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What was geared up to be a tense standoff between the British Prime Minister and the EU leaders has ended on an optimistic and cordial note -- with Merkel leading the change in tone.

Already a counter-majoritarian institution, the Senate was made even more so by the rise of the modern filibuster in the 20th century, which allows a minority to block majority-supported legislation. That means most substantive legislation must get 60 votes in the Senate to pass — often an exceedingly difficult threshold to reach.

In the minds of many gun control proponents, American life has become — or perhaps always was — a zero-sum game in which one party’s freedom to exist in peace has lost out to another’s prerogative to kill. In this view, mass death is simply the cost gun owners are willing to inflict on the country for the right to bear arms.

“The N.R.A. is powerful for precisely the reason most potent progressive organizations are powerful,” David French has written in National Review. “Like those progressive counterparts, the N.R.A. is an effective part of a larger community, and it is effective precisely because it persuasively expresses the will of its members and allies.” In his view, the N.R.A. does not manipulate people into supporting gun rights; rather, it reflects and channels the desires of people who already do

Gun control proponents often argue that the Second Amendment was meant to protect the right of state militias, not individuals, to bear arms. This interpretation is disputed by gun rights proponents, but not exclusively: The historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, who favors the Second Amendment’s repeal, has argued that it was expressly designed to enshrine not only the right but also the obligation of individual colonial settlers to violently appropriate Native land and to control Black populations, both free and enslaved.

This interpretive turn has led to calls for the Second Amendment’s repeal, including from the retired justice John Paul Stevens. Justice Stevens was one of the four dissenters in the Heller case, whose ruling he believed could be overturned only with a new constitutional amendment that voided the second. Doing so, he wrote in The Times in 2018, “would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.”

But none of them — not universal background checks, not red flag laws, not even a ban on assault-style weapons — would confront the core issue: America simply has too many guns.That is the view of Mr. Lopez, who contends that stamping out gun violence would require a Green New Deal-size plan that offers solutions at the scale of the problem. “If the key difference between America and other countries is how many more guns the U.S. has, then something has to be done to quickly reduce the number of firearms here,” he writes. “It could mean banning more types of guns — perhaps all semiautomatic weapons or all handguns — and coupling that with an Australian-style mandatory buyback program, which the research supports.”

Biden’s decision to stand down was a puzzling development given that there is no indication whatsoever that the Democratic legislation – which would create a national registry of police misconduct, ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and overhaul qualified immunity protections for police officers – has any chance in the 50-50 Senate after it passed the House in March without GOP support.

The deep fissures in the Democratic party over what to do on the issue of policing have put Democrats in a difficult spot. During the 2020 elections, Republican hammered their Democratic opponents over radical calls to “defund the police” – attempting to portray all Democrats as sympathetic to a view that is held by a small minority.

It’s a major reason why congressional leaders like House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the chamber, were quick to refute Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s argument that there should be “no more policing,” because, in her view, it cannot be reformed. “We’ve got to have police,” Clyburn said in an interview this week with CNN’s Don Lemon.

Protests erupted this week after the death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was shot by veteran Minnesota police officer Kimberly Potter in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center after he was initially pulled over for an expired tag and police learned that he had an outstanding warrant for a gross misdemeanor weapons charge.

Biden’s reticence reflects not only the deadlock in the deeply divided Congress, but also the fact that Democrats are still struggling to refine their message on police reform – knowing the issue will be a vulnerability at the ballot box in 2022 and 2024.

“There’s never gonna be justice for us,” Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, told reporters on Thursday. “Justice would bring our son home, knocking on the door with a big smile, coming in the house, sitting down eating dinner with us, going out to lunch, playing with his one-year-old – almost two-year-old-son, giving him a kiss before he walks out the door.”

in another difficult case, the Chicago Civilian Office of Police Accountability released body-worn camera footage Thursday that shows a police officer shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo last month.

“The officer screamed at him, ‘Show me your hands,’ Adam complied, turned around, his hands were empty when he was shot in the chest at the hands of the officer,” Weiss-Ortiz told reporters Thursday. “If you’re shooting an unarmed child with his hands in the air, it is an assassination.”

