This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Farid Zakaria coming to you live.

Today on the show, Joe Biden tells world leaders, America is back.

Back in the Paris Agreement, back supporting the transatlantic alliance and working to get Iran back to the negotiating table.

Will it make a difference? We'll discuss with a terrific panel.

We are not looking back, we are looking forward together.

Then a Texas-sized disaster has millions that lose power, heat and water.

The state's energy infrastructure was left crippled by an unusually cold and ferocious winter storm.

Why was Texas ready for it? Is any part of the world properly prepared for the ever more intense weather caused by climate change?

I will talk to Texas resident and climate expert Catherine Hayer.

Finally, the government of Bhutan is known for caring more about national happiness than GDP growth.

Well, the Bhutanese should be particularly happy about how their country has conquered COVID.

This tiny and not wealthy nation has thus far suffered just one COVID death. I'll tell you how.

But first, here's my take. The central question in American politics right now, one with global implications,

is whether the Republican Party can purge itself of its most extreme elements.

Obviously, this relates to Donald Trump, but it goes beyond him as well.

The current Republican congressional delegation includes people who insist the 2020 election was stolen,

have ties to violent extremist groups, traffic and anti-Semitism, and have propagated Q&N-on conspiracy theories in the past.

At the state level, it often gets worse.

Republicans have tolerated these views and voices for years. Can the party finally find a way to control them?

The answer to this question could well determine the future of American democracy.

In a brilliant scholarly work, conservative parties and the birth of democracy, Harvard's Daniel Ziblatt argues that Britain remained a democracy in the early 20th century,

while Germany veered into fascism because the main conservative party in the UK was able to discipline its extremists.

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