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It’s like political phantom limbs. He doesn't have the same political infrastructure he did three months ago as president,” added GOP strategist Matt Gorman, who previously served as communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Instead, Trump has maintained close ties to GOP officials who have committed to supporting incumbents, stayed almost entirely out of the spotlight, delivered fairly anodyne remarks the one time he emerged, and offered only sparse criticism of his successor, Joe Biden.

Trump has gone from threatening party bodies for using his name and likeness in their fundraising efforts to offering up his Mar-a-Lago estate as a host site for part of the Republican National Committee’s spring donor retreat. He savagely attacked veteran GOP operative Karl Rove for criticizing his first post-presidency speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Committee, and endorsed Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who repeatedly scrutinized Trump’s own trade practices while in office.

In his role as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott has promised to stick by GOP incumbents — including Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict Trump in his Senate trial last month on charges of inciting an insurrection. The Florida Republican said he had a “great meeting” with Trump in a tweet he shared Friday.

“For any normal politician, it would look like he’s trying to have it both ways but really he’s trying to have it his way,” said a former Trump White House official. “He only cares about maintaining his power and his stranglehold over the Republican Party and it doesn’t matter to him how any of the moves he makes affect the long-term success of institutions or individuals other than himself.”

He continues to hold court on the patio of his Mar-a-Lago resort where he is greeted by a standing ovation from members when he and the former first lady walk by. He spends his days monitoring the news, making calls and playing golf at his eponymous club just a few miles away.

But the factions that have already formed among those surrounding him suggest potential turbulence ahead. Three veterans of Trump’s 2020 campaign — Brad Parscale, Bill Stepien and Justin Clark — have been screening primary recruitments and brainstorming ways to reestablish his online presence, while Dave Bossie and Corey Lewandowski are in talks with the ex-president to launch a new fundraising entity on his behalf, according to people briefed on the recent discussions.

One former administration official who has been in contact with Trump described him as a “pinball,” noting that his tendency to abruptly change directions or seize on a new idea after speaking with a friend or outside adviser — a habit that often frustrated aides during his time in office — has carried into his post-presidency life.

The fear among Republicans is that Trump’s indecisiveness will extend to his personal political future as well. Trump has continued to dangle a 2024 run over the party, and the will-he-won’t-he guessing game has held presidential hopefuls in limbo. MOST READ IRS partially shields some stimulus payments from debt reductions MAGA voters discovered a new home online. But it isn't what it seems. Newsom says California recall likely to qualify, tries to soften Feinstein stance McCarthy decries ‘political stunt’ after troops visit lawmaker’s office An unlikely Trump turncoat shows the GOP way to resist his influence

But stripped of a social media platform like Twitter, the former president has had to rely on issuing statements — some mimicking the tone and length of his past tweets — via his post-presidency office or political PAC press lists. So far, he’s issued more than two dozen endorsements and statements since leaving the White House. The more recent ones have bashed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and sought credit for the current Covid-19 vaccine distribution.

When I was talking to the president this morning… he’s like, ‘Yeah, she’s no good. I said that and now everybody’s seeing it. But you realize if you say anything negative about Meghan Markle you get canceled. Look at Piers,’” Miller said, recounting his conversation with Trump, who had been referring to Piers Morgan, the polarizing “Good Morning Britain” host who parted ways with the show this week after dismissing Markle’s revelations as lies.

But so far, many of his recent political maneuverings have been met with a shrug by the GOP. Trump’s public tussle with the Republican Party over fundraising and the use of his name and likeness in appeals for money appeared to fizzle out after attorneys for the Republican National Committee denied Trump’s cease-and-desist demands. By week’s end, the RNC was not only still using Trump’s name in fundraising solicitations, it was offering him up as an enticement.

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.

Already today, noted Ben-David, half of Israel’s adult population is so poor that they do not pay any income tax at all. In 2017, just 20 percent of the adult population supplied 92 percent of all income tax revenue, he said.

The longer cycle is "the one which we understand much better, and it is a universal feature of all complex societies," Turchin told Life's Little Mysteries. From the Roman Empire to medieval France to ancient China, scholars have noted that societies swing between 100-150 years of relative peace and 100-150 years of conflict, and then back again

The data indicates that a cycle of violence repeats itself every 50 years in America, like a wave that peaks in every other generation. This short-term cycle is superimposed over another, longer-term oscillation that repeats every 200 to 300 years. The slower waves in violence can either augment or suppress the 50-year peaks, depending on how the two cycles overlap.

