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 […]
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 […]
Oil Tankers Anchored in the Strait of Hormuz Trump promised to reshape the Middle East and break Iran’s power. Instead, the war risks producing the opposite outcome: an Iran that retains strategic leverage, a China poised to exploit American missteps, and a United States struggling to preserve the maritime order that has anchored its prosperity […]
STS-107 Crew Photo, taken aboard Columbia The greatest threat to a democracy is not necessarily a dramatic rupture. It can be the slow, steady acceptance of behavior that previous generations would have immediately recognized as unacceptable. On January 28th 1986 the world watched in horror as NASA’s space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. A […]
Former senior CIA operations officer Jim Lawler sits down with Larry Pfeiffer, former senior director of the White House Situation Room and chief of staff to CIA Director Michael Hayden, who describes the rigors of working in the Situation Room, crisis decision-making, and what it takes to deliver accurate information when seconds matter. He describes […]
“…a government of laws and not men.” John Adams The federal judiciary has become a key target of presidential anger precisely because it remains one of the few institutions still capable of constraining executive misconduct. There has never been a US chief executive who hates judges and the law the way this one does. Because […]