Philadelphia Political Agnostics

Thu, Oct 23 · 12:00 PM EDT

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Online

NCC Debate - "Liberalism: Current Challenges & Modern Debates"

Online

Event Title: "Liberalism: Current Challenges and Modern Debates"

Date & Time: Thurs., Oct. 23, 2025, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. EDT

• PLEASE NOTE: This is a FREE event, but will be hosted online. Be sure to register in advance to receive the Zoom link: https://constitutioncenter.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_68jl0087RBCl3SLhhYdVMw#/registration
• You can also watch the live stream on their Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haBnto1f3YE

Cost: FREE

About the Event:
Susan Stokes, author of The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies (2025), and Cass Sunstein, author of On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom (2025), explore the current challenges facing liberalism and why liberalism remains essential to freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.

About the Speakers & Host:

• Susan Stokes is a Professor in the Political Science department of the University of Chicago, and the faculty director of the Chicago Center on Democracy. She is also the co-founder of Bright Line Watch, an initiative to monitor the strength of U.S. democracy. Her past books include Why Bother?: Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests (2019) and Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics (2013).
• Cass Sunstein is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School known for his work in U.S. constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and behavioral economics. He is the author of many books, including The New York Times best-seller Nudge (2008), as well as How to Interpret the Constitution (2023) and Algorithmic Harm: Protecting People in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2025).
• Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at George Washington University, the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic.

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Sun, Oct 26 · 3:00 PM EDT

•

Online

Bi-Weekly Discussion - Is America Sliding Into Authoritarianism?

Online

This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Click on the link above at the scheduled date/time to log in...

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IS AMERICA SLIDING INTO AUTHORITARIANISM - OR ARE LIBERALS SUCCUMBING TO "TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME" AGAIN?

INTRODUCTION:

We're 9 months into Donald Trump's second presidential term, and although we've focused quite a bit on his administration's foreign policy, tariffs and tech/energy policies, we haven't discussed his domestic policy since our meetup on January 26th - just a few days after he took office and began issuing a flurry of executive orders. Since then, many left-leaning journalists, academics & pundits have argued that Trump 2.0 is even more dangerous, because he's not checked by the traditional Republican politicians (e.g. Mike Pence, Rex Tillerson, John Bolton) and military experts (e.g. John Kelly, James Mattis, Mark Milley, Mark Esper) he had in his first administration who reportedly dissuaded Trump from rash actions in some cases and occasionally refused to enact orders they saw as unconstitutional. Instead, they argue, Trump has stocked his administration with loyalists, he has a Republican majority in both houses of Congress and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and he's been gutting much of the federal bureaucracy, so he's virtually unchecked. As the months have worn on, Trump's critics have pointed to various signs of authoritarian sentiments and policies they regard as authoritarian & unconstitutional or at the very least highly corrupt, for example:

• pardoning both violent & non-violent Jan. 6 rioters
• Executive Order (EO 14160) denying birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants & temporary residents which conflicts with the 14th Amendment
• NBC interview in March where Trump talked about circumventing the 22nd Amendment to run for a third term
• National Guard deployments to Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago over the objections of local Democratic mayors
• FCC chairman Brendan Carr threatening ABC in order to pressure them to fire Jimmy Kimmel
• firing BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer for a jobs report showing weaker-than-expected job growth
• firing DOJ & FBI employees who worked on cases involving Donald Trump, such as the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, the classified documents case, and the 2020 election interference case
• directing the DOJ to investigate Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue
• DOJ indictments of former FBI director James Comey & former national security advisor John Bolton
• deporting Kilmar Albrego Garcia to serve time in an El Salvadoran prison without a trial and refusing to return him after a court order
• ICE arrest and revocation of green card of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student & pro-Palestinian activist
• freezing or cutting federal grants to several major universities including Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, UPenn, Brown & Princeton over pro-Palestinian protests and DEI programs it labelled "discriminatory"

So what should we make of all this? If this United States actually sliding away from liberal democratic norms and towards illiberal authoritarian form of government? And if so, is this primarily or exclusively due to Donald Trump and his followers, or were there signs of this "democratic decay" in earlier administrations of both parties (and in other democratic countries abroad) that might signal broader structural forces that can't merely be solved by getting Trump out of office?

