vox--2020-12-18--How one of the biggest games of 2020 became one of the most controversial

It ’ s rare that anything lives up to its hype .
And yet the often astronomically high expectations that consumers set still persist , and sometimes even appear warranted .
That seemed to be the case with Cyberpunk 2077 , a video game released on consoles and PC on December 10 after many years of buildup .
Inspired by a cult-favorite tabletop role-playing game , Cyberpunk 2077 seemed tailor-made for success .
It ’ s the first big console game from Polish studio CD Projekt Red since The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt , a massively successful game that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its 2015 launch .
Cyberpunk 2077 stars Keanu Reeves in a major role that bears his likeness as an on-the-run rocker-turned-military-veteran-turned-cybernetic terrorist .
The game ’ s heaps of trailers and previews and marketing materials seemed to promise a slinky , sexy , neon-tinged world of futuristic action — catnip for many gamers craving escapism .
But these surefire bets were not so surefire after all .
Cyberpunk 2077 has , since its release , been roundly criticized across the gaming community by consumers , game designers , and industry insiders alike .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ harassing reviewers who offered tepid praise to roasting the company for the game ’ s many problems .
Initially positive reviews have added caveats as more time with the game reveals more loose threads .
To many observers in and outside of the gaming world , Cyberpunk 2077 has proven to be a stunning failure : a video game with such promise and ballyhoo that it did not , and perhaps could never , live up to .
The story of Cyberpunk 2077 ’ s botched release and ongoing controversy is one that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ video games .
Developer CD Projekt Red — Europe ’ s most successful video game company — first announced that it was working on the project in 2012 .
It was a tantalizing announcement : The game would draw on a popular tabletop RPG released in the late 1980s , Cyberpunk , and a teaser released in 2013 showed that the developer had translated that world into an appealingly gritty cybernetic environment .
It would be an expansive world , developers teased , aesthetically akin to the dystopian environs of Mad Max : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the story of a California city set in an alternate timeline , where a handful of megalomaniac corporations own the streets , everyone modifies their body with illegal tech , and much of the state is still reeling from a major nuclear attack years prior .
You , the player , get to be a particularly badass cyber-enhanced human , fighting against psychological and physical threats to your survival .
( This is where Keanu Reeves , as your begrudging sidekick , comes in ; his involvement was revealed in 2019 to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ date was in sight at the time of its 2013 teaser , excitement only grew after The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt launched in 2015 to overwhelming praise .
Its popularity helped increase hype for Cyberpunk 2077 , already a game that many fans of the original property were champing at the bit for .
And with work on The Witcher 3 winding down , the developer was committed to seeing Cyberpunk 2077 through .
Thus began a lengthy period of pre-release hype .
CD Projekt Red taunted fans with a glimpse of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after that initial teaser appeared .
At the game ’ s 2018 showing , held at the industry trade show Electronic Entertainment Expo ( E3 ) , journalists pumped it up based on early , closed-door impressions .
The developer gained positive attention for insisting that its game would not include some of the most common , most maligned features of other big adventure games at the time .
CD Projekt Red would not lock any game content behind a paywall , it said .
Anything added to the game after launch would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ game would only come out when it was “ ready.
” “ We do realize you ’ ve been impatiently waiting for a very long time , and we wouldn ’ t like anyone to feel that we ’ re taking this for granted , ” the developer wrote after the game ’ s E3 2018 presentation .
“ On the contrary — it gives us a lot of extra motivation .
The hype is real , so the sweat and tears need to be real , too : ) ” That now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , announced as an April 2020 release , was delayed several times due to the Covid-19 pandemic and , crucially , quality problems .
Each rescheduled release date engendered more concern and pushback , in part because it called for more patience than many Cyberpunk fans were willing to dredge up .
And the company ’ s claims eventually proved untrue : Despite stating in 2019 that it would not require developers to work overtime to finish the game , CD Projekt Red entered a months-long crunch period , a labor issue that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in recent years .
Bloomberg reported in September that the studio had instituted six-day workweeks for the final development stretch ; at that time , the game was set for a November release .
A month later , in late October , Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed again until December .
Gaming fans have raised concerns about crunch as more and more developers speak out about it .
Unionization efforts are mounting in the gaming industry .
Advocating for fair labor practices is becoming important to games makers and the people who play them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a game , the prevailing attitude among those anticipating it is hope that the end product is at least as “ worth it ” as possible .
For many players , that was not the case for Cyberpunk 2077 .
“ Despite the months of crunch that went into developing the game , even though the company promised not to go that route , the game launched with several technical issues , ” Jeff Ramos , who writes for Polygon , told me .
“ So many in fact , the company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end product .
We have even gone as far as updating our review of the game discouraging readers from playing the game on consoles until the game gets improved.
” When the game ’ s first reviews came out just before its December 10 release , they were mostly positive .
It turned out , however , that this was because reviewers were only given early access to the Windows PC version , the one best optimized and representative of the expansive , graphically intensive game ’ s potential .
Once the game @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One , versions that also work — much better — on the companies ’ newer consoles ) , players discovered a litany of technical issues .
Characters ’ faces were obscured , some environments were unsightly .
The game would make consoles crash repeatedly , sometimes sacrificing players ’ progress .
One glitch even exposed characters ’ detailed penises and breasts , which would poke out of their clothes .
The memes and mockery were relentless and swift .
Another issue arose out of lack of oversight : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tests that doctors use to discern whether a patient has epilepsy but offers no epileptic seizure warnings in advance of their appearance .
One games critic reported that she suffered grand mal seizures as a result ; the developer has now added warnings .
When CD Projekt Red announced that it would offer full refunds for unhappy console buyers a week after release , people quickly discovered that this was a make-good in name only .
Retailers redirected those seeking their money back to speak to the company , which only reiterated that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the refunds .
On December 17 , Sony announced that it would grant refunds to all owners of Cyberpunk 2077 on PlayStation 4 — as well as remove the game from sale for all platforms on the digital PlayStation marketplace until it ’ s in a more functional state .
That ’ s an unprecedented move from a console manufacturer , and a sign of how dire the situation is around Cyberpunk 2077 ’ s release .
( Microsoft followed suit on December 18 by offering full refunds for digital copies of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2077 does remain for sale there . )
CD Projekt Red courted controversy even before Cyberpunk 2077 ’ s rocky release period .
The studio has made news in the past for posting transphobic material on social media , misappropriating queer-themed hashtags , and making jokes about gender identities .
In 2019 , when footage from the game showed a hypersexualized trans character on a billboard , the studio failed to offer a nuanced explanation as to its placement , raising eyebrows .
( In the finished game , this ad appears on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2077 ’ s extensive character creator is meant to allow players to become whoever they want with no regard to gender .
But the company ’ s history has cast a shadow over those options and the game itself , especially when there are options to intricately customize a penis but no such attention paid to vaginas ; transgender characters in the game are used for provocation and little more ; and there are few characters of color , most of whom are presented stereotypically .
All of this has contributed to consumer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some of the worst of it has been directed at critics pointing out the problems .
It ’ s the kind of outrage that saw a ( young , female ) reviewer from one prominent gaming website face severe harassment for offering criticism of the game , which diehard fans maintained must be perfect after all of this time and struggle and crunch .
Yet upon its release , they backtracked , redirecting their viciousness toward the studio itself .
The question remains : Would Cyberpunk 2077 have been subject to such intense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the indulgent hype that it had enjoyed ?
Much of this is owed to its marketing , said Ramos , which portrayed the game as something different from what it actually is .
“ Fans still got a steady feed of promotional videos detailing the game ’ s vast open world , the various inhabitants of Night City , and the promise of exciting combat we ’ d get to experience once the game was in hand , ” Ramos said .
“ While I had assumed the game would cater more to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the marketing , what I found after 40 hours of gameplay is that it plays more like its role-playing , tabletop roots.
” To some who , like Ramos , are able to play the game in a more functional capacity , this isn ’ t a bad thing .
He ’ s enjoying the game for exactly the reason why many others aren ’ t : It ’ s not all posturing , stylized edge and murder under seedy neon lights .
The game does spend time expanding upon its lore , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and for some folks , the fashion and cultural references are a big success .
Even if the story can be campy and the dialogue wooden , there is the potential for fun to be had .
“ As a game about its characters , flawed as some of them are , that ’ s where Cyberpunk shines , ” Ramos said .
“ Unclear marketing and bad bugs don ’ t affect those much.
” Cyberpunk 2077 will receive updates that the studio hopes will improve its performance so that console players @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will also be more playable content in the future , as the studio initially teased years ago .
There are also versions in the works designed specifically for the most recently released consoles , the currently hard-to-find PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X systems where the game already looks and plays better .
Video games with such intense fanbases cultivated before their actual release often face an uphill battle .
Many games in the past have undergone the same cycle of intense excitement and even stronger disappointment ; with latent toxicity still alive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , those situations have often featured severe online bullying at the expense of hardworking developers or dissenting reviewers .
Games that have survived that initial period of persistent hate are those that are refined over time , eventually finding new , loving , dedicated fanbases .
Perhaps the same will be true for this video game — or perhaps all this baggage will weigh it down , leaving little but a cautionary tale in its wake .
Maybe even Keanu Reeves won ’ t be enough to save this one .

