Breaking: TNR has obtained J.D. Vance’s violent foreword to Project 2025 leader’s new book.

From @alex_shephard:

The subtitle and cover of Kevin Roberts’s book were softened as scrutiny of the Trump campaign’s ties to Project 2025 grew. The book was originally announced with the subtitle “Burning Down Washington to Save America” and featured a match on the center of its cover. The subtitle is now “Taking Back Washington to Save America,” and the match is nowhere to be seen. Promotional language invoking conservatives on the “warpath” to “burn down … institutions” like the FBI, the Department of Justice, and universities has also been removed or toned down, though it is still present in some sales pages. But the inspiration for that extreme language can be found in Vance’s foreword, which ends with a call for followers to “circle the wagons and load the muskets,” and describes Roberts’s ideas as an “essential weapon” in the “fights that lay ahead.” (The New Republic downloaded Dawn’s Early Light earlier this month from NetGalley, which provides advance copies of books to reviewers and booksellers. Copies were removed from the platform earlier this month.)

We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face.

Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, “He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.”

We unreservedly choose the latter course. And so we have assembled herein some of our leading intellectual historians of fascism; a member of the fourth estate who learned firsthand what the Trump lash feels like; a leading expert on civil-military relations; a great Guatemalan American novelist with a deep understanding of immigrants’ lives; one of our most incisive cultural critics; and a man with all-too-real experience in living under a notorious authoritarian regime. The scenarios they describe are certainly grim. We dare you to say, after reading these pieces, that they are impossible. Read the series here: newrepublic.com/series/37/trum…

In a shambolic and at times hysterical appearance before the International Court of Justice last Friday, at no point did the lawyers representing Israel present any concrete arguments or convincing evidence that its war on Gaza should not be considered an act of genocide. 🧵 1/ @James_ARobins: Faced with a credible accusation of a crime one of their own called the “epitome and zenith of evil,” “the crime of crimes,” “the ultimate in wickedness,” Israel’s legal defenders at The Hague produced no proof that the Israeli government was not guilty. 2/

On a chilly Sunday afternoon exactly two years ago today, Janikka Perry arrived for her bakery shift at a Walmart Supercenter in North Little Rock, Arkansas. 🧵 1/ Once she began working, she started to feel unusually faint. As the hours wore on, she told her co-workers she wasn’t feeling well, and retreated to a bathroom for rest. But the store was short-staffed, and her manager allegedly told her to “pull herself together.” 2/

Five years ago, on the campaign trail in Iowa, Donald Trump waved a faded blue hardcover Bible, embossed with his name, to an audience of conservative Christians.

“I’m a Christian,” he said. “Do you believe me?” 1/ At the time, a CNN commentator called it “the religious equivalent of going to an Iowa farmer in some overalls and some brand new boots.” Since that day in 2015, Trump’s relationship to the Bible has evolved to grave rituals designed to feed the devotion of his base. 2/

[Thread] Ever since Trump took office, we’ve been publishing pieces tackling the pros and cons in the debate over impeachment.

Should it take place? Why are Democrats dragging their feet? What lessons can we learn from history? Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane… Trump’s “Muslim ban” came only one week into his presidency.

Enforcing the order despite federal judges temporarily enjoining parts potentially committed contempt of court—an impeachable offense—by day nine: newrepublic.com/article/140220…