Back in 2018, of course, the political media fixation du jour was The Squad, the group of young Democratic freshmen whose arrival supposedly heralded an age of pinko-progressive, social-media-fueled insurgency. Four years later, with Republicans recapturing the House, there’s a similarly excitable media narrative coalescing around the “Taliban 20”—the mostly early-career far-right members of Congress who nearly derailed Kevin McCarthy’s speakership this month. They are, in fact, a sort of inverse of The Squad, with a terminally online ideological agenda and a mission to reshape Washington in their own radical image.
The Dark Squad Rises
Tina Nguyen
February 1, 2023