Biden’s cautious posture on policing issues since he has become President reflects the arms-length distance that he has maintained from the progressive left on a number of politically-fraught issues, including calls from some Democrats to expand the size of the Supreme Court, the suggestion that he should be doing more on gun control following a recent spate of mass shootings, and fulfilling his own promise to raise the cap set on refugee admissions.

“I want to make it clear again: There is absolutely no justification – none – for looting, no justification for violence. Peaceful protest, understandable,” Biden said Monday. “We do know that the anger, pain, and trauma that exists in the Black community in that environment is real – it’s serious, and it’s consequential. But it will not justify violence and/or looting.”

t this pivotal moment when the nation is once again focused on the need to end these all-too-common occurrences, Biden seems uniquely positioned to take a leading role in brokering a compromise with Congress after his lifetime of work on crime and justice legislation.

Democrats’ sensitivity to those attacks was magnified this week by the swift response to Tlaib, a liberal Democrat, when she tweeted Monday that Wright’s death was not accident and “policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist.

“This is not about policing. This is not about training. This is about recruiting. Who are we recruiting to be police officers? That to me is where the focus has got to go. We’ve got to have police officers,” Clyburn told Lemon on “CNN Tonight.”

But as incomprehensible police shootings multiply with devastating consequences for the families, there is a fierce urgency in this moment, particularly as the nation waits for the verdict in the Chauvin trial. Justice in policing might be “a cause” that is more convenient for Biden to tackle later in his presidency. But by standing down and waiting for others to act, he may well miss this moment.

Democrats effectively succeeded in running out the clock on this year's legislative session by depriving the Republicans of a quorum needed to pass the bill in a late-night session

Among other steps, the bill makes mail-in voting more difficult, bans after-hours and drive-through voting that helped Black and Latino voters in the Houston area cast their ballots in 2020. It prohibits early voting on Sundays -- a popular practice for Black churches -- before 1 pm and makes it easier to overturn an election.

"When you are pushed to extremes you respond to that with extreme(s)," Moody said on CNN's "New Day" on Monday.

Some Democrats may see hope in the fact that Manchin was angry and disappointed that Republicans used the filibuster to kill off the bipartisan January 6 commission. But he has so far given no indication that he will temper his desire for bipartisan action.

More evidence of Republican efforts to build on Trump's election fraud lies are causing some Democrats to wonder how much longer it will be politically feasible for Biden to pursue deals with a Republican Party that appears bent on locking them out of power.

"Let's be clear. If 10 Republican Senators cannot even vote for a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6th insurrection, 10 Republican Senators will not vote for anything meaningful to improve the lives of the American people. We must abolish the filibuster & act now," Sanders wrote.

If the infrastructure deal fails, that event may come to be seen as the moment when a more partisan White House approach became inevitable.

But to many Palestinians, his likely replacement as prime minister, Naftali Bennett, would be no improvement. Mr. Bennett is Mr. Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, and a former settler leader who outright rejects Palestinian statehood.

Yet alongside last month’s deadly 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and the worst bout of intercommunal Arab-Jewish violence to have convulsed Israel in decades, these disparate parts suddenly came together in a seemingly leaderless eruption of shared identity and purpose.

Among the Arab minority in Israel, many of whom define themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel, the prospect of a new government has divided opinion. While the government would be led by Mr. Bennett, and packed with lawmakers who oppose a Palestinian state, some hoped the presence of three centrist and leftist parties in the coalition, coupled with the likely tacit support of Raam, an Arab Islamist party, might moderate Mr. Bennett’s approach.

The cabinet is expected to include at least one Arab, Esawi Frej, of the left-wing Meretz party. Raam’s leader, Mansour Abbas, has said he will support the new government only if it grants more resources and attention to the Arab minority. And the likely appointment of a center-left minister to oversee the police force might encourage officers to take a more restrained approach to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, where clashes between the police and protesters played a major role in the buildup to the recent war in Gaza.

Mr. Trump’s administration helped broker a series of historic normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which bypassed the Palestinians and ruptured decades of professed Arab unity around the Palestinian cause.

