Category Archives: Republican

(RNS) To say that someone is killing Republicans and Trump supporters in this country sounds like a conspiracy theory gone crazy. It is the kind of conspiracy theory that should be banned by Facebook and Twitter.

But the evidence is overwhelming.

People in counties that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 are dying at much higher rates from COVID-19 than people who live in counties that voted for Joe Biden, according to a study by National Public Radio.

Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden, NPR wrote in its report.

People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.7 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

Could this be because Trump voters were older? No, the trend was robust even after controlling for age.

RELATED: Is Trump killing his supporters?

What makes the difference? Vaccination rates. The percentage of people vaccinated in Trump counties is much lower than the percent vaccinated in counties that voted for Biden.

Republicans have one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. According to an October poll by KFF, of the 27% of U.S. adults who are not vaccinated, 60% identify as Republican. Of these unvaccinated Republicans, 88% think that the seriousness of the coronavirus is exaggerated.

Who is responsible for these deaths?

Ironically, it is conservative political, media and religious elites who are causing these deaths by undermining public health directives aimed at protecting people from COVID-19. Science tells us that the best way to combat COVID is through vaccination, mask wearing and social distancing. These practices have been attacked by many conservative leaders, and it is killing Republican voters.

Sadly, I predicted this in my April 2020 column, Is Trump killing his supporters?

Democrats are unsuccessfully trying to save these Republicans by encouraging vaccinations, mask wearing and social distancing. Speaking in purely political terms with morality set aside, this is a mistake. Machiavellian pragmatism would dictate that the Democrats let the Republicans suppress their voter turnout by killing themselves. But that would be wrong.

Perhaps not surprisingly, progressive attempts to persuade Trump voters to get vaccinated have failed. Liberal urban elites can be arrogant and rural Americans arent prone to listening to those who look down on them as uneducated bumpkins. Perhaps if Democrats started arguing that Trump voters should be denied the vaccine, they would line up for the shot.

But in truth it is the absence of conservative voices supporting vaccinations, mask wearing and social distancing that is killing Republicans. Republican political leaders are cynically exploiting the crisis or are afraid to alienate their base by telling the truth. Meanwhile, conservative media outlets stoke the fires of conspiracy theories to increase their ratings and their profits.

But it is religious leaders who are most disappointing in their opposition or silence.

Although the Pew Research Center found only 5% of those attending religious services at least monthly say their clergy discouraged vaccination, another 54% heard nothing about vaccines from the pulpit. Theses preachers are either indifferent to COVID-19 or afraid to alienate anti-vaxxers in their congregations.

Despite Pope Francis encouragement to get the vaccine and some Catholic institutions mandates for their workers and students, 3% of Catholics said they were discouraged from being vaccinated. Another 52% had heard nothing from their priests.

Naysayers among Catholic leaders include Cardinal Raymond Burke, who was hospitalized and needed a ventilator in August after contracting COVID-19, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, who made headlines by refusing to be vaccinated.

RELATED: Marcus Lamb, anti-COVID vaccine Christian broadcaster, dies at 64

Evangelical leaders have done worse than Catholics. Not only have a number of anti-vax preachers died of COVID-19; 73% of evangelical congregants saying they have heard nothing from their clergy about vaccines.

The anti-vaxxers have won by scaring faith leaders into silence.

It is too late for hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 victims who could have been saved if they had been vaccinated, but there is still time to save hundreds of thousands more if conservative leaders come to realize that they are killing their base.

Progressives cannot save Trump voters because they have no credibility with conservatives. It is up to conservative leaders to save their own.

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Someone is killing Republicans and Trump voters - Religion News Service

In any contract or relationship, the person whos willing to walk away holds all the leverage. That dynamic is the key to understanding Donald Trumps takeover of the Republican party writ large as well as David Perdues primary challenge against Brian Kemp for the Republican nomination for governor in Georgia, which is the same phenomenon in miniature.

Go back to the time before Trump won the Republican nomination, when the Republican establishment and conservative movement elite stood opposed to him shoulder to shoulder. That opposition seemed to many of us to present an insurmountable obstacle to Trumps election in November. But the rights complaints about Trump, however loud, contained a crucial escape hatch. They were framed almost exclusively in pragmatic terms: Trump was, as National Review put it in its scathing editorial, a menace to American conservatism. But since Democrats were also menaces to conservatism, should Trump win the nomination, it was inevitable that they would fall behind him as the lesser evil.

Now the conservative establishment is objecting to Perdues primary challenge against Kemp. Perdues campaign is utterly devoid of policy content, and serves the sole function of advancing Trumps goal of liquidating internal resistance and aligning the party behind his refusal to accept electoral defeat. Unlike Trumps 2016 candidacy, Perdues has no confounding elements of populism or reality-show entertainment in the mixture. It is laboratory-pure authoritarianism.

But Perdues conservative critics register their objections at a far shallower level. The Wall Street Journal moans that Perdues campaign is a good way to turn a major state over to the progressive left, and the GOPs biggest obstacle will be party divisions. National Reviews Jim Geraghty calls Kemp a safe bet to prevail in November as the nominee, and warns, if the party doesnt unify behind whoever wins the primary, Stacey Abrams is probably going to be the next governor of Georgia. The Washington Examiner editorializes, Perdue is a good man, and it is a shame that he is no longer in the Senate, but it is at least as much a shame to see him splitting the Republican Party in the closely contested gubernatorial race.

None of these conservatives are drawing red lines, or even framing the case in any kind of moral terms. They are merely fretting that the primary will weaken the partys hand against the greater enemy of Stacey Abrams.

Is that argument even correct? Possibly so: Maybe Perdues association with Trump would alienate enough moderate voters to supply Abrams her winning margin. Alternatively, it is possible that a Kemp nomination would be hindered by opposition from Trump, who might very well prefer that she win to the reelection of a Republican who refused to help him steal the election.

Trump and Perdue no doubt grasp the imbalance here. The pro-Kemp forces are warning of division in the event Perdue wins, but ultimately they are not themselves willing to split from their party. Both factions are threatening schism, but only the Trumpian threat has credibility.

This imbalance in willpower has characterized the factional fights within the party for more than half a century. Ive recommended Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservices history of the demise of the GOPs moderate wing, many times, though perhaps not often enough. The conservatives cared more about control of the party (rule) than the risk of losing (ruin). The moderates may have wished to rule, but were largely unwilling to threaten party unity.

Trumps long post-election purge is prevailing because of this same asymmetry of willpower. He is able to grasp that his remaining intraparty critics dont actually care about democracy. They merely want to win. His strategy is to force them to choose, knowing full well what their answer will be in the end.

Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.

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Trump Keeps Beating His Republican Enemies Because Hes Willing to Break the Party - New York Magazine

Republicans in the Pennsylvania State House unveiled a newly proposed congressional map Wednesday, taking the biggest step yet toward drawing new districts that will reshape elections for the next decade.

The citizen map was drawn by Amanda Holt, a well-known redistricting advocate who successfully sued to overturn the state legislative maps drawn in 2011. It was submitted to the House State Government Committee as part of an open call for maps from the public.

Holts map favors Republicans more than the current one, according to an analysis conducted for The Inquirer by the nonpartisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project. The current map was imposed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2018, after it threw out a Republican-drawn map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The Holt proposal is less skewed toward Republicans than that 2011 map.

Using results from the 2016 presidential election, when Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by less than 1% of the vote, 10 of the proposed districts would vote for Trump and seven for Hillary Clinton, according to the analysis, which looks only at votes for the two major parties. Using the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won by slightly over 1%, the same 10 districts would vote for Trump and the seven others for Biden.

Being the first map introduced doesnt mean the proposal will be enacted. Lawmakers will have many opportunities to amend it, and state senators have been working on their own map. That proposal, negotiated by Democrats and Republicans, could be released as early as next week.

READ MORE: What to watch as Pennsylvania loses a congressional seat: The stakes are really high

State Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), the chair of the House committee, said he and fellow Republicans chose the Holt map partly because it was drawn by a member of the public known for supporting nonpartisan redistricting. He said he did not know how many Democratic, Republican, and competitive districts the map has.

He also said the map may make some people unhappy.

There might be some unhappy congressmen as well, he said. But thats a citizen map process, right? You have somebody with no skin in the game draw a map, and you take it. Sometimes you gotta smooth around the edges a bit.

Overall, Grove said, the map met the criteria he was looking for.

State Rep. Scott Conklin (D., Centre), the top Democrat on the House State Government Committee, said he was disappointed in the process. As the committee held public hearings across the state, Conklin said, those who came to testify urged lawmakers not to do a one-sided map.

House Democrats had no say in the proposal, he said: I was really hoping for better.

Politicians willingly giving up power is almost unheard of, so Groves decision to not draw his own map was an unexpected turn. Historically, redistricting has been an exercise in partisan gerrymandering, the process of drawing skewed maps to favor a political party.

New maps are drawn every 10 years to reflect changes in population, and Pennsylvanias congressional map is a piece of legislation, meaning it must pass through the Republican-controlled House and Senate and be approved by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, before becoming law. Pennsylvania is losing a seat as a result of population changes, as measured in the 2020 Census, and will have 17 House members starting in 2023.

Holt, a Lehigh County piano teacher, drew widespread attention in 2012 when the state Supreme Court cited her work in its decision to throw out a Republican-drawn map of state legislative districts. A Republican, Holt served on the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners and was later appointed to Wolfs Redistricting Reform Commission.

In 2011, the Republican-drawn congressional map so favored the GOP that, in election after election, the same 13 districts picked Republicans and the same five districts elected Democrats. That happened even as the state voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, and sent Bob Casey, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican, to the U.S. Senate.

The state Supreme Court overturned that map in 2018, saying it was skewed so strongly for Republicans that it violated the state constitutions guarantee that elections shall be free and equal.

Pennsylvania is expected to have several competitive congressional elections next year that will help determine which party controls the U.S. House. And in a large swing state with roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, that makes drawing the congressional map an important way of shaping political power.

READ MORE: Pennsylvania, gerrymandered: A guide to Pa.s 2018 congressional map redistricting fight

Determining whether a map favors one party can be complicated. There are multiple ways to measure maps, and they can sometimes disagree. Experts generally use multiple methods to get an overall sense.

And some degree of pro-Republican skew may be natural for Pennsylvanias political geography, given how Democrats cluster into deep-blue cities, including Philadelphia.

On three commonly used measures known as packed wins, mean-median difference, and partisan bias the Princeton analysis found the proposed map favors Republicans more than the current one. Looking at an average of two-party election results for statewide races in 2016, 2018, and 2020, seven districts are strongly Republican and five are strongly Democratic, in which a party received more than 55% of the vote. Of the remaining five districts, three leaned Democratic and two leaned Republican.

Those numbers vary when looking at specific elections, such as in the 2018 Democratic wave. But Republicans would generally fare better than Democrats across the range of elections under the proposed map.

The House State Government Committee is scheduled to meet Thursday to review the map, and to vote Monday on amending and approving it. Grove said a full House vote wouldnt take place until January at the earliest.

Meanwhile, State Sen. David Argall (R., Schuylkill), who chairs the Senate State Government Committee, is preparing to unveil a map hes been working on with Sen. Sharif Street (D., Philadelphia), the committees ranking Democrat.

The senators plan to jointly introduce the map, making it a bipartisan proposal.

It should be, and it especially should be this year, because we have strong Republican majorities in the House and Senate, and we have a very Democratic governor, Argall said. And so if we are going to succeed in passing legislation on this very important subject, its going to require bipartisan cooperation.

Street is said to be interested in running for Congress himself, though hes also been weighing a bid for the U.S. Senate. Sources familiar with the congressional map emerging from the Senate said it may redraw Philadelphia-based seats in a way that would move U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle into a new district potentially creating an opening for Street.

The senators plan to introduce their map as early as next week, said Brittany Crampsie, spokesperson for Senate Democrats.

Argall said he would certainly hope to announce the map next week: Weve made significant progress, but we still need some more time.

Argall said he didnt yet know whether his bipartisan map would be introduced as its own legislation; it could also amend and replace the House proposal entirely. Asked which map Holts or the Senates is more likely to look like the final product, Argall demurred.

You have to remember, there are 203 members of the House that are going to weigh in on this, there are 50 senators, theres the governor, he said. Its just impossible to predict.

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Pa. House Republicans just proposed the first congressional map in a high-stakes redistricting process - The Philadelphia Inquirer

When I was a kid, my parents were avid Republicans. At age 9, I drew a campaign poster that showed Barry Goldwaters head shaped like a light bulb and wearing his signature glasses. In big letters I wrote: Goldwater has a bright idea.

The Republican nominee lost that race for president. But he kept enough clout, 11 years later, to go to the White House and tell Richard Nixon his presidency was over.

Few Republicans nowadays have that much patriotism. In fact, the party has become a corrupt force spouting violent rhetoric and plotting to overthrow our democracy. Its not your grandfathers Republican Party now, unless your grandfather was a fascist.

Im not asking you to become a Democrat. Im asking you to become an anti-Republican. Here are six reasons why its time to get serious about the GOP threat:

1. Majority rules is a myth.

A recent poll showed only 26% of Americans consider themselves Republicans. Obviously, more Americans lean that way, but the GOP hasnt won a plurality in a national election since 2004. Complacent people say, There are more of us than them, as if the majority always prevails. Truth is, it rarely does. Look at all the foreign governments that suppress the will of the people. And remember: The Nazis never won a majority in any fair election. They took power anyway.

2. The deck is stacked for Republicans.

The American system is great in many ways. But the Senates makeup and the existence of the Electoral College promote inequality. California is about 24 times more populous than the Dakotas, but has half as many senators. Two of the last six presidential elections have gone to the candidate with fewer votes both times a Republican. And look at gerrymandering in Republican-run states. Joe Biden lost North Carolina by just 1 percentage point, but GOP mapmakers have rigged the system to give themselves the edge in 11 of 14 House seats. Its true that some Democratic-controlled states like Illinois gerrymander too. They wont unilaterally disarm. But the GOP controls redistricting for twice as many seats. Thats why Republicans are blocking Democratic legislation against gerrymandering.

3. On top of their built-in edge, Republicans are willing to cheat.

They tried to overturn the last presidential election based on zero evidence of significant fraud. Their Big Lie incited a deadly attack on the Capitol. When Donald Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes, he was pressuring him to commit fraud. Now Republicans want to push aside people like Raffensperger, who got in the way last time. In Wisconsin, theyre trying to scrap the bipartisan elections agency so Republicans can decide which votes get counted.

4. Criminals often get away with it.

Dont count on the courts to stop Republican criminals. Coup plotter Steve Bannon was indicted on fraud charges last year, but was pardoned by co-conspirator Trump. Its obvious that Trump has committed crimes (see 11,780 votes, obstruction of justice in the Mueller probe, misuse of funds in the Ukraine extortion plot and tax charges against the Trump Organization). In many ways, our justice system is failing to meet the moment.

5. People are manipulated by fear.

Republicans follow the fascist playbook: manufacture enemies. A migrant caravan is coming for you. Child tax credits are communist. Democrats want to abolish the suburbs. Republicans want you to be afraid of other people, when you should be afraid of Republicans.

6. The time to make a difference is running out.

If the Republicans win the House next November, they will be in a position to block the true results of the 2024 election and certify rival groups of presidential electors in key states. This is just one of the ways they could steal the election.

So what to do?

Vote against Republicans.

Persuade apolitical people of good will to vote.

Contribute to congressional campaigns with your money and time.

Worry about local races too. Electing state legislators is how the Republicans got the power to gerrymander.

Tell your lawmakers to prioritize voting rights.

Our children and grandchildren deserve to live in a free country. Its up to all of us to make sure that happens.

Mark Jacob is a former editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com

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We must get serious about fighting the Republican threat to our democracy - Chicago Sun-Times

Call it the great Republican resignation.

While many industries are seeing workers leave in record numbers due to low pay, family priorities and other reasons four Republican lawmakers have left the Utah Legislature over the past couple months.

The latest is Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield. He recently announced he was stepping down for a job with the newly formed Utah Department of Health and Human Services.

That triggers a special election by the Davis County GOP to pick Rays replacement. The same thing happened when the three other lawmakers resigned in their respective counties.

Katie Matheson, deputy director of the left-leaning government watchdog group Alliance for a Better Utah, said she views these mid-term resignations and special elections as a way to help Republicans keep their seats.

It's certainly a travesty for our state that that's how public servants are picked, rather than really playing above board and letting the competition of ideas really win out in an election, Matheson said. They're kind of manipulating the process in a way that is perfectly legal.

The process, though, is the same for Democrats. When former Rep. LaWanna Shurtliff died late last year, the Weber County Democratic Party elected her replacement, Rep. Rosemary Lesser, D-Ogden.

As far as a resignation, though, a spokesperson for the Utah Democratic Party said the last time a Democratic lawmaker left the Legislature in the middle of their term was likely in 2015, when Rep. Justin Miller stepped down.

Republican political consultant Spencer Stokes said legislators typically leave mid-term for either a positive reason, like they were offered their dream job, or an unfortunate reason, like bad media coverage.

He said the resignations are less about a grand party strategy than where a lawmaker is in their life.

First and foremost, these are individuals, and they're going to be concerned about their personal lives and their familys lives, Stokes said. They will resign when the timing is [right].

But he said it does give whoever the county party picks an advantage because theyll have name recognition and experience under their belt if they decide to run for election.

So, if people dont like who the party picked to represent them, Stokes said theres one thing they can do.

Voters always have the ultimate trump card because they get to vote on that person in November, he said. The politically active always are advantaged in the electoral system the ones that participate, the ones that get elected to be delegates they always have the upper hand. But the trump card is, at the end of the day, that ballot box.

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What's the political strategy behind the Great Republican resignation in the Utah Legislature? - KUER 90.1

Devin Nunes, the California congressman and close ally of Donald Trump, will be retiring from the US House of Representatives next year to join Trumps new social media venture.

The Republican congressman, who represents a rural California district, announced his retirement from the House on Monday, writing in a letter to constituents that he was leaving his position to pursue a new opportunity to fight for the most important issues I believe in.

Shortly after, Trump Media & Technology Group announced Nunes would become the companys chief executive in January.

In a statement, Nunes said: The time has come to reopen the internet and allow for the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship.

Nunes, 48, has served as a congressman since 2003. He was a member of the intelligence committee during Donald Trumps first impeachment and emerged as one of Trumps staunchest defenders in the House.

Nunes has long been a critic of major social media companies. The congressman has repeatedly claimed without evidence that platforms have been trying to censor Republicans.

In 2019, he filed a lawsuit against Twitter over mocking tweets from two parody accounts, Devin Nunes Mom and Devin Nunes Cow. In the lawsuit, Nunes claimed he had endured an orchestrated defamation campaign, one that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life. The suit also accused Twitter of censoring viewpoints with which it disagrees.

The parody accounts pretending to be the congressmans cow and his mother mocked him over revelations that his family had moved its farm to Iowa from California even as he used his agricultural roots as part of his campaign in central California.

Later, the Trump justice department subpoenaed Twitter for information related to a parody account that criticized Nunes, federal court records revealed even though a judge ruled that the representative could not sue the social media company for defamation.

Earlier on Monday, the blank-check company that aims to take Trump Media & Technology Group public acknowledged that two regulatory agencies are scrutinizing the $1.25bn deal.

Digital World Acquisition, which is often referred to by its trading symbol, DWAC, said it was cooperating with the preliminary, fact-finding inquiries by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

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Republican Devin Nunes to quit Congress and head Trumps social media platform - The Guardian

(Damon Winter | The New York Times)A congressional staffer works late on Capitol Hill as lawmakers voted on a continuing resolution to fund the federal government, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. The current GOP attempts at extortion are both more naked and less rational than what happened during the Obama years, Paul Krugman writes.

By Paul Krugman | The New York Times

| Dec. 6, 2021, 8:00 p.m.

With everything else going on the likely imminent demise of Roe v. Wade, the revelation that Donald Trump knew he had tested positive for the coronavirus before he debated Joe Biden, and more I dont know how many readers are aware that the U.S. government came close to being shut down last weekend. A last-minute deal averted that crisis, but in any case another crisis will follow in a couple of weeks: The government is expected to hit its debt ceiling in the middle of this month, and failure to raise the ceiling would wreak havoc not just with governance but with Americas financial reputation.

The thing is, the federal government isnt having any problem raising money in fact, it can borrow at interest rates well below the inflation rate, so that the real cost of servicing additional federal debt is actually negative. Instead, this is all about politics. Both continuing government funding and raising the debt limit are subject to the filibuster, and many Republican senators wont support doing either unless Democrats meet their demands.

And what has Republicans so exercised that theyre willing to endanger both the functioning of our government and the nations financial stability? Whatever they may say, they arent taking a stand on principle or at least, not on any principle other than the proposition that even duly elected Democrats have no legitimate right to govern.

In some ways weve seen this movie before. Republicans led by Newt Gingrich partly shut down the government in 1995-96 in an attempt to extract concessions from President Bill Clinton. GOP legislators created a series of funding crises under President Barack Obama, again in a (partly successful) attempt to extract policy concessions. Creating budget crises whenever a Democrat sits in the White House has become standard Republican operating procedure.

Yet current GOP attempts at extortion are both more naked and less rational than what happened during the Obama years.

Under Obama, leading Republicans claimed that their fiscal brinkmanship was motivated by concerns about budget deficits. Some of us argued even at the time that self-proclaimed deficit hawks were phonies, that they didnt actually care about government debt a view validated by their silence when the Trump administration blew up the deficit and that they actually wanted to see the economy suffer on Obamas watch. But they maintained enough of a veneer of responsibility to fool many commentators.

This time, Republican obstructionists arent even pretending to care about red ink. Instead, theyre threatening to shut everything down unless the Biden administration abandons its efforts to fight the coronavirus with vaccine mandates.

Whats that about? As many observers have pointed out, claims that opposition to vaccine mandates (and similar opposition to mask mandates) is about maintaining personal freedom dont stand up to any kind of scrutiny. No reasonable definition of freedom includes the right to endanger other peoples health and lives because you dont feel like taking basic precautions.

Furthermore, actions by Republican-controlled state governments, for example in Florida and Texas, show a party that isnt so much pro-freedom as it is pro-COVID. How else can you explain attempts to prevent private businesses whose freedom to choose was supposed to be sacrosanct from requiring that their workers be vaccinated, or offers of special unemployment benefits for the unvaccinated?

In other words, the GOP doesnt look like a party trying to defend liberty; it looks like a party trying to block any effective response to a deadly disease. Why is it doing this?

To some extent it surely reflects a coldly cynical political calculation. Voters tend to blame whichever party holds the White House for anything bad that happens on its watch, which creates an incentive for a sufficiently ruthless party to engage in outright sabotage. Sure enough, Republicans who fought all efforts to contain the coronavirus are now attacking the Biden administration for failing to end the pandemic.

But trying to shut down the government to block vaccinations seems like overreach, even for hardened cynics. Its notable that Mitch McConnell, whom nobody could accuse of being a do-gooder, isnt part of the anti-vaccine caucus.

What seems to be happening instead goes beyond cold calculation. As Ive pointed out in the past, Republican politicians now act like apparatchiks in an authoritarian regime, competing to take ever more extreme positions as a way to demonstrate their loyalty to the cause and to The Leader. Catering to anti-vaccine hysteria, doing all they can to keep the pandemic going, has become something Republicans do to remain in good standing within the party.

The result is that one of Americas two major political parties isnt just refusing to help the nation deal with its problems; its actively working to make the country ungovernable.

And I hope the rest of us havent lost the ability to be properly horrified at this spectacle.

Paul Krugman | The New York Times(CREDIT: Fred R. Conrad)

Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, is a columnist for The New York Times.

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Paul Krugman: How saboteurs took over the Republican Party - Salt Lake Tribune

In October, Eric Trump, son of the former president, spoke to a conference filled with anti-vaccine activists. Screenshot by NPR/Bitchute hide caption

In October, Eric Trump, son of the former president, spoke to a conference filled with anti-vaccine activists.

In October, a conference filled with anti-vaccine activists in Nashville, Tenn., received a high-profile political guest: former President Donald Trump's son Eric Trump.

While portions of the younger Trump's half-hour address were typical political platitudes, some of his biggest applause lines came when he attacked COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

"Do you want to get a vaccine or do you not? Do you want to be left alone or not?" said Trump to a roaring audience.

Still, Trump's emphasis was very different from those of many of the other speakers at the event, put on by longtime anti-vaccine activists Ty and Charlene Bollinger.

The day before Trump's speech, a homeopathic doctor named Edward Group stood on the same stage and suggested to the audience they should drink their urine as an alternative to getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Another speaker, Carrie Madej, said the vaccines contained microscopic technology designed to put "another kind of nervous system inside you." The true purpose of the vaccines, she claimed, was to turn humans into cyborgs.

It's the sort of fringe views that kept political figures away from this conference in the past. But as America heads into midterm elections next year, the political right and the anti-vaccine movement are drawing ever-closer together. It's an alliance that promises to give both sides more power, but the cost is potentially thousands of American lives.

To understand what's going on, it's important to understand where the parties are coming from. The anti-vaccine movement was not always especially political. Some of the movement's leaders, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, have championed other liberal causes in the past.

"The truth is, I'm still a registered Democrat," says Del Bigtree, a well-known anti-vaccine activist. Even before COVID-19, he wrote and produced a documentary that falsely claimed childhood vaccines were linked to autism. But the message never caught on with the liberal audience he was targeting.

Anti-vaccine activist Del Bigtree says he's seen his audience grow on the political right. The Washington Post via Getty Images hide caption

Anti-vaccine activist Del Bigtree says he's seen his audience grow on the political right.

Instead, it seemed to tap into something on the political right. He still remembers the first time he noticed; it was after he was invited to speak at a conservative women's group in Texas.

"Clearly I was shocked as a lifelong liberal progressive that I was hugging and hanging out and having a great time with a bunch of extremely conservative mothers and grandmothers," says Bigtree.

Bigtree has been banned from social media platforms like YouTube for making false claims about the dangers of COVID-19 vaccines. But as the pandemic has dragged on, his conservative audience keeps growing. Often he speaks at conferences alongside people who claim the election was rigged and promoters of QAnon conspiracy theories.

"Unless there's going to be a white supremacist on the stage or I find out that there's something that I truly find distasteful, then I just see that stage as simply an audience that I want to hear this message," says Bigtree.

It's a numbers game. He wants to grow his movement, and he'll talk to anyone who will listen.

GOP political operative Roger Stone has become a key connector between the pro-Trump political movement and anti-vaccine activists. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide caption

GOP political operative Roger Stone has become a key connector between the pro-Trump political movement and anti-vaccine activists.

On the other side of this alliance are far-right conservatives like Trump's former political adviser Roger Stone. Stone has been a Republican political operative since the 1970s, beginning with Richard Nixon's 1972 campaign. He's a longtime friend of Trump's and was convicted of lying to Congress about his knowledge of the 2016 Trump campaign's contacts with Russia. Trump pardoned Stone in December 2020.

Stone, who spoke at the conference, says he's quite open to some of the ideas presented there about vaccines. But he also sees the shot as a powerful wedge issue that Republicans can use to motivate conservative voters during next year's midterm elections. Citing public polls, Stone says that in particular, vaccine mandates are "highly likely" to be a campaign issue.

Vaccine mandates have many features that make them a good issue to motivate conservative voters. It invokes a fight about the government regulation and personal liberty. But add in the apocalyptic views of anti-vaccine activists and the political power of arguments against vaccine mandates gets punched up to a whole new level.

Some Republicans believe that vaccine mandates, such as this New York City requirement to enter museums and other public places, will be a potent political issue in 2022. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

Some Republicans believe that vaccine mandates, such as this New York City requirement to enter museums and other public places, will be a potent political issue in 2022.

For example, Bigtree falsely claims that the COVID-19 vaccines are killing people and represent an existential threat to humanity: "I believe that this vaccine approach, this vaccine itself, this brand-new technology, is so incredibly dangerous, that we are actually putting our species at risk."

It's the synergy between real politics and imagined dangers that is bringing the pro-Trump movement and anti-vaccine activists together.

But the result of this union increasingly appears to be an even higher death toll from COVID-19, in part because it's causing many people to resist getting the shot.

"We find a huge correlation between belief in misinformation and being unvaccinated," says Liz Hamel, who heads public opinion research with the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care think tank.

Between conservative media and GOP politicians, many Republican voters are being pummeled with bad science about vaccines almost daily. Kaiser's polling found that 94% of Republicans think one or more false statements about COVID-19 and vaccine safety might be true.

Over the past eight months, Hamel has watched as Republican vaccination rates have fallen further and further behind the rest of America. While Republicans tracked with other groups in terms of vaccination rates earlier this year, Kaiser's research shows that now, an unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat.

A new analysis by NPR suggests that Republicans are probably dying at a higher rate as a result. A nationwide comparison of 2020 presidential election results and COVID-19 death rates since vaccines became available for all adults, found that counties that voted heavily for Trump had nearly three times the COVID-19 mortality rate of those that went for Joe Biden. Those counties also had far lower vaccination rates.

The analysis only provides a geographic association, and the individual political affiliations of those taken by COVID-19 remains unknown. "It's a little crass to ask someone what their loved one's ideology was after they passed away," says Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who has been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic. But the strength of the association, combined with polling information, strongly suggests that Republicans are being disproportionately affected.

When asked about Republicans' low vaccination rates, Stone was nonplussed. "Each person must make their own choice, God bless them." He went on to falsely claim that getting the vaccine actually enhances a person's chance of getting the disease. "So I guess I'd be more concerned if I were a Democrat," he says.

Other conservative politicians try to avoid the thorny issue by keeping the conversation on the issue of choice. "It's not about whether the vaccines work or not," says Mark Burns, a conservative pastor closely affiliated with Donald Trump. "What matters for me is that you are stripping citizens [of] the right to choose what's best for their own life."

Pastor Mark Burns spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Now a congressional candidate, he recently spoke at a major gathering of anti-vaccine activists. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Pastor Mark Burns spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Now a congressional candidate, he recently spoke at a major gathering of anti-vaccine activists.

Burns, who is running for Congress in South Carolina, likened the choice about vaccination to smoking: "Cigarettes kill people every day, but yet you can go to the supermarket right now and buy it with no issue, that's their choice. If they want to go put cancer into their lungs, they have a right to do so." He felt his position would help him win the primary in the conservative district where he hopes to be elected.

But for many Republicans who are concerned about public health, the willingness to parlay a lifesaving vaccine into political capital is disturbing.

"They just care about winning," says Annette Meeks, a lifelong Republican who heads the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota conservative think tank. "It's the worst element in American politics today."

Meeks has seen the data on vaccines, and she's watched people she knows get sick. "To see people reject those vaccines based on pseudoscience or worse lies and to see lives lost is a tragedy beyond words," Meeks says.

In addition to the moral failings, Meeks says embracing the anti-vaccine movement carries huge political risks for the GOP. That's because elections in states like Minnesota are won and lost in the suburbs. And those suburban voters tend to be vaccinated.

"I believe that the long-term consequences for the Republican Party will be a lot of those independent suburban voters will look askance at us and say, 'What is this all about? I got vaccinated, my whole family got vaccinated, and we're just fine.' "

The risks for the Republican Party in lives and votes may be real, but the there is little downside for the other party in this alliance the anti-vaccine movement.

Del Bigtree says he's seeing more people at speaking engagements and getting millions of visitors to his website each week.

"We are growing in size, in numbers, in confidence and in finances," he says. And for now, his audience is clear: conservative America.

Paige Pfleger of WPLN contributed to this report.

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How anti-vaccine activists and the GOP are growing closer - NPR

In October of 1860, The Atlantics first editor, James Russell Lowell, wrote of Abraham Lincoln that he had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician. Lowell, in his endorsement, was mainly concerned not with Lincolns personal qualities but with the redemptive possibilities of his new party. The Republicans, Lowell wrote, know that true policy is gradual in its advances, that it is conditional and not absolute, that it must deal with facts and not with sentiments.

Check out the full table of contents and find your next story to read.

There is insufficient space in any one issue of this magazine to trace the Republican Partys decomposition from Lincolns day to ours. It is enough to say that its most recent, and most catastrophic, turntoward authoritarianism, nativism, and conspiracismthreatens the republic that it was founded to save.

From the October 1860 issue: James Russell Lowell endorses Abraham Lincoln for president

Stating plainly that one of Americas two major parties, the party putatively devoted to advancing the ideas and ideals of conservatism, has now fallen into autocratic disrepute is unnerving for a magazine committed to being, in the words of our founding manifesto, of no party or clique. Criticism of the Republican Party does not suggest an axiomatic endorsement of the Democratic Party, its leaders and policies. Substantive, even caustic, critiques can of course be made up and down the Democratic line. But avoiding partisan entanglement does not mean that we must turn away from the obvious. The leaders of the Republican Partythe soul-blighted Donald Trump and the satraps and lackeys who abet his nefarious behaviorare attempting to destroy the foundations of American democracy. This must be stated clearly, and repeatedly.

There will be no recovery from this crisis until the Republican Party recommits itself to democracy, says this magazines David Frum, who was one of the first writers to warn that America possessed no special immunities against demagoguery and authoritarianism.

In 2020, we asked another of our staff writers, Barton Gellman, to examine the ways in which Trumpism was weakening the norms and structures of American democracy. We published his cover story The Election That Could Break America before the election, and well before the insurrection of January 6. Something far out of the norm is likely to happen, Gellman wrote. Probably more than one thing. Expecting otherwise will dull our reflexes. It will lull us into spurious hope that Trump is tractable to forces that constrain normal incumbents.

As we know, the system held, but barely, America having been blessed, once again, by dumb luck. (The bravery of police officers on Capitol Hill, and the wisdom of a handful of state and local officials, also helped.) When President Joe Biden was safely inaugurated, two weeks after the attack on the Capitol, a belief took hold that Trump, and Trumpism, might very well go into eclipse.

But that belief was wrong. Which is why we asked Bart to examine, once again, the state of our democracy and the various attempts by Trump and other leading Republicans to claim power through voter suppression, subterfuge, and any other means necessary. His current cover story, January 6 Was Practice, suggests that we are closecloser than most of us ever thought possibleto losing not only our democracy, but whats left of our shared understanding of reality.

You will find in this issue other essays and reporting that illuminate the political, moral, and epistemological challenges we face today, including an investigation by Vann R. Newkirk II into Republican voter-suppression efforts, and an article by Kaitlyn Tiffany on a child-sex-trafficking panic intensified by the far rights descent into conspiratorial thinking. The crisis is in good measure a crisis of the Republican Party. A healthy democracy requires a strong conservative party and a strong liberal party arguing for their views publicly and vigorously. What we have instead today is a liberal party battling an authoritarian cult of personality. As David Brooks writes in his essay I Remember Conservatism: To be a conservative today, you have to oppose much of what the Republican Party has come to stand for.

The Atlantic, across its long history, has held true to the belief that the American experiment is a worthy one, which is why were devoting this issue, and so much of our journalism in the coming years, to its possible demise.

This article appears in the January/February 2022 print edition with the headline A Party, and Nation, in Crisis.

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Jeffrey Goldberg: The Republican Party, and America, Are in Crisis - The Atlantic

MADISON, Wisc. A group formed to support former President Trumps agenda is working with Wisconsin Republicans on a ballot measure that would bypass the states Democratic governor to change how elections are run in the battleground state.

The effort represents a new escalation in the ongoing Republican campaign to alter voting laws in response to Trumps false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. It comes as Wisconsin has become the epicenter of this years voting wars, with Republicans trying to dismantle the election system they themselves put in place several years ago and figure out how to do that with a Democratic governor still in office.

The backing for a possible route around Gov. Tony Evers was revealed during a private meeting on elections hosted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which advocates conservative policies to state lawmakers in voting and other areas. Trumps former White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told attendees that his new organization, the Center for Election Integrity, was working with elected officials and business leaders in Wisconsin to figure out the best path around Evers, who has said he will block Republican-backed election measures.

We feel as though the governor cant do anything about it and it will become law, Gidley said in a recording of the session made by an attendee and obtained by the Associated Press.

The strategy is similar to one already underway in Michigan. State Republicans there already are gathering signatures to place a measure on the ballot that would tighten that states voting laws, an effort to get around Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmers veto of a similar bill that passed the Republican-controlled state legislature. But Gidleys statement is the first indication of a Trump-tied group engaged in a similar tactic in Wisconsin.

Reached for comment, Gidley initially said hed provide more details about his work in Wisconsin, but did not respond to further requests for comment.

Bill McCoshen, head of the policy board for a conservative group called Common Sense Wisconsin, said he met with Gidley in Milwaukee six weeks ago to discuss getting an elections proposal on the ballot.

I think they thought it was a good idea, McCoshen said. They havent made a commitment to us one way or the other.

McCoshens proposal would require elections to be run the same way across Wisconsin; early voting hours and days would have to be the same in every community, and some would have to change how they count absentee ballots. The measure is largely viewed as an attempt to force the states Democratic cities to restrict access.

The proposal would also bar private groups from making large donations to the states heavily Democratic cities.

Wisconsin Republicans have been angry about more than $10 million in election grants that went to more than 200 municipalities last year, the bulk of it going to the states five largest cities, which are all Democratic strongholds. The money came from $350 million in election donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that have triggered deep conservative suspicion.

Under the amendment, money like that would have to be shared by all municipalities in the state.

The changes require amending the state constitution, a process that takes at least two years because the Legislature has to pass it in two consecutive sessions. No amendment to do so has been introduced yet in the statehouse.

Following Trumps narrow loss of Wisconsin last year, the state has been roiled by a Republican attack on the bipartisan elections commission the Republican-controlled Legislature itself created six years ago.

Gidleys group is part of America First Policy Institute, an organization created during the Trump administration to promote the former president and his policies.

The three-hour session where Gidley spoke occurred Wednesday, during the conservative councils state and national policy summit in San Diego, California.

The session reflects how election issues have moved to the heart of the Republican agenda since Trump falsely blamed his 2020 loss on fraud. Repeated audits, investigations and lawsuits including by Trumps own Department of Justice turned up no significant fraud in the presidential election. But that has not stopped Republican state legislatures from pushing new laws that largely put new limits on voting.

During the session, participants heard from Cleta Mitchell, a prominent conservative attorney who advised the former president earlier this year as he pressured Georgia Republicans to declare him the winner of a state President Joe Biden won. Also addressing the group was Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, who approved a review of the election in that states largest county that chased a variety of conspiracy theories. It was unable to prove any fraud in Bidens victory there.

Gidley praised the Arizona review. Arizona has done a great job with their audits, he told the group.

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Group tied to Trump working with Republicans to change Wisconsin election system - pressherald.com