Barton Gellman: “Late last month, in one of its final acts of the term, the Supreme Court queued up another potentially precedent-wrecking decision for next year. The Court’s agreement to hear Moore v. Harper, a North Carolina redistricting case, isn’t just bad news for efforts to control gerrymandering. The Court’s right-wing supermajority is poised to let state lawmakers overturn voters’ choice in presidential elections.”

“To understand the stakes, and the motives of Republicans who brought the case, you need only one strategic fact of political arithmetic. Six swing states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina—are trending blue in presidential elections but ruled by gerrymandered Republican state legislatures. No comparable red-trending states are locked into Democratic legislatures.”

Keith Richburg: “Since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard M. Nixon for his Watergate crimes 48 years ago, Americans have been fixated on the need to heal and unite. But the United States is a global outlier in granting de facto impunity to former presidents.”

“In many of the countries I’ve covered and followed closely as a foreign correspondent, prosecution of ex-leaders for crimes is not unusual and often expected by the public. In most cases, the democratic institutions not only held up but were bolstered by demonstrating that no one, even a former leader, is above the law.”

A new University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics poll finds that more than one in four Americans are so alienated from their government that they believe it may “soon be necessary to take up arms” against it.

“That startling finding, which comes in the midst of congressional hearings into the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was just one of several reflections of the dangerous level of estrangement many Americans feel from each other and our democratic institutions.”

Max Boot: “I wish I could say that such a scenario is implausible, but it is all too realistic. I used to be an optimist about America’s future. Not anymore. There’s a good reason that so many people I know are acquiring foreign passports and talking about moving somewhere else: The prognosis is grim.”

“As political scientist Brian Klaas just wrote in the Atlantic, given that the GOP has become ‘authoritarian to its core,’ there are two main ways to save America: Either reform the Republican Party or ensure that it never wields power again. But a MAGA-fied GOP is likely to gain control of at least one chamber of Congress in the fall and could win complete power in 2024.”

“We seem to be sleepwalking to disaster. If we don’t wake up in time, we could lose our democracy. Just because we’ve avoided a breakdown in the past doesn’t mean we will stave it off in the future.”

“I’m fighting hard, no matter what happens on August 16th, I’m going to wake up on August 17th and continue to fight hard to ensure Donald Trump is never anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again.”

— Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), quoted by Axios, saying that protecting American democracy is a higher priority than maintaining a seat in the House.

“In order to solve the climate crisis, we’re going to have to pay attention to the democracy crisis.”

— Former Vice President Al Gore, on NBC News.

Washington Post: “Both candidates described a country that was not merely in trouble, but being destroyed by leaders who despise most Americans — effectively part of a civil war. In both swing states and safe seats, many Republicans say that liberals hate them personally and may turn rioters or a police state on people who disobey them.”

A new CNN poll finds about half of Americans, 48%, say they think it is at least somewhat likely that in the next few years, some elected officials will successfully overturn the results of a US election because their party did not win.

A new study confirms one in five Americans believes violence motivated by political reasons is—at least sometimes—justified.

Nearly half expect a civil war, and many say they would trade democracy for a strong leader.

Tim Miller: “Honestly, I think a reasonable case could be made for either view. You can peruse the various links above if you want to decide for yourself. As for me, gun to my head, I’d side with the people saying DeSantis would be less of an existential threat.”

“To be clear—saying someone is less of an existential threat to democracy than Donald Trump might be the faintest praise ever uttered in American politics. It doesn’t carry with it any rejection of the many legitimate concerns that we small-“l” liberals have about a potential DeSantis administration. It merely acknowledges that Trump’s psychopathy is so extreme as to put him in a category all of his own. And as such, anything that keeps him from darkening the halls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue again is almost certainly an improvement.”

Jonathan Chait: “Unlike the Eisenhower-era Republican Party, and unlike the conservative parties in every other democratic country, the conservative movement never accepted the democratic legitimacy of the welfare state. Conservatives considered the ability of majorities to vote for economic redistribution a threat to liberty and placed the preservation of liberty (as they defined it) above democracy. And so, while Trump’s almost feral contempt for democracy and the rule of law represented a unique threat, the longer-term danger to the Republic was the institutional power of a movement that had never truly made its peace with democratic principles.”

“DeSantis is a flawless sample of this belief system. The conservative argument that democracy is dangerous lies so close to his heart that he wrote an entire book dedicated to the precept that ‘when the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.'”

Katherine Stewart: “The shape of the Christian nationalist movement in the post-Roe future is coming into view, and it should terrify anyone concerned for the future of constitutional democracy.”

“The Supreme Court’s decision to rescind the reproductive rights that American women have enjoyed over the past half-century will not lead America’s homegrown religious authoritarians to retire from the culture wars and enjoy a sweet moment of triumph. On the contrary, movement leaders are already preparing for a new and more brutal phase of their assault on individual rights and democratic self-governance. Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project.”

“Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) delivered a searing rebuke of former President Donald Trump and GOP leaders at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Wednesday night,” CNN reports.

Said Cheney: “We are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before — and that is a former President who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional Republic.”

She added: “And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man.”

Los Angeles Times: Republican Party must choose between Trump and the Constitution, Liz Cheney says in California speech.