President Donald Trump looks up at the new flag on the South Lawn of the White House on June 21, 2025. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
The president of the United States is deploying masked troops to the streets of blue cities, working to put friendly billionaires in charge of the media environment, and attempting to jail his personal enemies.
Can any democracy come back from this?
Earlier this year, two teams of researchers published papers trying to answer this exact question — and came to seemingly opposite conclusions.
Both papers focused on what they call “democratic U-turns:”...
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