he's not going to just spend his life studying halakha he's going to be involved in the world shaves and moves forward so take us a little bit from warsaw to berlin and maybe we'll pause at cincinnati for a minute so we can figure out heber union college

no no so he grows up in in a very traditional uh area of warsaw warsaw is a very a huge jewish population um Not quite 50%, but a big percentage of the city is Jewish.

And that is a city not just with Hasidic Jews, where he grows up, but also labor, radical labor leaders, early Zionists, poets and playwrights who were often quite radical in what they were doing.

And he grows up in a world where he's ensconced in the traditional part, but he always is watching and a little bit interacting with this other world as well.

His family is a family of very distinguished Hasidic rabbis.

So they're kind of elevated in the community.

And he's very bright from a young age, able to learn texts very young.

So this is

So hindsight is 2020 of course, but from your perspective as a historian, what went wrong?

Look, some of it is the fact that government institutions are often slow to change.

They're big, they're large, they're rooted in history, and it often takes time to adjust to new realities.

Added to that is the gridlock of Washington, which makes progress very difficult.

Some of it was a bias of, of not taking the threats from the region as seriously as they had other areas like the Soviets during the Cold War.

And finally, there were reforms in the '70s which intentionally separated the FBI and the CIA, uh, in response to revelations of how government officials had abused the power.

So there was a resistance to going all in on centralization given the history and the record of the US government abusing that authority.

Do you think the government has learned the lessons of September 11th, 25 years later?

So now, today in twenty twenty-six, do you think, Julian, that Biden's party, the Democratic Party, has learned lessons that it will take going into the midterms?

Well, I think they've, uh, learned some, and they might be missing some.

Meaning, what they have learned is the importance of communication and, and using that to build a durable political coalition.

If you don't have that, you can put all the laws on the books that you want, but they ultimately will disappear.

I, I do think that Democrats could also take a look at some of what Biden did accomplish on the domestic front because one thing becomes clear in retrospect, that on many of the issues people care about today, education costs and Prices and investing in new forms of manufacturing.

Biden had actually made a lot of progress in those four years.

So part of the tragedy for Democrats is not just that their candidate lost, but that an entire policy agenda essentially is going out the window.

Why not?

What does this say about where we are and who we are as a nation that Donald Trump is doing this and we elected him and put him in a place to do this?

Well, I think the values are antithetical to what the founders imagined.

This was a country created in rebellion.

against monarchy, against centralized power, against grandiose displays of authority.

And I think the way he's envisioning how this renovation takes place, putting aside the national security arguments that have now popped up, is to embrace exactly what Washington didn't want, what I think many presidents have avoided, even if they have decorated it, even if they have made it more grandiose, It's not meant to be a palace.

It's meant to represent the idea that this is a representative democracy where ultimately the power rests in the people, not in the president.

So I think it says something about the country to accept it.

Julian, how does another president come in and deal with all this?

He, he had other problems.

Although it was part, it was certainly part of the problem.

But Carter, yes.

I mean, Carter in 1979, it's in the summer of '79, is really reeling from what Americans experience, and it's not simply gas prices.

It's waiting in line for gas.

It's hearing that you could only buy gas on certain days.

It's reading stories about people stealing gas and violent clashes occurring-

Yeah.

He had other problems.

Although it was part, it was certainly part of the problem, but Carter, yes.

I mean, Carter in 1979, it's in the summer of '79, is really reeling from what Americans experience, and it's not simply gas prices.

It's waiting in line for gas.

It's hearing that you could only buy gas on certain days.

It's reading stories about people stealing gas and violent clashes occurring-

Yeah.

Uh, it's a war without the kind of clarity, uh, even that many people felt after 9/11 with Afghanistan and Iraq for a while.

Princeton's Julian Zelizer is a presidential historian, and he tells Scott Tong that history has two powerful examples of presidents who overcame deep divisions in their parties to govern decisively: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the thirties, and Ronald Reagan in the eighties.

It was a deeply divided party in the 1930s.

You had conservative Southern Democrats who were the powerhouses in Congress, who were very conservative on race relations, on unionization, and on many government issues.

And then you had a growing cohort of Northern Democrats, such as Senator Wagner of New York, who were very liberal and wanted to expand government and were really the architects of programs like Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act.

And so this was a big tension, bigger than in many ways the party faces today-

What issues did Reagan confront and, I guess as you argue, confront well?

Yeah, I mean, his coalition was also just a total mess in 1980.

There were so many different factions.

Is that just a hunch, or is that backed up through stats or effectiveness or anything else historically?

