On this week’s WER Live, I had the privilege of speaking with Perry Bacon Jr., one of the sharpest analysts of American politics out there, about why so many institutions are failing to reckon with the current authoritarian moment, and how we should think about it instead.
We discussed:
Why Bacon left The Washington Post for The New Republic (read his first TNR column here);
Why the institutional resistance to Trump we saw in 2017 from business, media, and academia has withered in 2025;
How Republican gerrymandering in Texas is part of an authoritarian coup, not just the usual “everyone does it” partisan gamesmanship;
Why the media obsesses over intra-party Democratic squabbles while ignoring Republicans’ radicalization and authoritarian power grabs;
The need for a more community-oriented understanding of power, beyond simplistic messaging debates or coastal punditry;
And more.
