The New Leviathan examines the architecture of emergency governance — how powers granted to meet a crisis become permanent features of the state, and how the United States since September 11, 2001 has lived under a regime of declared emergencies that no longer end.

The series traces the post-9/11 expansion of executive authority, the surveillance infrastructure built under the Patriot Act and its successors, the financial emergency powers exercised in 2008, and the public-health emergency apparatus activated in 2020. Each represents the same pattern: a temporary measure justified by extraordinary circumstance, normalized through extension, and absorbed into the permanent operating framework of government.

The argument is that emergency power, once claimed, is rarely returned. The constitutional design that required deliberation, debate, and the consent of the governed has been replaced by an executive instrument that responds to the next crisis with the tools accumulated from the last. Articles are listed below, followed by the podcast archive. This series is complete; the newest content appears first.