David Dagan

I think there's a difference between responding to the latest right-wing media provocation and trying to persuade people who have been soaked in bad arguments why they should reconsider. Isn't that a good use of our time these days, if appropriately framed and targeted?

To what extent was the U.S. already in crisis before the rise in populism we've seen over the past few years?

It's a serious debate among defenders of the liberal-democratic order. Recent responses to Brink Lindsey's new book have brought it to the forefront. ⬇️

Can we create a digital economy that strengthens democracy instead of eroding it?

This week in Hypertext ⤵️

Incredible courage from these witnesses, whose fear of retaliatory or preemptive violence is 100% justified.

They also believe hotter rhetoric will mobilize more undecideds to their side and/or fortify their true believers for whatever final clash they imagine is coming, with the midterm clock ticking on their fascist ambitions.

But it also raises salience so the sane majority hopefully wakes up. I'm not sure this is a *strategy* given the characters involved, but it's the logic now at work. The logic, in other words, of authoritarian consolidation. 2/2

The logic of the escalating violence & rhetoric is to force max number of R's and nonattentive folks into the pro-paramilitary corner because they either like what they see or just believe the lies, and/or to set off a confrontation w/ local/state authorities that provides pretext for worse. 1/2

But if you listen to Goldsmith and Bauer today, it becomes clear just how much of an own goal this will be. He is in a loss-overreach spiral that will badly wound us but exposes the limits of his power, and thereby degrades it.

The only big reveal here is that the purported truth-teller hasn’t graduated out of the wading pool of political thought. 4/4

In general, these folks imagine themselves as making bold revelations when they announce to us that the world is structured by force. But this is not something that liberalism denies or obscures; it is the underlying assumption of liberalism. 3/4

If victims can exist, that would suggest that force might be subject to reflection and accountability. In other words, that it might be constrained by something other than raw power. 2/4

The demagogic response to the ICE killing is the domestic side of Stephen Millerism. This administration cannot recognize the category of “victim” in regard to its policies or the agents carrying them out; any victim must be immediately converted into an enemy. 1/4

I am thankful for the heroes of Jan. 6 and all who worked so hard for accountability. Their America will outlast the mob and its leader.

The likeliest scenario is that Venezuela's new leadership tells Trump what he wants to hear on the phone and then acts differently, and he allows it to happen - because otherwise, he's committed to a disaster. 3/3

Voters who thought they were getting the anti-inflation, America First president now see as dramatically as possible that they got a Mafia boss who is willing to shed American blood to extract foreign oil. 2/3

Domestically, this may prove Trump's biggest blunder. How will MAGA isolationists take his plans to occupy Venezuela? A cowardly Congress refused to pass a law that would have prevented this intervention, but if Venezuela's new leader refuses to play ball, will they support a bloodbath? 1/3

Statement on Trump's Venezuela action by Cato Vice President for Legal Studies Clark Neily: * As a legal matter, any challenge by Nicolas Maduro to his capture last night and subsequent rendition to the United States would run headlong into precedents involving the prosecution of Manuel Noriega in the 1990s. Courts have already upheld the unilateral seizure, prosecution, and conviction of a foreign leader under materially similar circumstances, and given longstanding judicial deference in foreign-affairs cases, judges are unlikely to distinguish that line of authority in Maduro's case. That conclusion, however, should not obscure the deeper constitutional concern here, which is profound. The Constitution deliberately assigns to Congress—not the President—the power to decide when the United States will initiate hostilities against foreign sovereigns. That assignment includes the power to declare war and the related authority to issue letters of marque and reprisal to private entities, both of which reflect a constitutional judgment that decisions risking international conflict, retaliation, and escalation should not rest with a single executive actor. When a President unilaterally deploys military force abroad to seize a foreign head of state—effectively collapsing war powers, foreign relations, and criminal law enforcement into a single executive decision—the constitutional safeguards designed to cabin the use of force against other countries are bypassed entirely. That concern is not cured by the existence of a valid indictment. An indictment may (or may not) explain why a President wishes to act, but it cannot supply the constitutional authority to do so through military force without meaningful congressional engagement, let alone authorization.

Statement from Cato VP Clark Neily: Courts probably won't rule against the rendition. Yet Trump has chosen to bypass the constitutional provisions designed to cabin the president's powers in using force against other countries. And an indictment does not supply him with those powers.

The guy who ran against the Iraq War is offering us Iraq on steroids. The congressional abdication. The thin pretext. The myopia about the potential for a bloodbath. All caricatures of 23 years ago. And the caricature of 2003 - the oil play - is now real.

Let’s bake the liberal sourdough Yes, Jonathan V. Last, liberalism needs to revisit its recipe. No, Ross Douthat, we should not give up on the starter.

Earlier this month, Ross Douthat argued that “the liberal order can’t heal itself.”

The next day, @jvl.bsky.social told liberals to stop the masochism.

But the answer is neither despair nor restoration, but a liberal reconstruction.
hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/lets-bake-...

MJT-Bongino 2028

I’m poking a stick just a little bit in @jvl.bsky.social's eye here, but he is an indispensable read for me in these brutal times and his insight always leaves you sharper, agree or disagree. 2/3

Examining how our elite went wrong is not masochism and New Right flirtation. The question is precisely how our leadership class wound up allowing these people anywhere close to power, and caving repeatedly to the predations of the Trump administration in recent months. 1/2

Joining the Black Friday Amazon boycott this weekend led me to rediscover @kanopy.com! Double-win! @awscloud.bsky.social

You don't have to be a genius to understand why DOGE was a disaster. But even serious people can get government reform badly wrong. To do it right, we need to study the pitfalls - and I'm jazzed about this Hypertext issue doing just that.

Read the whole thing!

They should be subject to protest and boycott because they're selling all of us out. And there should be a civil society effort to provide them with all the cover they need to fight back. These are actors over which there may be more levers of influence than the government itself at this point. 2/2

ABC has joined the slackjaw club, dismayed at being called on its proclaimed principles, incapable of retort. It joins law firms, broadcasters, and Fortune 500 corporations that have all been exposed as suffering from an advanced stage of moral rot. Trump sensed that spinelessness and pushed. 1/2

That is true. But it's being open to challenges nonetheless, and the big question is whether this mode can be harnessed to a democratic politics. Because it's not going away, I think?

One of the most baffling points in the @ezraklein.bsky.social piece on Kirk: "We can live with losing an election because we believe in the promise of the next election." But Kirk didn't! And yet Ezra concludes: "We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics."