Category Archives: Republican

In early August, President Biden took aim at Republican governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas for not taking enough precautions to counter the surge in COVID-19 cases in their states.

But DeSantis was quick to pin the blame on Biden instead, writing the following in a fundraising email to supporters: Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies.

Only what DeSantis is claiming isnt borne out by data. Rather, according to public health experts, the far more likely culprit for the surge in Floridas cases is the states low vaccination rates.

DeSantiss decision to scapegoat immigrants for the record number of coronavirus cases is important, though, as it speaks to a larger strategy within the GOP: attack Bidens immigration policies at every conceivable turn. Prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, not to mention dozens of other GOP lawmakers, have been vocal in their criticism of how the Biden administration has handled immigration. Conservative cable news channel Fox News has also doubled down on its immigration coverage since Bidens inauguration, mentioning immigration, immigrant or the border more than 39,000 times compared with fewer than 7,000 and 9,000 mentions on CNN and MSNBC, respectively.

This strategy reflects just how much immigration has become a key issue for Republicans. Whats more, with a Democrat in the White House, Republicans are now more likely to be motivated by immigration, marking a shift in how much issues of race and ethnicity can motivate voters when their party is out of office.

Take how strongly Trump supporters currently disapprove of Bidens performance on immigration. Two Economist/YouGov polls conducted in July found that 84 percent of Trump voters strongly disapproved of how the president was handling immigration. Thats the highest level of disapproval of any of the 15 issues The Economist/YouGov asked about in its four weekly surveys in July.

Republicans dont just disapprove of the job Biden is doing on immigration, though. Data from Civiqss daily tracking polls shows that Republicans and to a lesser extent independents have grown less willing to support a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. Since Election Day 2020, Republicans support for deporting unauthorized immigrants has increased by 12 percentage points while independents support has ticked up 8 points. Its because of these increases that overall support for deportations is the highest it's been since Civiqs first asked the question in December 2016.

Civiqs isnt the only pollster to document this trend either. Polling from the Pew Research Center has also found that the share of Republicans who oppose finding a legal way for unauthorized immigrants to stay in the U.S. increased by 9 points between June 2020 and April 2021. And Reuters/Ipsos pointed to an even sharper uptick an 18-point increase in the share of Republicans who opposed a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants from 2018 to February 2021. Overall, Republicans are just a lot more likely to say illegal immigration poses a very serious problem, up from 43 percent in 2020 to 72 percent in April.

On the one hand, this trend fits within a familiar pattern in political science research arguing that public opinion often operates as a thermostat, whereby the public shifts against the current presidents positions to prevent policy-making from becoming too liberal or too conservative. On immigration, for instance, Americans opinions moved sharply to the left in response to Trumps restrictive rhetoric and policies this was the case especially among Democrats. Just as with a thermostat, though, public opinion is now reacting to the warmer environment on immigration under Biden by growing cooler toward it.

These recent pendulum swings on immigration, however, mark a potentially noteworthy departure. Thermostatic trends in Americans views about race and ethnicity have historically been weaker than Americans reactions to presidents economic policies. But that was before immigration became such a deep dividing line between Democrats and Republicans. Now, with the two parties pushing harder in opposite directions on immigration than they have in the recent past, immigration has emerged as an important political issue with significant policy consequences.

Indeed, the Trump administration was frequently criticized for its strict immigration policies, like separating children from their migrant parents, banning travel from predominantly Muslim countries and limiting protections for unauthorized immigrants brought to the country as children, which pushed Democrats further to the left on immigration. Likewise, the criticism that the Biden administration is not doing enough to secure the U.S.-Mexico border with the number of migrants crossing the border at a two-decade high is pushing Republicans further to the right on immigration. That growing hostility is likely to be a motivating factor in Republican politics throughout Bidens presidency. From the earliest days of Trumps presidential campaign, anti-immigrant sentiments fueled his rise to the top of the Republican Party. They also helped move some of then-President Barack Obamas 2012 supporters to vote for Trump in the 2016 general election. Republicans rising concerns about Trumps signature policy issue of immigration should, therefore, only solidify his stranglehold on the GOP in the Biden era.

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Republican Views On Immigration Are Shifting Even Further To The Right Under Biden - FiveThirtyEight

Ethan Demme was a lifelong Republican and onetime local party chairman in Pennsylvanias reliably conservative Lancaster County. He opposed Donald Trump from the outset of his 2016 presidential campaign and, after 20 years in GOP politics, left the party following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

Denial of the 2020 election results has damaged our system of government and has fomented the seeds of sedition, resulting in violence in our nations capital, Demme and two fellow Republicans wrote in a letter to the chairman of the Lancaster GOP on Jan. 7, saying they were changing their registrations to independent.

Now Demme, the CEO of an education publishing company, is heading up the Pennsylvania chapter of a centrist third party. Serve America Movement, or SAM, says it aims to fix a system that has been corrupted by the mainstream parties and the people who prop them up.

Its platform focuses on governance and elections issues like term limits and supporting independent redistricting commissions to draw political maps.

Founded in 2017 by former staffers in George W. Bushs administration, SAM now has chapters in Connecticut, New York, Iowa, and Texas, with plans to expand elsewhere. Much of its funding has come from Wall Street donors and an ex-tobacco executive.

Demme, 39, registered the party with the Pennsylvania Department of State in June.

Too much of politics is nationalized now, he said. How does a State House candidate in Adams County differentiate from one in Delaware County? The issues are actually different for both communities, but too often the campaigns are run on these national issues. So thats what were really hoping to do is really drive that conversation.

READ MORE: A Pa. towns election integrity law shows how Trumps lies can hijack local politics and government

We caught up with Demme and talked about SAM, the challenges it faces, and why campaign mailers for local races feature scary warnings about Trump and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.).

Answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

There are a couple things. Sixty-two percent of folks think that its time for a new political party. So theres clearly a rise in appetite among folks for a third party. The rise in unaffiliated voters has been a trend in Pennsylvania, as well as nationally.

It seems that the time is right. Were at that polarization tipping point, I like to call it, where people are really frustrated with both major parties. And they want something else, but they dont know what that is.

Other third parties that have been around tend to have more of a sharp or narrower ideological focus. And thats where the SAM Party comes in. Were more process- and principle-focused. Were leaving sort of our policy platform up to each individual candidate.

When you look at Pennsylvania specifically, a couple of changes in the last couple of years allowed third parties a little more latitude, if you will. We have the elimination of straight ticket voting. Then there was a lawsuit with a settlement with the Green Party.

So its much easier for independent or third-party candidates to get on the ballot.

Ive actually spent a lot of time trying to reform the way the system works but from within a major party.

The big change was with Donald Trump in 2016 and then more recently with the denial of the election results after November. Thats when I sort of made the decision and looked at it and talked to friends and other folks and we concluded that reforming within the party was not going to be a viable option.

Ive talked to at least a dozen folks who are looking at a State House race run or congressional run in Pennsylvania this cycle as an independent.

So Ive actually been surprised at the number of people who have come out of the woodwork saying, Im interested in maybe running for State House, State Senate, or for Congress. And we are talking to a few potential candidates who are looking at a statewide bid, either for [retiring Sen. Pat] Toomeys old seat or for governor. So theres a lot of interest.

READ MORE: Bidens infrastructure bill gave us a preview of a key clash in Pa.s 2022 Senate race. Heres what we learned.

I think the biggest thing over the last couple years is, the differences between national and state and local politics has shifted to, its all national. [Former House Speaker] Tip ONeill said, All politics is local. Now all politics is national.

Even in local races, we had a local municipal race where, on the mailers for the Republican primary, it was all national issues. It was, Hey, were going to stop Democrats from defunding the police, when no Democrat running in that area is actually advocating for that position at all. Youre seeing mail pieces for local municipal races that mention AOC.

This has nothing to do with how your sewer bill gets sent out, and how trash is picked up. The elected officials pretty much have to cater to that loudest, vocal 20% of their base in order to get elected.

Once you start to gain some traction, the two major parties will work together and sort of push back. So it is a long slog of you have that immediate, theres a lot of folks who like the idea but then once you start challenging the status quo, there will be push back. So were expecting that.

Well be hosting some sort of candidate training sessions. Theyre open so you dont have to necessarily be a SAM candidate, its just encouraging non-major party candidates to run.

The redistricting process were watching very closely. That is an opening for alternative candidates to run when its a fresh map. So thats why 2022 is sort of a key cycle for us.

Its gonna take a few years to get up and running. Were not optimistic that were going to change the world overnight, but were planning to be part of that process to make things better in Pennsylvania.

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He left the GOP after Jan. 6. Now hes starting a third party in Pennsylvania. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

But outside the building, those 265 characters prompted immediate backlash. Not just from Democrats, who accused her of disingenuousness, but from social conservatives too who furiously dialed up McDaniel with complaints. Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, lambasted her in a scathing blog post and even encouraged people not to donate to the RNC. But the attacks, particularly from the evangelical right, were met with a shrug by the party.

McDaniels willingness to brush aside complaints would have been unthinkable not too long ago, Republicans say. The evangelical right remains the most committed part of the party, and the Family Research Council leader is among its most powerful figures. But the GOP has, in recent years, undergone a quiet but consequential evolution: Party leaders still exhibit strong opposition to transgender rights and the top legislative priorities of the LGBTQ community. But on the most prominent battlefield of the past few decades, same-sex marriage, theyve all but conceded defeat.

In interviews with Republican operatives, former Trump administration officials, and conservative leaders, there is a widespread acceptance that debate over marriage equality is settled. There is no serious discussion about trying to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark Supreme Court case that ruled states are required by law to recognize the marriage of same-sex couples. There were openly gay officials working at the highest levels of the Trump administration. And in Congress, the gay rights movement has found allies in up and coming Republican stars like Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), and Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.).

In this image from video, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) speaks from Houston, during the third night of the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020. | Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via AP

There is Republican support for LGBTQ issues. There is more energy in the GOP for help for gay and transgender issues than a lot of issues Biden cares about, said Tyler Deaton, a Republican consultant and senior adviser to the American Unity Fund, which works to advance LGBTQ rights.

The Republican Party was a late arrival to this point. While much of the country grew to accept same-sex marriage well in advance of the Supreme Court recognizing it in 2013, GOP voters didnt. A Gallup poll from 2014 showed only 30 percent of Republican voters in support.

There have been moments over the past 20 years, however, when prominent conservatives warned Republican party leaders they were dramatically out of step with the public as a whole on the issue. Ken Mehlman, who managed George W. Bushs 2004 presidential run, apologized for the anti-same-sex marriage rhetoric of that campaign and for his role in fighting marriage equality, while announcing that he was gay. One of the founding members of the Federalist Society, conservative attorney Ted Olson, joined forces with David Boies, a Democratic attorney, to overturn Proposition 8, Californias ban on same-sex marriage. Hedge fund billionaire and Republican donor Paul Singer quietly donated to pro-gay rights causes and formed the American Unity PAC and American Unity Fund, which fights for LGBTQ and religious freedom. And former Vice President Dick Cheney was famously at odds with President Bush over same-sex marriage and became a supporter of the movement. His daughter, Mary Cheney, has been married to her wife since 2012.

