Thank you to everyone who’s sent in their reads on making sense of the post-Trump Era. I’ll be publishing more this afternoon. Keep them coming. My interest in soliciting these notes is that we are in a confused and confusing political-historical moment. It’s important to untangle that for anyone who is concerned about the country and civic life. It’s even more pressing for a news organization.

We owe a great deal to the insights and knowledge we gain from the social sciences, with their modeling, systems creation and statistics. But at core humans are a story-telling species. We organize the world around us through storylines, narrative arcs, the actions of individuals, the interplay of actions and reactions through time. This isn’t to embrace a “great man” theory of history. It’s not a comment on how history works. It’s a statement about how our brains apprehend, understand things – how we take the discrete facts we find and put them together into something that tells us something. Nor is it to relativize contending ‘narratives’, something that has long been the province of certain parts of the academic world and through a strange alchemy is now also pervasive on the right. Some narratives are truer than others. Many are deeply false. It is simply that we understand most intuitively through storylines, through the progression of events and the actions of people.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast just landed. You can listen to it here.

This week, Josh and Kate discuss the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial and take their first listener question.

Watch below:

The most obviously bad parts of the Georgia voting law are seen, by voters of both parties, as obviously bad, according to a new poll.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have created a special section at Dodger Stadium for fans who are fully vaccinated. A few other teams have introduced similar set asides. This is a good idea and we need more of it. The reward for being vaccinated should be to get back to life as usual as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Now that vaccines are pretty widely available for people 16 and over there’s no reason you should need to be seated near or with others who’ve chosen not to get vaccinated when you’re enjoying a ball game.

From TPM Reader ST …

Asking the question about how we’re all coping with the post-Trump era helped clarify for me the continuing unease I feel.

From TPM Reader BS …

I had hoped that this time might be different. That on the rebound from Trump, we might see some truly transformational legislation. That the filibuster would be scrapped, D.C. would be granted statehood, the right to vote would be protected and expanded, and the courts would significantly unwound from their recent rightward corkscrew. Mainly, though, I had what I knew to be an irrational hope that there would be action on climate sufficient to fit the moment.

From TPM Reader JB …

I always wanted to believe Trump was a last desperate charge of Old White Men in a losing a 50 year (or 150 year) war to retain their monopoly on power. Demographics are against them. Young people lean against them. Women lean against them. Black and Brown people lean against them. Cities against. Coasts against. The educated against. They know it. They fear it. They hate it. Voting for Trump was supposed to be a giant fuck you on their way out — half curse, half joke. But he won, it went to their heads, and they tried to end the game before losing it.

From TPM Reader EF …

I have been very heartened by Biden. The legislative success of the stimulus, the competence shown with the vaccine rollout, and the upcoming stimulus bill point to the possibility of people rediscovering that government can make a difference in their lives.

Excited to announce that we’re hiring for a newly created position: Editor for Content Strategy and Audience Development. This editor will help nourish and grow the TPM community. I think you’re going to like what this new role will enable us to do. We want a fantastic new teammate, so help us out. Please spread the word to your sharpest, most talented friends and colleagues – and put in a good word for us. Thanks.

Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all counts in the murder of George Floyd last night, the first verdict of its kind in a landmark case that inspired a wave of protests across the nation last summer against police brutality and systemic racism.

A few hours later, the St. Louis lawyer Mark McCloskey — who become known for standing barefoot outside his home alongside his wife last summer as the two pointed weapons at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters — told Politico that he was considering a Senate bid in Missouri.

“I can confirm that it’s a consideration, yes,” McCloskey reportedly said Tuesday evening.