Representative Lauren Boebert had an important point to make. But it could be difficult to hear the rabble-rousing Republican from Colorado over a packed-in crowd of counter-agitators.

“So this is what the students here at GW University are facing each and every day,” Boebert was trying to say into a bank of microphones in the middle of the downtown Washington, D.C., campus of George Washington University on Wednesday afternoon. She and five of her GOP colleagues from the House Oversight Committee had just toured an encampment of tents, or a “liberation camp,” that protesters had put up last week in opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.

“Their learning activities are being disrupted,” Boebert said of the students. “Their finals are being disrupted.”

But protesters kept disrupting Boebert. Or were she and her friends from Congress the disrupters in this particular Washington-bubble showdown? Who were the rabble in this equation, and who were the rousers?

“What about you in that theater?” one woman called out at Boebert from the back of the crowd, referring to a September incident in which the congresswoman was kicked out of a musical comedy after canoodling with a date, vaping, and talking in the midst of the production.

This was not the same protester as the one who had been trailing behind Boebert holding up a cardboard sign that said, simply, Beetlejuice, referring to the play that she’d been evicted from. (Google it, and you’ll find security footage of the episode—or don’t.)

[David A. Graham: Biden’s patience with campus protests runs out]

If only theaters could always incubate such frivolity. But these are bloody days in the embattled theater of the Middle East, which have in turn triggered a spate of protests on American campuses, marked by episodes of bigotry, sporadic violence, and arrests. Combine this with a group of elected performance artists who couldn’t help but try to grab a cheap morsel of attention from this bitterly serious conflict, and you have the political theater that played out on Wednesday.

“Dude, are you gonna talk, or am I gonna talk?” Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, admonished a protester who interrupted his turn at the mic, after Boebert had spoken. Donalds wore dark glasses and a tight-fighting navy suit.

Like his colleagues, Donalds called for the immediate removal of the protesters from campus—something that, to this point, the D.C. police department has declined to do. “The mayor is weak in the face of foolishness,” Donalds said, referring to Washington’s chief executive, Muriel Bowser.

“You wouldn’t allow someone to stay in your house or stay in your dorm room. You would have them removed,” Donalds said. “Everybody believes in peaceful protest, but this is trespassing.”

“What about January 6?” a man standing next to me called out. Yes, what about that, sir?

“Calm down. I’m talking now,” Donalds said, addressing another heckler.

[Tyler Austin Harper: America’s colleges are reaping what they sowed]

About 20 minutes earlier, Representative James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, had also urged calm as he paraded through the tent city. People shouted after Comer, mocking his committee’s fizzling effort to impeach President Joe Biden, while another said something about Hunter Biden. The voices and signs all blurred together into a muggy cacophony.

“Lauren Boebert, seen any good movies lately?”

Lesbians for Palestine.

I Stand With Israel.

Comer led his delegation past a row of tables covered with donated food for the protesters—pizza, granola bars, peanuts, bags of tangerines. Everything is FREE, like Palestine will be free, advertised a poster on the food spread, which covered several yards at the edge of the quad.

“Mr. Chairman, do you think your appearance today is going to lead to police violence on campus?” a man with a British accent asked Comer.

“Probably,” the congressman said, projecting zero concern.

“You want some pizza?” another onlooker asked Comer, who kept walking.

The congressman seemed eager to get on with the quick and chaotic press conference that would punctuate the lawmakers’ visit. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you,” an outnumbered supporter yelled out. The congressman waited for his colleagues to make their brief statements and seized the closing message for himself.

“Help is on the way for George Washington University,” promised Comer, who then joined his colleagues as they struggled through a thick crowd—and a “Beetlejuice” chant—before departing this enclave of academia and heading back to their own pillared sanctum on Capitol Hill.

Courtesy of Donald Trump, America continues its journey into the political twilight zone.

At an April 25 Supreme Court hearing, Trump’s lawyer D. John Sauer was asked by Justice Sonya Sotomayor, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” To which Sauer responded, “It would depend on the hypothetical. We can see that could well be an official act.”