And to what extent is a left-leaning political bias among journalists, academics & civil servants distorting our view of what's happening? To what extent are we seeing a media circus like "Russiagate" in Trump's first term, where we'll eventually realize that much of the media fell prey to hype about unverified claims? And for those on the left complaining about Trump's actions now, why didn't they criticize Obama's deportations of 3.1 million people, expansion of domestic spying, and prosecutions of whistleblowers? Why did they downplay the Biden administration's "jawboning" social media platforms into censoring content and their attempts to inject partisan narratives about race & gender into our public schools, universities & HR departments? Are those who are tempted to dismiss the media's recent warnings about Trump succumbing to the "cry wolf effect" and "whataboutism" where the media's false alarms & hypocrisy in the past has caused people to ignore genuine warnings now?

In this discussion, we'll explore 4 various sets of arguments about Trump's aggressive actions that have aroused cries of authoritarianism & calls for resistance on the political left, some hand-wringing & calls for civility by centrists, and lots of cheers among the populist right...

In the 1st section, we'll look at some arguments for why Trump has overridden the federal government's checks & balances to the extent that he is causing a rapid slide towards a system of "competitive authoritarianism" (a.k.a. "illiberal democracy", "anocracy" or "hybrid regime") similar to Hungary under Orbán & Turkey under Erdoğan if not a full-blown autocracy like Nazi Germany or Russia under Putin. Under this theory, elections will continue but Democrats will be seriously hampered by factors like gerrymandering, voter suppression, malicious prosecutions of their candidates, and government attacks on their fundraising apparatus & activist organizations. Proponents of this scenario often see Trump sending ICE & the National Guard into blue cities as the initial steps to a "police state" and warn that it's intended to provoke left-wing activists into rioting, which will be used to justify even more draconian measures. This in turn could lead to a spiral of escalation that could thrust the U.S. into a period of extended civil conflict comparable to "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland or Italy's "Years of Lead" if not a full-blown civil war like we saw in the U.S. in the 1860s or in the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

In the 2nd section, we'll look at some arguments for why Trump's cronyism & corruption, as well as his use of "lawfare" against his political opponents, has eroded democratic norms leading to what analysts have called "constitutional rot" and a Jacksonian-style "spoils system". This places the U.S. in the realm of a borderline "flawed democracy", but this is unlikely to lead to "competitive authoritarianism" since Trump's administration is too incompetent to fully consolidate power and he faces too little public support and too much opposition from powerful elites both within and outside the government. A reduction of civil liberties & rights violations are also expected, although this falls short of dystopian scenarios like a "police state". In terms of political violence, they predict something analogous to the protests & riots we saw in the summer of 2020, which still fell short of the riots of the 1960s-70s and didn't lead to anything analogous to "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Rather than a protracted civil conflict, proponents of this scenario tend to predict various types of "soft secession" from red & blue states ignoring the federal government when it falls into the hands of the opposition. This in turn could lead to a loss of national unity, economic decline as bureaucratic incompetence reduces "state capacity", and the loss of America's status as a world leader.

In the 3rd section, we'll look at arguments for why right-wing populism is best thought of as a structural force almost incidental to Trump, and why it is part of a "Great Realignment" (a.k.a. "Seventh Party System") where the Republican Party slowly but almost inevitably transitions into a multiracial working class coalition rather than a white nationalist party as some had feared. Proponents of this theory point out the Republican Party gained more support from black & Hispanic voters under Trump despite much of his rhetoric. Under this theory, the transition will be incomplete & chaotic until the GOP finds capable leaders who will make a clear break with the Reaganite legacy of tax cuts & deregulation to enact social & economic policies that are clearly pro-worker - what some refer to as "producerism". Proponents of this "Great Realignment" often imagine the Democratic Party slowly absorbing the neocons & libertarians pushed out of the GOP and reverting to a business-friendly version of "Third Way" liberalism roughly analogous to the Democrats under Bill Clinton.

