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Evangelicals for Trump? It’s Not About Religion


DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY JAN 18
 
 
 

Right after his victory in Iowa, where he received 53% of the evangelical and born-again Christian vote, Donald Trump traveled to New York to plead his case — literally. He was in federal court today, where he’ll soon find out how much he’ll have to pay for defaming a woman he’s also been found liable for sexually abusing. You may want to think about that for a moment. And let us remember it’s only January. There are more trials to come starring the leading GOP presidential candidate.

Here’s the quick backstory: Trump has already been found to have sexually abused and defamed columnist E. Jean Carroll. The jury in this current trial is only determining how much Trump will pay in compensatory and punitive damages. The contentious day in court — the judge threatened to toss Trump from the courtroom for his antics — is in sharp contrast to the warm and fuzzy reception he received from Iowa’s Republicans, especially the state’s evangelicals.

It is no secret that Donald Trump is the political choice of white evangelical Christians, albeit a counterintuitive one. He is a three-times married, twice divorced, admitted sexual abuser who is mired in six civil and criminal cases either in court now or headed for trial this year. Not exactly the picture of morality. But to the modern evangelical, that doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

Why this is true remains for many an open question.

Once upon a time, evangelicals believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ, in the moral imperative of helping one’s neighbors, of being a “compassionate conservative.” But we are living in an up-is-down, black-is-white world in which a man who admitted to grabbing women by their genitalia is embraced by one of the largest religious groups in the United States. What accounts for this dichotomy? What accounts for the growth of Trump’s popularity among this group? According to Ruth Graham and Charles Homans of The New York Times, “Today, [EVANGELICAL] is often used to describe a cultural and political identity: one in which Christians are considered a persecuted minority, traditional institutions are viewed skeptically and Mr. Trump looms large.” 

They care more about opposing abortion and curtailing LGBTQ+ and minority rights than about the teachings of their savior — the original one. Many see Trump as a modern savior, “rescuing” the country from Democrats, drag queens, and immigrants. Inexplicably, they do see him as a person of faith, more so than any other politician. In a November poll of Republican voters by HarrisX, Trump ranked highest as a person of faith at 64%, higher than profoundly religious former Vice President Mike Pence (56%), higher than Mormon leader Senator Mitt Romney (34%), and significantly higher than weekly church-going Catholic President Joe Biden (13%). 

It may not be surprising that the number of evangelicals who regularly attend church has dropped; 40% go to church once a year or less. But that’s against a backdrop of church attendance generally declining among Americans and in Western civilization as a whole. 

A group of Trump supporters recently produced a video called “God Made Trump” in which he is depicted as the second coming. It has quickly made its way around the MAGA-sphere. 

Perhaps it was Romney who best put this all in perspective. “I think a lot of people in this country are out of touch with reality and will accept anything Donald Trump tells them,” Romney told CNN. “You had a jury that said that Donald Trump raped a woman. And that doesn’t seem to be moving the needle. There’s a lot of things about today’s electorate that I have a hard time understanding.”

So it is with many Americans as we ponder in this election year what our country has become, where it appears to be headed, and why.  

As always, we welcome your comments and thoughts.

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Trump Keeps Suggesting People Who Aren’t White Aren’t Eligible To Be President


Jennifer Bendery

Huffpost

Tue, January 9, 2024 at 7:27 PM CST·2 min read

3.7k

Donald Trump is fueling a lie on social media that Nikki Haley isn’t eligible to be president because she’s not a natural-born U.S. citizen ― the same lie he spread about former President Barack Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas.).

It’s almost as if there is something ― something! ― about all of these people who happen to be not white and who happen to have immigrant parents that makes Trump wonder if they are real Americans. What could it be!

In Haley’s case, Trump on Monday posted a screenshot to his Truth Social account of a false story claiming that his Republican presidential opponent is disqualified from being president or vice president because “reports indicate that her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth in 1972.”

That story, published by the far-right website, The Gateway Pundit, and shared by Trump to his 5.5 million Truth Social followers, is as ugly as it is nonsensical. Haley was born in South Carolina. She is a natural-born U.S. citizen. She is eligible to be president.

Donald Trump is fueling a lie on social media that Nikki Haley is not eligible to be president.

But just like he did to Obama, Harris and Cruz when they were his primary political opponents, Trump pushing the racist idea that because Haley has immigrant parents (her parents are from India), she must not be a real American and is therefore disqualified from running for president.

Trump aggressively spread this lie about Obama, for years, fueling wild conspiracy theories about Obama being born in Kenya instead of Hawaii, where he was actually born. Trump routinely demanded that Obama release his full birth certificate to prove where he was born, and when Obama actually did, Trump questioned its authenticity.

After five years of doing this, Trump abruptly reversed course in September 2016, admitting that Obama was born in the United States and moving on as if nothing had happened.

In August 2020, Trump tried the same attacks on Harris. A Trump campaign spokesperson questioned Harris’ citizenship in an interview with ABC News, and later that day, Trump said that Harris possibly “doesn’t meet the requirements” to serve as vice president.

Harris was born in Oakland, California.