Sotomayor emphasized that this hypothetical act would be done for personal reasons, not in furtherance of an official responsibility, nor to protect the country from a terrorist. “Immunity says even if you did it for personal gain, we won’t hold you responsible,” she said. And that is precisely what Trump’s legal team is arguing for: immunity even for acts of personal gain, including assassinating a political opponent. (For good measure, Sauer argued that a president would have immunity if he ordered the military to stage a coup or sold military secrets to a foreign adversary.)

That is no surprise. In January, Sauer argued at an appeals-court hearing that a president could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival and not face prosecution unless he were impeached and convicted first. (Trump lost the appeal unanimously.)

[David Hume Kennerly: The danger of a small act of cowardice]

“If someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world, with the greatest amount of authority, could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes, I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is for turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during the April 25 hearing.

This raises the question: Would Trump ever actually try such a thing? And if he did, would the Republican Party stand with him?

The answer to the first question is of course unknowable today, probably even to Trump, whose mental state seems more and more capricious and deranged. He is no Vladimir Putin, capable of coldly organizing hit jobs.

All the same, in his 2:24 p.m. tweet on January 6, 2021, Trump spurred on an already violent mob that sought to hang Vice President Mike Pence. (Immediately after his tweet, the crowds both inside and outside the Capitol violently surged forward.)

The former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified under oath that she recalls former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone saying to then–Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, “Mark, we need to do something more. They’re literally calling for the vice president to be effing hung.” And Meadows responded with something to the effect of, “You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

According to the January 6 committee’s report, several other White House aides also believed Trump’s tweet was an effort to inflame the mob. “It was essentially giving the green light to these people,” according to then–Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews.

Additionally, in a recent CNN interview, former Attorney General Bill Barr—who’d previously said that Trump  has gone “off the rails,” is“manic and unreasonable,” and has demonstrated “erratic personal behavior”—admitted that Trump would “lose his temper” and talk about people who should be executed. “I doubt he would have actually carried it out,” Barr said with a nervous laugh. “But he would say that on other occasions?” the anchor Kaitlan Collins asked. “The president, I think people sometimes took him too literally,” Barr responded.

Perhaps Barr had the January 6 mob in mind.

So why would we assume that Trump—a man of sociopathic tendencies, who appears unable to even think in moral terms, who inflamed a violent mob to try to hang his vice president—would automatically recoil from having a political opponent assassinated if the opportunity presented itself?

In other words, although it may not be likely that Trump would order a political assassination—particularly if the Supreme Court rules that, as president, Trump would not have immunity—it is still possible. And that, in turn, raises another possibility, and maybe even a probability: Much of the Republican Party, including white evangelicals and fundamentalists, would line up in support of Trump even if he did order the assassination of a political opponent. If you don’t think so, you’re simply not familiar enough with the MAGA mind. You’re not listening closely enough to what Trump is saying to his supporters, and what they’re saying to one another.

It’s easy to anticipate just how their argument would unfold: first, deny that any amount of evidence could be amassed to prove that Trump tried to assassinate anyone; second, dismiss the allegations because they are being made by “haters” who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome; third, point the finger at the “Biden crime family,” whose corruptions far exceed what we see from Trump and his kin; and fourth, insist that even if the former president did order the assassination of a political opponent, it’s essential that Trump retain the presidency, because his absence would lead to dystopia. Unfortunately, for the sake of America, some people must perish. Or so Trump supporters would say.

[Isaac Arnsdorf: Trump has transformed the GOP all the way down]

Context is important here. MAGA world has stood with Trump—in fact, its support for him has deepened—through everything he has done, including encouraging the January 6 mob to kill his vice president and being found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming a woman. And those are just a fraction of his legal and moral transgressions. Yet Republicans have never been close to taking the exit ramp away from the former president. The closer we get to November’s election, the more emphatically they will defend him.  

The identity of MAGA world has fused with Trump’s; to turn on him would be to turn on themselves. They won’t admit to themselves, and they certainly won’t admit to others, the sheer expanse of Trump’s degeneracy. To do so would be self-indicting; it would cause enormous cognitive dissonance. They made a Faustian bargain, and they’re not about to break it. They will follow him anywhere he goes.

Where Trump might go in a second term is of course a matter of speculation. But if his actions track at all with his last months in office, with his rhetoric since his defeat, and with the actions his lawyers are saying their client might be legally immune for committing, we are heading to an exceedingly dark and dangerous place. We can’t say we haven’t been warned.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

In a recent interview with Time magazine, Donald Trump once again told Americans what he will do to their system of government. Why don’t they believe him?