The real breakthrough, gay Republican operatives say, came with the nomination of Donald Trump. Though evangelicals flocked to his candidacy, conservative gay rights activists also saw an opportunity. A cosmopolitan minded business person, Trump did not prioritize LGBTQ issues during his campaign and, in fact, made overt appeals to gay voters, though not by pledging support for laws to protect them.

For the first time we got to walk into the race with a candidate we didnt have to apologize for or explain away his reluctance to embrace the gay community. Probably Reagan was the last candidate where we were like this candidate has gay friends, said Charles Moran, spokesperson for Log Cabin Republicans, a LGBTQ GOP group. He worked closely with the Trump campaign on increasing LGBTQ engagement, and Log Cabin Republicans plans to hold their annual event this year at Mar-a-Lago, with a member of the Trump family (perhaps the former president himself) likely to be the headliner.

At the GOP convention in 2016, Trump became the first Republican to mention protecting the rights of LGBTQ citizens, and in a post-election interview with 60 Minutes echoed what was becoming the mainstream view on same-sex marriage. Its law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean, its done, Trump said.

A Gallup poll released earlier this year showed that by June 2021, 55 percent of Republicans supported same-sex marriage.

Gay rights activists and Republicans acknowledge there is still much work to be done within the GOP. For now, the official Republican party platform, unchanged since 2016, includes language defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, and gives what some say is a nod to the controversial practice of conversion therapy. Gay rights advocates in the party said Republicans missed an opportunity to change the platforms text in 2020. Had the platform committee convened, a group of Republicans planned to ensure specific changes related to LGBTQ rights were amended.

There is an appetite to change it but people actually have to get on the platform committee to do it and not enough people know how the process works, said one Republican official. Otherwise, the far right people get on and people are like, Well why does the platform say that? There will be a concerted effort next time in 2024. A more vamped up effort of what was going to happen in 2020.

Deaton said his group, the American Unity Fund, will continue to advocate for changes to the GOP platform.

We brought a lot of attention to the weaknesses of the platform, the mean-spirited language of the platform and it doesnt reflect the party. It reflects a few dozen people who show up at the convention and try to run the platform committee. And were not going to let them do that forever, Deaton said.

While Trump may have ushered in a wave of acceptance among conservatives for the cause of same-sex marriage, his actual record on LGBTQ issues was mixed at best, experts say. His administration committed to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic within 10 years and pushed to decriminalize homosexuality abroad. Trump mentioned his position in a speech to the United Nations (something President Barack Obama had done before).

Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a drive-in campaign rally for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at Northwestern High School on Oct. 31, 2020 in Flint, Mich. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Donald Trump's embrace of people who are LGBT truly did help make it OK to be an out, gay Republican, said former White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere. As president, he hired and promoted LGBT Americans to the highest levels of government, including positions at the White House, of which I was honored to be one of those people, Cabinet agencies, including the first openly gay Cabinet member, and ambassadorships.

But Trump also opposed the Equality Act which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit anti-LGBTQ and sex discrimination in public accommodations and federal programs appointed judges deemed hostile to LGBTQ issues, rolled back protections in the workplace for non-binary workers, and pushed for the removal of protections for LGBTQ people in healthcare programs.

Kasey Suffredini, the CEO and National Campaign Director for Freedom For All Americans, a bipartisan campaign for LGBTQ nondiscriminiation protections, said his organization sees the potential for Republican senators to support the Equality Act and has been encouraged by LGBTQ protections in the Republican-backed Fairness For All Act, which works to protect religious freedoms and LGBTQ rights.

Its clear where the country is on this issue and where it is headed on this issue, Suffredini said.

But on transgender rights issues in particular, fierce opposition within GOP ranks persists. The Trump-era Education Department eliminated guidance that sought to extend protections around the treatment of transgender students. And Trump himself issued an executive order, via tweet, prohibiting transgender individuals from serving in the military a move later overturned by President Joe Biden.

Potential 2024 candidates like Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have backed laws that would ban transgender athletes from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. And while McDaniel has hailed Pride Month, shes also slammed the Biden administrations use of the term birthing person instead of mother. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the nations largest LGBTQ advocacy group, 2021 was a record year for anti-transgender legislation with dozens of laws introduced in Republican legislatures across the country placing restrictions on transgender people.

Nikki Haley speaks. | John Lamparski/Getty Images

Perhaps the best illustration of the GOPs evolution on LGBTQ issues and the crossroads at which it now finds itself has come in the form of Caitlyn Jenners run for California governor as part of the recall election of Gavin Newsom. Jenner, who came out as transgender six years ago, said she opposes biological boys who are trans competing in girls' sports in school, even as she has tried to be a kind of ambassador for transgender people and the Republican Party. One Trump adviser, former campaign manager Brad Parscale, is working for her. Another, Trumps former election lawyer Jenna Ellis, has publicly criticized her for being transgender.

I think even with Christians the gay [marriage] issue, that ship has sailed. But the trans issue is different, said one Trump adviser.

Original post:

The GOP waves white flag in the same-sex marriage wars - POLITICO

The GOP is already defending five Senate seats opened up by retirements two in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania and North Carolina and three in GOP strongholds Ohio, Alabama and Missouri. Although Republicans are increasingly favored to win the House next year, further retirements would undoubtedly complicate their path back to power in the Senate.

Democrats say the hesitation will hurt Republicans next November.

I would think that they would make a decision before this time. Because it takes time to put a campaign together. Its unusual, said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who chairs the Democrats campaign arm and just won a competitive reelection bid himself. These are big races, and theyre going to be intense for everyone who is running. And delay usually puts you at a disadvantage.

Johnson reiterated that hes in no rush to decide as the Senate heads into a monthlong recess. And though he raised $1.2 million in the most recent fundraising quarter, he said thats no sign of his intentions: I didnt lift a finger to fundraise you cant read anything into that.

While Johnsons state is the most competitive, the retirement of GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley would instantly make Iowa a tighter 2022 race. And if Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) bows out of a fourth term, some strategists privately worry that her states new election system could help Democrats compete in a reliably red area.

Then theres Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who has been targeted by former President Donald Trump and is in position to compete for eventually succeeding Mitch McConnell as GOP leader. Thune put his timeline this way: "Im not in any rush. Trump has threatened to primary him and attacked the Senate infrastructure bill; Thune voted against it this week.

Grassley has laid out the firmest timeline, saying in a recent interview that hed decide by mid-October. The other four incumbents all replied that modern campaigns are too long and they are loath to start their reelection bids 15 months before Election Day.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said he felt confident about retaining all four of his undecided incumbents: Ill be surprised if any of them retire. Other Republicans say that by virtue of math it seems likely someone else heads for the exits.

The indication from what most do here is: Theyll run again, said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.). I would guess that three out of the four [Republicans] would end up running, including Johnson.

Braun added that Grassley is a special case, considering his age of 87 years: I know what Id be doing. Id be back on the farm picking weeds at least. Doing something. I would not be here.

Grassley and Johnson have already drawn challengers back home, with a crowded primary field brewing on the Democratic side in Wisconsin. Former Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D-Iowa) is running for Grassleys seat in Iowa, which has trended red in recent elections.

I can only think about what my job is, Grassley said. I dont pay any attention to what other people are doing.

In Alaska, Trump is coming after Murkowski by endorsing conservative opponent Kelly Tshibaka. Some of the ex-president's former advisers are helping the onetime Alaska Department of Administration commissioner in her bid to defeat Murkowski, who was a key negotiator on the bipartisan infrastructure bill Trump hates.

The Senate passed Bidens long-awaited bipartisan infrastructure bill earlier this week. But its fate is tied to a massive Democratic spending plan and things are looking a little shaky.

The states new top-four primary, followed by a ranked-choice general election, insulates Murkowski from a repeat of her 2010 primary loss thanks to resistance from hardcore partisans (she ended up winning the race as a write-in). But it also offers plenty of uncertainty, as former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin flirts with a Senate bid and Democrats search for a candidate who could consolidate their vote amid a split GOP.

I believe that if I run, I will win. I dont see that playing out any other way, Murkowski said in an interview, shrugging off the choice ahead of her.

Vermont is as blue as it gets in congressional races, but even so theres plenty of intrigue as Leahy makes up his mind. For one, Leahy could break the all-time record for Senate service if he wins another six-year term. Hes also in the line of succession now as president pro tempore, a post held by the most senior senator in the majority party. Combined with his Appropriations Committee chairmanship, Leahys seniority has helped him rack up some of the most coveted real estate in the Capitol, a security detail and a large staff.

Some Republicans hope that if Leahy bows out, popular Vermont GOP Gov. Phil Scott would consider running for the seat. Though the state votes Democratic in federal races, Scott has romped to a series of impressive wins in the Green Mountain States gubernatorial contests.

Phil Scott has endorsed me. And the latest polls showed me ahead of everybody in the state, Leahy said, reiterating he and his wife will make a decision on his political future while snowshoeing in Vermont this winter.

I dont even want to talk about it. If I run, Ill be in good shape to run, and Ill win.

Original post:

4 Senate Republicans wait on reelection bids as majority hangs in balance - POLITICO

As the Taliban take control of Afghanistan and troops are deployed to help evacuate U.S. personnel and Afghans who assisted coalition forces, attention has turned to the visa system for those who helped U.S. forces.

The U.S. has already evacuated 2,000 people under the Special Immigrant Visa program. That initiative has capacity for 34,500 more applicants, but this may not be enough.

On July 22, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to provide 8,000 more visas under the SIV program for Afghan interpreters, contractors and other U.S. allies who may be vulnerable as the Taliban seizes the country.

The House voted in favor of the resolution H.R. 3985, introduced by Rep. Jason Crow, by 407 votes to 16.

All the "nay" votes were Republicans and the bill was sent to the Senate, though it has yet to be passed by that chamber.

The Republicans who voted against the resolution were: Andy Biggs of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Jody Hice of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Barry Moore of Alabama, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Bill Posey of Florida, Matthew Rosendale of Montana and Chip Roy of Texas.

Jason Crow, a Democrat who represents Colorado's 6th congressional district and an army veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, spoke about the resolution on July 22.

"Some members of this body, including me, may not be here today without the service and self-sacrifice of Afghans who answered the call to serve shoulder to shoulder with us," Crow said.

H.R. 3985 would create 8,000 new SIVs and also expand eligibility to include the family members of applicants who have been killed, as well as Afghans who have worked with certain nongovernmental organizations and may now be facing persecution but would not have qualified previously.

When reached for comment by Newsweek on Tuesday, Rep. Roy's office pointed to a statement issued on July 22 that noted Roy had voted against the resolution because of a Democratic amendment that "raises serious questions and concerns by broadening the categories for SIV eligibility to include individuals that never directly assisted the U.S. government and weakening the standards of the program."

"I likely would have voted for the underlying bill, however a Manager's Amendment added language to the bill that I ultimately could not support," Roy said on the House floor at the time.

"That amendment 'expands the program to include nonprofits and grantees, private organizations that contributed to the United States mission in Afghanistan.' We don't know who would be included," he said.

Rep. Rosendale's office pointed Newsweek to a statement he issued on Monday.

"The total collapse of the Afghan government is the result of decades of failure and deception by the bipartisan foreign policy elite, which is even now trying to reverse the correct decision to withdraw American troops," Rosendale's statement said.

The statement went on to say the withdrawal was "catastrophically mismanaged" but "this does not change the basic fact that it was the right decision."

