Hey, y’all! JVL and I are back with another installment of the Triad Mailbag. As always, thank you for your excellent queries!

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Triad Mailbags will be posted in the Bulwark Takes feed for our audiophiles and a transcript can be found below for the readers among us.

In this episode we cover:

• From Dave Y.: DSA candidates have gotten a lot of publicity lately. What is your take on them? (starting around 0:28)

• From Judy B.: What can be done to protect the 2030 census? (starting around 8:09)

• From JennyB: What do you think about Ross Douthat joining ‘60 minutes’?(starting around 9:21)

• From Stephen R.: Do you agree with the theory that Republican voters want authoritarianism because they believe that left-wing authoritarianism is out to destroy them? (starting around 15:12)

• From In The Age of Now: In the Secret Pod, you said “We’re going to lose, but you have to go down fighting.” This reminded me of Tolkien’s idea of “the long defeat” in the fight against evil. Does Tolkien’s idea resonate with you? (starting around 18:15)

• From Kate B.: Why aren’t you a fan of Ezra Klein? (starting around 22:16)

• From tupper: What problems was the website’s redesign trying to solve? (starting around 27:25)

• From SJ: Could you take a minute and gush about another member of The Bulwark? (starting around 31:18)

• From Alejandro M.: What World Cup jerseys have you been sporting? (starting around 34:10)

• From E.J. Joseph: Have you considered writing another book? (starting around 35:20)

• From Jessica E.: Do you play any instruments? Does anyone in your family? (starting around 35:58)

• Also from Jessica E.: Who are your favorite musicians/bands? (starting around 36:54)

• From MCM: What are your favorite comic book series? (starting around 37:15)

• From Smike: What is something in arts/culture that you hate and everyone else seems to love, or you love it and everyone else seems to hate it? (starting around 39:20)

The transcript, edited for clarity and concision, is below, but you can also read the PDF version here:

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1. Political Violence

Because irony is dead, two weeks ago, the Trump administration hosted an international conference on “The Resurgence of Political Terrorism.”

This would be the same Trump administration whose first act was to pardon hundreds of political terrorists who attempted a violent coup. The administration headed by a man who summoned thousands of people to Washington for the express purpose of carrying out a coup. A man who, on January 6, 2021, after being warned that members of his mob were armed, directed them to march on the Capitol where Congress was attempting to ratify the results of the election and said:

[Y]ou'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. . . .

If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country because it's illegal when the votes are illegal when the way they got there is illegal when the states that vote are given false and fraudulent information. . . .

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

An administration headed by a man who has expressly called for violence against his opponents over, and over, and over:

But this conference—the administration tried to class it up by referring to it as a “ministerial”—wasn’t about all political violence. It was about one very specific sub-class: “Left-wing” political violence.

I know. You are not shocked by this.

What will shock you are the words spoken by Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller in their prepared remarks to the “ministerial.” Because they weren’t just shameless, or hypocritical.

Oh no. These two men went full Nazi.

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Hey fam: Get your questions for the next mailbag show in today, please? Leave them in the comments here. As always, my ask is that you take a minute to read the questions others have left. Upvote the ones you like best. And if you have follow-on questions, thread them as a reply to the existing questions.

1. Abdication

Last week I wrote that, as a political matter, Trump’s best option on Iran is to simply walk away:

What Trump should do is walk away. Swallow the loss, regroup, “liberate” Cuba, get into an online slap fight with the Spanish national team. Whatever. Take the L and all of the geostrategic consequences that come with it.

Some readers responded by saying that Trump can’t, because Iran won’t let him. Nick Catoggio wrote an interesting column about how walking away from Iran would be, for Trump, like declaring bankruptcy. Meaning: In theory, an attractive option.

But Catoggio concluded that it’s not possible:

[T]he president would happily choose the bankruptcy option, I’m sure, if only the Iranians would offer it to him. By signing last month’s humiliating peace agreement, he showed that he’s willing to accept the public embarrassment of admitting that a project he championed has failed, as bankruptcy requires. But bankruptcy is supposed to release him from the financial obligations created by that project, which in this case would mean oil commerce returning to prewar levels in the strait before November’s midterms. And the Iranians simply refuse to do that.