Turchin, who reported his results in the July issue of the Journal of Peace Research, compiled historical data about violent incidents in U.S. history between 1780 and 2010, including riots, terrorism, assassinations and rampages

"The database is too short: the entire study covers the period 1780-2010, a mere 230 years," he wrote in an email. "You can fit at most four 50-year peaks and two [long-term] ones. I just don't see how one could reasonably exclude that the observed pattern is random. But of course we would have to wait a lot longer to collect new data and find out."

Pigliucci said, but most historians would say these fluctuations are chaotic.

Daniel Szechi, professor of early modern history at the University of Manchester in England, agrees that not enough time has passed for patterns to have emerged. However, he believes "cliodynamics" could eventually work, once humanity racks up a few more centuries of good record-keeping. "Maybe 500 years from now we will have sufficient data and sufficient number crunching power to really make use of the data we will have generated and stored in vast quantities since about 1900,"

The Justice Department has been directed to draft rules regulating stabilizing braces that make AR-15 pistols, which are generally subject to fewer regulations than rifles, more stable and accurate.

The Justice Department will draft a template for states to use to write "red flag" laws that enable law enforcement and family members to seek court orders to remove firearms from people determined to be a threat to themselves or others.

"He called out, forthright, that violence is a public health crisis and that it disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities," she said. "He named that violence is the leading cause of death for Black boys and men, and the second leading cause of death for Latino boys and men. That matters.

As a member of the Senate, Biden was in the forefront of passing measures regulating guns, including a ban on sales of assault-style weapons and the Brady law, which instituted a nationwide system of background checks. But as president, Biden has been relatively cautious, calling on the Senate to pass House-approved measures expanding background checks and giving the FBI more time to process them, but he has been prioritizing other actions, such as a COVID-19 relief bill and his infrastructure and jobs plan.

Biden has been under pressure to act to curb gun violence after last month's shootings in Boulder and at several Atlanta-area businesses that killed eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descent.

"This is not the end of what this administration will do, but we thought it was very important for the president to come out early, within the first 100 days of his administration, to make clear ... that this remains a very significant priority for the administration."

Biden reiterated his call for the Senate to act on the House bills on Thursday, but it's not clear the measures have a simple majority there, much less the 60 votes they would need to overcome a Republican filibuster. Biden said members of Congress have "offered plenty of thoughts and prayers" but have failed to pass any legislation. "Enough prayers," Biden said. "Time for some action."

"If done in a manner that respects the rights of law-abiding citizens, I believe there is an opportunity to strengthen our background check system so that we are better able to keep guns away from those who have no legal right to them," Toomey said.

Biden said none of his actions "impinges on the Second Amendment," but gun rights advocates are likely to challenge the new restrictions in court.

"We will not be open to doing nothing," the president said. "Inaction, simply, is not an option." Translation: Get on board or step aside.

In remarks Wednesday pushing for his sweeping $2.3 trillion plan, Biden said he wants to meet with Republicans about it and hopes to negotiate in "good faith" — a political tenet that hasn't been practiced much in Washington, D.C., in recent years.

With the narrowest of majorities, one defection kneecaps the ability of Democrats to pass anything — even through partisan procedures such as budget reconciliation, which requires a simple majority and was used for the COVID-19 relief bill.

But Biden's overall approach to legislating so far — on a big, bold agenda — is winning plaudits from political strategists, left and right. "I am more impressed with Joe Biden than I ever thought I could be in the last few months,"

Several strategists said Biden has been more organized and disciplined out of the gate than former Democratic Presidents Obama or Bill Clinton, and they said his team's steadiness — so far — resembles someone Biden has almost nothing in common with from a policy standpoint: George W. Bush.

the Biden team's policy rollouts have been about as smooth, methodical and drama-free as you could expect, particularly given the polarized nature of our politics,"

"is effectively taking advantage of D.C.'s Trump hangover by just engaging in straightforward communications tactics."

It seems like Biden has taken a page from the Bush playbook, essentially cauterizing the chaos that defined Trump's policy announcements and replacing it with a fact-driven, drama-free approach that's working."

Biden clearly wants to do big things. On Wednesday, he made a case for a grand vision when it came to infrastructure. He drew on the past but looked to the future, and he swatted down GOP concerns about the size of the plan and criticism that he should focus on "traditional infrastructure" like roads, highways and bridges.

"We are America," the president said. "We don't just fix for today, we build for tomorrow.

Biden has been acutely aware of attempting to establish his place in history, even though he's been in office fewer than 100 days. Last month, in fact, the 78-year-old met with historians at the White House. Biden wants to be a bridge to the transformation of the country — and this infrastructure proposal is clearly a big part of that.