"The chaos we're seeing is not an excuse to flood our country with refugees from Afghanistan," Rosendale said.

A spokesperson for Rep. DesJarlais told Newsweek on Tuesday: "Congressman DesJarlais supports bringing in interpreters and allies that assisted us in the war effort.

"However, there is concern about the broad net being cast by the Biden administration that will surely let potential terrorists slip through the cracks. Rep. DesJarlais would like to see a better vetting plan in place before the United States starts bringing 40,000 to 60,000 Afghans and their families to our country."

Rep. Massie told Newsweek on Tuesday: "The program to extend visas to those who helped our military already exists and I support that program. The vote on the new measure was to greatly expand the number of visas and to include categories of people who did not help us in the war, while simultaneously reducing the vetting of these immigrants."

Rep. Duncan told Newsweek: "I opposed H.R. 3985 because of national security concerns and reports of fraud and abuse in similar immigration programs, such as the sweeping corruption outlined by the State Department's Inspector General for the parallel Iraqi SIV program.

"I have supported special immigrant visas programs in the past and personally assisted in individual cases but was concerned that the loose parameters within this specific legislation could open the floodgate to numerous problems. The program unnecessarily expanded the number of SIVs by 8,000 even though there were thousands of unused SIVs available."

Duncan went on: "Given the gross mismanagement in the way the Biden administration handled the crisis at the southern border, I was forced to approach this program with great skepticism, even though I thoroughly support the underlying objective of protecting our allies.

"Had Democrats chosen to prioritize the issue and bring up the legislation at an earlier date with an open amendment process, we could have likely significantly improved upon the bill and produced a product that that could have passed unanimously."

Rep. Hice's office issued a statement to Newsweek, saying: "America must stand by our steadfast commitments to our foreign allies, especially now when it matters most. Unfortunately, the special immigrant visa program for Afghan allies is so riddled with backlogs and bureaucratic delays that it can take years to approve an application, and H.R. 3985 does nothing to expedite this process.

"In fact, the legislation may actually make the existing backlog even worse as it lowers the eligibility threshold and significantly expands the program without addressing any of the underlying problems. The Biden administration's total incompetence has endangered the lives of every Afghan who has aided American forces over the last 20 years, and the reality of the situation is that we need to get all American citizens and our allies out of Afghanistan now."

Rep. Moore's office said he was "supportive of efforts to ensure we honor our commitments to Afghan interpreters and voted in support of H.R. 3237, which raised the cap on the SIV program by 8,000, added protections for surviving spouses and children of slain SIV applicants, and postponed medical exams so that SIVs can be issued ahead of evacuation.

"However, a last-minute amendment to H.R. 3985 expanded the program's eligibility to Afghan applicants that are well outside the designated populationopening the program to possible fraud and abuse."

The Biden administration is now in the process of evacuating SIV applicants from Afghanistan. The Department of Defense's evacuation efforts are being led by Garry Reid, director of defense intelligence.

Reid told a press conference at the Pentagon on Monday that the DOD has plans to evacuate 20,000 to 22,000 additional SIV applicants, possibly to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and Fort Bliss in Texas.

"There may be other sites identified if services are needed, if additional capacity is needed," Reid said. "As with the operation we've been supporting at Fort Lee [Virginia], persons that come to these locations will have been pre-screened by the Department of Homeland Security to enter on condition of full immigration processing once they arrive."

Newsweek has asked the representatives who voted against H.R. 3985 for comment.

Update 8/18/21 4:05 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include statements from Reps Jeff Duncan, Jody Hice and Barry Moore.

Update 8/17/21 10:55 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include a statement from Rep. Thomas Massie.

Update 8/17/21 10:06 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include statements from Reps Chip Roy, Matthew Rosendale and Scott DesJarlais.

Excerpt from:

Full List of 16 Republicans Who Voted Against Visas for Afghans Who Helped U.S. Troops - Newsweek

The conservative campaign to curb voting rights has helped spur passage of bills in at least 18 states and, backed by big money, is now widening its scope across the US in a concerted effort to suppress the vote and favor Republicans, say election law experts and watchdogs.

The lobbying and media drive is aiming to spend tens of millions of dollars and is led by well funded conservative and dark money groups, some of whom are also pressing Congress to block Democratic-backed bills to protect voting rights nationally, say watchdogs and election law experts.

The rights state and congressional blitzes to curtail voting rights, which have been stoked by Donald Trumps repeated false claims about rampant fraud in last years elections, are misleadingly touted as improving election integrity. They have led to tighter voting laws in Georgia, Florida, Iowa and elsewhere. Similar measures are now being pushed in Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and other states.

The state lobbying efforts feature deep pocketed conservative bastions such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), Heritage Action, FreedomWorks and the State Policy Network, a loose-knit group of rightwing thinktanks, a number of which have received grants from the donor network led by the billionaire oilman Charles Koch and the Bradley Foundation.

Other influential players pushing stricter voting laws include the Honest Elections Project and the Opportunity Solutions Project.

The rights lobbying tactics range from providing state legislators with model bills to paying for Facebook ads in many states that have included dubious information about some of the bills.

Evidence is palpable that the rights crusade to curtail voting rights, which its proponents say is aimed at limiting voting fraud even though there is little evidence of it in the US is now expanding, via more coordination among many groups.

For example, Heritage Action, which has touted plans to spend $24m on efforts to tighten state voting laws and to block congressional countermeasures, on 10 August hosted one of many joint calls this year for dozens of allies it has been working with, in a self-styled Save our Elections blitz.

Further, Heritage Action has paid for Facebook ads and other media in several states including Florida, Georgia and Arizona some of which carried the misleading tagline easier to vote, harder to cheat.

In late July, Alec hosted a two-and-a-half-day exclusive meeting in Salt Lake Citybefore Alecs annual conference for an elite group of state legislators who are Alec members. They discussed ways to revise voting laws and compared notes about whats been achieved already, according to an Alec email disclosed by the Center for Media and Democracy.

The Alec confab was co-sponsored by the dark money group, the Honest Elections Project, which launched in early 2020 and was the brainchild of the conservative fundraiser and ex-Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo and is led by Jason Snead, a former Heritage election policy guru. Snead has drawn fire for devising Heritages election fraud database, which the Brennan Center for Justice says has grossly exaggerated the extent of voter fraud.

The Brennan Center has calculated that the rights efforts to change voting laws had by mid-July led to the passage of 30 laws that restrict access to vote in at least 18 states. The center noted too that some 400 bills have been introduced in 49 states to restrict voting access.

A Brennan Center analysis indicates that in general these laws make mail and early voting harder, impose harsher voter ID rules and make faulty voting roll purges more likely, among other changes. Most of the changes, experts believe, disproportionately affect likely Democratic voters, especially among communities of color and the less well-off.

Campaign finance and election watchdogs voice dismay over these sweeping rightwing campaignsto roll back voting rights, and urge national legislation to counter them.

These efforts are part of a well-funded, calculated, nationwide strategy of making voting harder for people of color, particularly in swing states, said Adav Noti, a former associate general counsel at the Federal Election Commission and now chief of staff at the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center. Basically, every measure the anti-voting cabal has pushed is designed to disproportionately affect voters of color. And their work has had some success in states like Georgia.

Noti added the good news is that Congress could end all of this anti-voter activity in an instant by passing laws to protect voting rights at the federal level.

Other advocates voice similar concerns.

American Oversight, a watchdog group, has unearthed evidence that shows the fingerprints of these groups on policymaking, said Austin Evers, the groups executive director. They are orchestrating a state-by-state drive to restrict the freedom to vote and they are doing so successfully.

Evers stressed that Trumps big lie disinformation campaign is breathing new life into longstanding efforts to curate the electorate for partisan ends, and dark money forces are making the most of the moment.

The rights multifront drive seems now to be focused on several states, including Texas and Pennsylvania, where bills are making headway that could curb voting rights of minorities and other voters bills that are expected to benefit Republicans if they pass, say voting rights experts.

In Texas, Heritage Action has paid for ads on Facebook backing new voting curbs and helped fund an effort to spur public support for more voting restrictions, according to an analysis by Documented.

On 12 August, the Texas senate passed a measure, after a 15-hour filibuster by a Democratic opponent, that its GOP sponsor, Senator Bryan Hughes, touted as simple, commonsense reforms. But Democrats and voting rights advocates have said the measure would hinder voting by mail and impede voting by seniors and communities of color.

The Texas house still needs to pass the measure, but dozens of Democrats so far have blocked action by leaving the state.

On the national congressional front, Heritage Action and FreedomWorks seem to be lobbying to block Democrats from passing bills to offset the state measures, which Republicans seem to be banking on to help win back control of both houses.

FreedomWorks in the spring touted its plans to mount a $10m state and federal effort, with a focus on seven states, including Georgia and Arizona, to enact tough voting measures. To run its campaign, FreedomWorks has tapped veteran election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a board member of the Bradley Foundation, which has provided funds to rightwing groups working to restrict voting rights.

A FreedomWorks spokesperson has said that Mitchell is leading its national election protection initiative, to rally Senate opposition to a broad House-passed reform bill and block another measure pending in the House named for the late Representative John Lewis, both of which would help protect voting rights nationally. Most Democrats have backed both bills to resist the Republican assaults on voting rights.

The stakes for voting rights advocates and watchdogs are high. Democracy is on the line and this is an all hands on deck moment to fight back, said Austin Evers.

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Rightwing lobbies and dark money funders backing assaults on voting rights - The Guardian

Washington, D.C. Rep. Ken Buck (CO-4) joined House Foreign Affairs Committee Lead Republican Michael McCaul (TX-10), Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia and Nonproliferation Lead Republican Steve Chabot (OH-1) and all committee Republicans in calling on President Biden to commit to continuing evacuation flights out of Kabul until all American citizens and all of our Afghan partners are safely out of the country. Their call comes in the wake of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivans refusal to make that commitment when asked three times at todays White House briefing.

For months, we have consistently urged President Biden and his administration to develop and implement a plan to evacuate our Afghan partners, to secure the U.S. embassy and keep Americans in the country safe, and to manage the impending humanitarian crisis. He ignored us. We are facing this shameful moment in our history because of President Bidens failed leadership. Full stop. It is reprehensible that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and President Joe Biden are now refusing repeatedly to commit to continuing the evacuation of American citizens and our Afghan partners until they are all safely out of the country. We demand President Biden immediately and publicly commit to continuing evacuations for as long as it takes to get all Americans and Afghan allies to safety. Refusing to do so will only serve to further damage U.S. credibility as a partner moving forward.

The following House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans joined Reps. McCaul and Chabot in releasing this statement:

Rep. Ken Buck (CO-4)Rep. Christopher H. Smith (NJ-4)Rep. Joe Wilson (SC-2)Rep. Scott Perry (PA-4)Rep. Darrell Issa (CA-49)Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL-16)Rep. Lee Zeldin (NY-1)Rep. Ann Wagner (MO-2)Rep. Brian Mast (FL-18)Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1)Rep. Tim Burchett (TN-2)Rep. Mark Green (TN-7)Rep. Andy Barr (KY-6)Rep. Greg Steube (FL-17)Rep. Dan Meuser (PA-9)Rep. Claudia Tenney (NY-22)Rep. August Pfluger (TX-11)Rep. Peter Meijer (MI-3)Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11)Rep. Ronny Jackson (TX-13)Rep. Young Kim (CA-39)Rep. Maria Salazar (FL-27)

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Buck Joins House Foreign Affairs Republicans in Calling on Biden to Continue Evacuations in Afghanistan until All Americans, Afghan Partners Safely...

