What are the key takeaways from this Making Sense episode?

Key insights include: **Institutional Trust Collapse:** Federal judges — including conservative ones — have formally revoked the "presumption of regularity," meaning government lawyers no longer receive automatic credibility in court because judges have documented repeated dishonesty. This represents a concrete, measurable breakdown in the legal system's foundational operating assumptions, with long-term consequences that cannot be quickly reversed.; **Primary System Dysfunction:** Roughly 80% of U.S. congressional districts are so partisan that winning the primary guarantees winning the general election. This structural reality means incumbents answer only to their most extreme base voters, not median voters — making cross-aisle cooperation a primary liability rather than a governing asset worth pursuing.; **Campaign Finance Amplifies Extremism:** Small-donor fundraising, originally intended to democratize political participation, instead rewards performative outrage. AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene were simultaneously the top House fundraisers for their respective parties despite minimal legislative output, demonstrating that conflict-driven content generates more revenue than actual governance.

What did Jonah Goldberg discuss on Making Sense?

Sam Harris and Jonah Goldberg examine the erosion of U.S. institutional norms under Trump's personalist governance style, structural flaws in the primary system driving political extremism, the 2026 midterm outlook, and whether a future Democratic president could realistically reset executive branch overreach. Key topics include: **Institutional Trust Collapse:** Federal judges — including conservative ones — have formally revoked the "presumption of regularity," meaning government lawyers no longer receive automatic credibility in court because judges have documented repeated dishonesty. This represents a concrete, measurable breakdown in the legal system's foundational operating assumptions, with long-term consequences that cannot be quickly reversed.; **Primary System Dysfunction:** Roughly 80% of U.S. congressional districts are so partisan that winning the primary guarantees winning the general election. This structural reality means incumbents answer only to their most extreme base voters, not median voters — making cross-aisle cooperation a primary liability rather than a governing asset worth pursuing..

How long is this episode of Making Sense?

This episode is 21 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Making Sense

#460 — When the Center Cannot Hold

February 20, 2026

21 min episode · 2 min read

Jonah Goldberg

Episode

21 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Fundraising & VC, Leadership, Sales & Revenue

AI-Generated Summary

Published Feb 21, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓Institutional Trust Collapse: Federal judges — including conservative ones — have formally revoked the "presumption of regularity," meaning government lawyers no longer receive automatic credibility in court because judges have documented repeated dishonesty. This represents a concrete, measurable breakdown in the legal system's foundational operating assumptions, with long-term consequences that cannot be quickly reversed.
✓Primary System Dysfunction: Roughly 80% of U.S. congressional districts are so partisan that winning the primary guarantees winning the general election. This structural reality means incumbents answer only to their most extreme base voters, not median voters — making cross-aisle cooperation a primary liability rather than a governing asset worth pursuing.
✓Campaign Finance Amplifies Extremism: Small-donor fundraising, originally intended to democratize political participation, instead rewards performative outrage. AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene were simultaneously the top House fundraisers for their respective parties despite minimal legislative output, demonstrating that conflict-driven content generates more revenue than actual governance.
✓Midterm Probability Assessment: Goldberg rates a Democratic House takeover as highly likely in 2026, noting Republicans currently hold only a one-seat majority. Historical first-term midterm averages show the president's party losing roughly 26 seats. Democrats recapturing the Senate remains a heavier lift but becomes plausible if a genuine wave materializes.
✓Reset Strategy Requires Primary Navigation: A Democratic candidate running on reducing executive power could win a general election — Biden's 2020 "return to normalcy" message proved the concept — but would need to downplay that platform during primaries to survive. Governing as a majority-party president rather than satisfying the base is the critical execution requirement Biden failed to meet.

What It Covers

Sam Harris and Jonah Goldberg examine the erosion of U.S. institutional norms under Trump's personalist governance style, structural flaws in the primary system driving political extremism, the 2026 midterm outlook, and whether a future Democratic president could realistically reset executive branch overreach.

Key Questions Answered

•Institutional Trust Collapse: Federal judges — including conservative ones — have formally revoked the "presumption of regularity," meaning government lawyers no longer receive automatic credibility in court because judges have documented repeated dishonesty. This represents a concrete, measurable breakdown in the legal system's foundational operating assumptions, with long-term consequences that cannot be quickly reversed.
•Primary System Dysfunction: Roughly 80% of U.S. congressional districts are so partisan that winning the primary guarantees winning the general election. This structural reality means incumbents answer only to their most extreme base voters, not median voters — making cross-aisle cooperation a primary liability rather than a governing asset worth pursuing.
•Campaign Finance Amplifies Extremism: Small-donor fundraising, originally intended to democratize political participation, instead rewards performative outrage. AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene were simultaneously the top House fundraisers for their respective parties despite minimal legislative output, demonstrating that conflict-driven content generates more revenue than actual governance.
•Midterm Probability Assessment: Goldberg rates a Democratic House takeover as highly likely in 2026, noting Republicans currently hold only a one-seat majority. Historical first-term midterm averages show the president's party losing roughly 26 seats. Democrats recapturing the Senate remains a heavier lift but becomes plausible if a genuine wave materializes.
•Reset Strategy Requires Primary Navigation: A Democratic candidate running on reducing executive power could win a general election — Biden's 2020 "return to normalcy" message proved the concept — but would need to downplay that platform during primaries to survive. Governing as a majority-party president rather than satisfying the base is the critical execution requirement Biden failed to meet.

Notable Moment

Goldberg argues that the only path to a sane Republican Party runs directly through a sane Democratic Party — and vice versa. The two-party system's structural incentives mean one party's radicalization functionally grants the other permission to radicalize, creating a self-reinforcing cycle with no obvious internal correction mechanism.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers, so if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. I am here with Jonah Goldberg. Jonah, thanks for joining me again. Hey. It's great to be back. It was great to see you. So, I think it's been about six months since you were on the podcast and a few things have happened. I think I I looked at it. It was somewhere around August. Mhmm. I may have a list of things that that I think we could profitably discuss. But what what's most concerning you these days? Where has your head been on on our political landscape? If we're talking politically, right, I mean, there's also it's of, you know, the AI thing is interesting in all sorts of ways. We could talk about that all. But if you're just talking about, like, get gold we're going to do report from inside the Beltway, what's going on with politics stuff. I think the continued erosion of the and politicization of our institutions in in distressing ways is probably the main main thing I'm concerned about. I mean, we're talking on, you know, February 19 or whatever. Like, by the time that people listen to this, we could be invading Iran. So that could make anything I say kind of outdated. But just a potpourri, you know, like, just a couple days ago or yesterday, Kevin Hassett, chief economic adviser of the president, you know, he said, that some staff economist who did a paper verifying what economists have been saying for thirty years, fifty years, seventy years about tariffs that Americans pay them and that that Mhmm. That the foreigners don't. Kevin Hassett, who I knew part personally, and I know he agreed with that when I knew him, now says that those staffers should be penalized for releasing such a finding. And you you or you look at the chicanery that's going on with Stephen Colbert and the FCC. Trump is running what political scientists sometimes call a personalist Mhmm. Regime, where the distinction between his personal aims and desires and the demands of state are completely blurred. And I don't think that's gonna last forever. You know, the guy's, you know, 80 or whatever, and I don't think Vance can pull off that act or anything like that. But the problem is is that it's like with trust. Once you'd violate these kinds of norms and these institutional rules, what, you know, the sort of Hayekian hidden law stuff, you can't recreate it overnight. We have an an what …

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