldn’t look to the sitting legislators responding to the existing pressures of the base. You wouldn’t even look to Fox News, regurgitating a sanitized version of the material percolating on Breitbart and 4Chan.No, you would go to the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC. CPAC has often been treated as the fun carnival show of the conservative movement, a place for the Right’s biggest celebrities and grifting...WW…

No one said it was going to be easy. But it also doesn’t have to be this hard.The Biden Administration faces enormous challenges in pursuing its promised agenda. Decades of policy failures, a catastrophic pandemic, and a predecessor who governed more as saboteur than leader have dug this president into a deep hole from which to climb. A razor thin House majority and an evenly split Senate make holding a unified governing coalition together a daunting task in the face of unprecedentedly hostile Republican obstruction.But that’s all the more reason for the president and his team to move with...…No one said it was going to be easy. But it also doesn’t have to be this hard.The Biden Administration faces enormous challenges in pursuing its promised agenda. Decades of policy failures, a catastrophic pandemic, and a predecessor who governed more as saboteur than leader have dug this president into a deep hole from which to climb. A razor thin House majority and an evenly split Senate make holding a unified governing coalition together a daunting task in the face of unprecedentedly hostile Republican obstruction.But that’s all the more reason for the president and his team to move with...WW…

One of Donald Trump’s greatest political talents–if you can call it that–is the ability to kick up such a whirlwind of chaos that it becomes easy to lose sight of simple moral baselines. Actions and stories that would functionally end other presidencies are forgotten within days as the bright bouncy orange ball moves to the next outrage and shatters the next norm. Opponents are left wondering whether to five the next five-alarm fire, or try to focus on rebuilding the crumbling foundations of governance from the last fire.That is in part what has happened over Trump’s personal financial...…One of Donald Trump’s greatest political talents–if you can call it that–is the ability to kick up such a whirlwind of chaos that it becomes easy to lose sight of simple moral baselines. Actions and stories that would functionally end other presidencies are forgotten within days as the bright bouncy orange ball moves to the next outrage and shatters the next norm. Opponents are left wondering whether to five the next five-alarm fire, or try to focus on rebuilding the crumbling foundations of governance from the last fire.That is in part what has happened over Trump’s personal financial...WW…