I’m going to apologize in advance. There’s going to be some science fiction in this newsletter. It won’t be rank nerdery (though that can certainly be as enjoyable and informative as my colleague Jonah Goldberg’s famous “rank punditry”), but I will use two key quotes to help make sense of an important political reality of impeachment and of a critical constitutional battle that’s unfolding in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

That’s how we’ll start, but we’ll end with two rousing endorsements of thoughts from two very different people—Ross Douthat and Barack Obama. Here’s today’s lineup:

1. How Battlestar Galactica and Bill Clinton explain the GOP’s Trump problem.

2. What Frank Herbert’s Dune teaches us about the American Constitution.