Mr. Shaw notes that two sponsors of the Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar, Delta and Bank of America, “pulled out before anyone else had time to react.” He uses this as a signal that Americans are “starting to tire of assassination porn” and that corporate entities are starting to notice. According to Mr. Shaw, the move is not a matter of First Amendment freedoms — “it’s a matter of capitalism, not politics.” Read more »

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• Matt Lewis in The Daily Beast:

“Since Democrats can be counted on to reflexively oppose this Republican president, my message here is aimed primarily at patriotic Republicans: It’s time to take a stand, if you care about things like separation of powers, the rule of law, and preserving norms and the balance of power.”

Mr. Lewis has been a vocal and persistent critic of the president from the right. In his column for The Daily Beast, he entreats his fellow Republicans to take the possibility of Mr. Mueller’s dismissal seriously, and to loudly denounce any attempts to discredit the special counsel. Congressional Republicans, he writes, must engage in what has emerged as a new calling under the Trump administration: the “preservation of small ‘r’ republicanism.” Read more »

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• Peter Berkowitz in Real Clear Politics:

“To play the vital role contemplated for them by our constitutional system, intellectual and political elites have a long way to go in regaining the people’s trust.”

In May, Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes released a report for the Brookings Institution that affirmed the need for a political class and questioned whether universal voter participation is the panacea for democracy’s ills. You can read it in full here. In response, Mr. Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes, “A satisfactory argument for transferring more power to today’s elites would require addressing the people’s legitimate anxieties about the professional class.” Read more »

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From the Left

• Stassa Edwards in Jezebel:

“Sessions’s inability to recall or remember details ostensibly key to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation served as the chorus to his testimony, repeated at various times throughout Tuesday’s hearing without any hint of irony or embarrassment.”