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

Today on the program Vladimir Putin says the world faces the most dangerous decades since World War II.

Will he make it more dangerous by using nuclear weapons?

Can he compromise and make a deal? I will ask Boris Bondarov, one of the highest level defectors from Putin's own government.

Then, Britain has its third Prime Minister in less than two months.

We will tell you what you need to know about Rishi Sunak and his plans.

Trust is earth and I will earn yours.

Can they save the economy and the reputation of that storied nation?

And as a divided America heads to the polls, what can we learn from the most divided period in American history?

The Civil War years. I sit down with John Meacham who has just published a new biography of Abraham Lincoln.

But first, here's my take. History and current polling both tell us that the House of Representatives will likely flip over to Republican control in the November midterms.

What happens then? Actual governance will come to a standstill. There will be a flurry of investigations on everything from the Justice Department to Hunter Biden to the border crisis.

The January 6th Committee will almost certainly be disbanded. And it is not implausible to imagine that President Biden will be impeached.

How did we get here? There are of course many reasons.

But the central facilitating factor is surely the way that American politics has over the last few decades increasingly empowered the extremes of political parties at the expense of the mainstream.

The primary system used by American parties to choose their candidates is extremely unusual. No other major democracy has won quite like it.

The memories ensure that candidates chosen are selected by a sliver of the party, around 20% of voters.

And this selection is not at all representative. These are the most intense agitated activists, often far more extreme in their views than run of the mill registered Republicans or Democrats.

Add to this decades of sophisticated computer enabled Jerry Mandarin and you get extreme candidates who run in safe districts where the only threat to them is a primary candidate who is even more extreme.

The Washington Post has analyzed Republicans running for Senate House and certain statewide offices and found that a majority could be classified as election deniers.

People who have in some way questioned, challenged or refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Of these 291 candidates, 171 are running in safe Republican districts.

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