"He sees this as an opportunity to deliver massive change, the literal infrastructure of the country,"

"It's the return of traditional politics in a way that neither Trump nor Obama were willing to do," Simmons said, noting that "the Obama people did really good things. I think that they did not sell them very well."

"It's a Kennedy and Johnson-type dynamic,"

"Lyndon Johnson was phenomenal at working Congress, because that's what he did. President Obama was phenomenal at inspiring the public, as did Kennedy."

And while Biden would prefer bipartisanship, Cardona notes that Biden "learned the lessons of the Obama era" — not to wait around for Republican support that never materialized.

"He's not giving up on bipartisanship," she noted, "but he is living in a cold and cruel reality. ... These are things Biden has learned the hard way and taken to heart."

"We're at an inflection point in American democracy," Biden said Wednesday. "This is a moment where we prove whether or not democracy can deliver." And whether or not he can, too.

"I am more impressed with Joe Biden than I ever thought I could be in the last few months,"

"In contrast to his immediate predecessor and President Obama, the Biden team's policy rollouts have been about as smooth, methodical and drama-free as you could expect, particularly given the polarized nature of our politics,"

"The Biden team," Jones added, "is effectively taking advantage of D.C.'s Trump hangover by just engaging in straightforward communications tactics."

"It reinforces the fact that governing actually does take experience and does take knowledge,

Biden clearly wants to do big things. On Wednesday, he made a case for a grand vision when it came to infrastructure. He drew on the past but looked to the future, and he swatted down GOP concerns about the size of the plan and criticism that he should focus on "traditional infrastructure" like roads, highways and bridges.

"We are America," the president said. "We don't just fix for today, we build for tomorrow

Biden has been acutely aware of attempting to establish his place in history, even though he's been in office fewer than 100 days. Last month, in fact, the 78-year-old met with historians at the White House. Biden wants to be a bridge to the transformation of the country — and this infrastructure proposal is clearly a big part of that.

"He sees this as an opportunity to deliver massive change, the literal infrastructure of the country," said Gurwin Ahuja, who worked in the Obama administration and was an early supporter of Biden's and worked on his campaign. "His general approach of not being distracted by the day to day is why he is president. It is the singular reason he was able to defeat so many candidates when he was running in the Democratic primary."

"It's the return of traditional politics in a way that neither Trump nor Obama were willing to do," Simmons said, noting that "the Obama people did really good things. I think that they did not sell them very well."

"It's a Kennedy and Johnson-type dynamic,"

"Lyndon Johnson was phenomenal at working Congress, because that's what he did. President Obama was phenomenal at inspiring the public, as did Kennedy."

"He's not giving up on bipartisanship," she noted, "but he is living in a cold and cruel reality. ... These are things Biden has learned the hard way and taken to heart."

Biden seems very aware of that need to show competence — and results. "We're at an inflection point in American democracy," Biden said Wednesday. "This is a moment where we prove whether or not democracy can deliver." And whether or not he can, too.

“Before Trump, we rarely talked about politics,”

one in 10 voters who are registered as a Democrat or Republican are married to someone in the opposite party

Her views are much stronger now: “I’m voting for him because of what he’s done and what he supports and what he fights for.”

in both friendship and dating,

People are increasingly marrying people like themselves in terms of education and earnings potential, and living in places surrounded by others who share their beliefs and lifestyle. These things are correlated with political views.

Women and Democrats are the groups that care most about having the same political views as their romantic partner

two-thirds of Americans said they would not consider dating someone who disagreed with them about the president

The president of the United States cannot condemn dictatorships like the Maduro regime in one breath, then seek to unilaterally overturn American elections in the next. In light of Wednesday’s insurrection, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement the day before condemning Maduro’s manipulation of recent legislative elections rings hollow.

In doing so, Trump aligns himself with despots like Maduro rather than the great American presidents of past and future. On Wednesday afternoon, Venezuela’s foreign ministry issued a short but mocking statement: “With this unfortunate episode, the United States is experiencing what it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression.”

Venezuela’s democratic opposition, at greater risk of persecution since Maduro and his cronies regained control of the National Assembly, could face arrest or worse, and have lost the moral boost that America has their back if they keep up their dangerous push for democracy.

Venezuela is not the only country where Trump’s inconsistencies could have a destabilizing effect. Though Latin America’s democratic institutions have proved remarkably resilient under the circumstances, the coming months could be pivotal. Chile, Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua and Ecuador are all set to hold presidential elections this year.

Furthermore, with severe lockdowns devastating the region’s economies and largely failing to slow the spread of the virus, the region’s political class as a whole has watched approval ratings plummet. In an increasingly hostile political landscape, those fighting to defend democratic institutions could face growing pressure from outside challengers.

