The current GOP has merely used the methods pioneered by its predecessors, though to newly extreme ends. As Jentleson shows, since the 1950s, a free-flowing body of relative equals has devolved into a rigidly hierarchical, polarized institution, with both Democrats and Republicans to blame.

How did we get to this point? In Kill Switch, Adam Jentleson argues that shifting demographics alone cannot explain how Mitch McConnell harnessed the Senate and turned it into a powerful weapon of minority rule. Every major decision governing our diverse, majority-female, and increasingly liberal country bears the stamp of the US Senate, yet the Senate allows an almost exclusively white, predominantly male, and radically conservative minority of the American electorate to impose its will on the rest of us. ' excellent, surprising new book.'An insider's account of how politicians representing a radical minority of Americans are using 'the greatest deliberative body in the world' to hijack our democracy.'Careful and thorough and exacting.' -Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books.'Jentleson understands the inner workings of the institution, down to the most granular details, showing precisely how arcane procedural rules can be leveraged to dramatic effect.' -Jennifer Szalai, New York Times.Featuring a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration, Kill Switch will remain an essential warning about the costs of empowering this nation's right-wing minority. A revelatory history of minority rule in America as expressed through the Senate filibuster, Kill Switch shows that white conservatives have long relied on the filibuster-which is not featured in the Constitution, and which, as Jentleson demonstrates, the Framers would have opposed-to shut down attempts to create a multiracial democracy. Yet as Adam Jentleson shows, the problem not only goes back to the nineteenth century, but is less about the presidency than it is about our nation's most venerated institution: the United States Senate.

Our democracy is under assault from homegrown authoritarians, with most observers blaming Donald Trump and the Republican Party that submitted to him. blistering and persuasive.' -Ezra Klein, New York TimesĪn insider's account of how politicians representing a radical white minority of Americans have used 'the world's greatest deliberative body' to hijack our democracy. With a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration

Kill switch adam jentleson