I’m not certain this is true? Today I want to interrogate whether or not Trump could abdicate America’s position in Iran. Could he really just . . . walk away?

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1. Dinner Time

On Friday night the White House Correspondents’ Association hosted the re-do of its annual dinner. It was a stunning display of weakness. A sham in which serious journalists chose to pretend that Donald Trump is a normal political figure.

It was also a reminder that Trump understood America and our institutions more clearly than . . . well, certainly more clearly than I did prior to 2015.

Finally, it was an object lesson on why Trump was defeated by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

What I’m working toward here is a sort of Grand Unified Theory of Trumpism, which explains why Trump was able to flout American political norms and destroy many of our institutions—but has presided over the end of the American age, globally.

The short version?

The essence of Trumpism is that the other side will always choose surrender over discomfort.

But you should read the long version. It’s worth it. Let’s take that ride.

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Hey fam -

The hiatus is over. JVL and I are back with another Triad Video Mailbag. It will drop this Friday, July 31.

In the previous edition, we covered:

• How can prevent our retirement funds from being impacted by SpaceX stock?

• Why are the governors of Virginia and New Jersey letting Democrats down?

• What will The Bulwark look like after Trump?

• Can James Talarico actually win Texas?

• How can we raise our kids to be good citizens?

• . . . and more of your burning questions.

You can watch our first four installments of “Ask JVL” here.

Leave us questions for our next edition of “Ask JVL” in the comments on this post. We’ll pin this to the top of the Triad channel on the site and remind you of the link throughout the week.

Ask JVL

Questions can be whatever is on your mind. Was there something JVL needs to explain more from a recent Triad? Something he hasn’t addressed lately that you’d like to hear more about?

If you posted a question last time that didn’t get picked, feel free to post it here again. There were so many good, worthy questions.

Before you pose a question, please look through the existing questions and upvote (by clicking the 🩶) those you most wish to explore, and thread your replies if you have similar questions or follow-ups. Upvoted comments float to the top, letting us know what’s most important to the community for us to answer.

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1. Rotten to the Core

We’re going to have a fairly technical discussion about economics and AI in a minute, but first I want to give you some candy.

As part of the America 250 BS, the Trump administration held a quiz bowl–style competition for high school kids about “civics.”

And they rigged the game.

One of the semifinalists was a Sikh kid from Connecticut with immigrant parents. The judges made clear-cut “mistakes” in grading his answers so that three white kids—one homeschooled, one from a private Catholic school, and one whose dream is to go to Hillsdale—made the finals.

I know this sounds like crazy talk. It’s not. NOTUS has the entire story.

This is America now. Heritage Americans and MAGA fans first.

No deviationism will be permitted.1

On the one hand: This is not a big deal. Anyone who has ever watched a $100 Rotary scholarship go to the son of the guy who runs the local chamber of commerce knows this is how things work sometimes.

That’s life.

On the other hand: The rest of us don’t have to play along and pretend not to see what’s happening. Oh, and one last thing in the footnotes.2

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2. AI Talk

There’s a new academic paper making the rounds from a couple of researchers at Wharton. It is . . . alarming. They try to anticipate effects from the AI disruption and their thesis goes something like this:

• AI will rapidly replace many workers.

• The surge in unemployment will crush overall demand for products and services.

• At which point the companies that replaced workers with AI will suffer.

• This trap is akin to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Overall, businesses would be better off if they cooperated and slowed their adoption of AI. But individually, businesses will be harmed if they don’t replace workers as fast as possible.

Not gonna lie: It’s a pretty grim assessment. So let’s look closer.

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AFTER BOTH OF DONALD TRUMP’S election wins, the election punditry industrial complex decided that Democrats needed to run candidates who “talk like a normal person,” weren’t “grown in vats,” and can relate to voters like real people.

This is in large part a reaction to voters regularly noting that Trump is authentic because “he’s not a regular politician,” while viewing Kamala Harris as phony and inauthentic despite on paper being vastly more qualified than Trump. After all, Trump authentically tried to overturn an election.

The word “authenticity” gets kicked around a lot, including by me. But, like a lot of buzzwords, it’s important to grapple with what we’re really talking about when we say “authenticity.”

Before his downfall, many in the Beltway pundit class (not to mention rank-and-file Democratic voters) thought Graham Platner had the potential to be an electoral superstar because his gruff oysterman persona made him “authentic” and helped him connect with Maine voters.