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Im Ezra Klein, and this is The Ezra Klein Show.

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Lilliana Mason is a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of the 2018 book Uncivil Agreement How Politics Became Our Identity. And Uncivil Agreement is a touchstone book for me. For my money, its one of the most important books on politics published in the last decade. But its come out a little bit ago, so the work for it was done before even that, right, before even 2018, and a lot has happened. And so I wanted to have Mason on the show to talk through how her thinking on political identity changed across the expanse of the Trump era and into this era, into the Biden era.

One animating thought for this conversation: I talk a lot about polarization. I wrote a book on polarization, Why Were Polarized, out in paperback now. My book is very influenced by Masons book. But something Ive come to think of as a real problem when we talk about polarization is we talk about it as a singular, right? We are polarized. But over what? We often dont specify that, that over what. Its a theme of my book that I feel people sometimes miss.

I mean, you can be polarized on policy, but maybe youre not polarized on democracy and elections. You can be polarized on democracy, but maybe not on race relations across your society. You can be polarized on economics, but not on foreign policy. There are all these different possible dimensions of conflict in a political system, and which ones are front and center at any given moment is really important. And so tracking that is really important.

And this is a fascinating moment to track that. I mean, in the same year, the same year you have an insurrection, a violent insurrection at the Capitol and this very fundamental fight over voting in this country, you also have a big bipartisan infrastructure bill. You also have big Republican support in polling for much of Joe Bidens economic agenda.

And so thats a key question here. What is driving the composition of the political parties and the things they end up fighting over? And in particular, how has the coalition that both rose up behind Donald Trump and that Donald Trump assembled, how has that coalition changed the Republican Party? Thats a topic where Mason more recently has been doing some really fascinating, unnerving research.

One note before we get into this. We recorded this before, a couple of days before the infrastructure bill passed the Senate. You can hear in here that we expected that it would. And then a couple of days later, it did. But if the tenses sound a little bit odd, that is why. It is the nature of time and podcasting. But this one was a lot of fun. I love talking to Mason about these topics. So youre going to hear its very much a conversation, which is always a pleasure for me. As always, my email, if youve got guest suggestions, book or whatever else recommendations one of you just recommended the video game Kentucky Route Zero to me, I think it was, and Ive started playing it, and Im trying to get into it but you can send it all to ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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Lilliana Mason, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. Its great to be back.

So theres something weird about this moment in politics. On the one hand, the fight between the parties feels existential. You have insurrections, and were divided over voting rights and democracy itself and what kind of country we are at root, and then you tune into Congress and were about to pass a giant bipartisan infrastructure package, and Joe Bidens major proposals actually poll pretty well with Republicans. So how do you square all that?

One way that I would think about it is we sort of have general agreement that government should help Americans, but what we disagree over is who gets to be American. The fundamental disagreement that were having is whether American democracy means being a fully representative, egalitarian, multiracial democracy, or whether it means something less than that and going backwards in time, and not counting people who are not white, rural, Christian, largely men having the most voting rights and having the most ability to influence government, and whether that sort of traditional social hierarchy, A, still exists at all, and B, should exist, right?

Thats the debate. And when we start having a debate over who is American, who deserves the rights and protections of the American government and Constitution, that is a place where there is zero room for compromise. We can compromise on how much money were putting into infrastructure and what counts as infrastructure. Thats compromisable. But do human beings count as Americans, people who were born here, do they count less as Americans because of their religion or their race, we cant find a middle ground on that. Either people are fully American and they have the full rights and protections of the Constitution or they are not. And thats a battle that becomes extremely passionate extremely quickly.

I think this gets to the core thesis of your 2018 book, Uncivil Agreement, which was very, very influential for me, which is that Americans dont experience politics through policy, they experience it through identity. And a lot of the debates we have in this country are identity debates masquerading as policy debates. Can you talk a bit about that?

So on average, Americans have left of center issue positions. Most people are to the left of center on their preferences for economic policy and legislation. Even when you put issues like abortion and gun control and immigration into the equation, right, were still a left of center country on policy preferences. The problem is that there are a lot of people who identify as conservative and hold liberal, leftist policy preferences, but that conservative or Republican identity is so strong that they will vote to make sure that their group is winning regardless of what the policies theyre actually voting for are.

And then at the same time, one of the main points of Uncivil Agreement was that we have this social sorting, right, where effectively the Republican Party has become increasingly white, Christian, rural, male or at least pro- sort of patriarchy and the Democratic Party is not as monolithic as that. Theyre just sort of the party thats trying to push for a more egalitarian, multiracial democracy. And so the Republican Party is kind of forced into this I mean, ironically, right identity-based politics where they are really trying to make sure that the white Christian male is at the top of the American social hierarchy. Thats what theyre fighting for.

And so that becomes infused into a lot of issue conversations that were having. So for instance, health care, which before Barack Obama was not correlated with racial attitudes in any way, is now correlated with racial attitudes, our feelings about health care. Same thing with gun control. Gun control attitudes were not correlated with racial attitudes prior to Barack Obama. And now, they are. And increasingly so under Trump. So we have all of these policy attitudes that, facially, theyre not about race or equality, but theyre increasingly becoming associated with racial attitudes, especially among people who are paying attention to politics and hold attitudes towards non-white, non-Christians that are negative and full of what we would call in this most recent paper animosity.

So when I talk to Republican politicians or Republican voters about whats motivating them, they dont say to me, well, I just want to make sure white Christian men are on the top of the American social hierarchy. When I talk to them about voting rights issues or election protection issues, they say Im worried about fraud, not that I want to make sure my vote counts more. So what makes you confident that that is the division here, that that is what is motivating at least a substantial portion of the Republican electorate?

So this is related to a study that I just published with Julie Wronski and John Kane where we used this data set called the Voter Study Group, which is publicly available. Its online. Anybody can get this data. And they interviewed like 8,000 people in 2011. And then when Trump was elected, they thought, you know, if we reinterview these people, we can maybe learn a lot about whats going on in politics.

So they reinterviewed them in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. Theyre doing it basically every year. But because they had interviewed these people in 2011, these data became sort of a time machine for us, where we could go back to 2011, before Trump was a major political figure, and try to see what types of people are drawn to Trump in the future. Before Trump existed, what were their characteristics that then predicted they would really like him in 2018.

So one of the things that we found, obviously being a Republican, being a conservative, that predicted that they would like Trump in 2018. And it also predicted that they would like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and the Republican Party in general. However, for Trump himself, and Trump alone, the other thing that predicted whether they would like him was that they disliked Muslims, African Americans, Hispanics and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. Any mix of those, but largely all of them. And that animosity towards those marginalized groups did not predict support for the Republican Party. It did not predict support for Mitch McConnell or for Paul Ryan. It just predicted support for Trump.

And also, these people were coming not just from the Republican Party. Democrats who had these attitudes in 2011 liked Trump in 2018. Independents who had these attitudes in 2011 liked Trump in 2018. So its almost like Trump acted as a lightning rod for people who held these attitudes. He was extremely attractive to them, regardless of party, regardless of ideology. Trump attracted and really kind of corralled this group of people from across the spectrum, and really empowered this faction of Americans who held these attitudes.

And I think its important to say that this is not about the Republican Party, because its not true these attitudes dont predict support for the Republican Party. Trump was really kind of crystallizing or collecting all of these people into one political movement. And they happened to take over the Republican Party, but its not that every Republican holds these attitudes. Its that people who hold these attitudes really love Trump, and Trump is now the figurehead, became the figurehead of the Republican Party. So its important to kind of keep them separate, to some degree.

I want to hold on that idea of takeover for a minute. So in your view, is the Republican Party of, lets call it 2020 or 2018, a compositionally substantially different party than the Republican Party of 2008? Like, are we really dealing with a different coalition of people?

So, slightly. What happened during the Obama administration is that racial attitudes became much more aligned with partisanship. Not because of anything Obama did, but simply because there was a Black man in the Oval Office. And for people who were not paying attention to politics previously, that was a very, very easy cue for them, to just look at the front page of the newspaper and see whos the president and that hes a Democrat. And of course, we have social media and Fox News and all of these other entities that are really doubling down on which team are you on, really? If youre a white person, should you really be on that Democratic team?

And so the racial messages I think became really powerful during Obamas administration. The Tea Party was very powerfully motivated by racial animosity. And ultimately, this faction of people who love Trump were kind of bubbling up during the Obama administration. And then Trump, of course, really encouraged it. But Trump pulled people from not just the Republican Party.

Now, this is not to say that the Republican Party has not been benefiting from racial rhetoric. And the entire Southern strategy is trying to use implicit racial dog whistles in order to get votes from racially resentful white voters. So its not an accident that Trump was popular within the Republican Party, because the Republican Party has been cultivating this group of people. Theyve just been doing it on an implicit level, to a large extent.

But for some reason, between then and now, it went from, if you say something out loud, youre in trouble and you have to defend yourself against accusations of racism. And to Trump, whos able to say racially explicit things Mexicans are rapists, right he just said racist things, and it didnt end his campaign. And in fact, according to this data, he actually attracted a bunch of people who werent previously all that excited about voting for Republicans.

So I want to pull out something kind of subtle in this conception of the electorate and how its changed. So imagine weve got an electorate of 100 people, and zero opinions have changed between 2000 and 2020, but that the people who have a lot of lets call it outgroup animosity, right, racial animosity, animosity towards L.G.B.T.Q. people, that they used to be split, lets call it, 70-30 between the parties. And then now, theyre split 90-10 or 95-5.

And the reason I think this is important for the dynamic that youre talking about is that its true that, for a long time in politics you know, lets call it the 90s and the aughts you got in more trouble if you violated, like, speech norms, in a way, on both sides, right? Like, a Republican had to try not to do that, too. And then post-Trump, its actually a huge selling point within the Republican primary electorate to be somebody whos constantly getting attacked by the liberal media for saying stuff that seems kind of racist.

But on the other hand, when these two groups were split between the parties more, they also had more suppressive power within American politics. So within the Democratic Party, too, they could keep the Democratic Party, for instance, from wanting to do too much on voting rights, or keep the Democratic Party very interested in things like welfare reform or having a very racialized view of poverty. So on the one hand, you had to be careful not to seem too racist in both parties, but on the other hand, both parties were either, lets call it a little bit more racist, or there was at least less of an interest in either party for a kind of forthright political agenda built around racial equality and just, Id say, generalized equality.

And so this is kind of this polarization-suppression tradeoff, I think, that weve been in for the past decade or two, where on the one hand, our politics now feels much more divisive, like, and angry, because weve structured it around, like, a really, really difficult, deep argument in American life, so that feels bad. But on the other hand, these are maybe arguments we needed to have that were suppressed when Democrats who would have been the party to prosecute, you know, at least the racial equality side of this, didnt want to split their own coalition. They didnt want to, say, lose white Democrats in West Virginia who were voting for Jay Rockefeller but who werent going to be on board with this kind of more forthright racial politics.

Yeah. I mean, I think that the Democratic Party has been gradually, partly in response to the Republican Partys attraction of attracting people who are high in racial animosity, the Democratic Party has had to react against that. So we end up with Obama, then Trump, and then Biden, for the first time ever, in his inaugural address, actually saying the words white supremacy. So the parties have been making it more clear where they stand along this line.