It’s rare that anything lives up to its hype. And yet the often astronomically high expectations that consumers set still persist, and sometimes even appear warranted. That seemed to be the case with Cyberpunk 2077, a video game released on consoles and PC on December 10 after many years of buildup.
Inspired by a cult-favorite tabletop role-playing game, Cyberpunk 2077 seemed tailor-made for success. It’s the first big console game from Polish studio CD Projekt Red since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a massively successful game that won numerous awards and end-of-year accolades after its 2015 launch. Cyberpunk 2077 stars Keanu Reeves in a major role that bears his likeness as an on-the-run rocker-turned-military-veteran-turned-cybernetic terrorist. The game’s heaps of trailers and previews and marketing materials seemed to promise a slinky, sexy, neon-tinged world of futuristic action — catnip for many gamers craving escapism.
But these surefire bets were not so surefire after all. Cyberpunk 2077 has, since its release, been roundly criticized across the gaming community by consumers, game designers, and industry insiders alike. An already toxic fanbase has bounced from harassing reviewers who offered tepid praise to roasting the company for the game’s many problems. Initially positive reviews have added caveats as more time with the game reveals more loose threads. To many observers in and outside of the gaming world, Cyberpunk 2077 has proven to be a stunning failure: a video game with such promise and ballyhoo that it did not, and perhaps could never, live up to.
The story of Cyberpunk 2077’s botched release and ongoing controversy is one that illuminates several problems within the world of video games. Developer CD Projekt Red — Europe’s most successful video game company — first announced that it was working on the project in 2012. It was a tantalizing announcement: The game would draw on a popular tabletop RPG released in the late 1980s, Cyberpunk, and a teaser released in 2013 showed that the developer had translated that world into an appealingly gritty cybernetic environment. It would be an expansive world, developers teased, aesthetically akin to the dystopian environs of Mad Max: Fury Road and Akira.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the story of a California city set in an alternate timeline, where a handful of megalomaniac corporations own the streets, everyone modifies their body with illegal tech, and much of the state is still reeling from a major nuclear attack years prior. You, the player, get to be a particularly badass cyber-enhanced human, fighting against psychological and physical threats to your survival. (This is where Keanu Reeves, as your begrudging sidekick, comes in; his involvement was revealed in 2019 to resounding cheers.)
Although no release date was in sight at the time of its 2013 teaser, excitement only grew after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched in 2015 to overwhelming praise. Its popularity helped increase hype for Cyberpunk 2077, already a game that many fans of the original property were champing at the bit for. And with work on The Witcher 3 winding down, the developer was committed to seeing Cyberpunk 2077 through.
Thus began a lengthy period of pre-release hype. CD Projekt Red taunted fans with a glimpse of the game in 2018, five years after that initial teaser appeared.
At the game’s 2018 showing, held at the industry trade show Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), journalists pumped it up based on early, closed-door impressions. The developer gained positive attention for insisting that its game would not include some of the most common, most maligned features of other big adventure games at the time. CD Projekt Red would not lock any game content behind a paywall, it said. Anything added to the game after launch would be available for free. And the game would only come out when it was “ready.”
“We do realize you’ve been impatiently waiting for a very long time, and we wouldn’t like anyone to feel that we’re taking this for granted,” the developer wrote after the game’s E3 2018 presentation. “On the contrary — it gives us a lot of extra motivation. The hype is real, so the sweat and tears need to be real, too :)” That now feels like ominous foreshadowing.
The game, announced as an April 2020 release, was delayed several times due to the Covid-19 pandemic and, crucially, quality problems. Each rescheduled release date engendered more concern and pushback, in part because it called for more patience than many Cyberpunk fans were willing to dredge up.
And the company’s claims eventually proved untrue: Despite stating in 2019 that it would not require developers to work overtime to finish the game, CD Projekt Red entered a months-long crunch period, a labor issue that has gained more attention in gaming circles in recent years. Bloomberg reported in September that the studio had instituted six-day workweeks for the final development stretch; at that time, the game was set for a November release. A month later, in late October, Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed again until December.
Gaming fans have raised concerns about crunch as more and more developers speak out about it. Unionization efforts are mounting in the gaming industry. Advocating for fair labor practices is becoming important to games makers and the people who play them, and if developers have to crunch on a game, the prevailing attitude among those anticipating it is hope that the end product is at least as “worth it” as possible.
For many players, that was not the case for Cyberpunk 2077. “Despite the months of crunch that went into developing the game, even though the company promised not to go that route, the game launched with several technical issues,” Jeff Ramos, who writes for Polygon, told me. “So many in fact, the company offered refunds to players disappointed with the end product. We have even gone as far as updating our review of the game discouraging readers from playing the game on consoles until the game gets improved.”
When the game’s first reviews came out just before its December 10 release, they were mostly positive. It turned out, however, that this was because reviewers were only given early access to the Windows PC version, the one best optimized and representative of the expansive, graphically intensive game’s potential. Once the game was released on consoles as well (for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, versions that also work — much better — on the companies’ newer consoles), players discovered a litany of technical issues.
Characters’ faces were obscured, some environments were unsightly. The game would make consoles crash repeatedly, sometimes sacrificing players’ progress. One glitch even exposed characters’ detailed penises and breasts, which would poke out of their clothes. The memes and mockery were relentless and swift.
Another issue arose out of lack of oversight: A feature of the game recreates the tests that doctors use to discern whether a patient has epilepsy but offers no epileptic seizure warnings in advance of their appearance. One games critic reported that she suffered grand mal seizures as a result; the developer has now added warnings.
When CD Projekt Red announced that it would offer full refunds for unhappy console buyers a week after release, people quickly discovered that this was a make-good in name only. Retailers redirected those seeking their money back to speak to the company, which only reiterated that it was up to retailers to make the refunds. On December 17, Sony announced that it would grant refunds to all owners of Cyberpunk 2077 on PlayStation 4 — as well as remove the game from sale for all platforms on the digital PlayStation marketplace until it’s in a more functional state. That’s an unprecedented move from a console manufacturer, and a sign of how dire the situation is around Cyberpunk 2077’s release. (Microsoft followed suit on December 18 by offering full refunds for digital copies of the game on Xbox platforms, although Cyberpunk 2077 does remain for sale there.)
CD Projekt Red courted controversy even before Cyberpunk 2077’s rocky release period. The studio has made news in the past for posting transphobic material on social media, misappropriating queer-themed hashtags, and making jokes about gender identities. In 2019, when footage from the game showed a hypersexualized trans character on a billboard, the studio failed to offer a nuanced explanation as to its placement, raising eyebrows. (In the finished game, this ad appears on vending machines basically everywhere.)
Cyberpunk 2077’s extensive character creator is meant to allow players to become whoever they want with no regard to gender. But the company’s history has cast a shadow over those options and the game itself, especially when there are options to intricately customize a penis but no such attention paid to vaginas; transgender characters in the game are used for provocation and little more; and there are few characters of color, most of whom are presented stereotypically.
All of this has contributed to consumer anger of the highest order — and some of the worst of it has been directed at critics pointing out the problems. It’s the kind of outrage that saw a (young, female) reviewer from one prominent gaming website face severe harassment for offering criticism of the game, which diehard fans maintained must be perfect after all of this time and struggle and crunch. Yet upon its release, they backtracked, redirecting their viciousness toward the studio itself.
The question remains: Would Cyberpunk 2077 have been subject to such intense debate had it not come saddled with the indulgent hype that it had enjoyed? Much of this is owed to its marketing, said Ramos, which portrayed the game as something different from what it actually is.
“Fans still got a steady feed of promotional videos detailing the game’s vast open world, the various inhabitants of Night City, and the promise of exciting combat we’d get to experience once the game was in hand,” Ramos said. “While I had assumed the game would cater more to the action-orientated themes that came across in the marketing, what I found after 40 hours of gameplay is that it plays more like its role-playing, tabletop roots.”
To some who, like Ramos, are able to play the game in a more functional capacity, this isn’t a bad thing. He’s enjoying the game for exactly the reason why many others aren’t: It’s not all posturing, stylized edge and murder under seedy neon lights. The game does spend time expanding upon its lore, fleshing out its characters and setting, and for some folks, the fashion and cultural references are a big success. Even if the story can be campy and the dialogue wooden, there is the potential for fun to be had.
“As a game about its characters, flawed as some of them are, that’s where Cyberpunk shines,” Ramos said. “Unclear marketing and bad bugs don’t affect those much.”
Cyberpunk 2077 will receive updates that the studio hopes will improve its performance so that console players will find it more workable. There will also be more playable content in the future, as the studio initially teased years ago. There are also versions in the works designed specifically for the most recently released consoles, the currently hard-to-find PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X systems where the game already looks and plays better.
Video games with such intense fanbases cultivated before their actual release often face an uphill battle. Many games in the past have undergone the same cycle of intense excitement and even stronger disappointment; with latent toxicity still alive in many corners of the gaming world, those situations have often featured severe online bullying at the expense of hardworking developers or dissenting reviewers.
Games that have survived that initial period of persistent hate are those that are refined over time, eventually finding new, loving, dedicated fanbases. Perhaps the same will be true for this video game — or perhaps all this baggage will weigh it down, leaving little but a cautionary tale in its wake. Maybe even Keanu Reeves won’t be enough to save this one.


