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Podcast: Civil Squared new year compilation episode

Podcast: Civil Squared new year compilation episode

In order to make 2022 a better year, we revisited some of the best ideas we heard in 2021 because we think you’ll be able to apply them in the new year and beyond.

Through the course of last year, we talked to interesting and thoughtful guests on several topics, including, among others: how to handle bigots and snowflakes, the wide-reaching impacts of education policy, internet censorship, race and diversity, what it means to be American, why it’s ok to speak your mind, healthcare innovation and policy reform, immigration, factors that make college so expensive, ideological diversity and the importance of having conversations with those who are different than you, political polarization, criminal justice reform and the need for compassion toward formerly incarcerated individuals, the high costs of incarceration, transitional justice theory, tools to understand and navigate media bias, bridging divides, and the importance of preserving the ability for America to self-govern.


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Can MAGA go any lower defending Donald Trump?

U.S. president Donald Trump delivers remarks at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D..C on Nov. 19, 2025.

(Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images/TCA)

Can MAGA go any lower defending Donald Trump?

I remember it well. It was Oct. 7, 2016, a Friday. That afternoon The Washington Post dropped a bombshell, the perfect October surprise, just a month before the presidential election.

Earlier in the week, Hillary Clinton had been hammering Donald Trump on the news that he may not have paid taxes for 18 years.

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Can MAGA go any lower defending Donald Trump?

U.S. president Donald Trump delivers remarks at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D..C on Nov. 19, 2025.

(Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images/TCA)

Can MAGA go any lower defending Donald Trump?

I remember it well. It was Oct. 7, 2016, a Friday. That afternoon The Washington Post dropped a bombshell, the perfect October surprise, just a month before the presidential election.

Earlier in the week, Hillary Clinton had been hammering Donald Trump on the news that he may not have paid taxes for 18 years.

Keep ReadingShow less
Leaked ‘wish list’ for peace in Russia-Ukraine war is hardly America First

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on August 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.

(Getty Images)

Leaked ‘wish list’ for peace in Russia-Ukraine war is hardly America First

Last week, a 28-point “peace plan” for the Russia-Ukraine war surfaced. It was apparently fleshed out in Miami over cocktails by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Witkoff’s Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev.

Many critics immediately derided it as a “Russian wish-list.”

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Trump's Clemency for Giuliani et al is Another Effort to Whitewash History and Damage Democracy

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, September 11, 2025 in New York City.

(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Trump's Clemency for Giuliani et al is Another Effort to Whitewash History and Damage Democracy

In the earliest days of the Republic, Alexander Hamilton defended giving the president the exclusive authority to grant pardons and reprieves against the charge that doing so would concentrate too much power in one person’s hands. Reading the news of President Trump’s latest use of that authority to reward his motley crew of election deniers and misfit lawyers, I was taken back to what Hamilton wrote in 1788.

He argued that “The principal argument for reposing the power of pardoning in this case to the Chief Magistrate is this: in seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a well- timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth; and which, if suffered to pass unimproved, it may never be possible afterwards to recall.”

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