And unfortunately, that means that we have in the Republican Party and again, its really this MAGA faction, right, these people that really disliked marginalized groups even before Trump came along. Theyve always been in the American electorate. They were Democrats during the Civil War and Jim Crow, et cetera, and now theyve moved into the Republican Party.

But the problem with that is that we end up with an entire political party that is really trying to speak to these animosities and that sense of hatred of marginalized groups, which means that it has become an anti-democracy party, right? It is not in their interest to fully represent every single American. Its not in their interest to have a multiracial democracy. In fact, theyre campaigning against that.

And that puts us in a really dangerous place because we only have two parties. We need them to be both pro-democracy in order to have a functioning government. And if one of them is increasingly being led or pushed by this really racially motivated or anti-egalitarian motivated group of people which isnt tiny, its like 20 to 30 percent of Americans, and this group is also, as youve said many times before, institutionally and systematically overrepresented in our government because of various things like the Senate and the electoral college, et cetera, and gerrymandering if that group has control over the levers of government, it is effectively a group that is trying to lead a country with ethnic minority rule, ultimately. This is a country that has been diversifying. Its going to continue to diversify. White Americans will be not the majority relatively soon. And so ultimately, this movement is for future white ethnic minority rule of the country, which is not compatible with democracy at all. So I think that, in that sense, its something to really pay attention to and worry about.

So let me hold on the point you made about Democrats a minute ago, that they have changed in reaction to this, too. Because I think its easy, I think the audience for this podcast certainly leans liberal, and its easy to take what Democrats do or dont do or how they change for granted. But the blogger Kevin Drum, whos a liberal himself, has argued that, quote, its Democrats who have moved farther left on a lot of the policy issues, in particular issues around racial equality and on redistribution, than Republicans have moved right in the past 10 or 15 years, and that it is liberals, or progressives, if you want to put it that way, who are pushing really hard for progress, pushing really hard to diversify the country, diversify leadership, to change the way we understand American history.

And so its true that theres a huge counterreaction to this, that it often does terrible things. I think Kevin would say many of these fights are good, but that Democrats have to accept that part of whats happening here is that they have moved left and are pushing for change and are creating a reaction to that, and this is not all just something ginned up by Donald Trump. Like, this is, in some ways, a political choice of trying to fight for what they see as a more just world, but that its Democrats whove made the big kind of moves here. Do you think theres validity to that view?

Yeah, I mean, I think that its laid out right there in make America great again, right? Something has changed in America, and Trump supporters want it to go back to the way it was before. And youre right that, if you look at white peoples racial attitudes, Republicans have stayed relatively stable, but that is at a very, very racially resentful level, right, while white Democrats have really changed their attitudes.

Im not sure what the chicken and egg answer is for this particular phenomenon because I think there has been a lot of sort of iterative change between Democrats and Republicans, with activists getting more attention in the Democratic Party to reveal whats really happening, in terms of race and racism and institutional prejudice and brutality. Weve also had social media and cell phone videos, right? I mean, we have a lot more information about racism in America now. And thats also part of the reason why we see this pushback against critical race theory, right? As the sort of reality of racism is becoming more apparent, the parties are kind of required to go to their respective corners and pull in very opposite directions.

Theres a dynamic here that Ive come to think of as ricochet polarization, although I know polarization may not be the word all would prefer for it. But there is this way that youre getting at that the parties change repeatedly in response to each other. And something important in your book is that its not that identity and policy are completely separate. Its that oftentimes our policy positions are downstream from our identity positions. We take the identity position first, and then we find the policy position that supports it.

And I want to use immigration here as an example. If you go back and look at, say, the Democratic National Committee platform in 2004 or 2008, or even 2012, its very focused on border enforcement. Its very focused on things that Democrats, frankly, dont talk about that much these days. But then Donald Trump happens, and he gives the Republican Party a much more forthright anti-immigrant identity. Like, that had always been a strain in the Republican Party, but George Bush and John McCain had tried to keep that in check. And then Trump says, nope, thats who were going to be.

And in response, you watched Democrats become much more pro-immigrant as an identity. And then behind that, the policy begins to change, right? And they become more pro more legal immigration, and more skeptical of certain kinds of border enforcement. And so theres this way in which the identities change, like the party sentiment towards different groups and sentiment about who they represent change, and you really watch changes in the policy happen behind that, which I think, to your point about chicken/egg, is really important because things arent just stable, theyre in this kind of constant dynamic equilibrium with each other.

And in particular, the parties move in reaction to the other. Like, if the Republican Party becomes much more anti-immigrant, the Democratic Party becomes much more pro. And to some degree, vice versa. And so it becomes hard to say whos moving what because they move the other one.

Yeah. I mean, same with trade policy, right? We saw that completely reversed during the Trump administration. So this brings up this whole, like, what even is ideology? Like what

Yup. [LAUGHTER]

what are even in opinions? Do they exist in reality? Which is very existential, so I wont go into that one. But absolutely, our elites, our party leaders have influence on voters opinions, and we take cues from our leaders. But were supposed to do that. Like, thats how the system was created because, as voters, were not supposed to know everything. Our leaders are supposed to do a lot of the thinking for us, and then give us a simplified set of choices based on what they think is the best.

The most benign version of this is actually, its working the way it should. The problem happens when the leaders can say anything. Maybe theyre not making the best choices for us. Theyre just trying to make sure that they get the most power or they get the most money or they get whatever it is theyre after. And so if theyre not giving us reasonable choices, but were still kind of blindly following them, then we end up in a less normatively good Democratic situation. And that is sort of where we are now, right? Our leaders are partly encouraging their voters to be kind of their most extreme selves, to take on what the leaders tell them to take on and to defend it with everything that they have because this partisan battle has become so dire for everyone involved. Everyone feels very angry about it. And it feels really, really important, and its like the country is going to end if the other people win the election. So opinion leadership is good if its done for good reasons, but it certainly can be weaponized. And I think were seeing it weaponized now.

I want to go into the existential part of this, where the whole ground drops out beneath our feet. [LAUGHS] So one of the things that youre getting at there that I struggle with all the time: so my background is as a policy reporter. I covered health care for years, and the economy, and I spent so much time at think tank lunches and the unveilings of new bills. And so much of the policy community in Washington, D.C., what they do is they think of ways to conceptualize the policy space, right what is it the Republicans want today, what is it the Democrats want today and come up with clever ways to achieve their goals that seem to work for both sides.

And what that is built on is an idea that policy preferences are stable, and that youre running some kind of negotiation between the preferences of the two sides. But if theyre not, if theyre driven by identity, and identity is at least somewhat negative, such that a big part of my identity is, I dont want the other side to win, like, then the policy collapses beneath your feet. You try to build a health care bill, and you say, well, Republicans have liked the individual mandate in the past, well put that in there.

And the Republicans say, no, no, no, no, we now think the individual mandate is unconstitutional. Or this would come up with Donald Trump a bunch of different times, where he would say something out there that some Democrats thought meant maybe theres a compromise here, like I want to raise taxes on people like me. But then it turned out he didnt want to do that, and he definitely didnt want to do anything that Democrats would see as a win for them.

And so I always try to push this idea that you can compromise on policy. Like, policy is a positive sum environment. Like, I can come up with policies and make a lot of different ideological groups better off, and kind of fit their ideas well enough. But identity and electoral competition are often zero-sum. And that if thats whats really happening, then theres a lot less room for compromise.

It is true, I think, that Josh Hawley has a lot more room to compromise with Bernie Sanders than John Boehner or Paul Ryan ever did. It is also true that, in practice, I dont think Josh Hawley is going to compromise very much with Bernie Sanders because central to Josh Hawleys identity is owning the libs. And you cant do that working with the libs all that often.

So occasionally therell be a feint here or there, but when it comes down to it, youre just not going to see big coalitions on central issues because, if Josh Hawley developed a reputation for voting with the Democrats on issues of economics, he would get a reputation as being somebody who wasnt owning the libs. And like, that would be very, very destructive for him. So if you take this, I think, sort of Lilliana Mason-ified view of politics, the space for policy compromise really, really narrows because whatever you think it is is not what its going to be after Democrats decide to adopt a conservative policy or even Republicans decide to adopt a liberal one.

Right. And also, unfortunately, the way any of these government achievements is covered, right, is who won? Legislation to give every American $1,000, which party does that benefit? And thats generally the framing. And so in a sense, you know, Trump was right when he said were going to get tired of all the winning, right, because so much is just about who wins, rather than what does government do, what is governments role? You know, how much should government be helping citizens or intervening in their lives?

And those are the sort of traditional debates, right? The traditional debate over policy is what role does government play in regular Americans lives? And so you can find some common ground in the middle of that conversation. But if the conversation instead is which party wins literally everything, then why would anybody want to find common ground there?

Everyones just going to try to make it a win regardless, and also to prevent the other side from winning. So its not even about what government is supposed to be or governing at all. Its about winning, which is horrible. I mean, that is absolutely not the way to run a government. That doesnt allow the government to function. I mean, the Republican Party doesnt have a platform right now, they dont even have policies, because its just winning.

And this is also one of the asymmetries between the parties. Because American policy preferences are generally to the left of center, the Democratic Party actually has a much more popular policy agenda. So its actually in the Democrats interest to talk about policy and enact policy and try to do these popular things. But what then the Republicans are incentivized to do because of that is focus on the grievance politics, so that even if a policy helps someone, theyre not going to vote for Democrats because they hate that Democrats helped other people, as well.

So the two parties have very different incentives in terms of campaigning and governing. And I think weve seen that, just comparing the Trump administration to the Biden administration, right? Actually getting things done and trying to not only pass legislation in Congress, but even just the president just trying to care for American people and enact things that help them.

So its not exactly the same for both parties. And I think thats another thing that we need to start talking more about, because this is one of the things thats really been bothering me. We have these norms, both in journalism and in academia, norms of sort of non-partisanship.

But what were seeing is very asymmetric, and the things that are happening on the Democratic side are not exactly the same as the things that are happening on the Republican side. So increasingly, from a democratic, small d, like democracy, point of view, its really, really important that we actually point out the differences between whats happening in the Democratic and Republican parties, because to pretend theyre the same is allowing an anti-democracy faction of people to get an opportunity to harm our ability to govern ourselves.

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Let me try out a version of what is different between the parties on you here. So one version of whats different that Ive argued for years, its a big part of my book, is that the Democrats have to abide by and are disciplined by democracy, and the Republicans arent. That if the Republicans had to win majorities of the country to win the Senate, to win the House, to win the presidency, then the strategy theyve been pushing would not have worked, right?

Donald Trump did not win a majority of voters in 2016. Republicans in the Senate routinely do not win most voters when they go before the electorate. And so they would have to try to figure out some way to appeal to more people, which might mean offering policies that actually appeal to more people, whereas Democrats really have to appeal to a lot of people, including people who maybe culturally dont like them that much. And so they push on policies that give them something to say to skeptical electorates because they have to win, you know, 51, 52, 53 percent of the popular vote more than that in the Senate in order to win a majority.