vox--2020-12-18--Napoleon’s missing hand, explained

Napoleon’s missing hand, explained

Napoleon Bonaparte is one of history ’ s most famous figures .
He ’ s been depicted in countless portraits , and , often , paintings show him in one specific pose : with one hand concealed inside his shirt .
The gesture is a common feature of caricatures and impressions of the conqueror , and its frequent appearance has led to speculation about why he seemed to do it so often .
The answer is rooted in the gesture ’ s history .
Concealing a hand in one ’ s coat has long signified gentlemanly restraint and was often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far back as ancient Greece , when famed orator Aeschines claimed that restricting the movement of one ’ s hand was the proper way to speak in public .
Portraits of Napoleon adopting this pose are an example of propaganda — the most famous version being Jacques-Louis David ’ s 1812 painting of Napoleon in his study .
It portrays the ruler as a modest and hardworking leader ; however , outside of France , Napoleon was often labeled a tyrant and considered to be ill-tempered .
The hand-in-waistcoat gesture became a common @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and long after he died .
The pose also became a portraiture cliché with the advent of photography , thanks to its dignified reputation — and because it was a good way to sit still during the long exposure times of early photography .
You can find this video and all of Vox ’ s videos on YouTube .
And if you ’ re interested in supporting our video journalism , you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube .

Napoleon Bonaparte is one of history’s most famous figures. He’s been depicted in countless portraits, and, often, paintings show him in one specific pose: with one hand concealed inside his shirt. The gesture is a common feature of caricatures and impressions of the conqueror, and its frequent appearance has led to speculation about why he seemed to do it so often.
The answer is rooted in the gesture’s history. Concealing a hand in one’s coat has long signified gentlemanly restraint and was often associated with nobility. It goes as far back as ancient Greece, when famed orator Aeschines claimed that restricting the movement of one’s hand was the proper way to speak in public.
Portraits of Napoleon adopting this pose are an example of propaganda — the most famous version being Jacques-Louis David’s 1812 painting of Napoleon in his study. It portrays the ruler as a modest and hardworking leader; however, outside of France, Napoleon was often labeled a tyrant and considered to be ill-tempered. The hand-in-waistcoat gesture became a common way to depict him during his lifetime and long after he died.
The pose also became a portraiture cliché with the advent of photography, thanks to its dignified reputation — and because it was a good way to sit still during the long exposure times of early photography.
You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube. And if you’re interested in supporting our video journalism, you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube.


vox--2020-12-18--The Next Four Years: A Weeds series

The Next Four Years: A Weeds series

What ’ s actually at stake for Americans as the new Biden administration solidifies and approaches a January handoff of power from the Trump White House ?
Matt Yglesias is hosting a special eight-episode limited series of Vox ’ s original talk policy and politics talk show , The Weeds .
It will run on Fridays for eight weeks , starting on November 13 , 2020 , and running until mid-January 2021 .
Matt will be joined by policymakers and experts to discuss the likely consequences of the election and the challenges facing the incoming Biden administration .
We ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relationships with Congress to the points of tension and the limits imposed by political and procedural reality as the Biden administration begins to develop and enact policies around the pandemic , the economy , immigration , and climate change , as well as potential changes to the Supreme Court .
Episode 1 | Karl Smith , a Bloomberg columnist and adjunct scholar at the Tax Foundation , offers perspective on what worked about the pre-Covid-19 labor market , how Republicans in Congress are thinking about budgetary issues , and the prospects for bipartisan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ | Emma Ashford of the Atlantic Council casts a critical eye on President-elect Biden ’ s approach to national security — an area where he ’ s most likely to find agreement with GOP leaders but tensions with his own base .
Episode 3 | Kaiser ’ s Jennifer Kates joins Matt to explain the next steps in countering the pandemic .
Episode 4 | Third Way ’ s Josh Freed and Jackie Kempfer explain a path forward for low-carbon policy in a time of divided government .
Episode 5 | New America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the deeper problems with American higher education .
Future episodes on what ’ s left of the green agenda under a likely divided government , and how the new administration will handle ongoing antitrust litigation are in the works .
Subscribe to The Weeds wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , and Spotify — to automatically get new episodes when they publish .
Be sure to join the Weeds Facebook group to talk about the episodes , and much more , with our growing Weeds community @

What’s at stake for Americans as the new Biden administration takes over the White House?
Matt Yglesias is hosting a special eight-episode limited series of Vox’s original talk policy and politics talk show, The Weeds. It will run on Fridays for eight weeks, starting on November 13, 2020, and running until mid-January 2021. Matt will be joined by policymakers and experts to discuss the likely consequences of the election and the challenges facing the incoming Biden administration.
We’ll cover everything from Cabinet appointments to relationships with Congress to the points of tension and the limits imposed by political and procedural reality as the Biden administration begins to develop and enact policies around the pandemic, the economy, immigration, and climate change, as well as potential changes to the Supreme Court.
How to make a Biden Boom
Episode 1 | Karl Smith, a Bloomberg columnist and adjunct scholar at the Tax Foundation, offers perspective on what worked about the pre-Covid-19 labor market, how Republicans in Congress are thinking about budgetary issues, and the prospects for bipartisan collaboration on full employment.
Joe Biden’s world
Episode 2 | Emma Ashford of the Atlantic Council casts a critical eye on President-elect Biden’s approach to national security — an area where he’s most likely to find agreement with GOP leaders but tensions with his own base.
The Covid-19 transition
Episode 3 | Kaiser’s Jennifer Kates joins Matt to explain the next steps in countering the pandemic.
An optimistic climate agenda
Episode 4 | Third Way’s Josh Freed and Jackie Kempfer explain a path forward for low-carbon policy in a time of divided government.
Beyond the student debt debate
Episode 5 | New America’s Kevin Carey explains loan forgiveness and the deeper problems with American higher education.
Fighting tech monopolies
Episode 6 | Antitrust and competition policy expert Charlotte Slaiman discusses the ongoing antitrust cases against Google and Facebook, the basics of antitrust litigation, and their outlook for the future of regulatory efforts to rein in the power of Big Tech through pro-competition policy.
Subscribe to The Weeds wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify — to automatically get new episodes when they publish. Be sure to join the Weeds Facebook group to talk about the episodes, and much more, with our growing Weeds community.


vox--2020-12-18--Singapore is the first country in the world to approve lab-grown chicken products