Trump also tried to claim that Cruz was disqualified from being president because he was born in Canada. During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Trump repeatedly raised questions about Cruz’s qualifications. Cruz, whose mother was born in America and whose Cuban father was born in Canada, has long maintained that he qualifies as a natural-born citizen by virtue of being born abroad to a U.S. citizen.

Ironically, Trump may be the one who ends up disqualified from being president because he incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

U.S. aid to Central America: What it does, why Trump cut it and why that may not end the migration crisis


Alan Gomez

{Polls Show Increasing Discontent with Biden’s Immigration Policies and Border Situation A series of recent polls sheds light on American sentiments regarding illegal immigration and their dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden’s handling of the border crisis. These polls indicate a growing concern among Americans and a preference for stronger measures against illegal border crossers. See cause of exacerbated immigration issue below}:

USA TODAY 2019

President Donald Trump’s decision to cut $450 million in foreign aid to three Central American countries – collectively known as the Northern Triangle – will end dozens of projects designed to bolster security, the economy, education and judicial systems.

The goal of the programs is to improve conditions in the countries so citizens don’t flee to the U.S. While Trump wants to cut the assistance, former officials say the programs are seeing results. For example:

In Honduras, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) officials have been working in local communities to reduce violence, contributing to a drop in the homicide rate every year between 2011 and 2018.

In El Salvador, where a struggling economy has pushed people to make the trek north, USAID helped small- and medium-sized businesses create more than 22,000 jobs between 2011 and 2016.

And in Guatemala, where the judicial system has been wrought with corruption and inefficiency, U.S. money has helped the government hire more judges and provided security for justice officials to protect them from cartels they are trying to prosecute. 

Trump said the aid cuts, and his threat to close the southern border entirely, will punish governments of those countries for failing to prevent people from fleeing.

Where does the money go?

James Nealon, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, said Trump’s explanation of foreign aid sounds as though “somebody tried to explain to him where the money goes and he just didn’t get it.”

Some U.S. money does go directly to government agencies, including grants to support police, border security agents and judicial employees in those countries. But Nealon, who resigned from the administration last year over policy disagreements, said most of the money goes to U.S. contractors, non-profit organizations, and other private groups under close supervision from USAID and the State Department.

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Some supporters of Trump’s immigration policies are also questioning the decision to cut off foreign aid to Central America.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of legal and illegal immigration, said he doesn’t understand why the president would punish the governments of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala when they cannot legally stop citizens from leaving.

Krikorian said he is skeptical that foreign aid cuts will change anything, and urged Trump to focus instead on pushing Congress to overhaul immigration laws to limit the ability of asylum-seekers to enter the United States.

“By focusing attention on Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador, we’re distracting attention from the real culprits: Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer,” Krikorian said, referring to the Democratic House speaker and Senate minority leader.

Violence, poverty, hunger

El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have struggled for years with violence, poverty and insecurity.

El Salvador was recently dubbed the murder capital of the world. In Honduras, citizens are still protesting the contested 2017 election. Guatemala’s president has taken heat for trying to end a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission that has successfully prosecuted corrupt officials.

All the while, the three countries are struggling with a historic drought that has put more than two million people at risk of food insecurity, according to the United Nations.

But a study published by Vanderbilt University said U.S. aid has helped improve conditions little by little.

The aid has paid for computer labs and job training for at-risk youths, grants for women entrepreneurs and programs to bring underground businesses into the legal economy. It has also funded community policing programs, the purchase of law enforcement equipment and training for police, judges and prosecutors.

Mexico border closing: Trump and US face logistical nightmare if he follows through with threats

Researchers at Vanderbilt’s Latin American Public Opinion Project surveyed 29,000 people living in five Central American countries, and found that those living in neighborhoods with U.S.-funded projects saw less violence. In those communities, 51% reported fewer murders and extortion attempts, 35% said they no longer avoided walking through dangerous areas and 25% said they saw a drop in drug sales. 

“It’s an extraordinarily rigorous study, and it’s very persuasive,” said Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, who was not part of the report but has studied the reasons young people flee Central America for the United States. 

Rising migration

Trump sees things differently.

The combination of violence, poverty and food insecurity in Central America has driven record numbers of families to head north to seek U.S. asylum.

On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said rising migration showed that U.S. aid was not working.

Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 36,000 members of family units in February – a record – and border communities are being overwhelmed trying to care for them. That figure has steadily increased in recent months, with Border Patrol officials predicting a further rise for March.

“The president has determined that these programs have not effectively prevented illegal immigration from coming to the United States, and they’ve not achieved the desired results,” Palladino said. “It’s not succeeded in stemming this flow.”

Still, Clemens said cutting off funding was misguided. He said the evidence, including the Vanderbilt study, shows that U.S. aid has led to gradual progress in living conditions in Central America.

“There is literally zero evidence that bludgeoning the (Central American) governments and long-time partners of those governments is somehow going to produce security in the region,” he said.

Crybaby conqueror’: Columnist nails Trump’s appeal to MAGA fanatics


Opinion by Travis Gettys • 21h

Donald Trump has recently revived long-standing comparisons to Adolf Hitler, but a columnist hit him Friday for being more like a “crybaby conqueror” — though his fanatical supporters seem happy to embrace either.