Many Democratic Maine voters I talked to in focus groups talked about Platner as an authentic Maine candidate. And in fact what many of us saw as potential red flags—the Totenkopf tattoo, the gross Reddit posts, the strange social media activity—voters took as evidence that Platner wasn’t one of those candidates grown in a consultant-approved vat. Voters like a redemption story and they don’t want the national discourse to dictate whom they choose as their candidate.

The problem was, of course, that Graham Platner was, authentically, not a very good person. And ultimately that was his undoing.

So, if authenticity is the coin of the electoral realm, it’s worth digging into what it truly means for a candidate to clear the authenticity bar.

Let’s go.

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1. Iran, Again

David Frum often says that Trumpism holds many secrets, but no mysteries. Generally this is correct. But Iran presents us with the first genuine mystery of Trump’s presidency:

Why didn’t Trump just leave?

He got his Memorandum of Understanding. He semi-promised to give Iran what they demanded in order to let him out of the war. But then, instead of walking away, he tried to renegotiate. And now the war is back on, American soldiers are dying, and—even worse1—the price of gas is rising.

I am genuinely mystified by Trump’s conduct here.

Would it have been irresponsible to simply pull assets out of the region and move on as if the war never happened after the MOU was signed?

Sure. But not any more irresponsible than starting the war in the first place. Trump does irresponsible things all the time. Why was this decision point different?

I have a theory.

Iran has vexed Trump because it brings into conflict his two controlling impulses:

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1. The Insider

Last week reports surfaced that the Trump Media & Technology Group—the parent company of Truth Social—is looking to ship a new product. The company is preparing to sell faster access to posts.

This feature, called Truth API, will allow subscribers to see posts before they show up in the general public’s feed. The price of a subscription is reportedly $100,000. Per month. (Trump Media & Technology Group has yet to publicly announce its price.) Unless you lock in to a three-year commitment, at which point the monthly fee drops to $60,000.

This idea may seem silly to you. It’s not. Donald Trump is an innovator in the field of corruption and Truth API is something we’ve never seen before: A device that legalizes insider trading and turns Trump’s Truth Social account into something like a Bloomberg terminal.

In order to understand what’s happening here, we’re going to have to talk about social media platforms, market manipulation, and flash trading. It will get slightly technical.

But believe me: This story is fascinating. It demonstrates Trump’s animal cunning. And it points to yet another vulnerability in America’s economic and social order. One that we hadn’t even realized existed.

Oh—and it also hints at why there’s a good chance Don Jr. runs for president.

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This Triad goes all the way to . . . five.

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1. The Normalization of State Violence

After two canceled flights, three airlines, and one unexpected shuttle through Nashville, I finally made it back to New Orleans Monday night following my interview with Pete Buttigieg in Des Moines. Along the way, as I sat on a series of tarmacs, I realized something: I was pissed.

It was three big stories—stories I’ve been covering this week on The Bulwark Podcast—that had my cortisol spiking, cheap white wine in hand.

1. Rep. Ro Khanna and my friend and former cohost Cameron Kasky’s detention by Israeli settlers (aided by the IDF) in the West Bank.

2. The CPS swatting-style incident that Pete and his family are still recovering from.

3. And the two most recent ICE killings: Lorenzo Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine.

While those stories may not seem related, they connect in one profound way:

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1. Roving Death

Over the last week, agents of the federal government have killed two people on the streets of America. We should say their names: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo; Johan Sebastián Guerrero. These men were not armed. Araujo was in the country illegally, but was not the target of the operation that ended in his public execution. Guerrero was in the country legally when he was executed by agents of the state.

In America, we have become inured to incidents in which law enforcement kills civilians. The idea that LEOs can use deadly force at the drop of a hat is accepted by the general public.

But what the federal government has been doing to people assumed to be immigrants is different from normal police brutality. It is a targeted campaign. We are witnessing, for the first time since Jim Crow, American death squads.

I understand if that sounds like an exaggeration. But that’s only because we are inside the story and have become acclimated to the horror. When crimes against humanity start happening, the people on the inside are often the last to understand how horrific the situation is.

So let me tell you a story to help you understand how our situation looks to outsiders.

