I still have some relative confidence that the Gaza ceasefire deal will make its way through the current flare-ups. That’s because the deal itself has very powerful stakeholders behind it, ones who can apply overwhelming pressure to the warring parties if they choose to. But what we’re now seeing all the reasons you’d expect a deal like this with Donald Trump to go south.

First is attention. The best argument against this deal sticking has always been that Trump will get bored and lose interest. It’s pretty clear that’s already happened. We heard his press secretary say only days ago that his main priority is building the new White House ballroom.

I’ve made versions of this argument here in the Editors’ Blog and on the podcast many times. But it’s so critical and so beyond dispute I wanted to state it here as clearly as possible. There is no future for civic democracy in this country without reforming the Supreme Court. Putting that more specifically, the only way to recover from Donald Trump’s rapid lunge into an authoritarian American future is a future point at which Democrats regain control of the federal government — a trifecta — and institute a series of laws which cut off the channels Trump has exploited to get us to this point. That doesn’t solve the problem of Trumpism. The core issue is that very large minority of Americans who support his style of autocratic government. But that cuts off many of the paths Trump has used to build a presidential autocracy under the thinnest cover of law. You need, among other things, a federal law to place strict limits on partisan and racial gerrymandering. It’s only one example out of many – you need laws re-instituting true independent agencies, drastically limiting the use of military forces on US territory, barring president’s from claiming budgeting authority, et al. I note this example because it came up today when Kate and I recorded this week’s podcast. But even this comparatively uncontroversial federal statute would certainly be overturned by the Republican justices.

From TPM Reader AF …

From my perch as a rabbi’s kid, a decently religious Jew, not an anti-Zionist, and someone who spends many hours a week (a day?) occupied by these issues of Jewish community politics, I want to say: “What the fuck are we talking about” is exactly right.

I would add two things. First:

Publishing two very different responses, first from TPM Reader JS …

I bet you’re not surprised that I disagree about this. The #1 threat faced by Jews right now in the US is stochastic terrorism from both the left and right and Islamic terrorists, whether it’s more like the Tree of Life shooting (right wing), the attack on the Boulder group (left wing) or the very recent shooting in Manchester (Islamic), or, in my community an actual bomb attempt on local synagogues (right wing). This is the heart attack; fascism—or whatever you want to call what Trump is doing—is like cancer. At this point, just living until the cancer kills you is lucky. It doesn’t mean you don’t try to cure the cancer, but first things first.