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Amanda Knox: “What if Jens Söring actually did it?” Trump can’t seem to stay awake for his own trial. America’s colleges are reaping what they sowed, Tyler Austin Harper argues.

The Day After

While I was away from the Daily this past month, a lot of news and life happened, including the passage of a major foreign-aid bill, campus protests, and House Democrats offering to save the job of a GOP speaker. But Donald Trump also gave an interview to Time magazine that, after the usual burst of shock and commentary, has flown under the radar, relatively speaking, pushed out of the headlines by the unrest at elite colleges.

In the interview, Trump once again promised to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists; once again, he vowed to use the Justice Department as his personal legal hit squad. He said he will prosecute Joe Biden, deport millions of people, and allow states with newly strict abortion regulations to monitor pregnant women. He will kneecap NATO and throw Ukraine to the Russians.

Trump told Time that he thinks people actually like it when he sounds like a dictator, and he’s not entirely wrong: As I’ve noted, much of his base loves talk of “vermin” and the idea of exacting revenge on other Americans. But there are two other important reasons that many people are not taking Trump seriously enough—and that Biden, a long-serving American politician, is struggling in the polls with an often incoherent would-be autocrat.

One problem has been around as long as the republic: Americans don’t pay attention to politics, and when they do, they frequently blame the current president for whatever is going wrong in their lives. For most people, economic cause and effect is mostly notional; if gas prices are high today, or if someone is still not working despite low unemployment rates, it’s because of the guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Combine this with the peculiar amnesia that helps people forget how many Americans needlessly died of COVID while Trump talked about ingesting bleach, and you have a population that fondly remembers how good they had it during a terrifying pandemic.

Nostalgia and presentism are part of politics. But a second problem is even more worrisome: Americans simply cannot imagine how badly Trump’s first term might have turned out, and how ghastly his second term is likely to be. Our minds are not equipped to embrace how fast democracy could disintegrate. We can better imagine alien invasions than we can an authoritarian America. The Atlantic tried to lay out what this future would look like, but perhaps even words can’t capture the magnitude of the threat.

When I was in high school and taking driver’s education, our teachers would show us horrible films, with names like Death on the Highway, that included gory footage of actual car wrecks. The goal was to scare us into being responsible drivers by showing us the reality of being mangled or burned to death in a crash. The idea made sense: Most people have never seen a car wreck, and expanding our imaginations by showing us the actual carnage did, I suspect, scare some of us into holding that steering wheel at the steady 10-and-2 position.

Likewise, Americans had a hard time conceiving of a nuclear war until 1983, when ABC showed the made-for-television movie The Day After. The movie (as I wrote here) made an impact not because anyone thought a nuclear exchange would be a walk in the park but because no one could really get their head around what would happen if one took place. (That’s despite how thoroughly fears of nuclear war had otherwise permeated the culture.) The movie includes a stomach-churning scene of people watching a football game at a stadium, looking up to see the contrails of American missiles in the sky, and realizing that the world as they’ve known it would last for another 30 minutes at most. This was not Dr. Strangelove; it was a moment people could see happening to themselves.

We just don’t have a similar conceptualization for the end of democracy in America. I have not seen the film Civil War, but I’m not worried about another civil war—at least not the kind we had before. Rather, I’m worried about the gray fog of authoritarianism settling, in patches and pieces, across the United States. In 2021, my colleague George Packer tried to present a realistic scenario of democratic collapse; the next year, I wrote about what such a process might look like. But looking back, I see the limits of my imagination.

I did not, for example, think it possible that state troopers would stop women who might try to leave their state to seek an abortion. In his concurrence with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision that threw out Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that such travel bans on pregnant women might be unconstitutional, and no state has tried to enact one—yet. But I now view this as only one of many inhuman outrages that could come to pass if the federal government is overtaken by Trump and his authoritarian cronies and the state courts feel free, with Trump’s blessing, to ignore the Constitution. I can imagine state legislatures passing repressive laws and expelling any representatives who oppose them. And I can easily see the former president and right-wing governors attempting to use the U.S. military and the National Guard as their personal muscle.

