Today: How are America’s Democrats responding to being out of power? Daniel Schlozman on the deep problems beneath last year’s seemingly modest election loss.

+ Infrared auroras on Neptune; from the member’s despatch, Anthony Gregory on what the conflict over government surveillance in America is really about; &c.

But first …

• Prosecutors say Bolsonaro and his partners planned to use explosives and political assassinations—including an assassination of the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—to retake control of the country. One alleged aspect of the plot was to kill the Supreme Court justice now overseeing the case. After Bolsonaro lost, his supporters staged riots in Brasília, the capital, on January 8, 2023—modeled after the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
• Bolsonaro and the others—his former security chiefs, including his defense minister and security minister—will be tried on charges of belonging to an armed criminal organization, attempting a coup, and attempting to abolish democracy in Brazil. The court hasn’t set a trial date yet. If convicted, Bolsonaro could face between 12 and 40 years in prison—and would be barred from running for office ever again.
• Bolsonaro says the trial is politically motivated and was just a way to silence him and keep him out of power. His lawyers admit to the reality of a coup plot; they just say Bolsonaro wasn’t involved. Lawmakers allied with him have introduced a bill to pardon those associated with the January 8 riots.

• Democrats have called for the resignations of Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the incident. They say the group-chat exchange violated laws on classified information and the use of messaging apps and government communications. They also say the leak could have endangered the soldiers conducting the operation in Yemen—and that foreign intelligence services could have easily intercepted the communications. One member of the group chat, for instance, was inside the Kremlin during the conversation.
• The White House says the information in the group chat was not classified. Waltz says the editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, might have infiltrated the group chat. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says someone made a “big mistake.”
• Some Republican senators announced plans to investigate. Senator Roger Wicker, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says his committee will—and that the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General should conduct its own investigation. Republican senators say the Senate Intelligence Committee will also look into what happened. The Republican senator Lisa Murkowski says, “This is what happens when you don’t really have your act together.”

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• The doctors used the liver of a pig that had six genetic modifications designed to prevent the patient’s body from rejecting it. The liver looked like it was compatible and functioning. The surgeons removed it after 10 days. They’d not removed the liver of the patient—a 50-year-old man—so it was unclear whether the pig liver alone could have supported him.
• Doctors say the operation means that pig livers could one day be transplanted temporarily into people waiting for liver transplants or needing help while their own liver regenerates. Doctors have already tried transplanting pig hearts, kidneys, and thymus glands into humans, though only some of the operations have been successful. Thousands of people die every year in the U.S. while waiting for transplants on account of not enough organs being available.
• In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted approval to two biotech companies to conduct clinical trials transplanting kidneys from genetically modified pigs into humans. But there are prevalent ethical concerns about transplanting animal organs into people—known as xenotransplantation. One worry is about the validity of consent given by seriously ill patients; another is that the pig organs could introduce new pathogens—and cause a new pandemic—among humans. Animal-rights activists have meanwhile said, simply, “Pigs are not spare parts.”

Identity politics

Since his inauguration, U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have been relentlessly active in dismantling Democrats’ prior work. Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders that have shaken the federal bureaucracy, and he’s reversed many of the policies of his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. Trump has empowered his top donor, Elon Musk, to go through the federal government with his newly created outfit, the Department of Government Efficiency, canceling contracts and firing civil servants. Trump has also upended longstanding U.S. foreign policy: He’s threatened traditional allies like Canada, Mexico, and Europe with tariffs, he temporarily cut off aid to Ukraine, and he and his team have meanwhile moved much closer to Russia.

At first glance, the Democrats’ response to Trump’s victory and new policies appears unclear. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer is on a book tour; many of his colleagues want to take him out of his post for helping Republicans pass a bill to fund the government. The former vice-presidential nominee, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, has openly criticized the Democratic election campaign. Meanwhile, the old-progressive Democratic senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has organized a series of rallies with the new-progressive Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, attracting tens of thousands.

But others want a cooler response. The veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, for instance, suggested, “It’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.”

So if that’s not what they’re already doing, what are Democrats up to?

Daniel Schlozman is an associate professor of political science at the Johns Hopkins University and the co-author of The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics. Schlozman says that while the Democrats’ loss in November’s election was slight, their broader loss isn’t. They’re lost as a party.

They’re searching for policy responses—with some Democrats wanting the part to focus on economic issues to win working-class voters and others wanting it to focus on more centrist positions. But they’re also searching for a political response—without yet having decided how to pitch the party to the American people. And they’re making these choices while facing a very grim math problem: To win enough states to retake control of the White House or the Senate, the party needs to broaden its coalition of voters on account of how overly reliant it’s become on college-educated urbanites …

• On Neptune, the James Webb Space Telescope has for the first time detected infrared auroras—at the planet’s mid-latitudes rather than its poles, on account of its tilted magnetic field. A new mystery to solve: Scientists have also discovered that Neptune’s atmosphere has significantly cooled since Voyager 2 passed by back in 1989—from 482 degrees Celsius (900 Fahrenheit) to about 93 Celsius (200 Fahrenheit).

• “We love magazines” is the rallying call of magCulture. In-store in London and online everywhere, they celebrate the magazine—contemporary and historical—a medium we consider as important as it’s ever been. magCulture is the exclusive retailer for Altered States outside the U.S.A.

The surveillance States