The Palestinians have been aided by the international awakening and momentum of movements like Black Lives Matter, speaking the language of rights and historical justice, according to experts.

In a measure of the popular excitement about what would have been the first ballot in the occupied territories since 2006, more than 93 percent of eligible Palestinians had registered to vote, and 36 parties with about 1,400 candidates planned to compete for 132 seats in the Palestinian assembly. Nearly 40 percent of the candidates were 40 or younger, according to the Palestinian Central Elections Commission.

Some analysts say they doubt that this recent flash of Palestinian unity will have any immediate, profound impact on the Palestinian reality. But others argue that after years of stagnation, the Palestinian cause is back with a new sense of energy, connectivity, solidarity and activism.

The events of the last few weeks were “like an earthquake,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a seasoned Palestinian leader and former senior official. “We are part of the global conversation on rights, justice, freedom, and Israel cannot close it down or censor it.”

Mr. Netanyahu now has 28 days to try to cobble together a coalition that could command a majority of at least 61 in the 120-seat Parliament, with the possibility of an additional 14-day extension.

If he fails, the president, Reuven Rivlin, could task another candidate or refer the choice of a candidate to Parliament.

While the country remains split along the traditional fault lines of secular and religious, right-wing and left-wing and Jewish and Arab, the main rupture has increasingly come to revolve around the polarizing figure of Mr. Netanyahu himself.

In order to form the kind of “full-on right-wing government” Mr. Netanyahu promised his voters, the prime minister would need the support of another small right-wing party that has been sitting on the fence. He would also need the far-right flank of his potential coalition to agree to rely on the support of a small Arab, Islamist party that has become a potential kingmaker.

Mr. Rivlin referred to the legal and constitutional debate that has been roiling Israel, saying he was well aware of the criticism.

“It is the role of the Parliament to decide on the substantive and ethical question of the fitness of a candidate facing criminal charges to serve as prime minister,” he added.

“The president fulfilled his duty and he had no choice,” Mr. Lapid said shortly after Mr. Netanyahu was tasked with trying to form the government. “But giving the mandate to Netanyahu is a shameful disgrace that tarnishes Israel and casts shame on our status as a law-abiding state,” he added.

In the one-month period between the Iowa caucuses and Super Tuesday, about 40% of the total number of delegates voting in the first round of the Democratic National Convention will have been selected. In comparison, in 2016 only about a quarter of the delegates were distributed during that same period. A few weeks later, by the end of March, nearly 70% of the delegates will have been chosen.

Which brings us to the final element that makes a brokered convention more likely this year than in the past: the rules change that the Democratic party made to how voting will work at the 2020 convention

The 2008 and 2016 DNC conventions weren't "brokered," though, because Democrats since 1984 have allowed a large number of unpledged or uncommitted delegates to attend and vote at the national convention. These so-called "superdelegates" -- and there were more than 700 of them in Philadelphia in 2016 -- are not bound by voting outcomes in any of the states. In fact, this large number of uncommitted superdelegates has made it difficult for Democratic candidates to obtain a majority of committed convention delegates without them.

The influence of the superdelegates over the years has led to cries of unfairness from candidates who were not awarded the nomination. Both Hillary Clinton in 2008 and Bernie Sanders in 2016 could correctly argue that, had the superdelegates offered them support, they could have been the party's nominee.

The result was a change in the convention rules so that, in 2020, superdelegates will not participate in the first round of voting under this scenario. So it is up to Democratic primary and caucus participants to avoid a brokered convention.

A brokered convention in 2020 would set the stage for a repeat of that scenario. Already, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is saying that she will fight all the way to the convention. If Biden or Warren were to be handed the nomination by the superdelegates, and Gabbard were to win some delegates, might cries of "Bernie or Bust" on the convention floor be joined by "Tulsi or Trump"?

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who will attend the Davos meeting, rejected the idea that the upheaval in American politics is a threat."I don't think it has any impact on the world economy," Mnuchin told reporters on Wednesday, adding that other political issues such as Britain's departure from the European Union and last year's deadlocked elections in Israel were similarly inconsequential.

"In 2020, we have a combination of negative trend lines that we've not experienced in generations. This deteriorating environment is much more likely to produce a global crisis," warned analysts at Eurasia Group.

And the devastating bush fires in Australia have underscored why concerns about the climate dominate in the longer run. According to the World Economic Forum survey, the top five risks over the next decade all relate to the environment, including increased extreme weather events and the collapse of ecosystems.

If the final vote tally ends up being close, election experts say that both Democrats and Republicans will likely take the matter to court—increasing the possibility of another Bush v. Gore-style stand-off in which lawyers and judges, rather than the voters, ultimately determine the next President.

They argue that making it easier to apply for, vote, deliver, and count mail ballots facilitates fraud, thereby diluting the votes of those who play by the rules. So far, the rival teams appear to be in a dead heat. “Depending on the week, you may say it’s a very good Democratic week or a very good Republican week,” says Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford Law Professor.

Nearly every time states have implemented a change, it’s been followed by a lawsuit. There have been at least 380 election-related lawsuits solely stemming from the pandemic, according to the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.

To the extent that it can be simplified, this year’s election-related legal brawls can be distilled into two groups: a push to eliminate expanded mail-in voting policies on the basis that they would produce unprecedented fraud, and a push to ease the restrictions already in place.

Similar examples of litigation whiplash have played out across the country—each time banking a victory for the GOP.

Progressive watchdogs also point to another factor. Since taking office, Trump has appointed 53 appellate court judges, according to July data from the Pew Research Center, most of whom are reliably conservative and tend to sympathize with the Republicans’ legal positions.

Both Republicans and Democrats are actively preparing for the possibility of a pitched, multi-front court battle after Nov. 3. “We have been planning for any post-election litigation and recounts for well over a year and are extraordinarily well-positioned,”

Any post-Election Day litigation is most likely to involve swing states, crucial to determining the Electoral College winner, that end up having tight vote counts. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and North Carolina are all high on the list of possibilities, and top election officials in these states are girding for battle.

If the House and Senate arrive at different decisions, the law governing the proceedings is unclear about how to reconcile them, with the potential for an unresolvable constitutional deadlock.

The 2000 election was arguably the closest in history, decided by Florida by a margin of one one-hundredth of one percent, so close that we will never know who the true winner of the state was: Media recounts months later concluded that the results would change depending on which counting method was used. Even so, a concession occurred before the second stage.

If a state’s electoral votes are disputed, the House and Senate meet separately to adjudicate the controversy. A potentially small number of representatives or senators can break rank, conceding the election by agreeing to resolve the dispute in favor of the other party. There is a potentially dangerous legal ambiguity here:

The House and Senate could vote on the commission’s recommendation — but if the two houses disagreed, the commission’s decision would stand. The commission first recommended, on an 8-to-7 partisan vote, that Florida’s disputed electoral votes be allocated to the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes. But while the Republican Senate endorsed the recommendation, the Democratic House rejected it. The pivotal moment came immediately afterward: With the speaker of the House at his side, the vice-president announced that the commission’s decision stood. The Democrats accepted the call; they allowed the count to continue.

Peaceful transitions of power require political will. In the end, people on one side must step back from the brink.

Republicans have worried for months that Mnuchin isn't as fiscally conservative as they would hope in the talks. It's part of the reason that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear after the election that he was going to step in to negotiate and why Mnuchin has not played a visible role in weeks in these talks.

Still, a growing number of lawmakers from both parties are pushing to find some kind of deal. Tuesday morning, a bipartisan group of senators announced their own $908 billion proposal, which would be between the around $2 trillion package Democrats had pushed for earlier this year and above the $500 billion plan GOP senators discussed over the summer.

"It's not going make everybody happy but there's been an enormous amount of work done," Warner said. "It would be stupidity on steroids if Congress left for Christmas without doing an interim package as a bridge."

Cases from North Carolina and Pennsylvania are pending before the court, the latter a second attempt after a 4-to-4 deadlock last week. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed and sworn in to the Supreme Court on Monday night, could cast the decisive vote in that case

“That extension of Wisconsin’s ballot-receipt deadline ensured that Covid-related delays in the delivery and processing of mail ballots would not disenfranchise citizens fearful of voting in person,” Justice Kagan wrote. “Because of the court’s ruling, state officials counted 80,000 ballots — about 5 percent of the total cast — that were postmarked by Election Day but would have been discarded for arriving a few days later.”

