For years, military barrier-analysis teams helped identify and remove obstacles that drove talented people away from service. Their elimination—and the broader purge of transgender personnel—has sent a different message: belonging is conditional. That message carries a readiness cost that will outlast any single administration. In June 2024, around fifty people, most in uniform, a few […]
A new book, Common Sense: Take 2, A Call to Renew Democracy, contends that the United States is confronting not simply a political crisis but a deeper crisis of democratic capacity. Written by Russ Travers, a career public servant across multiple administrations who retired as Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the book focuses […]
President Trump in the Situation Room Bill Pulte’s failed nomination and Jay Clayton’s selection are not the story. They are symptoms of a deeper problem—a president who appears to place greater faith in personal instinct than professional intelligence. When policymakers stop listening, even the best intelligence in the world becomes irrelevant. The outcry over the […]
What does it mean to be a federal prosecutor when the client is the United States and the measure of success is not simply winning, but doing justice and doing it the right way? In the latest Steady State Sentinel podcast, former federal prosecutor and Steady State member Steve Bunnell interviews former federal prosecutor Ken […]
For decades, conservatives saw Russia as a threat to freedom. Today, many admire the very qualities that once made Moscow dangerous: strongman rule, contempt for institutions, and politics driven by grievance and loyalty. Putin’s greatest success may not be abroad—it may be here. Is Russia Now America’s Ally? For nearly eighty years, the answer would […]
America is under strain, but the story is not yet one of collapse. It is a story about whether democratic institutions can endure long enough for citizens to defend them. This week the Steady State doubled down on the fact that the greatest threat to American democracy is not a sudden coup or dramatic crisis, […]
By Annie Phorzheimer and Yulia Almazova Freedom is not lost only through laws, arrests, or censorship. It also erodes when citizens begin to censor themselves, avoid dissent, and accept fear as a normal part of public life, surrendering freedoms long before they realize they are disappearing. Annie: I was born and raised in the United […]
A new book, Common Sense: Take 2, A Call to Renew Democracy, contends that the United States is confronting not simply a political crisis but a deeper crisis of democratic capacity. Written by Russ Travers, a career public servant across multiple administrations who retired as Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the book focuses […]
The death of democracy is rarely announced with a loud and dramatic blow. Instead, it often arrives through quiet normalization: a rule bent here, an institution weakened there. It descends upon a public so overwhelmed by spectacle that it misses the quiet activities that have undermined the democratic structure, as termites eat away the foundation […]