Trump’s rabble-rousing has given anti-democratic leaders an updated playbook: use social media and other alternative information sources to spread misinformation to stir loyal followers, and then use those tools to organize a violent attack on the heart of democratic institutions.

To mitigate the damage in Latin America and the world, President-elect Joe Biden will need to re-engage with allies and rebuild America’s reputation by openly acknowledging the healing needed after the chaos of his predecessor.

Tom Rice, a Republican from his state who had backed impeachment.

Last week’s breach of the Capitol appears to have presented that opportunity to Republicans who want to refocus the party around Mr. Trump’s policies, and dispense with the polarizing language and divisive actions that marked his four years in office.

No, Trump does not have any blame, but the Democrats certainly do, along with all the Republicans that follow with them,” said Billy Long, the Republican Party chairman in Bayfield County, Wis., who said he was planning to break away from the G.O.P. to start a local Trump-centric third party. “The Trump movement is not over; like Trump said himself, we are just getting started.”

Republican voters, too, have largely drawn a sharp distinction between the president and those who stormed the Capitol, with 80 percent saying they do not hold Mr. Trump responsible for the rioting and 73 percent saying he is protecting democracy, according to polling released by Quinnipiac University this week

Even if Mr. Trump fades from political life, losing his social media megaphone and bully pulpit, his supporters say his message will be carried forward by a party remade in his image and with strong structural support at all levels.

“The election was crooked and Republicans who could have done something did very little,” said Dave Wesener, the chairman of the Republican Party in Crawford County, Wis. “Those Republicans who have not been supportive I affectionately call RINOs. All RINOs should be primaried by conservatives.”

The siege at the Capitol last week has drawn an even brighter line dividing the party. State legislators from more than a dozen states attended the protest, with at least one facing criminal charges for breaching the Capitol as part of the riot. Meshawn Maddock, an activist who is poised to be the incoming Michigan Republican Party co-chairwoman, helped organize busloads of supporters from her state to travel to the Capitol. In the days after the violence, she joined a conservative online group where some participants openly discussed civil war and martial law.

The Department of Homeland Security produces a threat assessment — but it is an overview, a DHS spokesperson told NPR, focusing on the "heightened threat environment during the 2020-2021 election season, including the extent to which the political transition and political polarization are contributing to the mobilization of individuals to commit violence."

This raw intelligence — bits and pieces of information scraped from various social media sites — indicates that there will likely be violence when lawmakers certify the presidential election results on Jan. 6.

But the DHS and the FBI do not create an intelligence report focused specifically on the upcoming pro-Trump rally.

These threat assessments or intelligence bulletins are typically written as a matter of course ahead of high-profile events. It's not clear why this didn't happen.

In a letter to the Justice Department, Bowser says "we are mindful" of events in 2020 — likely referencing the June 1 clearing of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square by Park Police and other federal law enforcement that not answerable to the city.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund asks permission from House and Senate security officials to request that the D.C. National Guard be placed on standby in case the protest gets out of control. The Washington Post reports: "House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving said he wasn't comfortable with the 'optics' of formally declaring an emergency ahead of the demonstration, Sund said. Meanwhile, Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger suggested that Sund should informally seek out his Guard contacts, asking them to 'lean forward' and be on alert in case Capitol Police needed their help."

The FBI Field Office in Norfolk, Va., issues an explicit warning that extremists have plans for violence the next day, as first reported by the Post. It releases its advisory report after FBI analysts find a roster of troubling information including specific threats against members of Congress, an exchange of maps of the tunnel system under the Capitol complex and organizational plans like setting up gathering places in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and South Carolina so extremists can meet to convoy to Washington.

The head of the FBI's Washington Field Office, Steven D'Antuono, later says that information is shared with the FBI's "law enforcement partners" through the bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force. That includes the U.S. Capitol Police, U.S. Park Police, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and other agencies.

Officials convene a conference call with local law enforcement to discuss the Norfolk warning.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser announces that the MPD will be the lead law enforcement agency and will coordinate with the Capitol Police, Park Police and Secret Service.

The Metropolitan Police Department has jurisdiction on city streets; the U.S. Park Police on the Ellipse, where Trump's rally took place; the U.S. Secret Service in the vicinity of the White House; and the U.S. Capitol Police on the Capitol complex.

That day appears to have profoundly influenced the mayor's approach to the Jan. 6 events. In her letter, Bowser describes the difficulty and confusion of policing large crowds while working around other law enforcement personnel without proper coordination and identification.

Bowser requests, and receives, a limited force from the D.C. National Guard. The soldiers number 340, though they are unarmed and their job is to help with traffic flow — not law enforcement — which is to be handled by D.C. police.

Trump begins to address the crowd at the Ellipse, behind the White House. He falsely claims that "this election was stolen from you, from me, from the country." Trump calls on his supporters at the rally to march on the U.S. Capitol, saying he will walk with them. Instead, he returns to the White House.

"We see this huge crush of people coming down Pennsylvania Ave. toward the Capitol," reports NPR's Hannah Allam. "We follow the crowd as it goes up to the Hill, toward the Capitol. There's scaffolding set up for the inauguration already," she adds. "But as far as protection, all we really saw were some mesh barriers, some metal fencing and only a small contingent of Capitol Police. And we watched them being quickly overwhelmed." The FBI says multiple law enforcement agencies receive reports of a suspected pipe bomb at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee. Fifteen minutes later, there are reports of a similar device at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

Mayor Bowser asks Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy for additional Guard forces

Capitol Police Chief Sund speaks with the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard Maj. Gen. William Walker by phone and requests immediate assistance.

Moving to the Senate terrace, they see protesters smashing the door of the Capitol to gain entry, as Capitol Police inside work to push them back.

Capitol Police send an alert that all buildings in the Capitol complex are on lockdown due to "an external security threat located on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Building. ... [S]tay away from exterior windows and doors. If you are outside, seek cover."

The House and Senate abruptly go into recess.

On a conference call with Pentagon officials, D.C. Mayor Bowser requests National Guard support and Capitol Police Chief Sund pleads for backup.

Trump tweets criticism of Vice President Pence: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"

From inside the House chamber come reports of an armed standoff at the door to the chamber. Police officers have their guns drawn on someone trying to get in.

Acting Defense Secretary Miller determines that all available forces of the D.C. National Guard are required to reestablish security of the Capitol complex.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam tweets that his team is working closely with Mayor Bowser, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to respond to the situation.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany says on Twitter that the National Guard is on its way at Trump's direction.

rump tweets a video downplaying the events of the day, repeating false claims that the election was stolen and sympathizing with his followers, saying: "I know your pain, I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. ... You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace."

Acting Defense Secretary Miller authorizes the mobilization of up to 6,200 National Guard troops from Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania, according to the Pentagon.

Trump tweets a message to his supporters. "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"

Capitol Police, MPD and the D.C. National Guard establish a perimeter on the west side of the Capitol.

The Capitol is declared secure. Members of Congress return to complete the opening and counting of the Electoral College votes.

Pence affirms that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have won the Electoral College: "Joseph R. Biden Jr. of the state of Delaware has received for president of the United States, 306 votes. Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 232 votes."

The FBI formally warns local law enforcement that armed protests are being planned for all 50 statehouses and the U.S. Capitol. The warning says an unidentified group is calling on others to help it "storm" state, local and federal courthouses, should Trump be removed as president before Inauguration Day.

Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, says two Capitol Police officers have been suspended. One of the suspended officers took a selfie with a rioter. The other put on a MAGA hat "and started directing people around," says Ryan.

The U.S. Justice Department says it has received more than 100,000 pieces of digital information in response to its call for tips about those responsible for the Capitol riot. The Justice Department says MPD acted on its intelligence to arrest the Proud Boys' Tarrio before the protest, and federal officials interrupted travel of others who planned to go to D.C.

The secretary of the Army announces that as many as 20,000 National Guard troops are expected to be deployed to D.C. for the inauguration. Some will be armed, while others will have access to their weapons but will not carry them.

FBI Director Christopher Wray says the bureau has identified more than 200 suspects from the Capitol riots and arrested more than 100 others in connection with the violence. "We know who you are if you're out there — and FBI agents are coming to find you," he warns.

U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz announces his office will begin "a review to examine the role and activity of DOJ and its components in preparing for and responding to the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021." Horowitz said his review will coordinate with IG reviews in the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Interior.

Nearly one year since the first known coronavirus case in the United States was announced north of Seattle on Jan. 21, 2020, the full extent of the nation’s failures has come into clear view: The country is hurtling toward 400,000 total deaths, and cases, hospitalizations and deaths have reached record highs, as the nation endures its darkest chapter of the pandemic yet.

By mid-April, most states had resorted to historic stay-at-home orders to avoid the horror seen in the Northeast. At the time, about 30,000 people had died, and the worst of the outbreak was still concentrated in the Northeast.

