The most important thing I read this week was an article in Vox: “How Ron DeSantis is following a trail blazed by a Hungarian authoritarian“. The reason it’s so hard to make sense out of what DeSantis is doing is that he’s not imitating Trump or following any other American model; he’s translating a Hungarian model of fascism into an American context. This article fits well with a series that the New York Times is doing on another American Orbánist, Tucker Carlson. This week’s featured post ties the two together in “MAGA 2.0”. It should be out between 10 and 11 EDT.
The weekly summary has a lot to cover: the Russian offensive in Eastern Ukraine continues, the pandemic is now clearly on the upswing, Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter appears to be succeeding, the Supreme Court appears ready to knock a few more bricks out of the wall separating Church and State, and GDP shrank in the first quarter. Plus, a lot of insightful things were written about the future of American democracy, and I’ll link to the talk I gave during my week off.
The summary should appear by 1.
The Weekly Sift 