Trumpists tend to call themselves conservative, which has traditionally signaled a belief in limited government and low taxes, but Chicago Sun-Times columnist Gene Lyons noted with horror that MAGA followers had essentially become fundamentalist fanatics.

“This explains what some see as the central paradox of the MAGA movement: that a congenital braggart who embodies what Christianity has traditionally called the seven deadly sins — greed, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony, pride and wrath — has come to seem the totem of faith for millions of Republican evangelicals,” Lyons wrote.

Lyons turned to noted anti-fascist George Orwell, whom he said “captured the essence of the whiny strongman” in his 1940 review of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” — a manifesto Trump insists he has never read.

“Orwell understood fascism’s appeal to an aggrieved population,” Lyons wrote. “While European and North American democracies, he wrote, told people in effect that, ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them, ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.

“Orwell also understood the personal psychology of the crybaby conqueror: ‘The initial, personal cause of [Hitler’s] grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon,'” Lyons added.

Lyons said he’s inclined to believe Trump never read “Mein Kampf,” but instead had affected an over-the-top persona based on low-brow entertainers from his own youth.

“Trump never learned anything from a book,” Lyons wrote. “He stole his whole act from 1950s professional wrestlers at Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, specifically from Dr. Jerry Graham, who swaggered around boasting that ‘I have the body men fear and women adore.'”

“The hairstyle, too — a bleached blond pompadour that taught a generation of wrestling fans how a ‘heel’ behaved — that is, basically like a cartoon Nazi,” he added. “Graham was a masterful showman who aroused thousands to frenzy with balsa wood chairs and fake blood capsules. He was as fat as Trump, too, although there was muscle under the lard.”

Recommended Links:

・Trump ‘tripling down on fascist rhetoric’ while denying he’s a Hitler fan: Morning Joe

・‘This is fascism!’ Morning Joe checks off all the ways Trump meets chilling definition

・Trump is following ‘the fascist playbook to the letter’: historian

Trump claims divine authority and threatens dictatorship in escalating rhetoric.


Donald Trump’s recent public proclamations, in which he presents himself as a godly figure and explicitly threatens to behave like a dictator if re-elected, have raised concerns among experts and observers.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=k5xoRDxKcpI%3Fautoplay%3D0%26mute%3D1%26enablejsapi%3D1

Trump’s behavior is indicative of what experts call a “God complex”, a deep-seated belief in one’s own infallibility and superiority. This is a classic element of a cult and a key ingredient of why and how Trumpism works among his followers. In this context, the profane and the sacred are conflated in the same way as the Nazis did.

This isn’t the initial instance of Donald Trump asserting divine authority. Over the past seven years, Trump has consistently professed to possess clandestine and omnipotent wisdom, urging his supporters to have faith in him over facts, reality, or anyone else. He purports to hold knowledge beyond anyone else’s grasp, makes daring future forecasts akin to a mystic or psychic, and overall maintains a belief in his omnipotence, considering himself beyond the law and any form of accountability.

During a speech in Iowa last weekend, Trump told his MAGA cultists that, “But I think if you had a real election and Jesus came down and God came down and said, ‘I’m going to be the scorekeeper here,’ I think we’d win there [in California], I think we’d win in Illinois, and I think we’d win in New York.”

Trump’s “narcissistic injury” following his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden has escalated into a more severe threat to American democracy, as per psychology experts. His recent remarks about targeting judges, pardoning the traitorous individuals from Jan. 6, and removing his ‘enemies’ are not novel concepts, but rather indicate that his veneer of decency and normality is eroding under the pressure of being answerable for his actions for the first time in his life.

“Mr. Trump is an obvious and severe sociopath, an antisocial person lacking the capacity for honesty, empathy or respect for the rule of law,” said an anonymous psychology expert, who added that Trump’s mental illness made him dangerous, especially as his legal problems grow worse.

As Trump faces mounting pressure from his criminal and civil trials, he is now publicly declaring himself as the Chosen One, chosen by “god” and “Jesus Christ” to be the next President of the United States. This marks a notable departure from his previous rhetoric and raises concerns about his mental state and the potential influence on his followers and the wider political landscape.

The implications of Trump’s behavior are far-reaching. His claims to be god-like are terrifying on their own but made much worse by the rapidly deteriorating democracy crisis. His endless self-centered drive for power at any cost makes him an extreme risk of discarding democracy in favor of his personal rule.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that Trump’s followers appear to be buying into his narrative. For them, Trump does not come from the normal political system, he comes from the world they come from, he’s been hugely successful, he’s enormously flawed, but who gives a damn, he’s chosen to turn the political system upside down and make it work for them.

As the country grapples with these developments, it is clear that the situation is fluid and evolving. The full impact of Trump’s rhetoric and behavior remains to be seen.

How The Court Was Bought


Heather Cox Richardson

12/18/2023

Reporters at ProPublica have uncovered yet more news about the right-wing network of wealthy donors who have supported Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. According to Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, Alex Mierjeski, and Brett Murphy, in January 2000, on a plane flight home from a conservative conference, Thomas complained to Representative Cliff Stearns (R-FL) about his salary. He warned that if lawmakers didn’t give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, “one or more justices will leave soon.”

After the trip, Stearns wrote to Thomas that he agreed “it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted.” Stearns immediately set out to pass legislation separating the salaries of Supreme Court justices from the rest of the judiciary, and then raising pay for the Supreme Court justices alone. But the top administrative official of the judiciary, L. Ralph Mecham, in June 2000 wrote to then–chief justice William Rehnquist to suggest that this was the wrong approach for this “delicate matter.”

“From a tactical point of view,” Mecham wrote, “it will not take the Democrats and liberals in Congress very long to figure out that the prime beneficiaries who might otherwise leave the court presumably are Justices Thomas and Scalia. The Democrats might be perfectly happy to have them leave and would see little incentive to act on separate legislation devoted solely to Supreme Court justices if the apparent purpose is to keep Justices Scalia and Thomas on the Court. Moreover, the fact that Representative Stearns is a conservative Republican may not help dissuade the Democrats and liberals from this view.”

Mecham distinguished between Republicans he thought of as “liberals,” and those, presumably like himself, Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia, who were pushing “to have the constitution properly interpreted.” By this, he meant those who wanted the concept of “originalism” to undermine the federal government’s regulation of business, provision of a basic social safety net, promotion of infrastructure, and protection of civil rights, principles on which “liberal” Republicans and Democrats agreed.

Although the extremist faction has now captured the Republican Party, as late as 2000 there were enough “liberals” in the Republican Party that members of the extremist faction worried they could not enact their chosen program. So they must have the Supreme Court. Stearns told the ProPublica reporters that Thomas’s “importance as a conservative [as they called themselves] was paramount…. We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and was being paid properly.” 

About this time, wealthy Republican donors began to provide Thomas and his wife Ginni with expensive vacations and gifts. Ginni went to work for the Heritage Foundation, making a salary in the low six figures. Yale law school professor George Priest, who has joined Thomas and billionaire donor Harlan Crow on vacation, says that Crow “views Thomas as a Supreme Court justice as having a limited salary. So he provides benefits for him.”

That is, a Republican billionaire donor “provides benefits” for a Supreme Court justice who voted in favor of—among other things—the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that reversed campaign finance restrictions in place for over 100 years, permitting corporations and outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections, and the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act protecting minority voting rights in the United States. 

The determination of wealthy Republicans to control our political system for their own economic benefit is now matched on the other side of the political equation by religious voters hellbent on overthrowing democracy to impose their religious will on the American majority.  

After voters in Republican-dominated states have tried to protect the right to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion, antiabortion forces are trying to stop voters from having the right to decide the matter. They are trying to prevent voters from signing petitions to put such measures on ballots. 

Steven Aden, the chief legal officer of the antiabortion group Americans United for Life, told Alice Miranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly of Politico: “Because we believe that abortion is truly about the right to life of human individuals in the womb, we don’t believe those rights should be subjected to majority vote.”

Breaking faith in democracy has led us to a place where the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is openly praising dictators, trying to join the United States into a rising global authoritarian movement based in the idea that democracy, with its focus on equal rights, is destroying traditional society by getting rid of patriarchy, racial hierarchies, and heteronormative society.  A Fox News poll released over the weekend showed that 3 in 10 Republicans agreed that “things in the U.S. are so far off track that we need a president willing to break some rules and laws to set things right.”

Today, Pope Francis undermined that argument when he said in a landmark ruling that Roman Catholic priests can bless same-sex couples. While this is not the same as the sacrament of heterosexual marriage, the Vatican’s doctrinal office said this is a sign that God welcomes everyone. 

Pope Francis has tended to ignore the rise of right-wing extremism in the U.S. church but now appears to be defending his message that the church should be tolerant and welcoming in the face of the growing intersection of religion and authoritarianism. Last month, he relieved from duty Bishop Joseph H. Strickland of Tyler, Texas, who has vocally supported right-wing politics and openly revolted against the Pope’s positions. 

There is a strong economic reason to reinforce the idea of democracy, as well. After forty years in which a minority worked to push tax cuts and deregulation with the argument that they would promote investment in the economy, the Biden administration quite deliberately has used the government not to prop up the “supply side,” but rather to bolster the “demand side.” Despite the history that showed such a system worked, economists and pundits warned that Biden’s policies would dump the U.S. into a terrible recession. 

The 2023 numbers are in, and they show exactly what the U.S. Treasury under Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen predicted: inflation has dropped significantly, unemployment is at a low 3.7%, the economy grew at an astonishing 4.9% in the last quarter, and the stock and financial markets are at or near all-time highs. 

The economic news is tangible proof that a government that serves the majority, rather than a wealthy few, works.

—

Notes:

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-money-complaints-sparked-resignation-fears-scotus

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24190168-stearns-note-to-thomas-2000

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24214202-2000-memo-to-rehnquist

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/voting-rights-america-six-years-after-shelby-v-holder

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/12/pope-francis-critics-catholic-church-strickland-burke.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/18/3-10-trump-voters-want-president-willing-break-rules-laws/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/10/26/gdp-third-quarter-economy-growth/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/12/18/recession-economy-inflation/

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/18/first-rule-of-the-anti-abortion-playbook-dont-let-the-public-vote-on-abortion-00132049

Think Biden’s doing badly? Check out the polling for these other Western leaders


David Lauter

Sun, December 17, 2023 at 4:33 PM CST·6 min read    

President Biden’s standing in polls is bad — generating panic among many Democrats and a raft of theories about what’s wrong.

He’s too conservative, say progressives; too liberal, according to centrists.

And, of course, nearly everyone mentions his age.

But what if all of that misses the real story? What if the main problem Biden faces isn’t Biden at all?

Biden is 81. No question that’s a problem politically. But if age were the sole driver of poll standing, what would explain the position of 51-year-old Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau? His current approval rating — 31%, according to Canada’s Angus Reid Institute — makes Biden’s 38% in the FiveThirtyEight.com average of polls look almost balmy.

One could argue that Trudeau is a special case: He recently began his ninth year in office and may have worn out his welcome.

But if so, what is there to say about British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak? He’s been in office barely a year, and just 21% of Britons are satisfied with the job he’s doing, according to the latest Ipsos poll. The opposition Labor Party leads Sunak’s Conservatives 41%-24% in a hypothetical look at the next British election, which Sunak must call by January 2025.

Maybe Sunak’s problem is that his party has run out of steam after 13 years in power under five prime ministers. But that wouldn’t explain the travails of Germany’s Olaf Scholz. The governing coalition of his Social Democratic party, the Green party and the Free Democrats took power just two years ago. Only 17% of Germans approve of how they are doing, according to a new poll by Germany’s public broadcasting network.

Scholz, of course, suffers from the fallout of the war in Ukraine, which has strained his coalition and driven up prices in Germany. But that doesn’t explain the poor position of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, whose approval rating dropped this week to a new low of 17%.

I could go on, but by now, the point should be clear: Around the world, leaders of wealthy, developed nations are struggling with poor approval ratings. For each one, there are individual factors often cited to explain their problems — age, lengthy tenure, domestic policy disagreements, a financial scandal in Japan. Those factors are all real and have an impact.

But stand back and look at the overall pattern, and it’s hard not to conclude that something larger is at work.

A similar pattern emerges if we look at the approval ratings of presidents over the last 70 years.

Starting with President Eisenhower and running through President George H.W. Bush, American leaders for 40 years spent most of their tenure with approval ratings above 50%. The periods when presidents dropped below 50% corresponded to major national traumas — escalation of the Vietnam War in the last few years of President Johnson’s tenure, the Watergate scandal for President Nixon and the Iran hostage crisis for President Carter.

The last 20 years — since President George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004 — shows the mirror image: Except for brief periods, including honeymoons at the beginning of their tenures, none of the presidents since then have popped above 50% for a sustained time. President Trump never got majority approval in his entire four years in office; Biden was above 50% for his initial months but soon dropped below.

As with the international comparison, one can pick out individual reasons why each president has failed to gain majority support, but the persistent pattern suggests a larger explanation.

The potential explanation isn’t a secret: Presidents like Eisenhower enjoyed majority approval during a period of sustained and widely shared economic growth that raised living standards for most Americans. Not long after that persistent growth gave way to income stagnation and rising inequality, the comfortable approval ratings for presidents became a thing of the past.

Globally, middle-income countries have seen big increases in living standards in the last couple of decades, and abject poverty around the world has declined a lot, but average living standards in many wealthy countries have plateaued.

Income stagnation isn’t the only problem wealthy countries have faced. High levels of immigration have brought enormous benefits and dynamism but have also increased social tension. Countries such as Japan, which resisted immigration, have suffered from rapid aging of their populations as birthrates declined. Changing gender roles and cultural diversity have brought more equality — and backlashes.

Those factors contributed to a sharp decline in the belief that political leaders are looking out for the interests of average citizens.

Trust in government has fallen in the U.S. as the share of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track rose, and partisan lines have hardened. All that leads to lower job approval for presidents.

Layer on top of that the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I wrote recently, a lot of Americans have tried to put the pandemic behind them and have stopped talking about it. But the trauma it caused worldwide won’t go away so easily: We remain a society in recovery.

The fact that Biden shares his unpopularity with other leaders doesn’t make his difficulties any less real. The comparison with others should, however, make people a bit more skeptical of the belief that some other Democrat would do significantly better. If the underlying reality in all these countries is that unhappy voters punish whichever party is in power, then replacing Biden with someone else won’t necessarily solve anything.

Nonetheless, Biden does face serious difficulties, as the numbers from a new survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center show.

In GOP Contest, Trump Supporters Stand Out for Dislike of CompromisePew Research CenterDonald Trump has a wide lead for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. His supporters stand out from R…

In Pew’s survey, just one-third of Americans approved of Biden’s job performance, and 64% disapproved. His standing has dropped significantly since the beginning of the year, especially among his fellow Democrats: Biden’s approval within his party has dropped from 73% late last year to just 61% now, Pew found.

Restiveness on the left — over the Israel-Hamas war, in particular — has gotten a lot of attention, but the Pew numbers suggest that’s not the main source of Biden’s troubles. Among Democrats who describe themselves as liberal, 66% approve of his performance; among those who identify as moderate or conservative 57% do.