Local journalists exposed how the Democratic leaders Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor London Breed of San Francisco — outspoken advocates for virus precautions — had attended birthday parties at the French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley, ignoring their own best practices. Disdain for masks and business closures resonated in more conservative parts of Southern California, and health officials pointed to people who had let their guard down at Thanksgiving as a turning point.

McConnell has not denied the possibility of voting against Trump at a potential Senate impeachment trial, precipitated by the House vote to impeach the president for an unprecedented second time over his role in the insurrection.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who will take over that role in less than 24 hours, said Tuesday the Senate will move ahead with an impeachment trial with a plan for a separate vote to bar Trump from holding any future federal office if the Senate votes to convict.

While millions wait for a life-saving shot, the U.S. death toll from the novel coronavirus continues to soar upwards with horrifying speed. Today, the last full day of Donald Trump's presidency, the official death count reached 400,000 — a once-unthinkable number. More than 100,000 Americans have perished in the pandemic in just the past five weeks.

In the U.S., someone now dies from COVID-19 every 26 seconds. And the disease is now claiming more American lives each week than any other condition, ahead of heart disease and cancer, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

Given its relatively large population, the U.S. death rate from COVID remains lower than the rate in many other countries. But the cumulative death toll of 400,000 now exceeds any other country's overall mortality — close to double what Brazil has recorded, and 4 times the death count in the U.K.

Is there any way we can avoid half a million deaths before the end of February?" says Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

Certain parts of the country have a disproportionately high death rate. Alabama and Arizona, in particular, have experienced some of the highest death rates, given their populations. The virus continues to kill Black and Indigenous Americans at much higher rates than white Americans.

In rural America, the chance of dying from COVID-19 remains much higher than in the urban centers.

Vaccine rollout has yet to catch up with an accelerating mortality rate

So far, about 3 in every 100 people have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, placing America ahead of many other countries, but behind the optimistic promises made in the early days of the rollout.

It is this polarity — the advent of a life-saving vaccine and hospitals filled with more dying patients than ever before — that makes this particular moment in the pandemic so confounding.

In rural America, the chance of dying from COVID-19 remains much higher than in the urban centers.

Vaccine rollout has yet to catch up with an accelerating mortality rate

So far, about 3 in every 100 people have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, placing America ahead of many other countries, but behind the optimistic promises made in the early days of the rollout.

It is this polarity — the advent of a life-saving vaccine and hospitals filled with more dying patients than ever before — that makes this particular moment in the pandemic so confounding.

Only the most ardent political junkies closely follow the re-shuffling and re-drawing of legislative and congressional districts that follow the decennial census. (Guilty, your honor!)

In fact, like many things that the general public either knows nothing about or has a decided lack of interest in, how these lines are drawn and by whom has an outsized impact on the sort of government we have -- and what the motivations of our elected officials are.

For decades, the line-drawing process has fallen, in most states, to state legislators and governors. What that has meant, in the main, is that when Democrats control the state capitol and, therefore, the line-drawing process, they create districts that are as favorable as possible for their side.

The strategy of both sides has been simple: Pack as many of the opposition party's voters into as few districts in the state as possible while spreading out their own voters to make as many districts winnable for their side as they can. Innovations in redistricting software have made this slicing and dicing of people based on their party registration or past voting history an art form -- allowing the line-drawers to literally go street by street when it comes to crafting new districts.

The state's congressional districts have regularly changed hands between the parties, with Republicans winning two previously-held Democratic seats in the 2020 election. And generally speaking, three of the four districts in the state -- the exception being the Republican-friendly 4th in western Iowa -- are extremely competitive every two years. Check out the winning percentages for four incoming members of Congress in the state: 62%, 49%, 50% and 51.3%. In the state's 2nd District, the Republican candidate leads the Democrat candidate by six -- SIX! -- votes.

The vast majority of members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, represent what we would call "safe" districts -- meaning that their only chance of losing their job would be in a primary, not a general election.

In 1956, for example, less than 6 in 10 House incumbents won with 60% of the vote or more, according to Vital Statistics on Congress. By 2002, the first election after the 2001 nationwide redistricting, 85% of all House incumbents seeking reelection won with 60% or higher. In 2014 and 2016, that number hovered in the mid-to-high 70s before dipping to just 63% in the tumultuous 2018 midterm election.

The practical, political effect of this trend is simple: Members of Congress have little reason to demonstrate their ability to work across the partisan aisle and every reason to be as partisan and ideological as possible in hopes of staving off any sort of primary challenge.

Independent or bipartisan commissions to redraw the maps in states -- as Hogan is trying to do in Maryland -- work to reorient the incentive structure for members by creating districts that are far more competitive between the two parties in general elections.

