Author’s Note: I didn’t send out a newsletter yesterday so as a gift to my readers, I am making Stew’d Over free today. Much love from Charm City!
Reality Checking the Bulwark - Episode 3 will be out tonight where we discuss Mona Charen and David French’s February 16th conversation on The Mona Charen Show.
Episode 4 will be recorded live on Saturday at 1 PM EST/10 AM PST!
The normalization machine continues to hum.
We have breaking news that the U.S. Justice Department says it is reviewing whether Epstein-related records were mistakenly withheld amid reporting that some Trump-related material was not included in the public release. That is not the same thing as proving a criminal cover-up, but it is a moment to reflect on how much we have allowed to be normalized.
We have normalized violence as a means of political coercion, we have normalized open bigotry without repercussions, and we have normalized the sexual assault and rape of children.
That is the stunningly dark truth of our times.
An FBI director who was filmed partying and chugging a beer with Team USA hockey is also the public face of an institution at the center of a credibility fight over what the public is (and isn’t) being shown in the Epstein document releases.
And it isn’t just optics. Reports say Patel has moved to oust or fire roughly ten F.B.I. employees tied to the investigation into Trump’s retained classified records, the same ecosystem of cases that, conveniently, once pulled Patel himself into investigators’ crosshairs via subpoenaed phone toll records while he was a private citizen. In other words, the state’s memory is being retconned.
Recently, resignations and fallout have spanned from the CEO of the World Economic Forum, Børge Brende (who stepped down today); former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Lawrence Summers (who said he will resign from his Harvard teaching role at the end of the academic year); and a leading neuroscientist at Columbia University, Nobel laureate Richard Axel (who stepped down as co-director of the Zuckerman Institute).
And across the Atlantic, the Epstein disclosures have also been linked to police action involving prominent figures like former UK ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office and released on bail, as well as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) was arrested and later released amid a related misconduct inquiry.
The elite networks are extensive and seem to be touching everyone but the president of the United States, even as critics argue he treats the Justice Department as a personal instrument, while officials insist their process is legitimate and ongoing. (If anything, the public fight now is less “what happened then” and more “who controls what we get to see now.”)
However, instead of solely pointing to malice actors, we need to interrogate the mainstream storytellers of this moment. How they have told political stories and lived within frames that served to empower those tied in the web of Epstein’s atrocities and thus perpetuate this doom loop of child abuse. When public storytelling is coerced by power then the shadows of various power centers becomes an industry or insider secret rather than a five-alarm fire.
The Epstein saga is just another flashpoint that grotesquely reveals to us how Trumpism is tied to the world that came before and how the history books will look at the American century as an age of empire and excess. Particularly the years where we claimed the end of history, normalized irrational right-wing politics, and lived in a haze of mass consumption. At the same time we pronounced American dominance and hyperpower splendor, we were allowing for children to be harmed, sold, and sexualized in popular culture and in the secret labyrinths of Epstein’s world.
What a shame indeed.
Tim Miller, David Frum, and Punching Potential Democrats
Reactionary Centrism in an Authoritarian Moment
I was listening to an interview in The Atlantic between Tim Miller and David Frum where they fixated on a nebulous “illiberal left.” I respect both of them. They have been clear-eyed about the dangers of Trumpism. But I find myself asking a harder question: in moments like this, are they strengthening the pro-democracy coalition or unintentionally narrowing it by reinscribing frames that originated in right-wing media ecosystems?
This is not a personal attack. It is an interrogation of a model.
What I heard in that conversation was a familiar pattern including a symmetrical critique of “excess on both sides,” an anxiety about tone, cultural overreach, and how easily persuadable voters might recoil from progressive rhetoric. The subtle but persistent implication is that Democrats must first discipline their left flank before they can effectively confront the right. Something that did not happen often enough during their time in the GOP.
That instinct has a name. Jan-Werner Müller recently associated it as part of a larger intellectual tradition that has become known as “reactionary centrism,” which is the tendency of self-described moderates to claim equal opposition to extremes on both sides while directing most of their urgency toward the left. Müller’s warning is not that progressives should be beyond criticism. It is that reflexive middle positioning in an asymmetrical political landscape risks creating a false equivalence.
We are not living in a moment of symmetrical excess. We are living in a moment where one major political party has embraced election denialism, flirted with political violence, and openly tested the boundaries of constitutional governance. To frame the problem as “illiberalism on both sides” may feel evenhanded, but it obscures where institutional power and organized authoritarian energy actually reside.
That illusion of neutrality is what troubles me.
