The Rise and Fall

My choice is normally to look for the positive in situations. While that can be difficult at times, there would be little use in me adding my voice to the monstrous roar of negativity that greets anyone following current events.

And let’s face it — the news is all bad right now.

Things are bad because of the election, and they may get worse before they get better, but I believe in our collective ability to overcome Trump’s imminent threat to our democracy.

And I believe that ultimately we will.

But first we have to be informed. And then we will need to stay alert. A broad-based resistance to what promises to be a slow slide toward autocracy will form the basis of a democratic recovery starting with the midterm elections of 2026.

That is the story I look forward to — the recovery of our norms — two years from now. For now, we all need to stay informed and notice the detail of autocracy’s rise. Among those details will be the seeds of the campaign we will wage together to provoke autocracy’s fall.

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“Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die

HEADLINES:

• Trump talked to Putin, told Russian leader not to escalate in Ukraine (WP)

• Kremlin says reports of Trump-Putin call about Ukraine are ‘pure fiction’ (Guardian)

• As Trump’s win tests the world order, diplomats are fretting over what it means for the planet (CNN)

• Trump’s reelection casts a shadow over the start of global climate negotiations (NPR)

• Trump appoints UN ambassador Elise Stefanik and border tsar Tom Homan (BBC)

• Smile, Flatter and Barter: How the World Is Prepping for Trump Part II (NYT)

• Trump on Day 1: Begin deportation push, pardon Jan. 6 rioters and make his criminal cases vanish (AP)

• Lebanon, Gaza and Syria hit by deadly Israeli strikes, reports say (CNN)

• The right-wing organization in Trump’s ear replacing the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 (Independent)

• How Kamala Harris — and Joe Biden — lost to Donald Trump (WP)

• There’s a Lot of Fighting Over Why Harris Lost. But Everyone Seems to Want to Avoid This Explanation. (Slate)

• Democrats face a reckoning and a long rebuilding. There is no quick fix. (WP)

• NY parks employee dies fighting fires; air quality warnings are issued in New York and New Jersey (AP)

• How Tech Created a ‘Recipe for Loneliness’ (NYT)

• AGI is coming faster than we think — we must get ready now (Venture Beat)

• Near plans to build world’s largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model (Cointelegraph)

• Large Behavior Models Surpass Large Language Models To Create AI That Walks And Talks (Forbes)

• CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years (The Onion)