In the 4th section, we'll look at arguments for why Trump is merely enforcing existing immigrations laws, cracking down on crime, and trying to reverse the left's "long march through the institutions" (e.g. news media, entertainment, schools & universities, nonprofits, the federal bureaucracy). They argue that elite dominance of most major institutions makes any major conservative reforms impossible without drastic actions that breach ostensibly "neutral" democratic norms that implicitly favor the left - e.g. invoking the Insurrection Act to use the National Guard in sanctuary states or violating the 1st Amendment by cracking down on left-wing activists & academics at universities. However, they'll often argue these actions are still constitutional based on various historical precedents when liberal administrations used similar strong-arm methods to enact their agenda, often connecting this with the "unitary executive theory" of jurisprudence. Another major component of this involves not so much ignoring or overturning civil rights laws but reinterpreting them to root out what conservatives perceive as anti-white, anti-male, anti-Christian & anti-Jewish discrimination. Under this interpretation, journalists, academics, civil servants & other managerial elites are merely using claims of "authoritarianism" and "fascism" against Trump to whip up a moral panic and obscure their agenda which is tantamount to "soft totalitarianism" under the guise of diversity, equity & inclusion administered by the "managerial state".

As you can see, the first 2 sections present scenarios which differ in their severity but put the blame mostly or entirely on the forces of right-wing authoritarianism, Christian nationalism & white supremacy, as well as its grifters & useful idiots. For most proponents of these scenarios, the radical left plays a merely incidental role in terms of giving the radical right a scapegoat.

The latter 2 sections present scenarios which are different in their outlooks but both put some or most of the blame on aspects of "liberalism" - economic liberalism (a.k.a. "neoliberalism" or "free-market fundamentalism") for Scenario 3 and social liberalism (a.k.a. "identity politics" or "cultural Marxism") for Scenario 4. In these latter 2 scenarios, the radical left is often seen as having a symbiotic relationship with the establishment left, and both share much of the blame for provoking the right into taking such drastic actions.

Please keep in mind that several or all of the scenarios presented in each section may have some true claims without being entirely true, and that they're not necessarily all mutually exclusive. It's not uncommon for people on the left to go back & forth between Scenarios 1 & 2, centrists to draw upon aspects of both Scenarios 2 & 3, and conservatives to use arguments from Scenarios 3 & 4. However, these scenarios are not necessarily exhaustive of the entire range of possibilities. Rather, these scenarios are just some of the more common narratives I've heard from journalists, pundits & academics over the last year or so, and I'm hoping they can serve as the launching point for a more nuanced discussion.

DO WE KNOW WHICH SCENARIO IS CLOSEST TO THE EXPERT CONSENSUS? AND HOW RELIABLE OR BIASED ARE THE EXPERTS?

As far as I can tell, the closest proxy we have to an "expert consensus" would be the Bright Line Watch which is an organization created back in 2017 that regularly polls U.S. political scientists & the general public on issues related to the health of democracy and government actions that potentially breach democratic norms. I encourage you to read the key findings of their recent survey from Sept. 2025 of both 703 political scientists and a representative sample of 2,750 Americans - it's entitled: "Violence, redistricting, and democratic norms in Trump’s America". In general, it appears to best align with the 2nd scenario we'll look at, since it says "current expert ratings of U.S. democracy are closer to those of a mixed or illiberal democracy than a full democracy or countries often considered as relevant comparisons such as Great Britain and Canada." It also notes that "human forecasts from the Metaculus prediction platform and those from experts are broadly consistent after adjusting for experts’ prior tendency toward pessimism. AI forecasts from the startup Mantic, which has created the best-performing AI forecasting bot to date, rate the likelihood of most events lower than either human source."

If you'd like to understand the research being done at Bright Line Watch and how much we should trust the experts, I'd recommend listening to the Niskanen Center's interview with political scientist Brendan Nyhan back in January. The interviewer, Matt Grossman, prods Nyhan by pointing out that "you found that experts tend to overestimate or be too pessimistic about democratic threats.... [In Trump's first term,] there’s events that [scholars] thought were 65% likely to occur that 20% of them occurred or so. So we got pretty high, and I know at the highest levels, they did occur, but we got pretty far into a consensus that didn’t materialize. So what are the reasons for that? Is there liberal bias in academia? Is there just a negativity bias when you’re asking people about a bunch of threats? Is there something that went wrong in the reasoning that we can tell?"