2. Story Corner

Once upon a time there was a democracy. It was a young country, but a reasonably sophisticated one. It was a constitutional republic, with separation of powers, the rule of law, the whole nine yards.

They were upwardly mobile and making economic strides. But they had problems, like every country. One of their problems was the drug trade.

A politician rose to power arguing that drugs were ruining the country. That drug dealers and drug users were destroying everything the people—the silent majority—held dear.

This politician came from a wealthy family but presented himself as a populist hero of the working class. He was unapologetic about his hatred of drug users. “I would be happy to slaughter them,” he told voters.

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The New York Times, in a profile years later, would describe him this way:

[H]is draconian justice and coarse manner have earned him widespread condemnation. . . .

He has alienated many with outrageous comments and irrational behavior, yet remains wildly popular.

This politician ran for president and campaigned almost exclusively on the scourge of drugs. He had a policy prescription to deal with the problem: He would unshackle the police and turn them loose on the streets to deal with the drug problem while also encouraging civilian militias to do the same.

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1. Literally or Seriously?

Yesterday the president of the United States made an announcement that changed the face of the world order. He declared that, starting immediately, the United States would charge a 20 percent toll on the shipping of all goods through the Strait of Hormuz.

We should be clear: This was never going to happen.

• The U.S. Navy will not keep a fleet of ships in the region permanently.

• Neither China, India, Japan, Australia, nor any other country will pay 20 percent tariffs to the United States on cargo moving through the strait.

• This was make-believe. The president of the United States was issuing proclamations utterly detached from reality, like a late-stage Saddam Hussein.

You can tell that Trump’s plan is make-believe because of the non-reaction from the rest of the world. If the Chinese, or the Europeans, or our allies in the Indo-Pacific believed that there was about to be a permanent 20 percent upcharge on all shipping through the strait, they would have freaked the eff out. They would be gearing up for war.

Because that’s what Trump’s “Guardian of the Hormuz Strait” proposal was: an act of war.

And then, at 11:04 a.m. this morning, Trump changed his mind. The “Guardian” plan was off. Instead, he’s going to force unspecified Gulf states to make undetermined “investments” in the United States in exchange for passage through the strait.

The most powerful country in the world is governed by a madman.

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I want to take Trump’s scheme seriously for a moment, though, to help you understand just how insane our president is. It’s going to require a deep-dive on maritime law, though.

Prepare for some scintillating #content.

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1. Rest in Peace

It was heartening to see tributes to Lindsey Graham from prominent Democratic figures. Like Hunter Biden. Here’s what Amy Klobuchar wrote about him:

He was a man who loved his work, his country, and his family. He didn’t have an easy life growing up and to me that explained a lot about him as well as his devotion to his remaining family members including his sister. It also explained his almost kid-like exuberance about his job and the responsibilities he was given . . .

Lindsey was loyal to friends and causes. He was willing to work on gnarly issues and take on (at times) political risks for the right reasons. . . . Lindsey had a zest for life and the Senate that made you want to get to work on a bill with him or at least debate him. He brought joy to his job.

That is very nice. I’m sure that Graham’s loss will be felt deeply by his loved ones. May his memory be a blessing to them.

For the rest of us, this moment requires more rigorous thinking. Some of which won’t be very nice. You’ve been warned.

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1. Commie Gas

By now you have heard about the new red peril that is taking over American politics. Socialism is ascendant and taking over one of our political parties! This is dangerous and un-American!

You realize we’re talking about Republicans, right?

The White House is promoting a chain of seemingly state-run gas stations selling gasoline at below-market costs.1

Who owns these gas stations? Why are the White House and Trump himself promoting them? How are they able to sell gas at a loss? Excellent questions!

Short answer: No one knows.

The White House comms office claims that the stations are privately owned and receive no government subsidies. But the White House has also claimed that Iran has no military capabilities—and yet we’re back in a shooting war with them. Which is to say: There is no reason to believe that the administration’s statements about Freedom Fuel are true.

The company itself is a mystery. It does not respond to press inquiries and accounts of its corporate structure differ—no one seems to know if it is a chain of independently owned operators or if the locations are all owned by a single entity.

The corporate parent, however, applied for its trademark on the same day Trump first posted about Freedom Fuel—which is either a remarkable coincidence or, you know, close coordination between the White House and this “private” business.

