Are Americans doomed to an indefinite future of extreme partisan conflict? The Senate impeachment trial is off to a rancorous start, and it appears that the process will make the most polarizing president on record even more polarizing. Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential candidates debate a raft of polarizing proposals: Medicare for all, free college, universal basic income, adding seats to the Supreme Court, and a wealth tax on the super-rich. These moves and countermoves have produced what Representative Justin Amash calls a "partisan death spiral". How to pull out of this downward spiral? There are few good options.

Joseph M. Parent is associate professor of political science and an associate director of the Notre Dame International Security Center at the University of Notre Dame.…

On Jan. 26, FBI agents made public a foiled plot against the Freemasons. Samy Mohamed Hamzeh was arrested with a machine gun and silencer. The FBI alleges that he intended to storm the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple in Milwaukee and kill upwards of 30 people... Full article…

In “Decline and Devolution: The Sources of Strategy Military Retrenchment,” Kyle Haynes builds a theory of how states react to decline across different regions. Haynes makes two key arguments. First, declining states should begin to retrench earlier when they have access to compatible successor states, which are willing and able to uphold the regional order as the waning state withdraws. Second, declining states should retrench more rapidly in regions that are less important to their security. The gist of our remarks is that, though we have qualms about the nitty-gritty, the work clarifies the big picture and substantially improves the literature on a number of fronts. This is real progress...…