I don't know if there's a statistical study of that or how you would actually gauge it.

Look, I've met many legislators today and policymakers in both parties who are very smart and certainly would stand up with people of yesteryear.

And I've studied many people from yesteryear who are not particularly smart or they're unethical or they would fall under the categorization you're talking today.

I do think there's challenges the current political ecosystem causes that doesn't always bring out the smart in smart people i do think i'm one who thinks social media has really degraded uh our our public discourse and our common space in politics and so you you have incentives for uh elected officials today to speak in ways that are provocative sensational attention yet that doesn't mean they're not smart But it leads them to a style of political debate that I don't think elevates who we are as a democracy and diminishes it.

I do think one other part to connect to the last question is because majorities on Capitol Hill are so narrow, my colleague Francis Lee wrote about this, and they shift so much in contrast to that earlier period, both parties, as smart as you might be, have an incentive to really kind of play to the worst elements of partisanship because you want to hold on to power.

You don't want to give your opponent a single thing because that might mean next Congress, you're out of power.

Can the legislative branch ever claw back power from the executive branch once it's handed over? And has that happened before?

And then the next time I really remember reading and seeing more of Newt was when, as you described, when Trump brought him back.

That's right.

And the 2012 campaign, by the way, not only did he When he was doing well, not only was he running a campaign very similar to Trump's message, almost the draining the swamp anti-media message, Kellyanne Conway was one of his top advisors.

So there's a connection that's really remarkable.

But yes, then he comes back, even though he doesn't get the vice presidential pick, he's been one of President Trump's most vocal supporters.

You often hear him or watch him on Fox.

television.

Okay, go ahead.

Would it have been possible without Social Security Act to have had the Medicare, Medicaid, the war on poverty during the LBJ administration?

No, I mean, broadly, I do think Social Security by the 50s is an extremely popular program.

By then, it's what it is today.

It's expanded.

People in Republican and Democratic areas are depending on it.

So I think by the time you hit the 60s, which is when LBJ is president, Americans are accustomed to federal provision.

I mean, obviously, Social Security is one thing among many, but it was an important one.

You mentioned Ronald Reagan, and for our younger listeners who don't remember the early 1980s or weren't around, what prompted him to... move with this rolling back the welfare state agenda and why was it popular and how successful was he? I

But what if this time he really is having some sort of change of heart and he really means it, that this, what people are calling a slush fund that would pay insurrectionists, is appalling?

Well, I, I think if you're bothered, as many people are, by January 6th, it's, it's better to have a, a former Republican leader, uh, and still a prominent Republican, standing against the slush fund and standing against this kind of payment, and that vote matters.

But still, more broadly, you want some sense of reckoning from the party about what's happened, what they've done, and the implications of continuing to this day, uh, to protect a president from their own party when he does things that destabilize the democracy.

So unless he does that, unless you see more people in the party do that, this is obviously a good step, uh, but it doesn't leave the bigger issue-

... destroyed the job he once held, the, you know, the majority leader.

I think that's right.

I mean, I think there's two things that have happened.

One is President Trump has expanded his reach as a party leader.

What, what am I ranking, making reference to? This is Katherine Cramer Brownell's work.

It's a very interesting essay, and it really looks at this new landscape that we live in, including, uh, what we are on currently, but of podcasting, of social media, really where these older institutions of media that President Biden grew up, uh, learning and using politically, television, print, newspapers, even cable television in some ways, by his presidency, were all really becoming, uh, pretty outdated.

And there was a new world which was not only about new places where you had to sell your message, but different ways on those platforms in which a politician has to communicate.

And we see through her essay, as well as in the essays on different policies, that he was just never very comfortable or nor did he have an understanding of, of how these worked, and it hurt him.

It hurt his ability to explain what he was doing to voters.

It hurt his ability to counteract the attacks that start to come, both from then former President Trump and Republicans, and it ultimately kind of left him in a terrible position before the famous debate ever happened.

President Trump is for you.'" One of the most memorable c- if not the most memorable spot of that cycle.

Yeah, I...

Yeah.

And then Disney caves in fires, Jimmy Kimmel...

Um, I mean, this, this was one of the fl- you know, flexes of government power that Donald Trump clearly has been pushing for.

It's clearly a requirement of Brendan Carr's em- employment.

But, the, well, just give me your sense of that before we get...

We'll get to the, the blowback from that in, in a moment.