Nyhan responds by saying: "We don’t have a lot of direct evidence on why this is taking place. It’s certainly possible that it’s political bias. I don’t think the totality of the evaluations offered by our experts across all their survey responses is consistent with that. I’ll say for instance, if you look at the overall evaluations of democracy during Trump’s term, the experts barely moved. They expressed concern. We asked people are these things threats to democracy? But they didn’t engage in the doomerism that we often saw online, and they consistently rated the US democracy as pretty stable, and while imperfect, significantly better than countries like Brazil and Russia and so forth. So I’m not convinced that the political bias story is the right one. I think negativity bias is an important idea to evaluate. And in our new future surveys, we hope to include negative events that aren’t related to democracy as well as events related to democracy that are neutral or positive to be able to better isolate how much that’s contributing. The final factor is, I think it may simply be these events are ones that seem especially intuitive. They coincide with narratives about Trump and potential vulnerabilities... And in selecting them in that way, we may be drawing out their beliefs on the kinds of events that they’re most likely to override their prevalence of."

RELEVANT MATERIALS FROM PAST MEETUPS:

Way back in Dec. 2017, we had a meetup entitled "Trump & Post-Truth Politics." We discussed: (1) the "Goldwater rule" and rhetorical analysis of Trump's speeches, (2) applying Occam's razor & Hanlon's Razor to the Trump administration, (3) the debate over "Trump Derangement Syndrome", (4) political fact-checking websites & their reliability in the age of "alternative facts", and (5) Trump as a "bullsh*tter" and "master persuader".

Back in Feb. 2018 we had a meetup entitled "Are We In A Global 'Democratic Recession'?" We discussed: (1) the components of democracy (free & fair elections, civil liberties, civil society, rule of law); (2) correlations between rankings on "democracy indices" and economic growth, personal freedoms, social progress & happiness; (3) whether we're in a global "democratic recession" - and if so, why; (4) has the U.S. declined into a "flawed democracy" - and if so, why.

In Sept. 2018, we had a meetup entitled "Can We Predict Geopolitical Conflict?" where we discussed the principles for geopolitical forecasting that Philip Tetlock discovered in his research with the Good Judgment Project. In the 3rd section, we looked at what factors can predict civil unrest, military coups & popular revolts. In the 4th section, we looked at looked at what factors can predict civil wars & mass atrocities.

In Oct. 2020, we had a meetup entitled "Is Constitutional Conservatism Dying?" We looked at the social trajectory of the American conservatism movement from the resistance to FDR's New Deal, to the Reagan & Gingrich Revolutions in the 1980s-90s, to the way the "libertarian moment" fizzled amid the Tea Party populism of the 2010s, which in turn paved the way for rise of Donald Trump. We also discussed the East Coast vs West Coast Straussian split over Trump, and the debate among Christian conservatives about whether fidelity to classical liberal ideals should be retained or jettisoned.

Back in Jan. 2021, just after the storming of the Capitol on 1/6, the Skeptics had a meetup entitled "Bad History & Our Political Crisis". We looked at political turmoil & violence in Weimar Germany and the U.S. in the lead-up to the Civil War and compared & contrasted this with modern-day America.

In Nov. 2022, we had a meetup entitled "Understanding the Great Realignment" and the 4th section dealt with the possibility that Trumpism" and the "Great Awokening" are realigning the two major parties, leading to a GOP that's more driven by a working-class/middle class coalition in the rural, suburban & exurban areas and a Democratic Party that's based around an multiracial urban coalition composed of a college-educated elite and lower-wage service workers. We explored how the current party coalitions might fracture in a meetup in Jun. 2024 entitled "Which Party's Coalition Will Crack First?", focusing on Democrats' struggles with young people and black & Hispanic voters (particularly men), and Republicans' struggles with major corporations and suburban middle-class whites (particularly women).