The motion noted that four justices had already indicated where they stood when the court deadlocked on Oct. 19. Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said they would have granted a stay blocking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision.

Neither side gave reasons

“the Constitution reserves a special role for state legislatures in federal elections,”

Republican lawmakers, the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign challenged the settlement in federal court, saying the board had exceeded its power. By a 12-to-3 vote, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled against them

“All ballots must still be mailed on or before Election Day,”

the press for using the term “shadow docket”, a term coined by a conservative law professor. All Justice Alito succeeded in doing, however, is proving his sensitivity to the public discourse about the court.

Nobody is forcing this conservative supermajority to use the shadow docket to rewrite American jurisprudence. Pregnant people in Texas no longer have a constitutional right to abortion because five justices on the supreme court opted to nullify Roe v Wade by way of the shadow docket.

“beyond recognition” in order to “justify” reimposing juvenile life without parole. The court rejected its own decisions in cases decided just nine and five years ago respectively. When precedent is so blatantly ignored, it is difficult to explain the court’s change in direction but for politics.

Such a claim of ethical clarity just isn’t credible when it is uttered on stage right next to the person most responsible for the partisan gamesmanship that packed the court. What Justice Barrett did succeed in doing with her remarks is to confirm just how closely justices listen to the public narrative about the court – and how sensitive they are to it.

The justices, through their own actions and words, have demonstrated their vulnerability to public pressure in support of court reform. Turns out, justices do not like being told they have no clothes on.

As the court delves into its new term, it should have no doubt that all eyes will be upon it. If they want to escape it, rather than hoping the press will be cowed into submission, the justices of the court might consider fulfilling the mission of the institution they embody, by upholding constitutional rights and respecting judicial norms.

His voice was a powerful force for nonviolence in the anti-apartheid movement, earning him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

“You are overwhelmed by the extent of evil,” he said. But, he added, it was necessary to open the wound to cleanse it. In return for an honest accounting of past crimes, the committee offered amnesty, establishing what Archbishop Tutu called the principle of restorative — rather than retributive — justice.

Archbishop Tutu preached that the policy of apartheid was as dehumanizing to the oppressors as it was to the oppressed. At home, he stood against looming violence and sought to bridge the chasm between Black and white; abroad, he urged economic sanctions against the South African government to force a change of policy.

But as much as he had inveighed against the apartheid-era leadership, he displayed equal disapproval of leading figures in the dominant African National Congress, which came to power under Nelson Mandela in the first fully democratic elections in 1994.

“many, too many, of our people live in grueling, demeaning, dehumanizing poverty.”

“We are sitting on a powder keg,” he said.

The cause of death was cancer, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said, adding that Archbishop Tutu had died in a care facility.

“I think we are at a bad place in South Africa,” Archbishop Tutu told The New York Times Magazine in 2010, “and especially when you contrast it with the Mandela era. Many of the things that we dreamed were possible seem to be getting more and more out of reach. We have the most unequal society in the world.”

This government, our government, is worse than the apartheid government,” he said, “because at least you were expecting it with the apartheid government.”

In elections in 2016, while still under the leadership of Mr. Zuma, the party’s share of the vote slipped to its lowest level since the end of apartheid. Mr. Ramaphosa struggled to reverse that trend, but earned some praise later for his robust handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Politics were inherent in his religious teachings. “We had the land, and they had the Bible,” he said in one of his parables. “Then they said, ‘Let us pray,’ and we closed our eyes. When we opened them again, they had the land and we had the Bible. Maybe we got the better end of the deal.”

Although Archbishop Tutu, like other Black South Africans of his era, had suffered through the horrors and indignities of apartheid, he did not allow himself to hate his enemies.

He coined the phrase “rainbow nation” to describe the new South Africa emerging into democracy, and called for vigorous debate among all races.

