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

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?

Pritzker had at least one statement along these lines in the last few days - he gets it.

Some racial profiling was happening from the start, but the operation was supercharged in mid-May when the White House ordered ICE to stop using warrants, targeted operations, and just "go out on the streets" and arrest people. These arrests shot from 500/week to 1,500/week

If R's are going to be the working-class party, they'll need to do better than ruinous debt and tariffs. There is a subtle way of thinking about growth that we have lost, this piece shows. 2/2

But local and even state politics are much more fluid, which is also why political reform probably needs to start at the bottom. 2/2

Punchcard society. Show your card, get a punch.

Iran is interesting because there is a hard decision that will commit Trump, period. If the bomb is dropped, it doesn't come back. If two weeks in it is not dropped, it probably won't be. Most of these other areas lack such an obvious focal point so far.

I would not assume they will "chicken out" on any major piece of this. I would assume they are going to carefully evaluate just how hard each constraint actually is and have some kind of negotiation on which one to try and blow through.

Tons of major initiatives are in limbo as other players show Trump their mettle and he (and his court) mulls over/fights over whether to apply more brute force or not. They tried to warp us into a new domestic and political universe and are hitting turbulence in the warp zone.

But since then he has hit some hard constraints that require political tradeoffs even in his narrow authoritarian conception of what it means to hold power. Markets crashed, courts repudiated him, the public got activated, efforts on Israel-Iran-Gaza/Ukraine got stuck, Congress started dealing.