So I think thats a huge difference. But on top of that, its true that Democrats are polarizing more on policy. Theyre moving further left on policy right now than Republicans are moving right on it. But Republicans have been polarizing, if thats the right word, against the political system itself. That the nature of the Republican coalition, where theyve been moving very far to the right, is in how they view elections, is in how they view the media, is in how they view more fundamental questions of, like, liberal democratic competition.

The two parties are really, to the extent they become more extreme, they become more extreme on different things. Republicans have become like more of an anti-system party, and Democrats have become, like, that much closer to being a truly liberal or, if you want, Democratic socialist party. But its not just, like, asymmetric because one side has gone more left or one side has gone more right, its asymmetric because, like, the locus of thing the parties are changing on is actually different in the two parties. Theyre actually not having the same argument, really.

Exactly, yeah. They are, right now, disagreeing about democracy. And youre right that Democrats are kind of becoming more liberal on policies that would create a more multiracial democracy, but also Republicans are trying to stop democracy from happening, and even just basic governance, right? The things that the Republican Party wants to do policy-wise just Im not even sure what they are.

Its so much more powerful to appeal to identity and threat, right? Thats what my book is ultimately about, is that when you make people feel like their group is being threatened, the status of their group is being threatened, they respond much more forcefully and emotionally than they do if youre going to enact a policy that they dont like. Its a very different emotional response.

And what sort of white Republicans are being constantly told is that their place in society is being threatened. They dont get to be at the top of the social hierarchy anymore. And if they want to be at the top of the social hierarchy, then they should really be the only ones voting. Stop the steal was about you know, they said if it wasnt for Madison and Milwaukee, right, we would have won. Its like, if it wasnt for non-white people in cities voting, then Trump did win. If we dont count non-white people in the electorate, Trump won the 2020 election, right?

So youre right that theyre polarizing on two different things, but I also do see some sense that theyre both pulling on the same rope when it comes to democratic access and the equal protection of people under American laws. In that particular fight, I think theyre pulling on the same rope. And thats where the battle is, and thats where theres no room for compromise.

That I agree with. I just think that the Democrats, in their relationship to democracy itself, have become somewhat more progressive, but not wildly. You know, Democrats are trying to do a really major expansion of voting rights right now under, you know, in HR 1 and HR 4, but theyre not willing to do that much to get it done. Like, they wont even, in the end, get rid of the filibuster. And so their view on democracy, which I think is sharper now but is continuous with our recent history, is we are a democracy, and we should be a bit more of one.

And the Republican take on this I think has changed dramatically. You will hear much more direct anti- small d- democratic rhetoric now from Republicans, like Mike Lee tweeting about how ranked democracy is the threat, or Tucker Carlson going to Hungary to talk about how great it is, where Hungary is like the example in Europe of a country that was a democracy and has backslid into competitive authoritarianism. Or Donald Trump, you know, saying in the 2020 election that, if the vote by mail stuff the Democrats wanted to do had happened, like, Republicans would never win an election in this country ever again, and that any election against him is rigged. And so thats more my point. Not that I agree that the fight over democracy is the central fight, but where Democrats seem to me to have changed dramatically is policy. They were for democracy and more, and maybe now theyre for democracy and more plus, whereas Republicans, like from where a Mitt Romney stood on this, or a George W. Bush, in many ways, or a John McCain, like, that has been sharp in a way that their economic policy just, like, has not changed that sharply.

Yeah, I mean, Dick Cheney himself is now worried about the direction the Republican Party is heading in, right? And you can see this in even in the January 6 commission, the makeup of that commission, right? You can find two Republicans to sit on that commission who actually think it was really bad that people stormed the Capitol on January 6 in order to steal the election, right? Or undo the election. And that those people are ostracized from the party, as well.

The way that I see it is that we have this really sort of anti-egalitarian faction in the Republican Party thats very loud and votes in the primaries and, you know, does all the talking and yells at town halls, and then you have other Republicans who think that thats gross and they dont like it and makes them uncomfortable, but they think Democrats are worse. And so we have some people who are really fighting for, essentially, a white supremacist, Christian nationalist nation, and other people in the party who just dont want to vote for Democrats.

And so I would really love to see and this is never going to happen but what I would really love to see is some sort of fight back from the kind of Liz Cheney wing of the party that says, Im a Republican, Im not MAGA, right? Like, Im part of a responsible party that believes in democracy and is going to actually work in government to do things. Im not here to make a giant riot and to wave around Confederate flags, right?

Im not a militiaman, Im a Republican. And I would love to see something like that just kind of, like, grow out of the Republican Party, because I think there are people in there that believe that. But its just too scary to kind of disassociate yourself from this really loud group of people that are scary. Theyre terrifying. They stormed the Capitol.

Well, even if theyre not scary, you do need their votes. I mean, this, to me, is what cowed that group. Look, a lot of Republicans are like that. And I think if you talk to Republicans in Congress, a lot of them say, I am doing that. I mean, I didnt storm the Capitol. I was hiding from those people. And here I am, working on bills that you never pay any attention to, and here I am, like, putting out bog-standard completely boring press releases about government red tape and regulation and so on. But the problem is that they dont want to have a internal confrontation, because what holds a party together is you need to win elections.

I mean, this is our mutual friend and your mutual political scientist, Lee Drutman, his argument for why America so badly needs multiparty democracy, because in some other world, maybe a Republican Party or Republican coalition on the right that has different parties in it. And so theres a MAGA-ish party and a conservative party, and maybe on the Democratic side theres a Democratic socialist party and a liberal party and so on. And you can have different coalitions form and fall, but if you had a different electoral system that had more proportional representation, like, it wouldnt be a total disaster if you didnt get the votes of the MAGA faction. There would be other ways to come into power.

But in a two-party first past the post system, like, if Republicans dont get more votes, or at least more electoral college points or more states or more districts than Democrats, like, they just dont win power. And it seems to me that, on the one hand, a lot of Republicans have realized the energy in the party is in the animus. And thats why you see somebody like JD Vance adopting this Twitter persona to how to win the Ohio primary for Senate. But on the other hand, even the ones who dont want to become a kind of bootleg Donald Trump recognize that you cant win by splitting your own party. Like, you cant have a schism. And so they say theyre acting exactly as you want them to act, theyre just not going to, like, get into a fight.

This is what they all say about Liz Cheney, that they didnt excommunicate her from leadership because she believed the 2020 election was correctly decided, that they kicked her out because she wouldnt stop talking about it. And like, what they want is to keep the peace at any cost. And like, that is, to me, the central vulnerability of the party, that they will forever try to keep the peace internally, even as the compromises that means making become more and more horrific, and even as that means then allowing their base to go down a path that they cant recover from, because at some point, like, it goes so far you really cant challenge it. And I think probably [INAUDIBLE] the Republican Party is already there.

Thats right. And thats why theyre sort of stuck in this position. And as Lee Drutman says, thats one of the problems with the two-party system, is that it requires a zero-sum mentality. Every election is zero sum. One of the parties is going to win the thing.

Its also true that the Republicans are uniquely vulnerable to this because theyre much more homogeneous, racially and religiously, than Democrats are. And so theyre much more focused on sort of purity and loyalty and staying exactly with what the party is doing at all times, whereas Democrats are a huge mix of people who are all kind of talking in different directions. And its easier for that to happen in a really heterogeneous mixed group. And in previous work that I have with Julie Wronski, we actually found that Republicans are much more sensitive to people who dont fit the mold, the social mold of Republicans.

People will discount other Republicans who arent the correct combination of identities, and theyll even identify less as a Republican themselves if they dont fit that white Christian paradigm. Whereas with Democrats, you can be kind of any collection of identities that you are, and you still feel like a Democrat. So I do think the Republican Party is particularly vulnerable to that, which, again, just piles on to all of the other sort of institutional problems that are in the way of trying to calm things down and create more concern for actual democracy and equal representation and equal protection. Right? Thats just another thing on the list of why its going to be hard for us to defend democracy against these forces.

So I do want to question on the Democratic side, because I do think this is a genuine weakness of the Democratic Party, whether its true that you can be any collection of identities and feel comfortable as a Democrat. And I think the biggest weakness of the Democratic Party is that it often makes people feel stupid or retrograde. The leaders of it, the kind of atmosphere of it, which is not to say like every individual Democratic politician or person, but the partys kind of cultural structure has just become, like, much more dominated by college-educated liberals and postgrad liberals. And like, theres a lot of knowing the right language. You know, like using Latinx and things like that. Like, that is the sorting in the Democratic side that makes me most concerned, which, of course, like, I, as a nerdy college-educated guy with glasses who likes to do a lot of podcasts with political scientists, is probably not exactly helping. But the sorting on education, the education polarization, like, thats a real issue for the Democratic Party. In many ways, I think class was, like, a healthier cut for them.

But there are a lot of people who, they tune in and it doesnt feel like them. Joe Biden has helped on that a lot. I think Joe Biden is somebody who a lot of folks feel like theyre in his tent and well liked by him, but Biden is, in many ways, a very throwback politician, where if you look at the ones vying to be the leader of the party in the future, I dont think its quite as open, particularly if youre not somebody who shares a lot of the kind of fundamental language and concepts.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the key thing to specify here, though, is that these are white Democrats. So race and class are sort of cutting against each other in a lot of ways in contemporary partisanship. And its generally kind of the rural white Democrats who feel looked down upon, sort of less educated white Democrats. And I can see that being true. And part of the reason, I think, that they can be attracted to somebody like Trump is that just based on the psychology.

When you have a person whos feeling like they are low status in society, that other people in the society look down upon them, theyre going to cling much more strongly to identities that are high status. Thats partially why its a white phenomenon, right, because people who feel looked down upon who have a white identity can then cling to that identity, can hold on to that and use that to help them feel higher status. And that becomes, then, a threat to that identity.

Thats a vulnerability thats always existed in American, among American white society. And part of the education part of it is that in institutes of higher education, institutions of higher education, there is sort of a language that people learn. But part of that language is due to these institutions trying very hard to be as inclusive as possible. Thats whats happening on college campuses, is that the kind of push for the fully multiracial, egalitarian society that the Democratic Party wants for democracy, thats what college campuses are trying to live right now. And theyre probably the most egalitarian places in the country at this point.

So exposure to that type of place creates sort of an acknowledgment of the current social hierarchy, the things that are unfair within it, and it also does create this language that says, if you use language that dehumanizes another person, thats bad. You shouldnt do that. And youre going to be socially sanctioned for that. Obviously, that would be really embarrassing and feel really condescending to someone.

And then Trump can come along and say, look at all this PC bull crap, you know, that everybody is telling you to do. You dont have to do that. So the education relationship I do think is related to this sort of social inequality phenomenon. These are the places where I think the institutions are trying the hardest to maintain a sort of peaceful, egalitarian place. Now, theyre certainly not succeeding, all of them, but I think that they are trying more than, for instance, like a corporate boardroom.

I think thats true, but let me indulge my inner reactionary here for a minute on this, because within the colleges and I think were talking here a little bit more about elite colleges than the just sort of, like, say, community college world I think a lot of things begin with the idea that they can be inclusive, and they end up being exclusionary, they end up being guild-protecting, they end up being other things. And I think youre seeing this in the electorate, right? It is true enough that a lot of what is going on is about the racial divisions in society. Its of course the case that some of the things that are upsetting people about speech is that they cant say things that are racist. And so like, Im on board with you cant say things that are racist or you get socially sanctioned.