There is also an empirical problem with the moderation thesis that often undergirds conversations like the one between Frum and Miller. The argument is straightforward: Democrats lose because they are perceived as too extreme and therefore moderation is the path to victory.
But political science research in the Trump era complicates that story. In Boston Review, Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach argue that the electoral benefits of ideological moderation have largely evaporated in nationalized, polarized elections. The median voter theorem (once a useful guide in an era of weaker party polarization) no longer operates cleanly in today’s environment. Elections function more like national referenda on party brands than fine-grained evaluations of candidate ideology.
If moderation no longer delivers a consistent electoral bonus, then a strategy centered on disciplining progressive rhetoric may not only be morally questionable in an authoritarian moment but also be strategically outdated.
Now, there is a serious steel man here.
Frum and Miller are not irrational. They worry, and not without reason, that voters in swing districts are culturally moderate. They understand how effectively Republican campaigns weaponize activist rhetoric. They have seen elections where marginal persuasion in suburban districts mattered. They fear that self-inflicted wounds cost winnable races.
That fear deserves respect.
But fear is not strategy.
If the structural conditions of American politics have shifted and if turnout and nationalized partisan identity matter more than micro-calibrated ideological repositioning, then constantly signaling distance from “the left” may dampen the very mobilization required to defeat authoritarian movements. The question is no longer simply how to appeal to a median voter.
It is how to generate a mobilized electorate.
When Democratic leaders and commentators internalize the reactionary centrist frame, the conversation often devolves into popularism, tone management, and self-flagellation. We saw in 2024 a heavy emphasis on moderation and “kitchen table” recalibration. The outcome did not demonstrate that this approach is a reliable safeguard against authoritarian resurgence.
That is not to say moderation is illegitimate. Centrism as temperament of procedural respect and a willingness to compromise that was supposed to remain foundational to democratic governance until their former political party lampooned those principles. But in an asymmetrical environment, centrism as reflex can become distortion.
Müller makes this point clearly: when one side pushes authoritarian projects, reflexively occupying “the middle” risks normalizing asymmetry. And Bonica and Grumbach caution against treating selective statistical interpretations as scientific proof that moderation is the singular path to victory.
There is also a moral dimension.
When commentary consistently recenters the anxieties of persuadable voters while sidelining the lived experiences of those confronting renewed bigotry, it weakens the moral clarity required to sustain a broad pro-democracy coalition. Communities most harmed by White supremacist authoritarian resurgence have a right to question a strategy that appears more concerned with appearing reasonable than confronting structural injustice.
At its strongest, the pro-democracy coalition is not built by shaming progressive energy into silence. It is built by expanding it and by reframing politics around corruption, institutional decay, and the defense of democratic self-governance. That axis shift, rather than perpetual calibration along a left-right spectrum, may be the more relevant strategic terrain.
I am not arguing that Frum and Miller are enemies of democracy.
They have been courageous critics of Trumpism. I am arguing that the model of politics where they sometimes invoke a symmetrical critique, tone discipline, and moderation as prophylactic may be misaligned with the structural realities of this moment.
In an authoritarian era, the question is not whether Democrats stand five degrees left or right of center. The question is whether they mobilize with sufficient clarity and scale to confront an organized anti-democratic project.
History will not judge the pro-democracy coalition on whether it sounded reasonable enough. It will judge whether it recognized asymmetry and acted accordingly.
References:
Thrush, Glenn, Devlin Barrett, and Alan Feuer. “Director Patel Ousts F.B.I. Personnel Tied to Inquiry Into Trump’s Retained Classified Records.” The New York Times, February 25, 2026.
Tucker, Eric. “Justice Department Says It’s Reviewing Whether Any Epstein-Related Records Were Mistakenly Withheld.” Associated Press, February 26, 2026.
“CEO of World Economic Forum Quits after Epstein Ties Scrutinised.” Reuters, February 26, 2026.
“Larry Summers to Resign from Harvard over Epstein Ties.” Reuters, February 25, 2026.
“Neuroscientist Resigns from Columbia amid Revelations about Epstein Ties.” The Guardian, February 25, 2026.
“FBI Director Kash Patel Addresses Viral Video of Him Partying with Team USA Hockey.” Sports Illustrated, February 23, 2026.
Müller, Jan-Werner. “Beware of ‘Anti-Woke’ Liberals: They Attacked the Left and Helped Trump Win.” The Guardian, February 3, 2026.
Bonica, Adam, and Jake Grumbach. “How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism.” Boston Review, February 3, 2026.