Back in September of this year, shortly after the shooting of Charlie Kirk, we had a meetup entitled "Is Political Violence Increasing in America?" We discussed: (1) what we can learn from studies on who commits political violence & which portion of the public supports it, (2) what we can learn from studies on hate crimes & the public's underlying racial/ethnic animosities, (3) the political effects of peaceful protests vs riots and the "radical flank effect," and (4) conflict cycle theories and whether they indicate the U.S. is at risk of a civil war.

DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of some of the major debates over democratic decline in the U.S. over the past decade. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the numbered videos linked under each section - the videos come to about 61 minutes total. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I've listed some questions under each section to stimulate discussion. We'll do our best to address most of them, as well as whatever other questions our members raise. I figure we'll spend about 40 minutes on each section.

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I. ARGUMENTS FOR WHY TRUMP IS CAUSING A RAPID SLIDE TOWARDS A SYSTEM OF "COMPETITIVE AUTHORITARIANISM" & A "POLICE STATE" WHICH COULD PRECIPITATE AN EXTENDED CIVIL CONFLICT:

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1a) NYT w/ Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder & Jason Stanley, "We’re Experts in Fascism. We’re Leaving the U.S." (video - 6:53 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXR9PByA9SY

1b) History Documentary Channel, "Expert [Barbara F. Walter] Reveals the Signs & Risks of Civil War 2.0" (video - 4:15 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of3Up6qDoVU

• Peter Savodnik, "Timothy Snyder Spent Years Studying Fascists. He Thinks Trump Is One - Is the Yale historian a prophet, as his supporters say? Or is he stripping the word ‘fascism’ of its meaning?"
  https://www.thefp.com/p/timothy-snyder-spent-years-studying
• Benjamin Hart, "This Is Going Even Worse Than Steven Levitsky Expected"
  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/how-trump-brought-competitive-authoritarianism-to-america.html
• Jack Landman Goldsmith & Bob Bauer, "Here’s What Trump Could Unleash by Invoking the Insurrection Act"
  https://www.aei.org/op-eds/heres-what-trump-could-unleash-by-invoking-the-insurrection-act/
• Jake Lahut, "Historians Don't Think a US Civil War Is Likely—but They're Still Nervous" (Wired)
  https://archive.ph/4MQrW
• Barbara F. Walter, "The Thing That Scares Me The Most: Five Warning Signs of a Police State in the Making"
  https://barbarafwalter.substack.com/p/the-thing-that-scares-me-the-most
• Dima Kortukov & Juian G. Waller, "Authoritarianism, Reform, or Capture?: Democracy in Trump’s America" - Focus on Section Entitled "Autocratization Is Harder than It Looks" (American Affairs)
  https://archive.ph/oekZo

II. ARGUMENTS FOR WHY TRUMP'S CRONYISM & USE OF "LAWFARE" HAS ERODED DEMOCRATIC NORMS & LED TO A DYSFUNCTIONAL "FLAWED DEMOCRACY" WHERE RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, LOWER "STATE CAPACITY" & "SOFT SECESSION" ARE MORE LIKELY THAN AUTHORITARIANISM OR CIVIL CONFLICT:

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2a) MSNBC w/ Joanne Freeman, "‘Blatant cronyism’: Trump’s gutting of the civil service has historic parallels to ‘spoils system’" (video - 9:24 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yM24CvEQAs

2b) CBS w/ Jeffrey Rosen, Gillian Metzger, Don McGahn, "Are we heading toward a constitutional crisis?"(video - 7:59 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UscjaQXPZo

