I came up with the idea for the new version of this newsletter, because I thought I could keep up with the news of the Trump Administration, but I found that I couldn’t do it and keep sane at the same time. I just couldn’t deal with the sheer volume of news or figure out how to funnel that news in a digestible way. Instead, I started to think more broadly about how we got where we are today.

Another factor is that I’m currently working on a book project unrelated to this newsletter. So, I decided that the best justification for continuing with this column is to use this newsletter to launch a second book project tentatively titled, Do-Over: How We Should Have Written Our Constitution If We Knew Then What We Know Now.

This second book project is focused on the U.S. Constitution. My premise is that we risk losing our democracy under Donald Trump, not in spite of the Constitution, but because of the Constitution. Trump is consolidating power because the U.S. Constitution has failed.

As a result, I’m going to focus a lot of the newsletter on the Constitution, both its history and how it influences current events. But because of the title “Do-Over,” I’m also going to write columns on current events based on the premise that American politics badly needs a do-over. Instead of focusing on “them” and what “they” did (whoever they is), I intend to look at the current state of politics from the standpoint of “How did we go wrong?” and “What could we have done differently?”