Russias No-Good, Very Failed Coup, and Jill Lepore on Amending the Constitution
b'Yevgeny Prigozhin\\u2019s march on Moscow last weekend, which killed more than a dozen Russian soldiers, fizzled as quickly as it began, but its repercussions are just beginning. The Wagner Group commander issued a video from Belarus claiming that he did not attempt a coup against Putin but a protest against the Defense Ministry.\\xa0 David Remnick talks with Masha Gessen and the contributor Joshua Yaffa, who has written on the Wagner Group, about what lies ahead in Russia. Both feel that by revealing the reality of the war to his own following\\u2014a Putin-loyal, nationalist audience\\u2014Prigozhin has seriously damaged the regime\\u2019s credibility. If an uprising removes Putin from power, \\u201cthere will be chaos,\\u201d Gessen notes. \\u201cNobody knows what happens next. There\\u2019s no succession plan.\\u201d\\xa0 Plus, Jill Lepore on amending the Constitution: suggesting a constitutional amendment these days is so far-fetched, it\\u2019s almost a punch line, but the Framers intended the document to be regularly amended, the historian Jill Lepore tells David Remnick. She argues that the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment sank the country into a political quagmire from which it has not arisen, and her latest historial project brings awareness to the problem of amendability.'