The Post-Trump Era Is Beginning.
Four ways of thinking about what comes next.
A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie by Albert Bierstadt. During the Civil War, Bierstadt traveled the West and began sketching out this view. He finished the painting soon after the war ended: Violent storms all around, but a promising shaft of light. (Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty.)
People may look back on this past week as a milestone in political awareness. It’s not only that public opinion keeps turning against Donald Trump. That’s been evident for months in plummeting approval ratings, for all the obvious reasons: Tariffs, brutal ICE raids, blatant self-dealing, needless and unpopular wars.
The real milestone, it seems to me, comes in signs of dawning awareness, crucially among some GOP forces who have enabled Trump, that he won’t be there forever. They’re already hearing from constituents that they don’t like soaring gas prices and an open-ended war. Eventually there will be questions about why their representatives turned a blind eye to these abuses for so…