Currently , farms around the world produce chicken for sale by raising fast-growing chicken breeds in batches of tens of thousands , tightly packed in warehouses that are a public health hazard , a fire hazard , a worker safety hazard , and a hazard to the well-being of the chickens themselves .
What if instead we could grow the meat without the chickens ?
Researchers all over the world have been chasing that dream , of “ lab-grown ” or “ cultured ” meat , for years .
Two weeks ago , lab-grown meat took one step closer to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sale of cultured chicken meat grown in bioreactors , becoming the first agency in the world to issue such an approval .
Now , not long after the approval , the chicken is on the menu at a Singapore restaurant called 1880 as part of a multi-course dinner , including chicken dishes from China , Brazil and the United States .
There are a few other places in the world where lab-grown meat will soon be available to customers , such as an experimental restaurant in Israel which is closed to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Singapore restaurant marks the first time lab-grown meat has been approved by a regulatory authority for commercial sale .
It ’ s a big step forward for a technology that stands to bring a desperately needed change to how the world eats .
Lab-grown chicken is meant to be physically identical to chicken from slaughtered animals .
It ’ s made of genuine chicken cells , but it ’ s grown on a cell-growth scaffold in a factory instead of growing in a live animal .
( This approach differs from plant-based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Meat , which use plant proteins to create products that taste like meat ; plant-based meat often tastes very similar to the meat products it replaces , but it is not identical on a cellular level . )
The same approach can be used for beef , pork , and other animal products , but for several reasons , chickens are the most appealing place to start .
First , chickens represent most of the animals raised and killed for their meat in the US , and they are raised in particularly appalling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ target in the effort to coax Americans away from factory-farmed food .
Second , the biggest challenge for lab-grown meat so far has been getting the structure of the meat right : Lab-grown products don ’ t yet have the texture of tissue produced inside an animal .
That would make a lab-grown steak disappointing , but it ’ s less of a limitation for many chicken products .
To grow a lab-grown product , chicken cells are taken from a real live chicken .
The process doesn ’ t involve killing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ win buy-in from vegetarians and vegans — though the target market for lab-grown meat products is mostly meat-eaters , not vegetarians .
These chicken cells are then immersed in a liquid solution known as a “ growth medium ” that encourages the cells to multiply .
Today , a serum from fetal cows is used as the growth medium , but the product ’ s manufacturers say they hope to switch to a plant-based one .
Inside the bioreactor , the cells grow until they ’ ve produced chicken meat — without the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the future of food is underway , ” said Good Food Institute Executive Director Bruce Friedrich in a statement when Singapore announced its approval of Eat Just ’ s chicken .
“ Cultivated meat will mark an enormous advance in our efforts to create a food supply that is safe , secure , and sustainable , and Singapore is leading the way on this transition.
” Getting lab-grown meat to consumers would be an enormous win for the climate and for animals .
Proponents believe it might be the most feasible way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ food production system sustainable .
But there are still substantial barriers to widespread access to lab-grown meat .
The first is that the technical challenges of bringing lab-grown meat to the table are far from solved , despite years of effort and investment .
Getting meat in a lab to imitate the texture and structure of muscle on an animal is very difficult .
No one has yet figured out how to imitate , say , a steak — thus the focus on products like chicken bits , where structure is much less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lab-grown chicken products that don ’ t require much internal tissue structure would be an enormous achievement for the world .
But there are still many hurdles to reaching that point .
The existing projects , like Eat Just ’ s in Singapore , are small in scale , producing relatively tiny quantities of meat for specialty dishes .
The meat industry kills tens of billions of animals annually .
Matching that will be a challenge .
“ With the numbers we have today , ” UC Berkeley ’ s Ricardo San Martin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me last year , “ we don ’ t see how [ lab-grown meat ] can scale up and deliver products soon at a competitive price .
Besides all of the technological hurdles , the scaling up can be very complex .
So far , I haven ’ t seen a medium-sized operation cultivating these kinds of cells for this purpose .
It ’ s very hard , and with what we know today , maybe it ’ s not the right approach.
” The next challenge — very much related to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lab-grown meat is much more expensive than factory farming .
As cell-based products grow , they ’ ll discover new cost savings and benefit from economies of scale .
Factory farming , though , also benefits from the ability to expand and discover new cost efficiencies , and through more than half a century of optimizations , it has succeeded at making factory-farmed chicken incredibly cheap .
“ The most processed cheap forms of chicken are just insanely cheap , relative to historical standards and relative to other food products on the market @ @ @ @ @ @ @ animals at the Open Philanthropy Project , told me this August .
“ The chicken industry has managed to cut all their corners , they don ’ t pay their environmental bills , they don ’ t pay for a lot of the public health hazards they cause .
They have managed to produce a product that is just artificially cheap and hard to compete with.
” But despite the many challenges ahead , the restaurant launch in Singapore is cause for celebration .
The world ’ s food system faces many challenges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a growing middle-class population worldwide that wants to enjoy the same variety of food that Americans enjoy at the same low prices , to tackling climate change , to reducing the dangers factory farming poses to public health .
Progress on lab-grown meat is progress toward solving one of the biggest problems we have .
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter and we ’ ll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world ’ s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good .

Currently, farms around the world produce chicken for sale by raising fast-growing chicken breeds in batches of tens of thousands, tightly packed in warehouses that are a public health hazard, a fire hazard, a worker safety hazard, and a hazard to the well-being of the chickens themselves.
What if instead we could grow the meat without the chickens?
Researchers all over the world have been chasing that dream, of “lab-grown” or “cultured” meat, for years. Two weeks ago, lab-grown meat took one step closer to reality as the Singapore Food Agency approved the sale of cultured chicken meat grown in bioreactors, becoming the first agency in the world to issue such an approval. Now, not long after the approval, the chicken is on the menu at a Singapore restaurant called 1880 as part of a multi-course dinner, including chicken dishes from China, Brazil and the United States.
Sign up for the Meat/Less newsletter course Want to eat less meat but don’t know where to start? Sign up for Vox’s five-day newsletter full of practical tips — and food for thought — to incorporate more plant-based food into your diet.
There are a few other places in the world where lab-grown meat will soon be available to customers, such as an experimental restaurant in Israel which is closed to the public temporarily under coronavirus restrictions. But the Singapore restaurant marks the first time lab-grown meat has been approved by a regulatory authority for commercial sale.
It’s a big step forward for a technology that stands to bring a desperately needed change to how the world eats.
Lab-grown meat, explained
Lab-grown chicken is meant to be physically identical to chicken from slaughtered animals. It’s made of genuine chicken cells, but it’s grown on a cell-growth scaffold in a factory instead of growing in a live animal. (This approach differs from plant-based meats like the Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat, which use plant proteins to create products that taste like meat; plant-based meat often tastes very similar to the meat products it replaces, but it is not identical on a cellular level.)
The same approach can be used for beef, pork, and other animal products, but for several reasons, chickens are the most appealing place to start. First, chickens represent most of the animals raised and killed for their meat in the US, and they are raised in particularly appalling conditions — making them a good first target in the effort to coax Americans away from factory-farmed food. Second, the biggest challenge for lab-grown meat so far has been getting the structure of the meat right: Lab-grown products don’t yet have the texture of tissue produced inside an animal. That would make a lab-grown steak disappointing, but it’s less of a limitation for many chicken products.
To grow a lab-grown product, chicken cells are taken from a real live chicken. The process doesn’t involve killing the animals, so producers hope they can win buy-in from vegetarians and vegans — though the target market for lab-grown meat products is mostly meat-eaters, not vegetarians. These chicken cells are then immersed in a liquid solution known as a “growth medium” that encourages the cells to multiply. Today, a serum from fetal cows is used as the growth medium, but the product’s manufacturers say they hope to switch to a plant-based one. Inside the bioreactor, the cells grow until they’ve produced chicken meat — without the chicken.
“A new space race for the future of food is underway,” said Good Food Institute Executive Director Bruce Friedrich in a statement when Singapore announced its approval of Eat Just’s chicken. “Cultivated meat will mark an enormous advance in our efforts to create a food supply that is safe, secure, and sustainable, and Singapore is leading the way on this transition.”
Timelines for lab-grown meat
Getting lab-grown meat to consumers would be an enormous win for the climate and for animals. Proponents believe it might be the most feasible way to end factory farming and make our food production system sustainable. But there are still substantial barriers to widespread access to lab-grown meat.
The first is that the technical challenges of bringing lab-grown meat to the table are far from solved, despite years of effort and investment. Getting meat in a lab to imitate the texture and structure of muscle on an animal is very difficult. No one has yet figured out how to imitate, say, a steak — thus the focus on products like chicken bits, where structure is much less important.
Even replacing chicken products with lab-grown chicken products that don’t require much internal tissue structure would be an enormous achievement for the world. But there are still many hurdles to reaching that point. The existing projects, like Eat Just’s in Singapore, are small in scale, producing relatively tiny quantities of meat for specialty dishes. The meat industry kills tens of billions of animals annually. Matching that will be a challenge.
“With the numbers we have today,” UC Berkeley’s Ricardo San Martin, who studies meat alternatives, told me last year, “we don’t see how [lab-grown meat] can scale up and deliver products soon at a competitive price. Besides all of the technological hurdles, the scaling up can be very complex. So far, I haven’t seen a medium-sized operation cultivating these kinds of cells for this purpose. It’s very hard, and with what we know today, maybe it’s not the right approach.”
The next challenge — very much related to the challenge of scaling — is cost. Lab-grown meat is much more expensive than factory farming. As cell-based products grow, they’ll discover new cost savings and benefit from economies of scale. Factory farming, though, also benefits from the ability to expand and discover new cost efficiencies, and through more than half a century of optimizations, it has succeeded at making factory-farmed chicken incredibly cheap.
“The most processed cheap forms of chicken are just insanely cheap, relative to historical standards and relative to other food products on the market,” Lewis Bollard, who researches animals at the Open Philanthropy Project, told me this August. “The chicken industry has managed to cut all their corners, they don’t pay their environmental bills, they don’t pay for a lot of the public health hazards they cause. They have managed to produce a product that is just artificially cheap and hard to compete with.”
But despite the many challenges ahead, the restaurant launch in Singapore is cause for celebration. The world’s food system faces many challenges in the upcoming decades, from feeding a growing middle-class population worldwide that wants to enjoy the same variety of food that Americans enjoy at the same low prices, to tackling climate change, to reducing the dangers factory farming poses to public health. Progress on lab-grown meat is progress toward solving one of the biggest problems we have.
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter and we’ll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world’s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good.


