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 […]
🎧 The Bob Mueller Standard: Justice, Integrity, and Public Service
/in SubstackWhat 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 […]
Transcript Episode 31: The Bob Mueller Standard: Justice, Integrity, and Public Service
/in SubstackIs Putin Winning Without Firing a Shot?
/in SubstackFor 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 […]
The Weekly: Death By A Thousand Small Surrenders
/in SubstackAmerica 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, […]
It’s a Free Country … Isn’t It?
/in SubstackBy 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 […]
Common Sense, Take 2: Democracy as a Patient, Part II
/in SubstackA 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 […]
Democracy Dies the Death of a Thousand Cuts
/in SubstackThe 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 […]
Common Sense Take 2: Democracy as a Patient
/in SubstackA 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 […]
Iran Defeats America
/in SubstackOil 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 […]
Normalization of Deviance
/in SubstackSTS-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 […]