You know, whatever you think of Jimmy Kimmel, whether you like Jimmy Kimmel, whether you think he's funny, whether you think he's a jerk, whatever, is the FCC in the business of enforcing certain ideological standards? Should they...

I know.

He wants his version of reality.

No, it's absolutely true.

We talk a lot about the separation of powers and how the Constitution sets up a system with competing branches of government.

But independent knowledge is also extremely important to a healthy democracy.

We need some grounding in facts that is not produced by the person in power.

And what's apparent in the second term, we move from him saying things that are not true in the first term and just... kind of constantly going against reality and facts to now systematically going against institutions that produce the knowledge.

And so, yes, government statistics are something that are being eroded.

No,

Epstein files.

... and we should assume he'll go very far.

I mean, it's the ongoing lesson of January 6th, is, he will go very far to protect himself and to protect his power.

Uh, and on this particular issue, he feels and looks desperate.

Uh, and when he accused Obama of that, it was...

I- it should be stunning.

Uh, and- and it's a problem if more of us are not kind of shocked by that, but it's also dangerous.

France did.

Um, because there was a debate during the Constitutional Convention, there were people saying this would be abused, and I think it was James Madison who reassured everybody, "No, don't worry about it." You know, um, the, the, there would be impeachment processes, but they never envisioned that it would become this out of control, did they?

No, I mean, look, it, it, it depended on the mechanisms of, um, the balance of power working.

It depended on some level of leaders accepting limitations to how they would use the power.

There is a history.

It's, it's always been a problematic area.

There's famous pardons, um, certainly President Clinton pardoning Marc Rich was very controversial, a donor.

Uh, President, uh, uh, Ford's pardon of Nixon historically has been one of the most controversial.

He does.

Julian, how serious is this moment, is the threat to our constitutional rights?

It's a very serious threat.

Uh, the Constitution is the framework for our government, and we have an administration that is testing its strength every given day.

And here, uh, you hear Stephen Miller saying out loud, uh, what we know is coming, based on an invasion that, uh, people don't see happening.

And so, uh, this is a test for the country, I think.

I think many judges are stepping up in trying to stop it, but they have limited power of enforcement.

So often, Julian, I am asked by voters, people who I'm talking to in the course of my reporting and travels about, "Well, when will the media let us know that the line has really been crossed this time, that we're in truly strange territory?" How do you advise (laughs) people on that? How do you, how do you talk to people without sounding hyperbolic about what we're seeing, but also addressing the reality of what's in front of us?

I- it's not hyperbolic.

Wh- what do you see here on the biggest topic that the administration can't just spin, or argue, or tell me about fine print? Which, which is something people are feeling as we set up, uh, in our report tonight from, from toy sales, uh, to, to rising prices.

Look, the evidence is overwhelming and Navarro stands alone.

Uh, and the problem is, usually presidents come into office and they deal with the crisis if there is one, and they deal with it well sometimes, like many would argue FDR or Obama, some do it poorly.

Uh, this is a crisis created, uh, by the president and so it's very hard for the administration not only to kind of craft a set of facts that contradicts what a lot of economists are saying, but also to explain it away as something that doesn't come from the administration itself.

So it's a big political problem, not just for the president but for the GOP, which also owns what's happening.

Yep.

...

the tape recordings.

Yeah.

We do know if he is surrounded now totally by groups of advisors who will say, yes, yes, yes, whatever reality he imagines or wants to talk about will be confirmed.

And so then many people in the room are saying, that isn't Photoshop, that's the photo.

The second thing is it is a strategy.

I mean, he does believe consistently in shaping the reality of what we see.

So...

He will talk about the economy in one way with the hope that the facts gradually will fade.

This is what he's doing.

So, what is your take on the level of defiance that we're seeing from the Trump administration?

They are defying the courts, and they're ratcheting up the level of defiance, and playing rhetorical games about what they're doing and switching the terms of what they're doing, who they're doing it to.

It doesn't change the basic message and ruling that comes from the court.

The Supreme Court, lower level courts have all kept saying the same thing.

And I think it's very clear that this is one more institution that President Trump is willing to ignore, uh, challenge, intimidate, and I don't think the Supreme Court is gonna have an easy time upholding its decisions.

Uh, at- at some level, what we learn is that the power of the Supreme Court derives from the respect that people have for the court, including the president of the United States.

If that is not there, we are also learning there's a lot of room for an administration to simply ignore what the court says, and I think it's pretty clear that in these deportation cases, um, that's where this is going.

Mm-hmm.

