Welcome to this monthly-ish mix episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. In our regular episodes, we focus on one major theme, presenting our top takes in the first hour of the show, before diving deeper into each of those topics in the second half. For monthly-ish-m mix episodes like this one, we skim across the

surface of the past couple of months as a sort of quick recap and reference guide. So if you

prefer your news in summaries like this, then welcome. And if you know someone who fits that

description, then send them this episode. One last quick note of promotion, we've also launched a new show

on the Best of Left YouTube channel called Solved.

We use our curation skills

and put them toward gathering

interesting articles and ideas

that collectively help us solve

some of the biggest issues of our day.

And Best of Left members

get solved early and ad-free as a podcast,

but anyone can check out the video version of the show on the Best of Left YouTube channel.

Now, for today's episode, we have three big sections and lots of subtopics.

If you want to skip around, reference the show notes for guidance.

Section 1 will be institutional capture of small D democratic institutions.

Section 2 is information warfare and reality control.

And finally, section 3, othering and expansion, exploring how domestic authoritarianism spreads.

Now for our first section, institutional capture and consolidation, examining how

democratic institutions are hijacked and turned against democracy itself. And we start by looking

back to episode 1742. In a recent interview, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney-Barrad, who has a new bookout, said we are not in a constitutional crisis, adding, quote, I think our country remains committed to the rule of law.

So nothing to worry about here. Here's the thing. Lower court federal judges across the ideological and

...