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Also, the White House claims to know a great deal about the company’s business strategy:

A White House official told ABC News that the Freedom Fuel Network is a private company not associated with the president, that is “simply reducing their margin to make prices at the pump more affordable for drivers in Philadelphia and New Jersey.” . . .

"There is no other entity or person subsidizing the lower gasoline costs," the official said.

How would the White House official know this information? How would they know that Freedom Fuel stations are still profitable and that the cheap gas is only a reduction of profit margins? Or that no other person or entity was subsidizing a loss on sales?

Seems suspicious to me!

According to industry data reviewed by ABC News, selling gas at that price point, under the current market conditions, would likely eliminate any profit and potentially cost the 25 participating stations a total of more than quarter million dollars every month.

They’ll lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume?

In case you can’t tell, this looks like socialism to me. Someone—either the government or a private entity working in close conjunction with the government.—is subsidizing retail goods sold below market rates. They are doing so to serve what they see as a critical group of consumers whom they believe are being disadvantaged by structural problems in the local market.

Wait a minute. Where have I heard this before . . .

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You may recall that once upon a time Zohran Mamdani proposed opening five city-owned grocery stores in communities where a shortage of retail options made food prices disproportionately high. His idea was to increase access to affordable food, even if it meant subsidies and created a bit of distortion in the local market.

You may also recall that Republicans lost their ever-loving minds over this proposal.

And yet, here Trump is, doing the exact same thing—he’s just doing it under the cover of night.

I have not heard one word of complaint from the Friends of Adam Smith. Have you?

2. Better Dead than Red

And it’s worse than just the gas stations.

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1. Platner Discourse

A certain type of progressive is very upset about the Graham Platner implosion.

Who are they upset at?

The Democratic party. Or Israel. Or oligarchs. Whatever. Some examples:

Here’s more from Matt Stoller:

Let's be clear, the goal of pushing Platner aside is to destroy the agenda on which he was elected, which is about taming oligarchy and reorienting us from endless war. That is why the Maine Democrats aren't saying 'let's respect Platner voters and transition to someone else,' they are taking a sanctimonious 'he gets NO say in ANYTHING.' Those are not the actions of people who want to win a Senate seat, those are the actions of nasty insiders claiming factional power for themselves.

Here’s David Sirota:

The bad guys in the Graham Platner saga are: corporate Democrats, oligarchs, Neera Tanden, AIPAC, Israel, the media, the elites, and the establishment.

I have a question: Why aren’t these people angry at Graham Platner?

There is one person and one person only to blame for the disaster unfolding in Maine: Graham Cunningham Platner.

This asshole knew who he was and what he’d done. He put himself forward anyway. He lied—over and over—to the public, to his supporters, to the media. He asked people to prostitute themselves for him and cover for him. He encouraged the Bernie Bro cult that coalesced around him.

Now everyone who went out on a limb for the guy is cut off. The Maine Democratic Party is in an impossible situation. And Susan Collins is seventeen weeks from her election and she doesn’t even have an opponent.

Think about that for a minute: In the single best chance to flip a Republican Senate seat, Democrats don’t even have a candidate.

This wasn’t a Neera Tanden–engineered coup. Graham Platner did it.

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Whatever you want to call that wing of the progressive caucus—tankies, the Revolutionary Workers League, you pick—they ought be angry at Platner. He’s the guy they put their trust in; he’s the guy who did this.

Or maybe not? Maybe there are some other people who are responsible for the debacle?

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JVL’s mother-in-law passed away last night. JVL texted me and Tim in the middle of the night to let us know about her passing and to say that he couldn’t write The Triad this week.

I scrolled up and looked at the picture JVL had sent us over the weekend of his entire family camped out in the living room, surrounding her and keeping vigil.

And I had a thought: Readers of this newsletter obviously know a lot about JVL, because he weaves his life into his writing. But there’s something about him you might not know.

JVL loves people.

Yes, I know. His assessment of “The People” in this newsletter is often bleak, occasionally bordering on misanthropic. But it’s always a little funny to me, because IRL no one loves individual people harder and with more devotion than JVL. Someday I will convince him that “people” are just lots of individuals.

