Most Trump supporters remain in his camp, but some independents, young people and Black Americans who voted for the president in 2024 would not do so again in an election do-over.
The founding generation in America was not of one mind. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson differed on crucial ideas, but exemplify the capacity for people to disagree and yet work for a common cause.
Rebuffed by the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump is seeking to exploit a different tariff tool to regain leverage. Whether it succeeds remains in question.
We speak with the acclaimed artist and author Molly Crabapple about her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. Although largely forgotten today, the Jewish Labor Bund was once a powerful secular, socialist revolutionary party that fought for freedom and dignity for Jews in Europe. The movement formed in the waning days of the Russian Empire in an atmosphere of intense antisemitism, but it “rejected, from the very start, calls to create a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine,” Crabapple says. “They felt that Zionism was a capitulation to the same bigots that wanted to kick Jews out of Europe.”
Bund members — known as Bundists — navigated profound historical changes from the founding of the movement in 1897 until its ultimate destruction in the Holocaust. But Crabapple, who learned Yiddish for the book, says the Bund is not just Jewish history.
“This is a history that belongs to all rebels. It belongs to everyone who believes in the necessity of human solidarity,” she says.
You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here. The unfairness created by Republican gerrymandering in states across the country ahead of the midterm elections is the latest sign of the deep flaws of the American political system. In the latest edition of Right Now, political scientists Lee Drutman of the think tank New America and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mark Copelovitch say that the United States needs to look abroad for models on how to better run a democracy. Both say that it’s critical that the U.S. adopt proportional representation and multimember congressional districts. That would make gerrymandering obsolete and foster the creation of a multiparty system, which both Drutman and Copelovitch agree is essential. Copelovitch says that the strongest democracies tend to have a prime minister chosen by parliament, not a president, because presidents often assert too much power. Since the U.S. is not likely to get rid of the presidency, Copelovitch argues that it’s critical that true limits are enforced on presidential power. He also says that adding justices to the Supreme Court is essential, because the current justices are hyperpartisan and too power-hungry. Copelovich says that judicial reform is also important because the current high court might strike down proportional representation and other necessary reforms. Drutman and Copelovitch say that the 2028 Democratic presidential candidates should emphasize democracy reforms on the campaign trail. They say questions about whether Democrats should focus on democracy or affordability are a false choice. Economic and democratic issues are connected, the two scholars argue, because our current system is too broken to deliver strong outcomes for our citizens.