vox--2020-12-19--The Lost Year: A dad, his son, and the bittersweet realization of life’s true priorities

This is The Lost Year , a series of stories about our lived experiences in 2020 , as told to Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff .
Parents feeling overwhelmed and burnt out by the burden of child care during the Covid-19 pandemic has been a consistent theme of 2020 , and with good reason .
When you ’ re trying to work a full-time job and be a full-time parent , it can often feel impossible to do either to the best of your abilities .
But when I talked to Robert , who lives in Manhattan and works @ @ @ @ @ @ @ struck by how he reframed this idea .
In the past , he spent so much of his time commuting that he missed out on many of the mundane but lovely moments that make up his 3.5-year-old ’ s life .
But since quarantine began , he ’ s been able to be there for every breakfast and playground visit , building a stronger relationship with his kid .
This ability to positively reframe an incredibly difficult situation is one I found in lots of my conversations with people who ’ ve faced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Robert ’ s take on what it means to suddenly realize just how out of whack your priorities have become in a system that prioritizes money over family , even when it insists it ’ s doing the opposite .
Here ’ s the story of his 2020 , as told to me .
I learned that I had a kid , for starters .
It ’ s kind of sad , but I think the situation is very common , especially in New York , San Francisco , and DC .
You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long commutes .
You leave early , you get home late , and you often don ’ t get to spend much quality time with your kid .
Maybe you leave really early , so you can leave earlier from work and get dinner .
Or maybe you get breakfast but you don ’ t get dinner .
But it ’ s rare that you get both .
Yeah , there ’ s a lot of stress in quarantine , but at the same time , you ’ re able to engage with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never able to do before .
To give you an example , my kid is 3 and a half .
I ’ m teaching him how to read .
We ’ re 20 , 30 lessons into it , and he ’ s doing great .
Would I have been able to do that if I was working crazy hours and commuting ?
The answer is no .
There wouldn ’ t have been the energy on my part or my kid ’ s part .
And I ’ ve noticed changes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , physical development , that kind of thing .
The playgrounds were closed for a little while , and everybody was inside .
You could notice how that was impacting the young children , especially at that age .
When the playground closed down , he would cry because he couldn ’ t go .
We ’ d have to say there are germs .
He didn ’ t understand why this was happening .
Then the playgrounds opened up , and you could notice within two weeks of the playgrounds opening up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ladders and go down the slides and get sunlight really matters for the physical as well as the emotional well-being .
There are so many little things .
Being able to see them in the morning when they wake up .
Breakfast with them .
Being able to have lunch with them .
Being able to take breaks throughout the day .
Being able to walk them to the playground .
These things are all small things , but you don ’ t actually get a chance to do a lot of them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work every day ] .
I ’ m able to bond with my child on a deeper level .
I ’ m not an outside observer .
A situation like this strengthens the initial feelings you have when you have a kid .
When you have a kid , your world changes .
You ’ re like , “ I would burn everyone in this room to protect this child.
” That gets accentuated by this kind of thing .
The drive to want to protect them is already heightened .
The other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prepare my child emotionally or physically for things like this in the future .
I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can prepare him in the best way I can so that he is strong enough to deal with the uncertainty that the world throws at you .
Both my spouse and my mother-in-law are helping with child care , and that ’ s huge .
But for sure you feel overwhelmed .
One of my good friends says that three versus one is almost a fair fight .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you ’ re almost making it , and that ’ s not even in a pandemic .
That ’ s in normal times .
Put the pandemic on top of that and it ’ s brutal .
I feel deeply for my colleagues who are single parents .
When a child is young , there ’ s no way for one person to manage their job and keep a 3-year-old entertained .
It ’ s just not physically possible .
We need to give single parents as much help as we can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we do is for our child , but we spend a lot of time working and accumulating money and stuff that we don ’ t really need .
At the end of the day , if you really care about your kids , you should be prioritizing them .
That ’ s both at the individual level and the societal level .
Deep down inside , you always say , “ My kids are the most important thing , ” but when you get down to it , are you really prioritizing them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office and seeing my peers and being able to work out problems .
You do develop a deeper relationship when you ’ re in the office .
But if the vaccine becomes a reality and I had the choice , would I go back to commuting to work every day and not seeing my child grow up ?
I don ’ t think I would .
I might make some compromises in terms of my career so that I could spend more time with my kid .
I think about my friends in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if they got it right .
A lot of them don ’ t get to work until 9 or 10 , and they take lunch from noon to 2 .
Their kids come home for lunch , and they have lunch together .
Then they work a few more hours before their kids come home .
There ’ s something really beautiful about that .
I don ’ t know if it would ever work in America , prioritizing family relationships above all else .
We haven ’ t really solved that in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic to really show that we have a lot to learn in terms of how we prioritize families .
Tomorrow : Coming out — over the phone , to your mom , and across a language barrier

