And the one after that, and the one after that. https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/trump-election-rules-changes/682394 An unfortunate reality now confronts Americans who value the rule of law: The court system has limited capability to act as a guardrail against Trumpist authoritarianism. And so elections matter—vitally. The final and most powerful check on Donald Trump has always been, and will…

Trump is an agent of chaos, and chaos has a human cost. https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/signalgate-trump-administration-messaging/682308 The first Trump administration began with a lie. On January 21, 2017, President Donald Trump’s then–press secretary, Sean Spicer, claimed that Trump had drawn the largest audience to ever witness a presidential inauguration. Photographs clearly showed that the assertion was false; Trump’s…