Archbishop Tutu had always said that he was a priest, not a politician, and that when the real leaders of the movement against apartheid returned from jail or exile he would serve as its chaplain.

While he never forgot his father’s shame when a white policeman called him “boy” in front of his son, he was even more deeply affected when a white man in a priest’s robe tipped his hat to his mother, he said.

But Archbishop Tutu did not stay entirely out of the nation’s business.

When Desmond was hospitalized with tuberculosis, Father Huddleston visited him almost every day. “This little boy very well could have died,” Father Huddleston told an interviewer many years later, “but he didn’t give up, and he never lost his glorious sense of humor.”

After his recovery, Desmond wanted to become a doctor, but his family could not afford the school fees. Instead he became a teacher, studying at the Pretoria Bantu Normal College and earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Africa. He taught high school for three years but resigned to protest the Bantu Education Act, which lowered education standards for Black students.

By then he was married to Nomalizo Leah Shenxane, a major influence in his life

He was named Anglican dean of Johannesburg in 1975 and consecrated bishop of Lesotho the next year. In 1978 he became the first Black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, and began to establish the organization as a major force in the movement against apartheid.

Under Bishop Tutu’s leadership, the council established scholarships for Black youths and organized self-help programs in Black townships. There were also more controversial programs: Lawyers were hired to represent Black defendants on trial under the security laws, and support was provided for the families of those detained without trial.

A month after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, Desmond Tutu became the first Anglican bishop of Johannesburg when the national church hierarchy intervened to break a deadlock between Black and white electors. He was named archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, becoming spiritual head of the country’s 1.5 million Anglicans, 80 percent of whom were Black.

“I am a man of peace, but not a pacifist.”

In 2021, as he approached his 90th birthday, he pitched into a fraught debate as disinformation about coronavirus vaccines swirled.

He remained equally outspoken even in later years. In 2003 he criticized his own government for backing Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, who had a long record of human rights abuses.

On his frequent trips abroad during the apartheid era, Archbishop Tutu never stopped pressing the case for sanctions against South Africa. The government struck back and twice revoked his passport, forcing him to travel with a document that described his citizenship as “undetermined.”

Still, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its final findings in 2003, Archbishop Tutu’s imprint was plain. It warned the government against issuing a blanket amnesty to perpetrators of the crimes of apartheid and urged businesses to join with the government in delivering reparations to the millions of Black people victimized by the former white minority government.

Archbishop Tutu officially retired from public duties in 2010. One of his last major appearances came that year, when South Africa hosted the World Cup

But he did not retreat from the public eye entirely. In June 2011, he joined Michelle Obama at the new Cape Town Stadium, built for the tournament, where she was promoting physical fitness during a tour of southern Africa.

In an interview in the early 1980s, he said: “Blacks don’t believe that they are introducing violence into the situation. They believe that the situation is already violent.”

“There is nothing to fear,” he said. “Don’t let Covid-19 continue to ravage our country, or our world. Vaccinate.”

She now faces up to 20 years in prison for each count, although legal experts say she is unlikely to receive the maximum sentence.

The jury deadlocked on three remaining charges, which a federal judge anticipates dismissing as part of a mistrial ruling that could come as early as next week. The split verdicts are “a mixed bag for the prosecution, but it’s a loss for Elizabeth Holmes because she is going away to prison for at least a few years,” said David Ring, a lawyer who has followed the case closely.

Another type is the majlis-ash-shura, which is quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial, though traditionally not democratic. No voting is involved. But people do have a chance to be heard, and there is an expectation of being treated fairly. The decision may be handed down by the local leader, such as a sultan, or by religious leaders who are respected for their piety.

That brings us up to Dubai and the sultan. Considering that Al Jaber is the president of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, I think he deserves credit for cajoling delegates from nearly 200 countries to, for the first time, approve a pact that calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” In his closing address he thanked delegates “who met me at 4 and 5 a.m.” When does this guy sleep?

Al Jaber may have been right that there was more speaking from the heart than usual. “The gathering seemed to evoke a more personal, emotional tone, and confidences were shared,” Environment News Service wrote.