This is The Lost Year, a series of stories about our lived experiences in 2020, as told to Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff.
Parents feeling overwhelmed and burnt out by the burden of child care during the Covid-19 pandemic has been a consistent theme of 2020, and with good reason. When you’re trying to work a full-time job and be a full-time parent, it can often feel impossible to do either to the best of your abilities.
But when I talked to Robert, who lives in Manhattan and works as a data scientist, I was struck by how he reframed this idea. In the past, he spent so much of his time commuting that he missed out on many of the mundane but lovely moments that make up his 3.5-year-old’s life. But since quarantine began, he’s been able to be there for every breakfast and playground visit, building a stronger relationship with his kid.
This ability to positively reframe an incredibly difficult situation is one I found in lots of my conversations with people who’ve faced significant obstacles this year. I loved Robert’s take on what it means to suddenly realize just how out of whack your priorities have become in a system that prioritizes money over family, even when it insists it’s doing the opposite.
Here’s the story of his 2020, as told to me.
I learned that I had a kid, for starters.
It’s kind of sad, but I think the situation is very common, especially in New York, San Francisco, and DC. You have a lot of people that have long commutes. You leave early, you get home late, and you often don’t get to spend much quality time with your kid. Maybe you leave really early, so you can leave earlier from work and get dinner. Or maybe you get breakfast but you don’t get dinner. But it’s rare that you get both.
Yeah, there’s a lot of stress in quarantine, but at the same time, you’re able to engage with your kids in a way you were never able to do before. To give you an example, my kid is 3 and a half. I’m teaching him how to read. We’re 20, 30 lessons into it, and he’s doing great. Would I have been able to do that if I was working crazy hours and commuting? The answer is no. There wouldn’t have been the energy on my part or my kid’s part.
And I’ve noticed changes, even — being able to speak properly, physical development, that kind of thing. The playgrounds were closed for a little while, and everybody was inside. You could notice how that was impacting the young children, especially at that age. When the playground closed down, he would cry because he couldn’t go. We’d have to say there are germs. He didn’t understand why this was happening. Then the playgrounds opened up, and you could notice within two weeks of the playgrounds opening up that being able to run up the ladders and go down the slides and get sunlight really matters for the physical as well as the emotional well-being.
There are so many little things. Being able to see them in the morning when they wake up. Breakfast with them. Being able to have lunch with them. Being able to take breaks throughout the day. Being able to walk them to the playground. These things are all small things, but you don’t actually get a chance to do a lot of them [when you’re leaving for work every day]. I’m able to bond with my child on a deeper level. I’m not an outside observer.
A situation like this strengthens the initial feelings you have when you have a kid. When you have a kid, your world changes. You’re like, “I would burn everyone in this room to protect this child.” That gets accentuated by this kind of thing. The drive to want to protect them is already heightened. The other aspect is thinking about how I can prepare my child emotionally or physically for things like this in the future. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can prepare him in the best way I can so that he is strong enough to deal with the uncertainty that the world throws at you.
Both my spouse and my mother-in-law are helping with child care, and that’s huge. But, for sure, you feel overwhelmed. One of my good friends says that three versus one is almost a fair fight. If you have three adults and one child, you’re almost making it, and that’s not even in a pandemic. That’s in normal times. Put the pandemic on top of that and it’s brutal.
I feel deeply for my colleagues who are single parents. When a child is young, there’s no way for one person to manage their job and keep a 3-year-old entertained. It’s just not physically possible. We need to give single parents as much help as we can.
In America, we say everything we do is for our child, but we spend a lot of time working and accumulating money and stuff that we don’t really need. At the end of the day, if you really care about your kids, you should be prioritizing them. That’s both at the individual level and the societal level. Deep down inside, you always say, “My kids are the most important thing,” but when you get down to it, are you really prioritizing them?
I do miss going into the office and seeing my peers and being able to work out problems. You do develop a deeper relationship when you’re in the office. But if the vaccine becomes a reality and I had the choice, would I go back to commuting to work every day and not seeing my child grow up? I don’t think I would. I might make some compromises in terms of my career so that I could spend more time with my kid.
I think about my friends in Europe, and I’m wondering if they got it right. A lot of them don’t get to work until 9 or 10, and they take lunch from noon to 2. Their kids come home for lunch, and they have lunch together. Then they work a few more hours before their kids come home. There’s something really beautiful about that. I don’t know if it would ever work in America, prioritizing family relationships above all else. We haven’t really solved that in America. It took something like this pandemic to really show that we have a lot to learn in terms of how we prioritize families.
Next: Coming out — over the phone, to your mom, and across a language barrier


vox--2020-12-19--“The party can’t move on”: Ross Douthat on the Republican Party after Trump

The Trump administration is careening towards its inglorious end , but Trump , the political force , likely isn ’ t going away .
It ’ s possible — maybe even probable — that Trump runs for the Republican nomination again in 2024 .
It ’ s just as possible that Trump ’ s children grab the baton and run for office themselves ( at least two of them have already hinted at this ) .
Or maybe Trump launches his own media empire and terrorizes the Republican establishment from the outside .
In all of these scenarios , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for years to come .
And that , more than anything , is why American democracy ’ s long-term prospects seem so gloomy to many .
Regardless of what Trump does post-presidency , his impact on the conservative base has been profound .
According to one poll , 70 percent of Republicans don ’ t believe the 2020 election was free and fair .
That ’ s not all that surprising considering the leader of the party is telling his followers that the process was rigged and illegitimate .
So whatever direction the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a Trumpian base and that might be the defining constraint for the party over the next four years .
To talk through what comes next , I reached out to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat .
Douthat is consistently one of the more thoughtful observers of contemporary conservatism and just an insightful voice on the broader ideological landscape .
We discuss why a conspiratorial mindset prevails on the right , if Republicans have an insoluble demand-side problem with their base , and if the GOP has a coherent ideological future with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transcript of our conversation follows .
Why do you think so many “ normal conservatives , ” to use your phrase , continue to believe that the election was rigged ?
We ’ re talking about 70 percent of the Republican Party , not just a minority of Birthers or QAnon fantasists .
I wrote a piece that tried to lay out some of the reasons Republicans might believe this that aren ’ t just “ because right-wing news is whipping up the narrative.
” Part of it has to do with how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Many see it as a justification for liberal overreach .
It ’ s almost become the conservative equivalent of liberal fears about Trump ’ s authoritarianism .
I don ’ t think that reading of the situation is correct to be clear , but I think you can see where it comes from .
What has happened under pandemic conditions has been genuinely weird in all kinds of ways .
Beyond that , there ’ s always been this phenomenon on the right where you have self-conscious outsiders who think of themselves as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reality and bringing fresh eyes to every scenario and rejecting conventional wisdom at every pass .
These are the people generating a lot of the data analyses claiming to show fraud or whatever .
There ’ s a whole class of people dedicated to throwing off the “ consensus ” of academia or media discourse and that can send people in bizarre directions .
But look , I think a lot of this is overdetermined .
We ’ ve never had a losing presidential candidate spend so much time claiming that the election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election was close , or close enough , to really raise the stakes of all these claims .
And the fact that we ran an election under incredibly unusual conditions with a massive experiment in mail-in balloting that we ’ ve never done before .
And while all that ’ s going on , you ’ ve got all these right-wing competitors to Fox News invested in the fraud narratives and working to make it look more plausible than it is .
American elections are big , messy , sprawling , localized events @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of the reason why you should assume there isn ’ t massive fraud .
Because they are so sprawling and decentralized and complicated , the idea any kind of centralized conspiracy could figure out the right way to switch votes under these rules and this voting machine and this area and those rules and that voting machine , that just seems implausible to me .
I ’ ll just say briefly that there ’ s a difference between a healthy skepticism and a persistent commitment to baseless conspiracy theories , and I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here is overwhelmingly the latter .
Right , but I think skepticism is the place people fall back to when you have arguments with them .
It ’ s that idea that when people argue they move back and forth between strong claims that are weakly defended and weaker claims that are strongly defended .