You know the maximalist way he’s always making pronouncements both on the pods and in his writing? “WE’RE ALL DOOMED,” “AMERICA IS OVER.” Ironically, that’s also how he loves people. Pedal to the metal. He’s always telling me, in totally benign contexts, that he’d take a bullet for me—which is lovely, but not the required response to asking him to get a sub for The Secret Pod while I’m traveling.

The Bulwark community gets to see a lot of our friendship on display. But there are always a few minutes before and after we tape, where we talk about the things not fit for public consumption. And over the last couple of months we’ve mostly talked about his mother-in-law.

JVL really forking loved her. He loved her in a do-anything, be-anywhere, drop­-everything-for-her kind of way—which is why he’s going to be taking some time away from The Triad.

But here’s the thing. JVL loves lots of people like that. Obviously his wife and family. But also a bunch of us here at The Bulwark, starting with Bill. As many of you know, JVL and I hardly knew each other when The Bulwark started, and the whole bit about us being “best friends” was sort of a way of breaking the ice, because it was weird to be recording a two-person podcast with someone I hardly knew, and even weirder to be building a whole new publication with him.

But now I also think maybe he was manifesting the future. Because if you looked at the people I talk to most, it wouldn’t be silly to guess that JVL and I were actually best friends from way back, the way Tim and I are.

Now the three of us are enmeshed in each other’s lives in ways we couldn’t have imagined when The Bulwark was just getting started.

In fact, the three of us are on a text chain that is an endless mix of work conversations about The Bulwark and our lives. We have a separate chain that includes JVL’s wife.

JVL’s love for people is so strong that by sheer force it encompasses those around them—their own families and loved ones. It can’t be contained to a single person.

Tim and I were recently in Aspen together and were talking about JVL behind his back. And Tim said that “JVL’s devotion to his mother-in-law is almost hard to process because . . . who loves their mother-in-law that much? Usually when you hear about mothers-in-law, it’s in the context of a complaint. I mean I have a great mother-in-law but I’ve never heard anyone in my life be so effusive or committed to their spouse’s mom.”

Tim said it almost makes you wonder if there is an angle of some kind, or if it’s a trick JVL is trying to play on God so he can get into heaven. How can Mr. ‘Falcon Heavy Into the Sun’ also be the person who only takes off work to tend to an ill mother-in-law or do favors for church friends? But that’s the thing with JVL, it’s not a trick, it’s just Maximum JVL Guaranteed, no matter the circumstance.

That’s our boy.

Currently, JVL and my wife are having an ongoing text conversation about coordinating pinball machines. (Do you think either of us were considering a pinball machine before JVL decided they were mandatory for a life well lived? We were not.) And JVL has managed to become best friends with my real-life best friend, with whom he often shares details about his life prior to sharing them with me. I’m not saying they’re closer than I am to either of them, but as JVL might say, I’m not not saying that.

He’s like a cranky love bomb that has, over the years, somehow become my work husband (which is the only kind of husband of interest), business partner, podcast cohost, editor of my book, and perennial gut-check. Also, for all of our disagreements, he’s the best writer I’ve ever encountered. No one who is as good as him is as fast as him. And no one who is as fast as him is as good as him.

I know a bunch of you all who get this newsletter have felt JVL’s love, and become his friends. I’m sure you have stories of him responding to an email you never expected anyone to read, or giving a detailed and thoughtful answer to a question you had, or convincing you to spend too much money on a new watch.

Just like the time, against my vociferous protestations, he sent my kids an inflatable bouncy house during the pandemic. Obviously it turned out to be an endless source of joy and occasional headbumps, which gave me the opportunity to shout “Get up! You’re fine!” at regular intervals. Which was fun for me.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but we’re really lucky to have JVL. The fact that he puts out this newsletter five days a week—plus all the podcasts and videos and everything else he does—is a testament to how much he loves this community, and how hard he loves in general.

Honestly, that’s all I wanted to say. This is a JVL appreciation post. We love you, man.

If you want to do something nice for JVL and his family, his mother-in-law was a big fan of this charity, and I’m sure it would mean a lot to them if you guys wanted to send something their way.

1. Hospice

My mother-in-law, Peggy, is one of the most important people in my life. She is precious to me. In a few days she will celebrate her birthday, if she is still here. She has been in hospice the last few months. As I write, she is on the home stretch of the final lap of her race.