People have a hard time imagining all of this is in part because Trump has a compliant, right-wing media ecosystem arrayed around him that tries to explain away his behavior. But it doesn’t help that others in the national media remain locked in the mindset that this is a normal election. Today, The New York Times ran an op-ed from Matthew Schmitz, a right-wing writer who assured readers that all will be well: “Mr. Trump may pose a threat to our political system as it now exists,” he writes, “but it is a threat animated by a democratic spirit.” (Back in December, the Times ran an essay by Schmitz in which he argued that Trump is a moderate: “Mr. Trump’s moderation can be easy to miss, because he is not a stylistic centrist—the sort who calls for bipartisan budget cutting and a return to civility.” Well, that’s one way to put it.)

Crucial to deadening our imaginations about Trump is the idea pushed by some of his supporters that his unhinged statements are just a lot of tough talk, and that the second term would be like the first, only without the pandemic and with cheaper eggs. In reality, of course, Trump’s first term was (to use a rather vivid Russian expression I learned in my days in the Soviet Union) about as organized as a whorehouse on fire during an earthquake. Even before COVID, responsible men and women, some of whom agreed deeply with Trump on many issues, nonetheless had to run around stamping out one crisis after another. None of those people will be present to restrain Trump this time, and he will bring to Washington a crew that is even more morally reprehensible—and far more organized—than those who joined him in his first term.

Trump’s most alarmist opponents are wrong to insist that he would march into Washington in January 2025 like Hitler entering Paris. The process will be slower and more bureaucratic, starting with the seizure of the Justice Department and the Defense Department, two keys to controlling the nation. If Trump returns to office, he will not shoot democracy on Fifth Avenue. He and the people around him will paralyze it, limb by limb. The American public needs to get better at imagining what that would look like.

Related:

Trump’s contempt knows no bounds. If Trump wins

Today’s News

The House passed a bill yesterday aimed at responding to reports of rising levels of anti-Semitism on college campuses. Israeli officials warned the U.S. government that if the International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over alleged war crimes on Palestinian territories, Israel may retaliate against the Palestinian Authority, according to Axios. The governor of Arizona signed into law a repeal of the state’s controversial Civil War–era abortion ban.

Dispatches

Time-Travel Thursdays: The gulf between critically acclaimed art films and blockbuster movies keeps growing, Jacob Stern writes. Sixty years ago, the critic Pauline Kael saw it coming. The Weekly Planet: The French Biodiversity Agency is a nationwide police force charged with protecting French species across the country. It’s a uniquely French approach to environmentalism, Jess McHugh writes, and it just might work.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

America’s IVF Failure

By Emi Nietfeld

A sperm donor fathers more than 150 children. A cryobank misleads prospective parents about a donor’s stellar credentials and spotless health record. A cancer survivor’s eggs are stored in a glorified meat locker that malfunctions, ruining her chance at biological motherhood. A doctor implants a dozen embryos in a woman, inviting life-threatening complications. A clinic puts a couple’s embryos into the wrong woman—and the biological parents have no recourse.

All of these things have happened in America. There’s no reason they won’t happen again.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

Biden’s patience with campus protests runs out. Cancer supertests are here. Milk has lost its magic. Why a bit of restraint can do you a lot of good The complicated ethics of rare-book collecting

Culture Break

Max

Watch. In the third season of Hacks, premiering today on Max, the show faces the failures of late-night comedy head-on.

Listen. In the latest episode of Radio Atlantic, staff writer Zoë Schlanger discusses a provocative scientific debate: Are plants intelligent?

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

A lot of other things happened while I was gone (and you’ll continue to see me here a little less frequently than usual for a stretch, as I’m still working on some longer-term projects). Some of you may have seen the personal news that my cat, the amazing Carla, passed away. I will write about Carla here next week, but thanks to the many of you on social media who sent your condolences. As anyone who’s loved an animal knows (and as Tommy Tomlinson wrote here), it’s astonishing how much you can miss them.

I’ll be back next week, but in the meantime, I also want to wish my fellow Eastern Orthodox Christians a happy Easter, which for us is this Sunday. (It’s because we rely on the Julian calendar. Why can’t we just change it, and use a common calendar, like we do with Christmas? Well, we’re Orthodox, and … Look, it’s complicated.) Anyway, a blessed Easter to those who are celebrating this weekend.

— Tom

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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