I don ’ t think it ’ s the case that all those 70 percent [ of Republicans who believe that fraud occurred ] are 100 percent committed to the idea that there was fraud .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of them who will tell pollsters that they think there was fraud and then if their friend challenges them , they will say , “ Well , I ’ m just asking questions , ” or , “ I ’ m just being skeptical and I just want the media to cover these stories.
” There ’ s also a performative aspect to this .
One of the responses I got to my column from people who are vocal in saying they think there was fraud was that you also have to see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ narrative about Trump being an illegitimate president .
So some of this rests on sincere beliefs .
Some of it rests on generalized skepticism .
And for some people , it rests on an automatic distrust of liberal narratives and feeling that they have to fight to delegitimize Biden the way the Democrats delegitimized Trump .
All of those things are going on at the same time .
“ The problem for Republicans is they represent the grievances of 48 percent of the country ” Yeah , there ’ s a lot going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fundamentally a demand-side problem on the right that ’ s helping to create this permanent conspiratorial mindset .
Is this something that ’ s been engineered by conservative media or is it more complicated than that ?
I think it ’ s fair to say that a big chunk of conservative media have leaned hard into a long-running message of total distrust of anything that comes out of establishment organs and the mainstream liberal media .
So in that sense , it ’ s something that has clearly been nurtured and furthered by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your point about the demand side , you can see it with people abandoning Fox News for these startups or long-running nonentities that nobody was watching , and I think you can see it more generally in the original turn to Trump .
Trump was not the candidate of Fox News or conservative media when he started running in 2016 , but there were a lot of people on the right who wanted to hear what he was selling .
He found a niche that wasn ’ t representative of all of conservatism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people thought .
Some of this goes back to your first question about what broke the Republican Party .
To me , this demand-side problem has always been a part of conservatism , going all the way back to the John Birch Society and this fear of the liberal establishment and desire for narratives that make the liberal establishment seem more dangerous , more menacing , and more Communist than reality suggests .
It ’ s always been there .
In that sense , you won ’ t get a Republican Party whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leader of that party who inspires trust .
But it ’ s a circular problem , because you can ’ t get that leader as long as the base of the party is drawn to conspiracy theories and figures like Trump .
I guess that brings us back to Trump and the future of this party .
I think Trump ’ s political genius was his ability to be for everything and nothing at the same time .
“ Make America Great Again ” is so perfect precisely because it ’ s so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ avatar so that people can project onto him whatever they want .
But his policy imprint is weak and I guess the question is what does the GOP stand for now that the avatar is gone ?
Does it have a coherent ideological future ?
Well , the GOP stands for the idea that liberals are wrong .
Whatever liberals want is wrong — that ’ s what the GOP stands for .
That ’ s an instinct , not an ideology , Ross .
Yeah , but it ’ s a unifying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think liberals are wrong and being a party that says “ liberals are wrong ” can bring a lot of people together , certainly enough to maintain the GOP as a viable political force , even if it ’ s short of a majority .
The interesting thing is that Trump ’ s persistent presence in the GOP actually freezes the real debate about how to build on his populist gestures or instincts , because he ’ s such a dominant force .
The party can ’ t move on .
I do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been substantial at least in the sense that he shifted the Republican Party away from Paul Ryan ’ s vision of entitlement reform in a way that ’ s going to be hard to undo .
You will obviously have born-again deficit hawks attacking some of Joe Biden ’ s policy proposals , but I don ’ t think you ’ re going to see a re-emergence of full Ryanism in the next four years .
Trump ’ s populism , even if it never manifested into anything substantial , changed the party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about that .
Trump did show that there ’ s space for a genuine economic populism on the right , but in the end he mostly outsourced his economic policies to the business wing of the GOP .
Not totally .
You could say that Trump sort returned to what Bush did in his first term , which is to say tax cuts for the business wing and more spending for voters who like spending .
So it wasn ’ t a radical turn to populism , it was more of a return @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But there was a clear and I think irreversible turn away from the Romney-Ryan proposal to reform Social Security and basically end entitlement-friendly conservatism .
I think Trump killed that completely .
If a Republican comes along who really is an economic populist , and who doesn ’ t couch it in nativist appeals , could he or she win ?
Does the populism only work if it ’ s tied to the nativism ?
I don ’ t think the populism has to be tied to the nativism .
I think the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if it isn ’ t tied to a celebrity businessman figure who plays the outsider role ?
I don ’ t think racism was Trump ’ s secret sauce as much as celebrity was .
I think the race stuff helped him build his base in the early going , but later it became a liability .
But if you want to understand how Trump won over a certain kind of white working-class voter who used to vote Democrat , or a certain kind of middle-class Hispanic or African-American voter , I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was very powerful .
That ’ s the thing that any would-be inheritor of Trump will be missing .
“ Whatever liberals want is wrong — that ’ s what the GOP stands for ” Whatever happens , it ’ s hard to see a path forward for the Republican Party that doesn ’ t recognize anti-elite grievances as a core animating principle .
Can you be a “ grievance ” party without also being a reactionary party ?
The Republican Party is destined to be a reactionary party , but that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If you think America has taken a wrong turn and needs some serious changes , that ’ s certainly reactionary , but that doesn ’ t mean it ’ s wrong .
Reactionaries can sometimes be right .
The grievance question is hard , though .
There are conservatives like Julius Krein , who edits the American Affairs journal , that are trying to make something substantive out of Trumpism .
Krein , for example , arggues that populists need technocrats , too .
You can ’ t just run a government on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know how the government works and can take the somewhat inchoate grievances of the populists and turn them into a policy agenda that actually answers those grievances .
I think that ’ s absolutely right , but it ’ s really , really hard to pull off because a politics of grievance alienates the people you need to join it in order to turn it in this constructive direction .
The problem for Republicans is they represent the grievances of 48 percent of the country .
If you represent the grievances of 60 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s easier to govern .
But the grievances of a not-quite-majority is a very different thing .
It ’ s a lot harder to build anything with 48 percent support .
That ’ s not exactly a Reagan-level coalition .
What do you expect Trump ’ s relationship to the party to look like the next four years ?
He ’ s going to act as if he ’ s running again for a long period of time .
I don ’ t think it ’ s guaranteed that he runs again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that a member of his family runs .
Like if you ask me for odds that either he or Don Jr. will run , I would say we ’ re at 75 or 80 percent .
I think the fact that he ’ s going to act as if he ’ s running means that he ’ s going to consider himself the leader of the party and the people involved in the party establishment are going to act loyal to him .
Absent an alternative center of gravity for the out-of-power party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of success just casting himself as the leader of the opposition and having parts of the RNC and other institutions like that in his corner , whether they want to be or not .
Then the question is whether he can run a Tea Party-style insurgency campaign against people who he feels were insufficiently loyal to him .
But 2022 is a long way away and it ’ s possible that his star will fade once he ’ s out of power .
But if you look at the dynamic right now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to believe that he didn ’ t really lose the election puts him in a much stronger position to claim to be the leader of the party moving forward .
Whoever takes the helm for the GOP will have to reflect Trumpism one way or the other .
Who is best positioned to fill that vacuum ?
The honest answer is I don ’ t know .
It ’ s not that hard to imagine that if Trump dropped back , or if the Trump kids are embroiled in legal or financial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the ballot , someone like Pence or Nikki Haley appropriating just enough populism to ride their name recognition and connection with Trump to some kind of victory .
I just don ’ t see any way they go back to Romney-Ryan Republicanism .
But a world where it ’ s the same old establishment , only they ’ re just saying a bunch more Trumpy things , I don ’ t think that world is impossible to imagine .
I think it ’ s a little more likely than my preferred scenario @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hawley succeed in creating something genuinely new out of what Trump failed to build .
But in a world where Trump is still here , I have no idea how there could ever be a Trump-like alternative in the GOP .
I just can ’ t see it .