• Jamelle Bouie, "How Far Gone Are We [according to Jack Balkin's "Constitutional Rot" Theory]?"
  https://archive.ph/gzp0B
• Christopher Wright Durocher, "A Unitary Executive on Steroids Threatens to Crush the Constitution"
  https://www.acslaw.org/inbrief/a-unitary-executive-on-steroids-threatens-to-crush-the-constitution/
• Richard Hanania, "Kakistocracy as a Natural Result of Populism: The problem with anti-establishment politics"
  https://www.richardhanania.com/p/kakistocracy-as-a-natural-result
• Philip K. Howard, "Does Trump have the right idea about dismantling the Deep State? 'Trump’s diagnosis is correct in part but his reform proposal badly misses the target,' writes one observer."
  https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/10/does-trump-have-right-idea-about-dismantling-deep-state/400070/
• Yuval Levin, "You Can’t Run Government Through Retribution: Donald Trump’s key early actions are responses to frustrations from his first term. But did he learn the wrong lesson?"
  https://www.thefp.com/p/donald-trumps-revenge
• Andrew C. McCarthy, "The Trump Effect: On the Rule of Law - A country in which law is king asks not whether government hardball works but whether it is legal"
  https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2025/11/the-trump-effect-on-the-rule-of-law/
• Clara Jeffrey, "It’s Time for Soft Secession: How blue states can use their economic clout to stand up to Trump’s agenda—starting with California."
  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/its-time-for-soft-secession/

III. ARGUMENTS FOR WHY TRUMPIAN POPULISM IS PART OF THE "GREAT REALIGNMENT" WHERE THE G.O.P. SLOWLY TRANSITIONS INTO A MULTIRACIAL WORKING CLASS PARTY BASED ON "PRODUCERISM" RATHER THAN A WHITE NATIONALIST PARTY BASED ON FASCISM:

• SECTION 3, QUESTION 1: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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3a) Daily Signal w/ Patrick Ruffini, "The Multiracial Populist Voters Reshaping the Republican Party" (video - 22:32 min, listen from 0:39 to 9:05)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAak9cZLJ6o&t=39s

3b) Eric Metaxas Show w/ Michael Lind, "Can Democracy Be Saved from the 'Managerial Elite'?'" (video - 6:53 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq3kYVc3UyM

• Edward Helmore, "The new class war: did a liberal elite pave the way for rise of Trump? Michael Lind’s new book argues that ‘technocratic neoliberalism’ cut itself off from white working-class heartlands and opened the door to rightwing populism"
  https://archive.ph/HxTLI
• Michael C. Bender, et al., "In Trump’s Win, G.O.P. Sees Signs of a Game-Changing New Coalition: Donald J. Trump picked up support among Latino and Black working-class voters [in 2024], giving the party hope for a new way to win in a diversifying nation."
  https://archive.ph/nwtSt
• Christian Paz, "Are tariffs breaking up Trump’s working-class coalition?
  A large share of the country still seems to view the Republican Party as the party of the people." (Vox)
  https://archive.ph/mE08R
• Paul Blumenthal, "It’s Official: [Trump's Big Beautiful Bill Tax Cuts Proves] The GOP Is Not A Working-Class Party"
  https://www.yahoo.com/news/official-gop-not-working-class-225221356.html
• Michael Cuenco, "The American Gentry’s Unrealized Potential [as 'Honest Brokers Between Capital and Labor']"
  https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-american-gentry-s-unrealized-potential/
• Jerry Taylor & Samuel Hammond, "How to Transcend Trump’s Hold Over the GOP"
  https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-to-transcend-trumps-hold-over-the-gop/
• Nils Hesse, "Dirty Hands vs. Decentralized Producerism: The Populist Logic Behind Trump’s Tariffs - The costs associated with 'industry jobs' are high and tangible — and never paid by the elites who want to 'bring them back.'"
  https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/dirty-hands-vs-decentralized-producerism-the-populist-logic-behind-trumps-tariffs/
• George Lowry & Richard Hanania, "The National Populist Illusion: Why Culture, Not Economics, Drives American Politics"
  https://www.cspicenter.com/p/the-national-populist-illusion-why-culture-not-economics-drives-american-politics

IV. ARGUMENTS FOR WHY TRUMP'S DRASTIC ACTIONS ARE MERELY PART OF RESTORING LAW & ORDER, FLEXING "UNITARY EXECUTIVE" AUTHORITY, AND REVERSING THE LEFT'S "LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS":

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4a) The Hill w/ Dritan Nesho, "Trump Policies Hugely Popular, New Poll Finds: 81 Percent Support Deporting Illegal Migrants" (video - 8:49 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0KVQwTw-Nk