But you know, Latinx is an example people use a lot. That is not the way most people who are covered by that designation talk about themselves. So like, saying youre using inclusive language that people dont use about themselves, I mean, I get the kind of academic argument for it, but its getting into a weird place. And youre starting to see this, I think, play out in elections that are not exactly conforming to these theories of electoral inclusion that particularly elite Democrats are putting forward.

I mean, you have Eric Adams in New York, who wins the Democratic mayoral primary with this very working class multiracial coalition, running very much against a lot of these trends of the Democratic Party, on crime, but just also on the way Democrats talk about things, a lot of like, as you said, the sorting is mostly among white voters, so Democrats still have a lot of more conservative and moderate Hispanic and Black voters in the coalition. In the 2020 election, Democrats do better among white voters, and thats part of how Joe Biden wins, but Donald Trump made real gains, particularly with Black voters, with Hispanic voters, to some degree, with potentially Asian voters.

So theres got to be some questioning on the Democratic side about if you are driving a pretty intense political theory thats supposed to make you a more inclusive party, but the trends are going actually a little bit against you on that, like, is it working? Like, do you have to rethink where maybe a good motivation, but then a set of, like, tactics and internal group dynamics have actually gotten you?

Yeah. So I mean, I think the Latinx things a little overblown. Like, I used the word Hispanic and Latino all the time, and Ive never been socially sanctioned for it.

Yep, agreed.

And yeah, Im a professor, right? Im constantly surrounded by people who know the term, just they dont get that mad at me. So the Trump appeal among Black and Hispanic mainly men, actually, voters, but so one of the things, going back to this study that we did where we looked at peoples attitudes in 2011, the people who had animosity towards any of these four groups were not all white, right? There was a pretty mixed bunch, actually.

And so within that group are African Americans who dislike L.G.B.T.Q. people, right, or Hispanics who dislike Muslims. You can harness hatred from a lot of places. And thats really what Trump was so good at, just harnessing whatever grievance, whatever hatred you have, and putting it to electoral political use. So its not like non-white people are immune from prejudice. And those who hate other groups are possibly going to appreciate something that Trump has said thats against one of those groups, or any of those groups.

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Opinion | How Identity Politics Took Over the Republican Party - The New York Times

The meaning today of the "Big Lie" almost always refers to the false claim by Donald Trump and his right-wing cronies that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen by the leftand Joe Biden, with the help of foreign agents.

Not only is this claim false,it isabsurdly false.

This is hardly the first Big Liefrom the right. Not even close. The righthas been promulgating Big Liesfor decades.

In fact,lying is the only waythe right wing can win elections. After all, itspolicies are profoundly unpopular with ordinary people because the right-wing favors the 1% rich over the 99% working and middle classes.

How in the world could 1% of the population ever win elections over the 99%? Simple. The 1% bamboozles the 99%. To win elections, the rightmust conceal its true intentions from the voters and instead engage in manipulative tactics, like lying and fearmongering.

The lies are not just little lies.They are whoppers. They are the complete opposite of the truth. They are 180 degrees from the truth. They are the polar opposite of the truth, like from the North Pole all the way to the South Pole. Hence the term BigLie.

Yet, shockingly, many of these egregious lies actually work. They take hold. They create a false impression in the mind of the public.

One of the egregious lies that has taken root throughout society, and remains persistent today, is the false notion that dictatorships and fascism are associated with the left.

Once again, this is the exact opposite of the truth. Dictatorships and fascism are right-wing, not left-wing.

This "Big Lie" grew out of the aftermath of World War II and the emergence of the Cold War in the extreme backlash against communism and the Soviet Union. This was the era of the "Red Scare" and lying Republican demagogueJoe McCarthy, a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, who falsely smeared innocent liberals as being dangerous communists, destroying their careers and lives. This period ranks among the most shameful in American history.

During and after the Cold War, the rightundertook a relentless campaign that rages on to this day of falsely smearing Democrats and the leftas the cause of authoritarianism, like the horrendous dictatorships of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler in Germany, Fidel Castro in Cubaand Hugo Chvez in Venezuela.

In fact, the rightso maligned the concept of "socialism" and the profoundly influential thinker Karl Marx that"socialism" remains a poisonous word to this day, often wieldedas a weapon against Democrats and liberals.

Republican candidates accuse Democratic candidates of being diabolical "socialists" and claim that Democratic policies such as Medicare for All, child care, or taxing the rich are evil "socialism." Republicans allege that electing Democrats will turn America into a failed socialist state like Venezuela.

Shockingly, this nonsense actually works.

When people hear "socialism," they often think of Stalin and Hitler. They have been incorrectly conditioned to associate Stalin and Hitler with the left wing, and wrongly conclude that left-wing policies lead to totalitarianism.

This is a Big Lie.

The truth is that left-wing policies, broadly speaking, are popular and beneficial to society, while dictatorial regimesare right-wing, with policies that are unpopular and horrendous for society. So how did theseopposites become associated with each other? How is it that beneficial policies from the left wingof the political spectrum, became mixed together with dictators from the right wing of the spectrum?

To understand all this, keep in mind the two basic forms of government that are opposite to each other. And let us indeed oversimplify for clarity. One form of government is monarchy, which is rule by a king or a dictator. The otheris democracy, which is rule by the people through popular vote of their elected officials. Monarchy and dictatorshipare right-wing, while democracy is left-wing.

Historically, governments were primarily monarchies, which are essentially dictatorships. Just think of all of the European countries and world empires that were ruled bykings and queens or their equivalents, such as England, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Russiaand on and on.

Along came the liberal Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, whichcelebrated liberty of the individual and emancipation from the strictures of monarchy. These new ideas led to the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, including the American Revolution of 1776, in which the United Statesdeclared its independence from the King of England, thereby giving birth to modern liberal democracy. France soon followed with the French Revolution in 1789, overthrowing the French monarchy.

Unfortunately for the working class, however, even the elimination of monarchies did not improve their plight as they had hoped. From approximately 1850 to 1880, Karl Marx came along and explained the problem. Even though monarchies were receding, a new oppressive force was emerging:capitalism.

The Industrial Revolution was underway, and this new system of capitalism was creating great wealth and control at the top for a tiny minority, while simultaneously oppressing the vast number of workers in the middle and lower classes by forcing them to work long hours underdifficult conditions for paltry wages.

Marx provided a solution. He observed that the working class (the 99%) overwhelmingly outnumbered the rich at the top (the 1%), and thus the working class could transform its massive size into political power by uniting together in a cohesive political movement. Workers of the world, unite!

This is a powerful idea. Extremely powerful. This idea filled the suffering working class with great hope and inspired them to attempt to join together in unity in order to seek greater fairness for workers.

At the same time, Marx's idea struck fear into the hearts of the ruling rich at the top. They knew full well that Marx was exactly right that the unification of the working class would pose an existential threat to the dominance of the rich at the top and to their vast fortunes.

The world was shocked as it watched Marx's theoretical idea come into actual fruition in the Russian Revolution of 1917 when the working class united in the Bolshevik party led by Vladimir Lenin and overthrew Czar Nicholas II and the Romanov dynasty, ending the Russian Empire and creating the Soviet Union.

But Lenin fell ill not much later, became weak and disabled, and died in 1924. Within a few years,Joseph Stalin seized control, consolidated his power, and ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist for three decades,until his deathin 1953. Stalin is now justly regarded as among the worst dictators of the modern era. Stalin created a deplorable totalitarian state, waged a campaign of murder and imprisonment againstmillions of political dissidents (as well as imaginary enemies)and repressed human rights, free speech and any version of democracy.

Sowhat is the assessment here? Was the Soviet Union left-wing? Was Stalin left-wing? Are dictatorships left-wing? Is totalitarianism left-wing?

This is exactly what the rightalleges today. Republicans claim that electing Democrats would result in turning America into a socialist or communist regime like Russia under Stalin. Many Americans believe this, associating Stalinist repression, dictatorship andtotalitarianism with the political left.

This is a Big Lie. The truth is entirely different.

The truth is that the communist movement in Russia in 1917 began as a left-wing movement that was positive and beneficial for society. After all, the population was in fact suffering grievously from oppression under theRussian monarchy. The working class united, as Marx had suggested, in order to bring fairness to government and improve the lives of ordinary people. This movement was inspired and driven by positive motives.

Unfortunately, it was hijacked by a right-wing dictator in Stalin, steered into the opposite direction, and transformed into a right-wing totalitarian state, all under the false pretense of being a left-wing movement. This too was a Big Lie.Stalin falsely proclaimed to be governing under left-wing principles for the people, when in fact he was concentrating power into his own hands and governing as a right-wing dictator.

This transformation of the Soviet Union by Stalin from a beneficial left-wing movement into a hideous right-wing dictatorship was masterfully described by George Orwell in his famous novel from 1945, "Animal Farm." That book, summarized here, tells an allegorical tale about animals on a farm who rise up in revolt, banish the humans from the farm, and seek to govern themselves on the farm under a free and democratic animal society.

The story is essentially a retelling ofthe Russian Revolution, with the animals representing theworking class revolting against the humans that represent the Russian monarchy. The new democratic animal society represents the new left-wing society sought by the working-class revolutionaries who created the Soviet state.

But then, one particular pig on the farm, who represents Stalin, seizes control through lies, propagandaand violence, transforming the farm from a beneficial left-wing movement into a horrendous right-wing totalitarian regime. As in real life, the initial rebellion on the farm began as a positive development to improve the lives of the working animals, but then the entire movement was seized and transformed into adictatorship.

Therefore, to say that Stalin, dictatorshipsand totalitarianism are left-wing is the exact opposite of the truth. It is indeed a Big Lie.

Russia, of course, is not the only example. When Republicans claim that the left-wing and Marxism results in authoritarianism, they cite not only Russia but also various other regimes, like those of Castro in Cubaor Chvez in Venezuela.

To be sure, a number of dictators have proclaimed themselves to be Marxist, socialist, and left-wing as did Stalin. This does indeed create the false impression in the public mind that these dictatorships are left-wing when, in fact, they are not. Just like with Stalin, these dictatorships are right-wing, not left-wing.

So why have so manydictators claimed to leadleft-wing, socialist governments? For avery good reason. Think about the situation from the perspective of a right-wing, wannabe tyrant who desires to seize control of a government. What campaign message should the wannabe tyrant communicate to the population?

Should the tyrant tell the population: "I am a devious person.I want to be a dictator whocontrols everything myself. I want tosuppress all the working people, corrupt the governmentand steal loads of money by abusing my power"? Of course not.Tyrants who desire to become dictators cannot possibly tell the truth. In order to seize power and remain in control, tyrants must lie to the people, misrepresenting themselves as someone they are not.

Clearly, tyrants should pretend to be someone who can offer whatthe people desire. Many tyrants falsely proclaim to be Marxists, socialistsand left-wingers because the ideas of the left are broadly popularamong the oppressedclasses in many countries around the world. And for good reason:Left-wing policies would indeed improve the quality of life in most societies.

Once in office, the tyrants do not truly implement left-wing policies, but instead rely on totalitarianright-wing policies, such as consolidating their own power, restricting democracy, aligning with the wealthy, imprisoning political dissidents and so on, all while falsely proclaiming to represent theleft.