But your impression, because he's just not dealing with the facts and reality when it comes to tariffs and the global economy is at stake

right so we've seen this before and we've talked about this certainly in the first term and in the first few weeks of the second term um but this you know what makes this different is the cost is just very immediate it's it's very intense and people are seeing that this is consequential it's it's not as if everything he does and the way he uses truth and falsehoods doesn't matter.

It's not as if we're watching it.

It wasn't a TV show yesterday.

That was a performance that preceded a big policy shift.

And a lot of people are going to lose money and lose potentially jobs as a result of what's going on.

And that's that match.

Do you see it that way? Do you see some real warning signs?

A- a- absolutely fascinating. Julian, this does relate to your, um, arguments in chapter four about the reasons for today's hyper-polarization being asymmetric polarization. Uh, tell us about that and how it relates to the alliance of, of MAGA with, uh, the evangelical church.

Yeah, so I mean, this is an argument some social scientists have talked about and a few journalists, Norm Ornstein and Matthew Grossman, that I th- I think is very convincing. And essentially, the, the argument is since the '90s, both parties have become more polarized, the center in both parties has diminished, both parties have been more aggressive in pursuing, uh, their agendas, but you've seen a much more extremist shift in the Republicans in, in thinking about what's permissible and what's not. And I started, and I mean, our timing isn't that different, I, I started really with Newt Gingrich as a figure to understand where this comes from, uh, who openly would discuss, uh, in memos to colleagues the need to not only speak, uh, and use more toxic language, but to be less concerned with norms of governing, to be less concerned with, "What will this do to the institution?" As opposed to obtaining power. Then you have the Tea Party, which i- is a acceleration of some of the kinds of thinking, um, that I think was introduced in terms of weaponizing almost anything. And for me, you see that with the debt ceiling fights under President Obama in 2011 and '13. We have a party that's seriously willing not to raise the debt ceiling, which would send us into default. That's a process whereby we approve, uh, money that's already been approved essentially to, to use it, um, and, and many other examples and then culminating, uh, in Trump. And, and, and that radicalization of the Republican Party, I think is different than what Democrats are ever gonna be capable of. And I argue Democrats are a party of governing, of government, and because of that, there's limits on how much they can do or how much they will be willing to do to the governing process, whereas Republicans have become an anti-government, um, party, and they're much more comfortable, uh, with the risks and the gridlock. Part of the coalition that I'm talking about includes the religious right, which I think, you know, you see the compromises Jonathan's talking about already a bit in the 1980s. I mean, there was a pragmatism to the movement when it's starting with the Moral Majority and thinking about the value of Reagan. Um, right from the start, I think like the broader party, it keeps intensifying. So I talk about that and, and that kinda leads into my notion of responsible partisanship, which is different than the political scientists of 1950, and it's party leaders who are strong, who are vigorous, uh, who are robust in their differences but adhere to some set of rules and principles in terms of what's legitimate, uh, so we protect our institutions, so we protect the ability to govern. A- and I think we've lost that. Uh, and I, I just... The other thing I talk about in that chapter is we've also layered onto this, have been in a period since the mid-'90s, um, which my colleague Francis Lee has really written about well, where, uh, majorities are no longer stable. And so, you know, from really the early '30s through the 1990s, other than a few exceptions, Democrats controlled Congress the whole time. Uh, and, uh, while there were problems with that, certainly if you were a Republican, it did create a kind of stability where the majority party was willing to negotiate with the minority party 'cause they had nothing, they weren't gonna lose power the next year or next election, and the minority party had an incentive to stay in the game and bargain. But we're now in a period on top of this hyper-partisan philosophy and mentality where control shifts every year, and it's the same in presidential elections, so the incentives are not to give away a thing. Uh, and that's a really combustible combination I think we have, which is part of, um, where we've ended up in 2025.

It's an incredibly powerful and inspiring, uh, model, as you say. Julian, your final chapter offers a series of proposals for achieving responsible partisanship, uh, including, uh, disarming the weapons of the hyper-partisan destruction in the context of the filibuster and Senate confirmation processes and, and campaign finance, permanently restoring regular order in Congress, which I want you to tell us about, and then of course, the crucial importance of leadership. Let's focus on regular order and congressional reform. Yuval Levin, of course, has a very important new book out, American Covenants, saying that the solution to resurrecting the Madisonian system, where all three branches independently check each other rather than allowing all power to consolidate in the elect- in the executive, is reinvigorating Congress, and that would include reforms like regular order. Tell us what that is and then address this, this obvious and important question. Given the hyper-partisanship and dysfunctions of the system, how in practice could a political movement arise th- that in fact would reform Congress in the way that the framers hoped?