4b) CBS News w/ Jessica Levinson, "What is the unitary executive theory and how might Trump be using it to transform government?" (video - 4:41 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yad8iVoZBg

4c) Chronicle of Higher Education w/ Chris Rufo, "Chris Rufo Floats Calling in ‘Troops’ [to end DEI in Universities]" (video - 56:14 min, listen from 49:08 to 53:19)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFCj_3zd6GM&t=49m8s

• Simon Jenkins, "Donald Trump is moving fast and breaking things, but that may result in a better US"
  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/27/donald-trump-moving-fast-breaking-things-better-us
• Rich Lowry, "This Is Not What Authoritarianism Looks Like: The absurd L.A. freak-out"
  https://archive.ph/HbCLi
• Rebecca Shabad, "Mayor Muriel Bowser says Trump's surge of federal law enforcement has lowered crime in D.C. The Democratic mayor also said the presence of masked ICE agents and National Guard members 'is not working.'"
  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/bowser-trump-police-takeover-lower-dc-crime-national-guard-ice-rcna227582
• James R. Rogers, "Democratic Efficacy and the Unitary Executive: A unitary executive is both constitutionally demanded and conducive to democratic governance."
  https://lawliberty.org/forum/democratic-efficacy-and-the-unitary-executive/
• Christopher Caldwell, "The Biggest Policy Change of the Century: Trump is not simply eliminating the affirmative-action enforcement machinery. He is throwing it into reverse." (Free Press)
  https://archive.ph/krh7x
• Matt Grossman & David A. Hopkins, "How conservatives lost the institutions: Instead of cultivating the professions, the conservative movement has attacked the legitimacy of the nation’s organizational infrastructure."
  https://hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/how-conservatives-lost-the-institutions
• Gregory Conti, "The Right Must Stand for Free Speech"
  https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-right-must-stand-for-free-speech/

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Mon, Oct 27 · 7:00 PM EDT

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Online

FAIR Event: "The Conscience of Democracy"

Online

This event is FREE, but you must register at the link below, at which point you'll be given a link to the Zoom event - https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_j7KLsnS7T56x4Z5si66QiA#/registration

EVENT DESCRIPTION:
Starting in October, FAIR is launching an exciting campaign to celebrate America's 250th anniversary!

Rather than merely looking backward at what our founders accomplished, we will examine how today’s Americans – across all demographics, backgrounds, and beliefs – are applying those same foundational principles to solve contemporary problems. We’ll demonstrate that democracy isn’t a relic to be preserved, but a living experiment that demands our active participation.

This campaign will also support FAIR's American Experience curriculum, which is designed to help students understand that throughout our nation’s history Americans have always found ways to bridge differences, overcome challenges, and create a more perfect union. From October 2025 through July 2026, we'll explore themes that directly reflect our curriculum's core principles.

Our theme for October (this webinar) will be "The Conscience of Democracy." This webinar will explore how respectful disagreement and constructive criticism have strengthened American democracy throughout history, and continue to do so today.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Host - Monica Harris, is the Executive Director of Fair For All. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She spent more than a decade as a business and legal affairs executive at Walt Disney Television, NBCUniversal Media, and Viacom Media Networks. In 2011, Harris abandoned corporate life and moved with her family to Montana where she launched her own firm and serviced entertainment clients remotely. Monica is also a TEDx speaker, author, and blogger who advocates for balanced, common sense solutions to systemic problems based on our shared values and goals. Her 2022 book, The Illusion of Division, argued that America isn’t nearly as divided as we’re led to believe, and that political opportunism and exploitative media have distorted our collective reality by amplifying our differences and polarizing us with hot-button issues.

Robert P. George - Robert P. George is McCormick Professorship of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has chaired the U.S. Commission on the International Religious Freedom and served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President's Council on Bioethics. He was a Judicial Fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore, he holds JD and MTS degrees from Harvard University and the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and DLitt from Oxford University. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom, the Irving Kristol Award of the American Enterprise Institute, and Princeton University's President's Award for Distinguished Teaching. He's the author of over a dozen books, most recently a work co-authored with Cornel West entitled Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division (2025).