Consider the example of the Nazi Party. Its name was a Germanabbreviation for the party's full name, the National Socialist German Workers' Party.Politicians from the right,to this day love to pointto the words "Socialist" and "Workers"as proof that the Nazis were sincere socialists somehow affiliated with theleft,and that electing Democrats or "democratic socialists" somehow risks turning America into Nazi Germany.

This is the exact opposite of the truth. Hitler was a perfect example of aright-wing dictator and the Naziswere a right-wing fascist movement. They co-opted the language of the left to some degree. That was a Big Lie.

This is exactly the playbook followed by right-wing dictators:They falsely pretend to representa leftistmovement that favors the working people, because left-wing policies are the best way to win popular support. Once in power, dictators abandon left-wing policies and instead implement right-wing authoritarian policies.

This dictator's playbook has been used again and again.Castro in Cuba and Chvez in Venezuela are often cited as examples of "left-wing dictators," largely because theyimplemented various left-wing policies designed to benefit the working class, including widespreadpublic education,public health care and income redistribution.

But implementing a few left-wing policies does not magically convert a right-wing dictatorship into a left-wing democracy. The societies ruled by Castro and Chvez were never left-wing democracies, and cannot truly be considered "socialist." They were overwhelmingly defined by right-wing attributes, includingstrongman rule, a one-party monopoly on power, suppression of free speech,false propaganda glorifying the regime, persecution ofpolitical dissidents, the restriction or elimination ofdemocracyand so on.

Another example isthe People's Republic of China, which is ruled by a "Communist" party ostensibly based in Marxism. Right-wing politicians often cite China as an example of a left-wing state, and an example of what Democrats have in mind for America.

Of course, this is nonsense.Does anyone really believe that China is a "People's Republic"? as its name proclaims? Of course not. Thistoo is a Big Lie, is the dictator's playbook on full display. China falsely proclaims to be a left-wing government in order to win support from the people, but in practice, China operates as an authoritarian regime that implements all the right-wing techniques of wielding power.Indeed, China's leader, Xi Jinping, eliminated term limits and cleared the way for him to remain as president for life. (Xi was praised for this by none other than Donald Trump.)

If Karl Marx were here today, he would be appalled by all of these countries that falsely invoke his name and ideasin order to impose right-wing governments of domination and control. This is precisely the opposite of what hehad in mind, which was a vision ofrobust democracy and rule by the ordinary people.

This is not to say that Marx offered a magic solution in communism, which he did notoutlinein practical terms. Indeed, the theory of communism may be riddled with many problems and contradictions, although it's fair to say it has never reallybeen implemented anywhere in the world.

While Marx may not have provided a workable solution, hedid provide an accurate diagnosis of the problem:Unbridled capitalism results in unacceptable inequality, withof a small minority of the rich at the top (the 1%) grievously exploiting the vast majority of the population(the 99%). This imbalance remains the central problem plaguing our society to this day, more than 150 yearsafter Marx first described the problem.

Unfortunately, the Big Lie used around the worldis alive and well right here in America today. Indeed, it is the defining characteristic of the entire Republican Party, with Donald Trump offeringa prime example.

Trump's presidential campaign in 2016 was significantly focused on appealing to the blue-collar working class by promising to implement a number of popular left-wing policies.To be sure, Trump also campaigned on plenty of right-wing appeals, such as opposition to immigration, xenophobic nationalism, overt racism andsexism, gun rightsand so forth.

But Trump intentionally sought the support of blue-collar, working-class voters by promising left-wing policies. He promised a new health care system with universal coverage for everyone at a mere fraction of the cost. He promised he would stop U.S. corporations from shipping jobs overseas, and would bring jobs back to America. He promised he would never cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. He promised to get tough on Big Pharma and cut the high cost of drug prices. He promised a massive investment in America's infrastructure, like roads and bridges. He promised to tax the rich, including himself, and to provide a massive tax cut for the middle class.

But once Trump was elected, of course, he abandoned all these promises of policies that would benefit the working class, instead implementing right-wing policies that benefited large corporations and the rich at the top, including granting a massive tax cut to himself and the rich, slashing regulations for big business, seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act and seeking to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

This is exactly the dictator's playbook fordeceiving the population. Trump followed it faithfully. Hisentire presidency was based upon a "Big Lie."

In America along with some other Western countries, an outward difference is that the rightdenounces "socialism" rather than falsely clothing itself in socialism. In America, the right-wing (falsely) claims that "socialism" equals authoritarianism while capitalism equals freedom.

By contrast, in manynon-Western countries where anti-capitalist sentiment runs high, the rightdoes not necessarily attempt to claim that capitalism is good. Instead, the rightfalsely claims to be socialists, when it is actually authoritarian. But the essence remains the same in both cases.The right wing falsely claims to favor the working class and democracy over the rich and authoritarianism, when the truth is exactly the opposite.

In America today, the threat of authoritarianism overthrowing democracy is clear and present. As usual, this threat is not coming from the leftbutfrom the right. Look no further than the Republican Party. Trump went so far as to incite an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election that he had lost fair and square, and thereby overthrow democracy in America, while falsely claiming that the purpose of his insurrection was to stop the leftfrom stealing the election. Once again, the rightfalsely claims the exact opposite of the truth and falselyblames the left forthe very offenses the rightitself is committing.

The Republican Party will no doubt continue with its tactics of claiming the exact opposite of the truth. So let us all be informed about the truth. The left wing is not authoritarian. In truth, it seeks robust democracy in direct opposition to authoritarianism.

Authoritarian regimes around the world that claim to be "socialist" or Marxist, such as China and Cuba, are not proof that "socialism" is authoritarian. In truth, these regimes falsely claim to be left-wingin order to win support fromthe population whenthey are actually right-wing authoritarian regimes in direct opposition to left-wing democracy.

The Democratic Party is not authoritarian, and does not seek to create an authoritarian regimesuch as those in China or Cuba. In truth, the Democratic Party favors robust democracy in direct opposition to authoritarianism.The right wing is the side of the political spectrum that favors authoritarianism, and it has repeatedly led to dictatorships and totalitarian regimes.

Yes, authoritarianism poses a real threat in America today. As usual, this threat is not coming from theDemocratic Party, butfrom the right-wing Republican Party, which falsely claims that the Democratsseeks authoritarianism. In truth, it is precisely the other way around: TheRepublican Party poses a real threat of overthrowing democracy and imposing authoritarian rule in America today. This is the dictator's playbook in action, and the biggest of Big Lies.

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Republicans claim to fear left-wing authoritarianism but there's no such thing - Salon

At the first House select-committee hearing on the January 6th insurrection, last week, four law-enforcement officers presented excruciating details of their efforts to protect the Capitol and the lawmakers inside it from the mob that sought to disrupt the certification of the Presidential election. Aquilino Gonell, a Capitol Police sergeant, recalled how rioters set upon him, doused him with chemical irritants, and flashed lasers into his eyes. Michael Fanone, of the D.C. Metropolitan Police, said that he was Tased and beaten unconscious, and suffered a heart attack. Harry Dunn told of being taunted with a racist epithet that no one had ever, ever called him while he was wearing the uniform of a CapitolPolice officer. Daniel Hodges, the youthful Metropolitan Police officerwho was recorded on video beingcrushed in a doorway, used a single word twenty-four times to describe the people who rampaged through Congress. He called them terrorists.

Shortly after the insurrection, R.P.Eddy, a former director of the National Security Council, suggested on NPRthat the reason the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. had missed every glaring sign of what some members of the group that Donald Trump liked to call his army were planning for the sixth had to do with the invisible obvious. It was difficult for officials, Eddy explained, to realize that people who look just like them could want to commit this kind of unconstitutional violence. Representative Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, one of two Republicans who joined the committee, against the wishes of the House MinorityLeader, Kevin McCarthy, noted something similar in his opening statement. We never imagined, he said, that this could happen: an attack by our own people fostered and encouraged by those granted power through the very system they sought to overturn.

When Officer Hodges used the word terrorist, he was demanding that the obvious be made visible. This is also the essential task of the committee: to assemble a comprehensive record of January 6th showing that those who entered the Capitol were not, as Trump said, a loving crowd but political extremists, incited by the President and abetted by Republican members of Congress and other government officials, whose deference to a seditious demagogue represents an ongoing threat to the country.

The insurrectionists, however, called themselves patriots, seeming to believe that bearing the American flag earned them that title. To most people, the flag symbolizes the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. But at the Capitol it was brandished as a weaponalong with the Trump flag, the Confederate battle flag, and the thin-blue-line flagin an attempt to undermine what the committees chair, Representative Bennie Thompson, called the pillar of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. The insurrectionists, in calling themselves patriots, had absorbed a fundamental lesson of the Trump Presidencyhow to pervert language so that the things you say are the opposite of what they actually mean.

That lesson was on display on the morning of the hearing, when Representative Elise Stefanik, who was once a vocal critic of the former President but has since become his willing enabler, stepped up to a bank of microphones outside the Capitol, alongside McCarthy. The American people deserve to know the truththat Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility, as Speaker of the House, for the tragedy that occurred on January 6th, Stefanik said, alleging that Pelosi had prioritized her partisan political optics over the safety of the police. The Speaker of the House is not, in fact, in charge of security. But at least, one could argue, the woman who is now the third-ranking Republican member of the House recognizes that the events of January 6th were tragic.

Stefanik ascended to the leadership position because Representative Liz Cheney was ousted from it by her fellow-Republicans, this spring, for challenging Trumps lies that the election had been stolen. No member of Congress should now attempt to defend the indefensible, obstruct this investigation, or whitewash what happened that day, Cheney, who joined Kinzinger as the only other Republican on the committee, said at the hearing. Or, as Sergeant Gonell put it, What do you think people considering becoming law-enforcement officers think when they see elected leaders downplaying this? Nevertheless, both McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, said that they had been too busy to watch the officers testimony.

Meanwhile, members of the now defunct America First caucusa small cadre of House Republicans led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose attempt to promote Anglo-Saxon political tradition proved too retrograde even for other Trump loyalists in Congressgathered outside the Department of Justice. Before hecklers could chase them away, they championed the more than five hundred people who have been charged so far in connection with the assault. Paul Gosar called those still in jail awaiting trial political prisoners, following the lead of Louie Gohmert, who, in May, on the House floor, said that they were political prisoners held hostage by their own government. This theme has become a talking point on the far right. Trump, too, has embraced it. Recently, on Fox News, he questioned why such tremendous people had been incarcerated.

The House select committee will reconvene sometime in August. Before that, according to Thompson, it is likely to begin issuing subpoenas to people, including some in the government, who may have known about events leading up to and surrounding the insurrection.Now that the Justice Department has allowed former officials to provide unrestricted testimony, Trumps Attorney General William Barr and his acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen are likely to be called. So are members of Trumps inner circle, including Representative Jim Jordan, who spoke with him that day. (Jordan was one of two Republicans nominated to the committee by McCarthy and rejected by Pelosi, for having challenged the legitimacy of the election and for calling the committee impeachment round three, after which McCarthy pulled all five of his nominees.) Its unclear if officialswill honor subpoenas or ignore them, as happened during Trumps two impeachments, potentially forcing a protracted legal battle.

If they choose to obstruct the committee, the obviousan invitation to incite and carry out future acts of insurrectionwill be visible for all to see. The pillar of American democracy may yet be the final casualty of January 6th.

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Why Republican Leaders Ignored the January 6th Hearing - The New Yorker