In both cases, no one is clearly in charge. In ancient Arabia, tribal leaders who had conflicts couldn’t appeal to some higher authority. They had to work things out among themselves.

There is no higher authority — certainly not the United Nations — that can tell sovereign nations what to do. They need to work things out among themselves.

Modern majalis might be able to resolve disputes — and help save the planet — by drawing on sources of authority beyond one-person, one-vote democracy. Trust that’s built up over time, for one.

A majlis is also a natural forum for scientific experts, religious leaders and artists to be heard and heeded.

In modern diplomacy, Yusuf said, “There’s just a complete lack of regard for expertise and any type of leadership.

The majlis is based on a kind of decorum. There are things that are totally unacceptable in a majlis, such as backbiting, speaking ill of people. There’s a hushed aspect to it. People speak in a very respectful, formal way. Each situation is going to be unique.”

Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist who won a Nobel Prize in economics in 2009, showed how ranchers, fishermen and others had devised clever ways to cooperate, without appealing to government, and to avoid the tragedy of the commons, which is the overexploitation of shared resources. One way they built the necessary trust was through what Ostrom called “cheap talk,” which is simple communication. “More cooperation occurs than predicted, ‘cheap talk’ increases cooperation, and subjects invest in sanctioning free-riders,” Ostrom wrote in her Nobel lecture.

The trust-building communication that Ostrom put her finger on in her Nobel lecture seems like the kind of talk that occurs in a majlis, Erik Nordman, the author of “The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom,” told me.

I also don’t want to make too much of the role of the majlis in reaching the deal. The majlis should not be a replacement for democracy but a complement to it. In that role, I think it could be quite useful.

the red-blue divide is perhaps less illuminating than the gap between engaged and disengaged Americans, in which an exhausted majority encounters the highly polarized activist wings of both parties and shrinks back from the fray

The wings aren’t changing each other’s minds — hard-core Democrats aren’t going to persuade hard-core Republicans — but they’re also not reaching sufficient numbers of persuadable voters to break America’s partisan deadlock.

In 2020, when I was doing research for my book about the growing danger of partisan division, I began to learn more about what extreme partisanship does not only to our hearts but also to our minds.

It can deeply and profoundly distort the way we view the world. We become so emotionally and spiritually invested in the outcome of a political contest that we can inadvertently become disconnected from reality.

Our heart connects with our mind in such a way that the heart demands that the mind conform to its deepest desires

When a partisan encounters negative information, it can often trigger the emotional equivalent of a fight-or-flight response. This applies not just to negative arguments but also to negative facts. To deal with the emotional response, we seek different arguments and alternative facts.

If you are a true partisan, you essentially become an unpaid lawyer for your side. Every “good” fact that bolsters your argument is magnified. Every “bad” fact is minimized or rationalized.

When partisanship reaches its worst point, every positive claim about your side is automatically believed, and every negative allegation is automatically disbelieved.

allegations of wrongdoing directed at your side are treated as acts of aggression — proof that “they” are trying to destroy “us.”

You see this reality most plainly in the daily Republican theatrics surrounding Trump’s criminal indictments. Rather than wrestle seriously with the profoundly troubling claims against him, they treat the criminal cases as proof of Democratic perfidy. They believe every claim against Hunter and Joe Biden and not a single claim against Trump.

ask why people are checking out, and one reason is that partisans make it so very difficult to engage.

The problem is most pronounced (and often overtly threatening) on the MAGA right, but it’s endemic to our partisan wings

as partisanship deepens, partisan subcultures can get increasingly weird. They become so convinced of the us-versus-them dynamic that they’ll eventually believe virtually anything, as long as it’s a claim against the other side.

If decades of partisanship have persuaded you that your opponents are evil, have no morals and want to destroy the country, then why wouldn’t they hack voting machines or recruit a pop star as a government asset?

I have some rules to help temper my worst partisan impulses.

Expose yourself to the best of the other side’s point of view — including the best essays, podcasts and books.

when you encounter a new idea, learn about it from its proponents before you read its opponents.

when you encounter bad news about a cause that you hold dear — whether it’s a presidential campaign, an international conflict or even a claim against a person you admire, take a close and careful look at the evidence