The Frame The sudden passing of former Speaker Dennis Hastert at 84 arrives at a moment when President Donald Trump’s second term is reshaping the federal bureaucracy, and the United States is confronting a demographic cliff of aging legislators and a political class increasingly dependent on private capital. Hastert’s trajectory — from a modest Illinois congressman to the longest‑serving Republican House speaker, then to a federal inmate — encapsulates a quiet crisis: the erosion of the unwritten rules that once buffered personal scandal from systemic collapse. In a political climate where legitimacy is increasingly purchased rather than earned, his case forces us to ask whether the institutions that have survived two world wars and the Cold War can still contain the forces unleashed by technology, demographic pressure, and the commodification of trust. The Signal While the media spotlighted Hastert’s admission of sexual abuse and his subsequent imprisonment, the more consequential revelation was his...