The Trump administration is careening towards its inglorious end, but Trump, the political force, likely isn’t going away.
It’s possible — maybe even probable — that Trump runs for the Republican nomination again in 2024. It’s just as possible that Trump’s children grab the baton and run for office themselves (at least two of them have already hinted at this). Or maybe Trump launches his own media empire and terrorizes the Republican establishment from the outside.
In all of these scenarios, the specter of Trump hangs over the GOP for years to come. And that, more than anything, is why American democracy’s long-term prospects seem so gloomy to many.
Regardless of what Trump does post-presidency, his impact on the conservative base has been profound. According to one poll, 70 percent of Republicans don’t believe the 2020 election was free and fair. That’s not all that surprising considering the leader of the party is telling his followers that the process was rigged and illegitimate. So whatever direction the GOP goes, they’re going with a Trumpian base and that might be the defining constraint for the party over the next four years.
To talk through what comes next, I reached out to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. Douthat is consistently one of the more thoughtful observers of contemporary conservatism and just an insightful voice on the broader ideological landscape. We discuss why a conspiratorial mindset prevails on the right, if Republicans have an insoluble demand-side problem with their base, and if the GOP has a coherent ideological future with or without Trump.
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing
Why do you think so many “normal conservatives,” to use your phrase, continue to believe that the election was rigged? We’re talking about 70 percent of the Republican Party, not just a minority of Birthers or QAnon fantasists.
Ross Douthat
I wrote a piece that tried to lay out some of the reasons Republicans might believe this that aren’t just “because right-wing news is whipping up the narrative.” Part of it has to do with how conservatives have experienced the pandemic era. Many see it as a justification for liberal overreach. It’s almost become the conservative equivalent of liberal fears about Trump’s authoritarianism. I don’t think that reading of the situation is correct to be clear, but I think you can see where it comes from. What has happened under pandemic conditions has been genuinely weird in all kinds of ways.
Beyond that, there’s always been this phenomenon on the right where you have self-conscious outsiders who think of themselves as completely outside of the official consensus about reality and bringing fresh eyes to every scenario and rejecting conventional wisdom at every pass. These are the people generating a lot of the data analyses claiming to show fraud or whatever. There’s a whole class of people dedicated to throwing off the “consensus” of academia or media discourse and that can send people in bizarre directions.
But look, I think a lot of this is overdetermined. We’ve never had a losing presidential candidate spend so much time claiming that the election was stolen from him. And the election was close, or close enough, to really raise the stakes of all these claims. And the fact that we ran an election under incredibly unusual conditions with a massive experiment in mail-in balloting that we’ve never done before. And while all that’s going on, you’ve got all these right-wing competitors to Fox News invested in the fraud narratives and working to make it look more plausible than it is.
American elections are big, messy, sprawling, localized events and to me, that’s part of the reason why you should assume there isn’t massive fraud. Because they are so sprawling and decentralized and complicated, the idea any kind of centralized conspiracy could figure out the right way to switch votes under these rules and this voting machine and this area and those rules and that voting machine, that just seems implausible to me.
Sean Illing
I’ll just say briefly that there’s a difference between a healthy skepticism and a persistent commitment to baseless conspiracy theories, and I think what we’re talking about here is overwhelmingly the latter.
Ross Douthat
Right, but I think skepticism is the place people fall back to when you have arguments with them. It’s that idea that when people argue they move back and forth between strong claims that are weakly defended and weaker claims that are strongly defended. I don’t think it’s the case that all those 70 percent [of Republicans who believe that fraud occurred] are 100 percent committed to the idea that there was fraud. It’s more that there are a lot of them who will tell pollsters that they think there was fraud and then if their friend challenges them, they will say, “Well, I’m just asking questions,” or, “I’m just being skeptical and I just want the media to cover these stories.”
There’s also a performative aspect to this. One of the responses I got to my column from people who are vocal in saying they think there was fraud was that you also have to see this as payback for the Democrats’ narrative about Trump being an illegitimate president. So some of this rests on sincere beliefs. Some of it rests on generalized skepticism. And for some people, it rests on an automatic distrust of liberal narratives and feeling that they have to fight to delegitimize Biden the way the Democrats delegitimized Trump. All of those things are going on at the same time.
“The problem for Republicans is they represent the grievances of 48 percent of the country”
Sean Illing
Yeah, there’s a lot going on. But there’s also fundamentally a demand-side problem on the right that’s helping to create this permanent conspiratorial mindset. Is this something that’s been engineered by conservative media or is it more complicated than that?
Ross Douthat
I think it’s fair to say that a big chunk of conservative media have leaned hard into a long-running message of total distrust of anything that comes out of establishment organs and the mainstream liberal media. So in that sense, it’s something that has clearly been nurtured and furthered by the narratives in right-wing media.
But your point about the demand side, you can see it with people abandoning Fox News for these startups or long-running nonentities that nobody was watching, and I think you can see it more generally in the original turn to Trump. Trump was not the candidate of Fox News or conservative media when he started running in 2016, but there were a lot of people on the right who wanted to hear what he was selling. He found a niche that wasn’t representative of all of conservatism but it was way more powerful than people thought.
Some of this goes back to your first question about what broke the Republican Party. To me, this demand-side problem has always been a part of conservatism, going all the way back to the John Birch Society and this fear of the liberal establishment and desire for narratives that make the liberal establishment seem more dangerous, more menacing, and more Communist than reality suggests. It’s always been there.
In that sense, you won’t get a Republican Party whose voters trust again until you have a leader of that party who inspires trust. But it’s a circular problem, because you can’t get that leader as long as the base of the party is drawn to conspiracy theories and figures like Trump.
Sean Illing
I guess that brings us back to Trump and the future of this party. I think Trump’s political genius was his ability to be for everything and nothing at the same time. “Make America Great Again” is so perfect precisely because it’s so empty. Trump positions himself as an avatar so that people can project onto him whatever they want. But his policy imprint is weak and I guess the question is what does the GOP stand for now that the avatar is gone? Does it have a coherent ideological future?
Ross Douthat
Well, the GOP stands for the idea that liberals are wrong. Whatever liberals want is wrong — that’s what the GOP stands for.
Sean Illing
That’s an instinct, not an ideology, Ross.
Ross Douthat
Yeah, but it’s a unifying force, right? Lots of people think liberals are wrong and being a party that says “liberals are wrong” can bring a lot of people together, certainly enough to maintain the GOP as a viable political force, even if it’s short of a majority. The interesting thing is that Trump’s persistent presence in the GOP actually freezes the real debate about how to build on his populist gestures or instincts, because he’s such a dominant force. The party can’t move on.
I do think Trump’s policy imprint has been substantial at least in the sense that he shifted the Republican Party away from Paul Ryan’s vision of entitlement reform in a way that’s going to be hard to undo. You will obviously have born-again deficit hawks attacking some of Joe Biden’s policy proposals, but I don’t think you’re going to see a re-emergence of full Ryanism in the next four years. Trump’s populism, even if it never manifested into anything substantial, changed the party.
Sean Illing
I’m not so sure about that. Trump did show that there’s space for a genuine economic populism on the right, but in the end he mostly outsourced his economic policies to the business wing of the GOP.
Ross Douthat
Not totally. You could say that Trump sort returned to what Bush did in his first term, which is to say tax cuts for the business wing and more spending for voters who like spending. So it wasn’t a radical turn to populism, it was more of a return to Reagan-era deficits-don’t-matter thinking. But there was a clear and I think irreversible turn away from the Romney-Ryan proposal to reform Social Security and basically end entitlement-friendly conservatism. I think Trump killed that completely.
Sean Illing
If a Republican comes along who really is an economic populist, and who doesn’t couch it in nativist appeals, could he or she win? Does the populism only work if it’s tied to the nativism?
Ross Douthat
I don’t think the populism has to be tied to the nativism. I think the big question is, does it work if it isn’t tied to a celebrity businessman figure who plays the outsider role?
I don’t think racism was Trump’s secret sauce as much as celebrity was. I think the race stuff helped him build his base in the early going, but later it became a liability. But if you want to understand how Trump won over a certain kind of white working-class voter who used to vote Democrat, or a certain kind of middle-class Hispanic or African-American voter, I think the fusion of populism and Apprentice-style celebrity was very powerful. That’s the thing that any would-be inheritor of Trump will be missing.
“Whatever liberals want is wrong — that’s what the GOP stands for”
Sean Illing
Whatever happens, it’s hard to see a path forward for the Republican Party that doesn’t recognize anti-elite grievances as a core animating principle. Can you be a “grievance” party without also being a reactionary party?
Ross Douthat
The Republican Party is destined to be a reactionary party, but that’s not necessarily a negative thing. If you think America has taken a wrong turn and needs some serious changes, that’s certainly reactionary, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Reactionaries can sometimes be right.
The grievance question is hard, though. There are conservatives like Julius Krein, who edits the American Affairs journal, that are trying to make something substantive out of Trumpism. Krein, for example, arggues that populists need technocrats, too. You can’t just run a government on anti-elite grievances. You need people who know how the government works and can take the somewhat inchoate grievances of the populists and turn them into a policy agenda that actually answers those grievances. I think that’s absolutely right, but it’s really, really hard to pull off because a politics of grievance alienates the people you need to join it in order to turn it in this constructive direction.
The problem for Republicans is they represent the grievances of 48 percent of the country. If you represent the grievances of 60 percent of the country, then it’s easier to govern. But the grievances of a not-quite-majority is a very different thing. It’s a lot harder to build anything with 48 percent support. That’s not exactly a Reagan-level coalition.
Sean Illing
What do you expect Trump’s relationship to the party to look like the next four years?
Ross Douthat
He’s going to act as if he’s running again for a long period of time. I don’t think it’s guaranteed that he runs again. I think it is very likely that a member of his family runs. Like if you ask me for odds that either he or Don Jr. will run, I would say we’re at 75 or 80 percent. I think the fact that he’s going to act as if he’s running means that he’s going to consider himself the leader of the party and the people involved in the party establishment are going to act loyal to him.
Absent an alternative center of gravity for the out-of-power party, I think Trump could have a lot of success just casting himself as the leader of the opposition and having parts of the RNC and other institutions like that in his corner, whether they want to be or not. Then the question is whether he can run a Tea Party-style insurgency campaign against people who he feels were insufficiently loyal to him. But 2022 is a long way away and it’s possible that his star will fade once he’s out of power.
But if you look at the dynamic right now, the fact that so many Republicans want to believe that he didn’t really lose the election puts him in a much stronger position to claim to be the leader of the party moving forward.
Sean Illing
Whoever takes the helm for the GOP will have to reflect Trumpism one way or the other. Who is best positioned to fill that vacuum?
Ross Douthat
The honest answer is I don’t know. It’s not that hard to imagine that if Trump dropped back, or if the Trump kids are embroiled in legal or financial troubles and there’s no Trump on the ballot, someone like Pence or Nikki Haley appropriating just enough populism to ride their name recognition and connection with Trump to some kind of victory. I just don’t see any way they go back to Romney-Ryan Republicanism.
But a world where it’s the same old establishment, only they’re just saying a bunch more Trumpy things, I don’t think that world is impossible to imagine. I think it’s a little more likely than my preferred scenario where a Marco Rubio or a Josh Hawley succeed in creating something genuinely new out of what Trump failed to build. But in a world where Trump is still here, I have no idea how there could ever be a Trump-like alternative in the GOP. I just can’t see it.