Rioters storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, seeking to intimidate politicians into overturning the presidential election. AP Photo/John Minchillo Shelley Inglis, University of Dayton As the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump approaches, federal officials are investigating threats to attack or kill members of Congress. This comes […] Read more »
Trump leaves America at its most divided since the Civil War
Donald Trump ends his tumultuous presidency with the nation confronting the greatest strain to its fundamental cohesion since the Civil War. The January 6 assault on the US Capitol capped four years in which Trump relentlessly stoked the nation’s divisions and simultaneously provided oxygen for the growth of White nationalist […] Read more »
The American Abyss
… Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to […] Read more »
An Insurgency From Inside the Oval Office
President Trump’s relentless effort to overturn the result of the election that he lost has become the most serious stress test of American democracy in generations, led not by outside revolutionaries intent on bringing down the system but by the very leader charged with defending it. In the 220 years […] Read more »
Republicans Are Going Down a Dangerous Road
Republicans’ tolerance, if not active support, for President Donald Trump’s ongoing bid to overturn the 2020 election has crystallized a stark question: Does the GOP still qualify as a small-d democratic party—or is it morphing into something very different? Even with the Supreme Court still deciding whether to consider a […] Read more »
The U.S. shows all the signs of a country spiraling toward political violence
… Political violence in democracies often seems spontaneous: an angry mob launching a pogrom, a lone shooter assassinating a president. But in fact, the crisis has usually been building for years, and the risk factors are well known. The United States is now walking the last steps on that path. […] Read more »