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Ruben Gallego’s Battle Against Kari Lake Could Decide the Fate of the Senate—And Our Democracy

Ruben Gallego’s Battle Against Kari Lake Could Decide the Fate of the Senate—And Our Democracyn the afternoon of January 6, 2021, as election deniers armed with Tasers and tomahawks overran the US Capitol, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) handed his colleague and close friend Eric Swalwell a pen. “Here,” he said to the California Democrat. “Stick this in their neck if they get close to you.” The Marine veteran, who’d seen combat in Iraq, leaped on a table and began issuing instructions to other panicked lawmakers, showing them how to don the gas masks secured under their chairs: “Tear gas will not kill you. But it’s important to remain calm. If you hyperventilate, you may pass out.” If necessary, Gallego told himself, he could use his own pen as a weapon to take a more lethal one from a rioter. Three years later, the battle for American democracy continues, and Gallego,…


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The Ego Has Crash-Landed

The Ego Has Crash-LandedDonald Trump dominated the news cycle this weekend. Everybody’s talking about the outrageous things he said at his rally in Dayton, Ohio—above all, his menacing warning of a “bloodbath” if he is defeated in November. To follow political news is to again be immersed in all Trump, all the time. And that’s why Trump will lose.At the end of the 1980 presidential debate, the then-challenger Ronald Reagan posed a famous series of questions that opened with “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”Why that series of questions was so powerful is important to understand. Reagan was not just delivering an explicit message about prices and wages. His summation also sent an implicit message about his understanding of how and why a vote was earned.As a presidential candidate that year, Reagan arrived as a hugely famous and important person. He was the champion of the…


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Will RFK, Jr. and Other Third Party Candidates Help Doom Democracy?

Will RFK, Jr. and Other Third Party Candidates Help Doom Democracy?In the summer of 2000, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a scion of the Democratic Party dynasty, took time out of his schedule as an environmental attorney to write an op-ed for the New York Times. In the piece, Kennedy hailed consumer advocate Ralph Nader as his “friend and hero,” but he lambasted him for mounting a third-party run for president. Nader could “siphon votes” from Vice President Al Gore, who was running against Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Kennedy warned, saying it was “irresponsible” for Nader to argue that there was “little distinction” between the Democratic and Republican nominees. A vote for Nader, Kennedy asserted, “is a vote for Mr. Bush” and for what he considered a disaster: the Republicans’ anti-environment agenda. That was then. Twenty-four years later, now an anti-­vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, Kennedy has broken with the Democratic…


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War-Gaming for Democracy

War-Gaming for DemocracyIt’s January 21, 2025, the first full day of the second Trump administration. Members of a right-wing paramilitary group, deputized by the president to patrol the border, have killed a migrant family. Video of the incident sparks outrage, sending local protesters swarming to ICE detention centers. Left-wing pro-immigrant groups begin arriving in border states to reinforce the protests, setting off clashes.In response, the Democratic governors of New Mexico and Arizona mobilize National Guard units, ordering them to disperse the paramilitaries. But these groups, having been deputized by the president, are recognized under Articles I and II of the Constitution as legal militias. The commander of the New Mexico National Guard refuses orders from the governor, saying that migrants pose the true threat, not patriotic Americans defending their homes. The governor summarily relieves him of command. On his way out the door, the general pledges to “continue to follow…


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RFK Jr’s VP Pick Is a Fervent Critic of IVF: ‘One of the Biggest Lies’ About Women’s Fertili...

RFK Jr’s VP Pick Is a Fervent Critic of IVF: ‘One of the Biggest Lies’ About Women’s Fertili…AP Photo/Eric Risberg Nicole Shanahan, the 38-year-old tech entrepreneur and attorney who was announced this week as presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, has expressed deep skepticism of in vitro fertilization. Politico’s Brittany Gibson published a profile of Shanahan’s comments about women’s fertility on Thursday that featured a compilation of her comments on IVF, including this statement in a February interview with the Australian Financial Times: Shanahan felt IVF was sold as a “saving grace” to her and her peers. The statistics show that is far from the case. Each round only works about one-third of the time for a woman under 35, with success rates falling as she ages. Shanahan began to view IVF as a “commercial endeavor” rather than a scientific one. “It became abundantly clear that we just…


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The Supreme Court Is Shaming Itself

The Supreme Court Is Shaming ItselfDonald Trump is determined to avoid accountability before the general election, and, so far, the U.S. Supreme Court is helping him.Trump has no legal ground whatsoever to delay a ruling in his plea for presidential immunity. The reason Trump has nevertheless sought to slow down the immunity appeals process is obvious: to postpone the trial date, hopefully pushing it into a time when, as president, he would control the Department of Justice and thus could squash the prosecution altogether. The Supreme Court has shamed itself by being a party to this, when the sole issue before the Court is presidential immunity. By contrast, Special Counsel Jack Smith has both law and policy on his side in seeking a prompt determination on immunity and a speedy trial soon thereafter. Yet the Court has ignored all that.[David A. Graham: The cases against Trump–a guide]The Supreme Court’s lollygagging…


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