Maps drawn over the past two decades -- by Democrats and Republicans -- in places like North Carolina, Texas and yes, Maryland -- have come under legal scrutiny for using political considerations as the sole motivator in creating legislative and congressional districts. Maps in which one party overreached have, occasionally, led to unpredictable results in which the party in power loses seats they expected to win because they tried to divide up their own voters among too many districts.

While bipartisan -- and independent -- line-drawing commissions are on the rise in recent years, the majority of states in the country still rely on politicians to draw lines.

At the same time, the party shored up its heavily evangelical base with tough-on-crime policies, anti-abortion rhetoric and coded racist attacks on “welfare queens.”

But the past 40 years of Republican-led (but bipartisan) neoliberalism left large segments of the party’s social base, like many other Americans, with declining standards of living Economic crisis and the browning of America opened new avenues for calculating politicians to exploit white cultural resentments for political gain: Isolationism, nativism, racism, even anti-Semitism roared back.

Such scapegoating is strikingly reminiscent of the radio priest Charles Coughlin’s attacks on the Rothschilds and “money-changers” during the Great Depression.

Mr. Trump championed ideas that had been bubbling up among the Republican grass roots since the late 20th century. His great political talent has been to see the extent of these resentments and rhetorically, and to some extent politically, speak to those concerns.

His hold on his supporters is not just a cult of personality but grounded in a set of deeply rooted and increasingly widespread ideas within the Republican Party: ending birthright citizenship for immigrants, militarizing the border, disenfranchising Americans under the guise of protecting the integrity of the ballot, favoring an isolationist nationalism.

Republican nativists warned of the “takeover of America.” Their “greatest fear,” according to one prominent Republican activist, was that “illegal aliens will stuff the ballot boxes.” Mr. Trump’s genius was to recognize the opportunity to mobilize such anti-democratic resentments around himself.

They understood that in a world of economic anxiety, disempowerment of the middle class and colossal income inequality, such policies would deliver majorities. The successful combination is most likely to encourage many Republicans to continue to embrace it.

With the party’s elite disinclined to grapple with extreme wealth inequalities and the increasing immiseration and insecurity of the American middle and working classes, the only way to win votes may be to pander to cultural resentment.

Mr. Trump’s style of personalistic authoritarian populism is his alone. It is unfamiliar to most American politicians, and the messianic loyalty he commands among his most martial followers is unlikely to be replicated by those within the party who seek to pick up his mantle.

Worried that Mr. Trump might use any unruly demonstrations as pretext for a federal crackdown of the kind seen last summer in Portland, Ore., progressives organized mass gatherings only sparingly and in highly choreographed ways after Nov. 3.

Since the violence of Jan. 6, progressive leaders have not deployed large-scale public protests at all.

For the organizers of the effort, it represents both a good-news story — Mr. Trump was thwarted — and an ominous sign that such exhaustive efforts were required to protect election results that were not all that close.

Michael Podhorzer, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. strategist who was one of the architects of the coalition, said it presented both a political model and a cautionary tale about a badly frayed democratic system.

They worried that a traditional political campaign might never attain victory if it did not also prepare to battle a would-be strongman during a deadly pandemic.

A cluster of a few strategists became a coalition of 80 groups, and then of more than 200.

“This whole defending the election once we won it — making sure the election stayed won — was not something a lot of others were focused on.”

during the long hours of election night, the strategy needed a tweak. Mr. Trump’s declaration of victory had been treated by television networks as a galling stunt, and Fox quickly called the key state of Arizona for Mr. Biden. Vote counting was proceeding without major inhibition.

Among those listed were Republican state legislative leaders in battlegrounds like Michigan and Pennsylvania; the Michigan Board of State Canvassers; and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state. Mr. Trump would soon seek to twist every one of them to his advantage.

They held de-escalation training sessions around the country, aimed at giving people the tools to ease potentially violent conflict.

“We prepared for the worst of the worst: We’re going to get shot at, killed, on Election Day and afterward,” said Ms. Stamp, adding, “You have to understand that a lot of this is coming from movements that have been dealing with a lot of death.”

the group asked a Washington law firm, Arnold & Porter, to compile a report on how votes would be tabulated and electors assigned in every swing state, including a catalog of the pressure points someone like Mr. Trump could exploit.

The rallies were canceled, in favor of more targeted actions: Instead of throngs of protesters carrying Biden-Harris signs and competing for street space with Trump supporters, progressives assembled in smaller groups around vote-counting facilities in Philadelphia and Detroit, aiming to head off any intimidation tactics from the right.

“Organizing any kind of massive ‘It’s a coup’ mobilization, in the midst of those contested days, would have just been bait for the right,” she said.

