The Nature of Crisis

Trump’s assault on the judiciary and October 1962.

Update: I’m going on Substack Live today at 1:30 p.m.—not 1 p.m.—with Jim Acosta. Come and hang out with me. It’ll be fun. Or a disaster. I haven’t done this before. so it could be a trainwreck.

Look for an alert in your inbox around 1:30 p.m. ET with a link to the live chat. We’ll post a link on the homepage too.

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(Composite / Photos: GettyImages)

1. Havana Syndrome

Today we’re going on a bit of a journey. I’m making the case that we are, as of right now, in the opening phases of a constitutional crisis in which the executive branch has subjugated the legislature and is attempting to break the judiciary, creating an unchecked, all-powerful presidency.

I’m going to argue that everything we’ve seen over the last two years has pointed to this moment. And that the end result is likely to be determined by information. The best analogy I can think of for this brinksmanship is the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Trump as Khrushchev and John Roberts as Kennedy.

We’re going to unpack this analogy because there are some lessons to be learned. But also: You will see how the analogy breaks down and how Roberts is in a much more perilous position than Kennedy occupied in 1962.

My big point, however, is that we are underestimating the risks we face right now because we are focused on specifics. Once you abstract our situation, you can see the dangers much more clearly. Let’s go.

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At its most basic, a crisis is what happens when two sovereign entities have their interests collide in a way that threatens the status quo. Crises are resolved in one of three ways: