Voters at campaign events bring up their worries that political division could lead to large-scale political violence. Pollsters regularly ask about the idea in opinion surveys. A cottage industry has arisen for speculative fiction, serious assessments and forums about whether the country could be on the verge of a modern-day version of the bloodiest war in American history.

And “Civil War,” a dystopian action film about an alternative America plunged into a bloody domestic conflict, has topped box office sales for two consecutive weekends. The movie has outperformed expectations at theaters from Brownsville, Texas, to Boston, tapping into a dark set of national anxieties that took hold after the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol.

Of course, the notion of a future civil war remains a mere notion. But, as another presidential election approaches, it has suddenly become a hotly debated one, reflecting the bipartisan sense of unease that has permeated American politics. In polls and in interviews, a segment of voters have said they fear that the country’s divides have grown so deep that they may lead not just to rhetorical battles but actual ones.

“I personally do not believe we will descend into a formal armed civil war,” said Maya Wiley, who ran for mayor of New York City in 2021 and now serves as the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a civil rights group that has fielded several polls on the topic. “But it’s in the air. It doesn’t surprise me at all that we’re seeing a very explicit fear of where things could go.”

Daniel C. Dennett, one of the most widely read and debated American philosophers, whose prolific works explored consciousness, free will, religion and evolutionary biology, died on Friday in Portland, Maine. He was 82.

His death, at Maine Medical Center, was caused by complications of interstitial lung disease, his wife, Susan Bell Dennett, said. He lived in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

Mr. Dennett combined a wide range of knowledge with an easy, often playful writing style to reach a lay public, avoiding the impenetrable concepts and turgid prose of many other contemporary philosophers. Beyond his more than 20 books and scores of essays, his writings even made their way into the theater and onto the concert stage.

But Mr. Dennett, who never shirked controversy, often crossed swords with other famed scholars and thinkers.

I caught up with Rep. Tom Cole, a veteran Republican from Oklahoma, to get his insights into the internal dynamics at play here. Cole knows what he’s talking about, having chaired the Appropriations Committee and the Rules Committee — both in the past month.

In press shorthand, Cole is usually described as an institutionalist, and since the tea party era, he’s also been known for butting heads with his more rambunctious, often newer colleagues on the far right.

Today’s antagonism toward House leadership stems from “a lack of respect for the institution and the wisdom of the institution,” he said. Speaking of the bomb-throwers, he added, “You know, you’ve got to grow up.”

Cole is also a member of the Chickasaw Nation, a trained historian and as a cigar aficionado, literally a devotee of Washington’s smoke-filled back rooms.

On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, we got deep into the weeds of why the Rules Committee has been such a trouble spot for recent GOP speakers and whether Cole thinks Johnson can hang on as members threaten to oust him. I also had Cole answer some prying questions from some of his favorite historians on the subject of Donald Trump.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/20/grow-up-a-veteran-republican-is-tired-of-his-partys-insurgents-00153454

Donald Trump is spending as much on legal bills as he is on campaigning. Joe Biden, meanwhile, is building a reelection behemoth.

Campaign finance reports filed this week underscored the unusual nature of this campaign: the current president running against his predecessor, who is more preoccupied with his criminal trial than the campaign trail.

Like most incumbent presidents, Biden is outgunning Trump, raising and spending multiple times more than the presumptive GOP nominee, especially with his post-State of the Union ramp-up last month.

But the two aren’t even in the same ballpark. A PAC controlled by Trump spent almost as much on legal bills as his campaign did on anything else — and Biden’s campaign outspent Trump’s by nearly eight-to-one.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/20/donald-trump-joe-biden-fundraising-takeaways-00153511

Record heat, hurricanes, wildfires all have been making news in recent years. And while not everyone agrees events like these are the direct result of climate change, they do connect to peoples' opinions about it: a big majority of Americans feel the U.S. needs to address climate change, with those who report experiencing extreme weather more likely to say we should do so right now.

Views on climate change have long been associated with partisanship, and they still are, but age is a factor, too. Younger Americans, including younger Republicans, are even more likely to say the U.S. needs to take steps to at least try to slow it.

There's a sense of urgency from many in the public, too. A large majority think it needs to be addressed at least in the next few years, including half who think it needs to be addressed right now.

There's the sense that we should address climate change, and there's also some belief that we can.