So, uh, first, I have no short term, uh, kind of (laughs) vision of how this will happen. And, and I don't write a book like this for that purpose. I'm a historian. I look backward. But even when I'm looking at reforms, the point is, this is a big picture and a set of ideas to put out there, and I'm gonna come back to that. Uh, so some reforms I propose are very concrete, s- apparently technical reforms. That, that's what they sound like. Uh, but it's really thinking of, of what are some of the most dangerous mechanisms and processes that have been weaponized, and can we do something about it? And, and so one example is the debt ceiling, to come back to that. It's not part of the Constitution. And there's been a lot of a- of discussion, uh, in both parties, frankly. Uh, even President Trump floated it, uh, about either eliminating it altogether, uh, or instituting reforms which we've had in the past which make it automatic to increase the debt ceiling so we don't have to risk default when the parties are fighting over the budget. Uh, so that's a kind of very specific reform where I think we take one of the worst things we've seen and take it off the table, uh, so the parties don't have that, uh, to use anymore. Regular order is something you get a lot of bipartisan support, ironically, for it. And it's, it's simply... It, it goes against strong parties, so, so there's a contradiction. And, and the point is, there needs to be more of a textbook, uh, procedural process, uh, where committees have more input in crafting legislation, the rank and file have ways to get their ideas in there, so the party leaders aren't simply acting as totally autonomous creatures, essentially, uh, on Capitol Hill. I don't see that as a total contradiction, 'cause I argue if members feel more buy-in to what parties actually produce, I think it's healthier for the parties. Even when they're at loggerheads, uh, I think you want parties that don't feel like two people in a room are essentially dictating the pace of the negotiation. So it's reestablishing rules, um, that make it harder for parties to simply, you know, smoosh everything together in one big bill, not let anyone read it, and get it through, uh, until the end.... leadership is the most amorphous, and I, I get that, but it's vital. And I, I argue in, in studies of leadership, people focus on transformative leaders who are leaders who change the way we think of problems, change the debate. Again, FDR and Ronald Reagan are two classic presidential examples. We have transactional leaders, leaders who are great at bargaining and putting coalitions together. Uh, not at the big ideas, but at that part of politics. But I think we need normative leadership. I really think we need... We are in a moment, we need leaders in Congress who run for president, local politics, who take the norms seriously, who actually elevate reestablishing, uh, norm, norm stability, uh, and governing capacity as a central feature of what they're fighting for. How do you get that to happen? Well, the fact is, we haven't had many moments of reform in American history, but we've had some. Uh, y- you didn't anticipate the progressive era happening if you were living in the 1880s. You didn't anticipate the reforms of the 1970s happening if you were living in the '60s. And so, uh, the, the key is, does a crisis lead to that? Does the breakdown of a party? It's not happening right now, but, you know, does a sequence of big losses for Republicans, for example, shake the party up? I, I actually think we had almost a moment like that after 2020, but it moved in a different direction. But the point of these books, and, and I... From, from, you know, what I have read and, and I'm listening to with Jonathan, you're writing so when those moments come and when those leaders come, there's ideas on the table, uh, to, uh, work with. And so those are the kinds of reforms I talked. And there's one I don't talk about as much, um, well, one I... Uh, sorry. One other I do talk about is the need to integrate party leaders and rank and file members and think about that more. There's a whole argument about hollow parties, and it's not simply they are hollow in terms of the ability of the leadership to, uh, shape what a party does, but there's often a big disconnect between people who feel very loyal to party and the leadership. They're doing it on their phone, they're doing it through a text rather than actually becoming integrated into party, daily party operations, monthly party conversations, and I, I talk about reforms where people are using technology to do that. The one thing that's not in my book which I actually have come to think about a lot is the importance of reinvigorated civic space outside of politics, and I count religion as one of them, because I do th-... I am not one who doesn't think the divisions are real in this country, (laughs) and I am not one who thinks the 50/50 nation is an illusion. I think there's... It's grounded, but we need spaces, uh, and, and that can be the bowling alleys of sociologists or political scientist Robert Putnam, uh, to Jonathan's kind of reimagined churches where there's space for communal interaction that kind of is a countervailing pressure to the other kinds of pressures which will continue in politics, and, and I think that kind of work in communities, it, it's very important. Uh, I think there's ways in which we can be with people, uh, we don't agree with politically, uh, outside the political arena, and the more we nurture those, I think it just, uh, creates a better civic identity and a civic culture.