Former President Obama went through a similar, although less deep, decline in support among fellow Democrats at this point in his presidency. He succeeded in rallying Democrats, in part by depicting his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, as a plutocrat unsympathetic to the problems of ordinary Americans.

White House aides have made no secret of their plan to try to do likewise by focusing voters on Trump’s faults, and the former president has a knack for reminding voters of what they dislike about him. Once he’s more consistently in the spotlight, that’s likely to make a difference.

But Biden and his allies shouldn’t count on incumbency, itself, to deliver a victory: These days, it’s no longer clear that it’s even an advantage.

For the good of the nation


America needs a new sane Republican Party, and here’s who should lead it

ROBERT REICH

SEP 18

Friends,

Last Tuesday, former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney tweeted this in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that the criminal indictments of Trump are politically motivated:

“Putin has now officially endorsed the Putin-wing of the Republican Party. Putin Republicans & their enablers will end up on the ash heap of history. Patriotic Americans in both parties who believe in the values of liberal democracy will make sure of it.”

In reality, the Putin wing of the Republican Party has taken over the Republican Party. The GOP no longer believes in the values of liberal democracy. It has become a cesspool of authoritarian nihilism.

As Mitt Romney told the Atlantic’s McKayu Coppins, “a very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”

The GOP is now a rogue elephant — increasingly dangerous, out of control, and on a rampage.

Knowing that most of the American public rejects it, it’s busily repressing votes through extreme partisan gerrymandering and new barriers to voting.

Notwithstanding zero evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden, it’s seeking to impeach him. 

Even though there’s still no basis for Trump’s big lie that he won the 2020 election, most Republican lawmakers continue to support it.

A growing number of House and Senate Republicans are questioning America’s commitment to defending Ukraine.

House Republicans are about renege on the deal they made before the debt ceiling was lifted, and shutter the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republicans are threatening to impeach a State Supreme Court justice who disagrees with their agenda. Tennessee Republicans have expelled Democratic lawmakers who supported an anti-gun protest.

Alabama Republicans are denying Black voters the opportunity to elect another representative to Congress. Florida Republicans have suspended an elected official because they don’t like their policies.

The GOP engaged in authoritarian antics before Trump (see: Gingrich, Newt), but Trump has pushed the Party over the edge, morally and politically.

Trump has so profoundly poisoned the Republican Party — filling it with election deniers, bigots, paranoids, and anti-democracy zealots — that it won’t recover its capacity to govern even after Trump leaves the stage.

Frankly, I don’t give a fig about the Republican Party. But I do care deeply about this nation. And America needs two major political parties capable of governing. Right now, only the Democratic Party has that capacity.

As long as the Trump Republican Party exists, it poses a profound danger to American democracy.

What should be done, and who should do it?

America needs a third party that stands for all the things conservative Republicans stood for before Gingrich and Trump — limited government, fiscal prudence, a strong defense against dictators and autocrats, and the stability and integrity of the nation’s major institutions.

Is Mitt Romney the person to start such a Real Republican Party? He’s now basking in the adulation of the Washington establishment because he had the courage to utter some truths about Trump when the former president was in power and just announced he won’t be running again.

But Romney is too elitist and too, well, 2012.

The person to lead it is Liz Cheney. She should run for president on a third-party Real Republican ticket.

I’m sure there are plenty of anti-Trump Republicans willing to support this effort. Some of them, I expect, have enough money to get the Real Republican Party on the ballot in most states. There’s still time.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not endorsing Liz Cheney for president. I’ve disagreed with too many of her policy ideas and votes over the years.

I’m merely suggesting that it would be good for all of us if she took the reins of a new Republican Party — good for Republicans, good for Democrats, good for democracy, good for America.

When it comes to the survival of American democracy, Liz Cheney has displayed more courage and integrity than any other member of her party.

Six days after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — when no other Republican in the House or Senate was willing to rebuke Trump — Cheney charged on the House floor that “the president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.”

The next day, Cheney joined just nine other House Republicans and 222 Democrats in voting to impeach Trump. (Few, if any, of these principled Republicans remain in the House today. Most have resigned or been purged.)

Then, as vice chair of the House of Representatives’ January 6 committee investigating the causes of the January 6 attack, Cheney ceaselessly and tirelessly helped lay out the case against Trump.

To get revenge, Trump did everything possible to end Cheney’s career. He selected Cheney’s opponent in the 2022 Wyoming Republican primary, Harriet Hageman — who rallied behind Trump and amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen — and made sure Hageman won.

I think it would be a fitting rebuke to Trump — as fitting politically as his criminal convictions will be legally — to have Liz Cheney create a new Real Republican Party that replaces the squalor of Trump’s (and Putin’s) GOP.

What do you think?

Watch This Texas Democrat Leave Republicans Speechless When He Uses The Bible Against Them


Ariel Messman-Rucker

Fri, November 24, 2023 at 10:18 AM CST·3 min read

4.1k

(L) James Talarico holding a ‘Don’t mess with Texas Public Schools’ sign, (R) James Talarico

A video of Texas State Rep. James Talarico using biblical scripture to tear down conservative Christian arguments is going viral on social media, and it is glorious to watch.

This past summer, Texas Republicans tried to pass Senate Bill 1515, which would have required the Ten Commandments to be displayed prominently in every public school classroom in the state. The bill was an attempt by conservative Christian Republicans to inject religion into schools, but Talarico wasn’t going to take this lying down. Instead, he used their religious text against them.

After passing the Texas State Senate, the House Public Education Committee was considering the bill at a May meeting, where Republican Candy Nobel — who sponsored the bill — argued that “This legislation will bring back this historic tradition of recognizing America’s foundational heritage in both our education and our judicial system,” reported the Texas Scorecard.

In a viral video of the meeting posted to his TikTok account, Talarico stood up for LGBTQ+ rights and calmly explained why, as a Christian, he feels the “bill is not only unconstitutional, it’s not only un-American, I think it is also deeply un-Christian.”

After quoting from the Bible, the Democratic lawmaker said, “A religion that has to force people to put up a poster to prove its legitimacy is a dead religion, and it’s not one I want to be a part of. It’s not one I am a part of.”

Talarico then brings up that this bill seems to go against Republicans’ desire to get parental consent for everything. “Every time on this committee that we try to teach students values like empathy or kindness, we’re told we can’t because that’s the parent’s role,” he said. “Every time on this committee that we try to teach basic sex education to keep our kids safe, we’re told that’s the parent’s role, but now you’re putting religious commandments — literal commandments — in our classroom, and you’re saying that’s the state’s role. Why is that not the parent’s role?”

This question left Nobel silent and searching for words before finally saying, “That’s really an interesting rabbit trail that you’ve gone on with that.”

Later, Talarico asks Nobel, “Do you believe schools are for education and not indoctrination?” to which Nobel answers, “Absolutely.” Then Talarico brings his arguments home, saying, “I guess what I’m trying to figure out is why is having a rainbow in a classroom is indoctrination and not having the Ten Commandments in a classroom.”

The stunning video already has 5.8 million views and 1 million likes on TikTok and is now gaining traction on Threads. But this isn’t the only time the Austin representative has stood up for the rights of Texas students; he’s also fought against unfair school voucher programs, book bans, and even for having Narcan available in schools.

It’s unclear whether Talarico’s arguments were a deciding fact. Still, the time for Ten Commandments legislation expired before the bill could receive a vote and won’t be instituted in Texas public schools, the New York Times reported.

Conservative Christians continue their quest to shove their religious beliefs down everyone’s throat, but with lawmakers like Talarico out there, we may have a chance of keeping them out of our schools.