Nadine Strossen - New York Law School Professor Emerita Nadine Strossen, past national President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), is a Senior Fellow with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and a leading expert and frequent speaker/media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties, who has testified before Congress on multiple occasions. She serves on the advisory boards of the ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, FAIR, and National Coalition Against Censorship. The National Law Journal has named Strossen one of America's "100 Most Influential Lawyers." She is the author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018) and Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know (2023). She is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series released on public television in October 2023. In 2023, the National Coalition Against Censorship (an alliance of more than 50 national non-profit organizations) selected Strossen for its Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech.

ABOUT THE EVENT HOST:
This is an online event hosted by FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity.

FAIR was founded in 2020 and boasts an impressive board of advisors that includes psychologists Jonathan Haidt & Fred Luskin, legal scholars Nadine Strossen & Robert P. George, sociologist Ilana Redstone, political scientist Wilfred Reilly & Shadi Hamid, and journalists Angelo Eduardo, Jonathan Kay, Michael Shellenberger, John Wood Jr., and Andrew Sullivan.

For more info about FAIR, check out their website at https://www.fairforall.org/about/

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Wed, Oct 29 · 12:00 PM EDT

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Online

Cato Institute Book Discussion: "No Adult Left Behind"

Online

Event Title:
Online Book Forum: "No Adult Left Behind: How Politics Hijacks Education Policy and Hurts Kids"

Registering for the Online Event:
To register for and watch this FREE event, go to: https://www.cato.org/events/no-adult-left-behind-how-politics-hijacks-education-policy-hurts-kids

You can also watch it live on Vimeo - https://vimeo.com/1123669172

NOTE: You can submit questions in the comment box on the Cato Institute's event page. For event updates, follow @CatoInstitute on X. If you have questions about the event or your registration, please email events@​cato.​org.

Event Description:
It is often said that public schooling is the bedrock of democracy. It prepares children to be knowledgeable citizens, and some believe that it exemplifies democratic governance through its control by locally elected school boards. But what if such control is a bug, not a feature? What if it elevates the concerns of adults, many of whom do not even have children, over the children the schools are supposed to teach? And what if it turns education into a gladiatorial political arena rather than a peaceful realm for learning?

For decades, Americans have debated why our students consistently score lower than their peers in other developed countries. While most debates have focused on school spending, curriculum, teacher quality, and teachers’ unions, No Adult Left Behind argues that local democratic control is the root of the problem. Elected school boards govern local school districts, but only adults vote in local elections – most of whom don’t have children or care about academics. This leads to educational debates that are centered around issues that adults care most about, such as partisanship, identity politics, property values, and employment concerns, while the needs of students get left behind. In identifying the misalignment between the interests of school children and the political and policy agendas of the adults who control education, No Adult Left Behind stands to become a landmark study on modern education politics.

Join us to discuss!

About the Speakers:
* Vladimir Kogan is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Ohio State University and one of America's leading scholars of education politics. Kogan previously covered education at the Voice of San Diego, a pioneering nonprofit specializing in investigative journalism. He's the author of Paradise Plundered: Fiscal Crisis and Governance Failures in San Diego (2011) and No Adult Left Behind: How Politics Hijacks Education Policy and Hurts Kids (2025).
* Charles Wilson is Professor of Law Emeritus at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, former President of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) in 2020-21, and an at-large member of the Worthington Schools Board of Education in Ohio from 2008 to 2013.
* Neal McCluskey is Director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, and has a PhD in Public Policy from Georgetown University. He is the author of the books Feds in the Classroom (2006) and The Fractured Schoolhouse (2022) and is coeditor of several volumes, including School Choice Myths (2020) and Unprofitable Schooling (2019).

About the Cato Institute:
Founded in 1976, the Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. The institute advocates for free market economic policies, protection of civil liberties, criminal justice reform, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. It publishes the annual "Human Freedom Index" that ranks countries based on their levels of personal & economic freedoms, and it hosts cross-partisan discussions monthly at "Cato Unbound". To learn more, go to https://www.cato.org/about

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