Art Reyes, leader of the activist group We the People Michigan, directed a two-pronged effort, bombarding legislators’ offices with phone calls and deploying several dozen volunteers to meet the two Republican leaders, Lee Chatfield and Mike Shirkey, at the airport on their way to Washington. A corresponding group was waiting when they landed.

Democratic litigators had been in contact before Election Day with Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, about the possibility of an attempted electoral heist. “We were prepared to counter it,” Ms. Nessel said in an interview.

“We may have walked back from the brink of a dangerous moment in this country, but this cannot be the norm,” said Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn. “It’s not sustainable for democracy.”

The move came as Poland is struggling through the economic repercussions of the pandemic, a partial lockdown and a sluggish vaccine rollout.

The Constitutional Tribunal, the country’s top court, which issued the ruling, explained its decision by saying that “human life has value in every phase of its evolution, and as a value, the source of which is in the constitutional laws, it should be protected by lawmakers.”

Even before the tribunal’s decision, Poland’s abortion laws were among the most restrictive in Europe, allowing for termination of pregnancies only in cases of rape or incest, a threat to a woman’s life and fetal abnormalities.

The government has tried to frame the abortion debate as an attack on the church and therefore an attack on the people, said Edit Zgut, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a move that could further polarize an already divided society.

And that, I think, has encouraged the kind of anti-institutional mind-set that, in some ways, is always there. Populism is always anti-institutional, and there’s always been a populist element of the right. But the American right, at its origins, was in the business of defending the institutions.

sometimes that meant defending the institutions from the people running them.

Think about William F. Buckley’s first book. He was just out of Yale and wrote a book called “God and Man at Yale,” which was basically an argument for saving the great universities from the professors

I think that when conservatives think about universities now, they’re more inclined to think that there is no saving these institutions — we have to attack these institutions.

on the whole, the culture of the right has become much more hostile to the establishment.

Yuval Levin: I think that our politics has never really been intended to function as a pure majoritarian politics. One of the most important insights built into the constitutional system is that a functional republic, to be stable, has to not only enable enduring majorities to have their way but also protect durable minorities — large ones. And that means that there are all kinds of structures in the system that compel accommodation, that require differing factions to work together if they’re going to achieve anything.

I don’t think conservatism can do its job in a free society in opposition to the institutions of that society. I think it can only function in defense of them.

a conservatism that becomes anti-institutional looks like a mob attacking the Capitol

Yuval Levin: Creating alternatives to [mainstream institutions] is quite a challenge. To start a new elite university is not a simple matter. It’s not unimaginable.

It’s just very hard to do.

Yuval Levin: I do think that’s true. I would say one important force that’s played a role here is the increasing capture of our core mainstream institutions by the left. The core institutions of American media, the academy, culture are abjectly left-leaning institutions. That has meant that to resist the left is to resist these core institutions.

To Levin, the problem is that the Republican Party, in hock to these institutions, has become untethered from the tangible stakes of politics. “The question for us in the coming years is whether we can move a little more in the direction of a politics of ‘What does government do?’ and less of a politics of ‘Who rules?’” he said.

And so I think conservatives have found that rather than create alternative institutions, they’ve created critical institutions. They’ve created institutions that exist to attack the left’s institutions. And there’s an audience for that, but that’s not really mainstream work. That’s not a place to just get your news when you just want news.

I think a politics where a narrow majority could just advance its agenda and then see what the public says at the next election is not a good idea for American society in this moment. I think we are much better served by a politics that compels some work across party lines in order to get anywhere.

Congress has always been designed that way. Congress was not intended to be like a European Parliament, where the majority rules for as long as the public will let it. It is a place where the country works out its differences

that requires these supermajority institutions

I think it is very important that our system requires some cross-partisan accommodation, frustrating as it is for those of us who have policy ambitions. I think that the contribution of that to the health of our political culture is absolutely essential, especially now.

the filibuster was not an idea of the founding fathers. They did not want a supermajority requirement in Congress. They thought about that and rejected it.

one way of framing what you’re saying here is that a system that requires more accommodation to get things done is going to encourage compromise and understanding between the parties

well, look around. We have more filibusters than ever and more polarized politics than ever. More party line votes than ever. Less cooperation than ever.

I feel like if your view on this were right, politics would look better right now. And these various blockages we have would encourage compromise. But instead, the more blockage we have, the less compromise we seem to get.

The question is, what gives us a chance to arrive at a more legitimate and a more sustainable set of political arrangements?

I think, ultimately, it is a good thing for a very narrow majority to have to get some support from the minority for its big ideas if those are going to endure.