Mini Wrap


November 21, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON NOV 22    
  Yesterday the United Auto Workers ratified their new contracts with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. The new contracts include wage increases of at least 25% over the next 4.5 years, cost of living increases, union coverage for electric battery plants, and the reopening of a closed plant. “These were just extraordinary wins, especially for those of us who’ve been studying strikes for decades,” Washington University labor expert Jake Rosenfeld told Jeanne Whalen of the Washington Post. Union president Shawn Fain told Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, “It’s a sign of the times…. In the last 40 years…working class people went backwards continually…. There’s this massive chasm between the billionaire class and the working class and…when those things get out of balance, we need to turn it upside down. When 26 billionaires have as much wealth as half of humanity, that’s a crisis….”   Fain said the automakers strike was “just the beginning…. Now, we take our strike muscle and our fighting spirit to the rest of the industries we represent, and to millions of nonunion workers ready to stand up and fight for a better way of life.” President Joe Biden, who stood on the picket line with UAW members, congratulated both the auto workers and the companies for their good faith negotiations. “[W]hen unions do well, it lifts all workers,” he said. In the wake of the agreements between the UAW and the Big Three automakers, nonunion automakers who are eager to prevent unionization, including Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, and Subaru, also announced wage increases.  Following a tradition normalized in the 1980s, Biden also pardoned the turkeys Liberty and Bell yesterday, marking the unofficial start of the holiday season. The birds will move to the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences where they will become educational ambassadors for a state where turkey production provides more than $1 billion in economic activity and more than 26,000 jobs.  At the ceremony, Biden urged people to “give thanks for the gift that is our nation.” He offered special thanks to service members, with whom he and First Lady Jill Biden shared a Friendsgiving meal on Sunday.  Falling prices for travel and for the foods usually on a Thanksgiving table are news the White House is celebrating. Gas prices have dropped an average of $1.70 from their peak, airfares are down 13%, and car rental prices are down about 10% over the past year.  According to the American Farm Bureau, the price of an average Thanksgiving dinner has dropped by 4.5%. The cost of turkeys has dropped more than 5% from last year, when an avian flu epidemic meant nearly 58 million birds were slaughtered (this year, growers have lost about 4.6 million birds to the same cause). Whipping cream, cranberries, and pie crust have also dropped in price.  But plenty of grocery prices are still rising, and Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) has taken on the issue, documenting how “corporations are making record profits on the backs of American families.” In a public report, Casey noted that from July 2020 through July 2022, inflation rose by 14%, but corporate profits rose by 75%, five times as fast. A family making $68,000 a year in 2022 paid $6,740 in that period to “corporate executives and wealthy shareholders.” In 2023, that amount will be at least $3,546.  The report notes that the cost for chicken went up 20% in 2021 as Tyson Foods doubled their profits from the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022; Tyson has been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and restitution for “illegally conspiring to inflate chicken prices.” PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said in April 2023 that even though inflation was dropping, their prices would not. He said “consumers generally look at our products and say ‘you know what—they are worth paying a little bit more for.’” President Biden has launched a campaign to push back on corporate profiteering, including cracking down on the practice of so-called junk fees—unexpected hidden costs for air travel, car rentals, credit cards, cable television, ticket sales, and so on. (The airline industry collected more than $6.7 billion last year in baggage fees, for example.)  But Tony Romm of the Washington Post explained on Sunday that corporate lobbyists are warring with the Biden administration to stop the crackdown. An airline lobbyist testified at a federal hearing in March that changing the policy would create “confusion and frustration” and that there have been “very few complaints” about the extra costs for bags. The same lobbying group told the Department of Transportation that the government had no data to “demonstrate substantial harm” to passengers. A lobbying group for advertising platforms including Facebook and Google agreed that the Federal Trade Commission had failed to present “sufficient empirical evidence” that junk fees are a problem.  Much of the fight over the relative power of ordinary Americans and corporations will play out in the courts. Those courts are themselves struggling over the role of money in their deliberations. After scandals in which it has become clear that Supreme Court justices—primarily Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, but a real estate deal of Neil Gorsuch’s has also been questioned—have accepted gifts from exceedingly wealthy Republican donors, the court on November 13 finally issued its own ethics guidelines.  That code of conduct echoes the obligations of judges in the rest of the U.S. court system, but it takes away the requirements for behavior imposed on the lower courts, and—crucially—it has no methods of enforcement. Legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick noted that the code appeared to be designed to assure the American people they were confused about the need for an ethics code. It appeared, Lithwick said, to be “principally drafted with the intention of instructing us that they still can’t be made to do anything.”  The Supreme Court has been packed with lawyers from the Federalist Society, established in the 1980s to push back on what its members believed was the judicial activism of federal judges who used the Fourteenth Amendment to defend civil rights in the states. Federalist Society lawyers were key to creating legal excuses for Trump to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election, and yet the society has never addressed how their people have turned into such extremists.  In the New York Times today, leading former Federalist Society lawyer George Conway, former judge J. Michael Luttig, and former representative Barbara Comstock (R-VA) called out both the Federalist Society for failing to respond to the crisis Trump represents, and “the growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency.”  They announced a new organization to replace the corrupted Federalist Society, a significant move considering how entrenched that society has become in our justice system. The Society for the Rule of Law Institute, made up of conservative lawyers, will be “committed to the foundational constitutional principles we once all agreed upon: the primacy of American democracy, the sanctity of the Constitution and the rule of law, the independence of the courts, the inviolability of elections and mutual support among those tasked with the solemn responsibility of enforcing the laws of the United States.” The authors say that the new organization will provide a conservative voice for democracy and that they hope to work with much more deeply established progressive voices.  For now, the Biden administration continues to try to rebalance the economic playing field. Today the Treasury Department announced the largest settlements in history for violations of U.S. anti–money laundering laws and sanctions. Cryptocurrency giant Binance, which handles about 60% of the world’s virtual currency trading, settled over violations in transactions that laundered money for terrorists—including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, and ISIS—and other criminals, and violating sanctions, including those against Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the occupied Crimean region of Ukraine.  Binance will pay more than $4 billion in fines and penalties. At the same time, the Justice Department obtained a guilty plea from Binance chief executive officer Changpeng Zhao, a Canadian national, for failing to maintain an effective anti–money laundering program. Zhao amassed more than $23 billion at the head of the company; he will pay $200 million in fines and step down. He could face as much as 10 years in prison, but his sentence will likely be less than 18 months. U.S. officials say this is the biggest-ever corporate resolution that includes criminal charges for an executive.
— Notes: https://www.whitehousehistory.org/pardoning-the-thanksgiving-turkey https://cfans.umn.edu/news/turkey-home-minnesota https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/20/uaw-contract-ford-general-motors-stellantis/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/11/20/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-ratification-of-the-uaws-historic-agreements-with-the-big-three-automakers/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/11/20/remarks-by-president-biden-at-pardoning-of-the-national-turkey-2/ https://apnews.com/article/bird-flu-outbreak-turkey-egg-chicken-prices-afca48e861a54091d0e224a5fcbed17b https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/business/thanksgiving-dinner-less-expensive-inflation/index.html https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/17/inflation-down-thanksgiving-dinner-cost-lower/71610372007/ https://www.casey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/greedflation1.pdf https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/19/companies-lobbyists-fight-junk-fees/ https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/11/new-supreme-court-ethics-code-alito-thomas-roberts-nah.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/opinion/trump-lawyers-constitution-democracy.html https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1925 https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/binance-and-ceo-plead-guilty-federal-charges-4b-resolution https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/21/investing/binance-changpeng-zhao-treasury/index.html https://www.threads.net/@thetnholler/post/Cz390h_u6DG