When she is gone, she will leave a hole in our hearts.

Peggy appeared to be in excellent health until last fall. A year ago she drove twelve hours (solo) to North Carolina for the family vacation and, upon arrival, jumped into the swimming pool while fully dressed to the delight of her grandchildren—a tradition she began almost two decades ago. In October, she didn’t feel right. She went to the doctor. Her doc ordered a same-day MRI. Peggy woke up that Tuesday not feeling great; by dinnertime she’d been told there was a tumor the size of a baseball in her lung.

Nine months later she was in a bed in the middle of my family room, being anointed by our priest. That was this past Monday.

This beloved woman, the center of our family, had a cancer growing in her that no one could see. And in the blink of an eye she went from health to hospice so that now, a few days shy of her birthday, her children and grandchildren sit, round the clock, keeping vigil over her.

As metaphors go, it’s uncanny.

I am unable to disentangle Peg’s experience from the journey my country has been on for the last decade.

We were fine. Maybe better than fine. We’d won the Cold War and reached the end of history, where liberalism was the inevitable conclusion of human affairs. Everything seemed good. We’d even elected a black president.1

But beneath the surface a cancer was growing. And here, on the eve of our nation’s birthday, the America we knew is in hospice. After the cancer of illiberalism first presented itself, we chose a difficult course of treatment and beat it back for a few years. But then it returned, stronger and more aggressive. The illiberalism metastasized.

July 4, 2026 is not the celebration of a vital and prospering liberal society. It is a deathbed vigil.

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My best friend is fond of quoting William Seward’s line about America:

“There was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency.”

That’s a nice sentiment, but I don’t think it’s right. For one thing: How would we know if the republic hasn’t been saved?

A nation called “The United States of America” would still exist. It would still have books full of laws, and McDonald’s, and the Postal Service. Just as a for-instance: If Donald Trump’s attempted coup had worked in 2021, “America” as a place, a thing, would have persisted, even if the liberal republic as we had known it was gone.

Maybe Seward’s line should be read like the parable of the Chinese farmer: Has the republic been saved? Too soon to tell.

From this vantage point, no outcome is ever determinative. You can’t say, “Well, there wasn’t enough virtue to save America in 2016. Or 2024.” Because the story never ends and there is no “emergency.” There is only life; there is only struggle. Which rolls in endlessly, like the tides.

That version of Seward is a little better. It’s certainly more fitting for our age. But it’s Pollyannaish. If you think it’s always “too soon to tell” then you don’t believe that America always has enough virtue for liberalism to prevail.

Because you don’t think that “prevailing” is a thing.

My own suspicion is that the hour is late. Liberalism in America as it was even ten years ago is gone. “The republic” still exists. It just isn’t the same thing we once loved.

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2. The Arc of History

Maybe that’s all too dyspeptic.

I won’t recapitulate what America has become—if you are a regular reader of this newsletter, then you know the state of liberalism in this moment.

But America has always had its problems, right?

We were founded in genocide and then our new nation institutionalized slavery. We didn’t do (much) colonialism, but we did practice a brutal mercantilism. Even after the Civil War, we allowed authoritarianism to persist in half the country. Our hands have never been entirely clean.

And yet, no nation or people has ever had hands free of dirt.2

America was exceptional because, uniquely, it was formed around an idea: liberalism. And even though the American practice of liberalism was compromised from the start, the ideal was still pursued. America was never perfect; it could never be perfected. But for 240 years, more or less, the arc of our nation’s political history bent toward liberalism.

That’s what I loved about it. I grew up knowing that my country might never be what I wanted it to be—but that it would tilt a little bit closer to the American idea with each passing age.

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And that, finally, is what makes this moment different.

America is not more unjust or illiberal today than it was in 1800; or 1850; or 1950. But we have moved decidedly backwards: We are a great deal more illiberal in 2026 than we were in 2000, or 2008, or 2016.

What worries me most about the regression is that our lurch toward illiberalism is not the result of hardship or privation—it is the product of success. Americans did not turn to a corrupt strongman because they were suffering through a Great Depression or a World War. Illiberalism was not undertaken out of desperation.

If that had been the case, then we could make excuses for our fellow citizens and hope that, once peace and prosperity return, the illiberal impulse would fade.

