Jill Lepore

But it's, I don't know, it's sort of like the narrative gods are speaking as well.

Partly, I feel this is a strange confession to make.

I feel a public duty to perform hope.

So I do all the time.

And whether I have it or not, maybe that's a misplaced sense of duty.

I do think, though, that we are in a moment in American history of tremendous constitutional change, tremendous constitutional change.

The powers of the executive have changed dramatically in the last 10 years.

The separation of powers has almost entirely eroded, not entirely, but significantly eroded.

There's a real question of whether this administration will successfully argue that birthright citizenship is not, in fact, in the 14th Amendment.

And I think that puts a lot of pressure on the document, right?

And there's also an argument to be made and legal scholars have made that a constitution that has become functionally unamendable lacks legitimacy.

I think there is a bit of a crisis of legitimacy to the constitution, right?

There's that.

The current document of the Oval Office says he does not know if it's his duty to uphold the Constitution in spite of having sworn an oath to do just that.

So I think that I think it's an unsustainable and untenable situation.

You hear more about constitutions from AI companies than you do from the general public right now.

So I think there's like a pressure point that we are at now.

I do think there are also a lot of initiatives that are very quiet and sleepy right now, but could awaken.

So one is an organization called Democracy 2076.

It's really a youth organization that's trying to hold citizens' assemblies to get people to talk about, well, it does take forever to change the Constitution.