Portside

• Rightwing lobby group appealing to major donors to return • Internal documents reveal so-called 'Prodigal Son Project' • Network lost almost 400 state legislators over past two years

Stopping the rightwing, anti-immigrant, poor-bashing Republican juggernaut won’t be easy.

The debt ceiling turns out to be unexploded ordnance lying around the American form of government. Only custom or moral compunction stops the opposition party from using it to nullify the president’s powers, or, for that matter, the president from using it to nullify Congress’s. To weaponize the debt ceiling, you must be willing to inflict harm on millions of innocent people.