Instead, this age is marked by something unseen in the history of our once-great nation: A surge toward illiberalism born of tranquility and wealth.

3. The Day After Tomorrow

So what happens next? At some point the vigil will end and we will make peace with the reality that the America we knew and loved has passed.

But we’ll still be here. A placed called America will still be here. Life will go on.

What are we supposed to do?

The same thing we do when any loved one passes. We live.

Americans make a fetish of the idea that they are, by dint of philosophy, geography, history, and/or Providence, exceptional. I certainly used to venerate this idea. Perhaps you did, too.

Seeing that we are no more exceptional than Venezuela, Turkey, or Hungary3—other democracies that fell to strongmen—is bracing.

But maybe it can be liberating, too.

Because despite what the pickup-truck commercials say, America isn’t an inevitable juggernaut of freedom. It is compromised and vulnerable and we will have to figure out how to live here anyway. Just like the Venezuelans, the Turks, and the Hungarians have done for a generation.

Maybe—and I’m just thinking out loud here—we can be at peace knowing that Seward was wrong. There isn’t always enough virtue to save the day. The triumph of liberalism is not inevitable. It can fail. And then, if we are bold, unrelenting, and lucky, it can be won back.

Maybe this knowledge—stripping America bare of her pieties—can make us less fatalistic and more eager to fight.

Because to struggle is to live.

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4. Parenthood

I talk about parenthood and kid sports from time to time and I just did an entire podcast about it with my buddy Shaun Dawson.

I think you’ll like it.

THE DSA WING OF THE DEMOCRATIC COALITION is having a bit of a moment. Three Zohran Mamdani–endorsed congressional candidates won their primaries recently, sweeping aside more moderate challengers. This week in Colorado, socialist Melat Kiros routed Rep. Diana DeGette, a nearly three-decade incumbent who has served in the House longer than Kiros has been alive.

There’s talk of a Democratic Tea Party, an insurgent movement that’s poised to finish the job that Bernie Sanders started a decade ago: taking over the party and shoving it in a more populist direction.

So, is Democratic socialism the new hotness? Should mainstream Democrats panic? I don’t think so. But mainstream Democrats do need to wake up to what their voters are demanding.

Here’s what I can tell you from my focus groups:

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–Ben

1. A Citizenship Scenario

We should all be very glad that the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship. If the justices had overturned it, the first-order implications would have been appalling for hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their children, and for people who were adopted—even if they were born in America to American parents and raised in America by American parents.

But the second-order effects could have been catastrophic for democracy—and the threat against birthright citizenship isn’t entirely gone, so it’s worth taking a good, hard look at it.

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1. “Winning”

On the one hand, yes, it is very nice that the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s BLATANTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL order to unilaterally end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.

This is nice in the same way that it is nice when a person walking past you on the street doesn’t pull out a gun and shoot you.

The Court’s majority followed the Constitution. Yay. Let the celebrations begin. Give each of the six justices in the majority a cookie.

On the other hand: The fact that three justices took the anti-constitutional side of this fight is evidence that the Court itself cries out for reform.

Let’s not play make-believe. There was no “case” here. The Trump administration has lost this argument at every single level. The lower-court judges who heard the case were gobsmacked that the Trump administration would even try to end birthright citizenship via executive order.

It started in January 2025 when a district court judge granted a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of the policy.

“This is a blatantly unconstitutional [executive] order,” Judge John Coughenour said. He was not done:

I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.

Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made? There are other times in world history when we look back, as people of good will, and say, “Where were the judges? Where were the lawyers?” And frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.

Coughenour is not one of your socialist DEI judges—he was appointed by Ronald Forking Reagan.

Six months later, in July 2025, Judge Joseph Laplante, a George W. Bush appointee in the District Court of New Hampshire, granted certification for the class-action lawsuit that would challenge the administration’s policy.

Another version of the case, State of Washington v. Trump, was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It ruled against Trump as well.1

The majority, upholding a lower court’s injunction, ruled that the lower court had “correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional.”

The first time the Trump administration was able to find any judge, anywhere in America, to state that it had the ability to do away with birthright citizenship was when it got to the Supreme Court.

And then it found three of them.

2. Reform

What does it mean when a third of the Court wants to blow up the Constitution?

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