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President Biden campaigned on a proposal for a massive infrastructure plan to transform the economy and on the idea that he could work with Republicans. Trying to bring the infrastructure plan into reality forces a key decision on bipartisanship. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

President Biden campaigned on a proposal for a massive infrastructure plan to transform the economy and on the idea that he could work with Republicans. Trying to bring the infrastructure plan into reality forces a key decision on bipartisanship.

President Biden is continuing his victory lap this week after passing the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, which addressed the most immediate crises Biden has faced coming into office: a pandemic still spreading and an economy still millions of jobs short of where it was a year ago.

But if the relief bill was designed to put out the fire, Biden's next goal is to rebuild the house, with an infrastructure bill fulfilling the president's campaign promise to "build back better."

"The Build Back Better bill is the legacy bill," said Bill Galston, former domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House. "It's the bill that will define the meaning of the Biden presidency."

White House aides are reportedly compiling a $3 trillion plan that would include a wide range of priorities, including social programs and tax changes, though press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday that nothing was decided: "President Biden and his team are considering a range of potential options for how to invest in working families and reform our tax code so it rewards work, not wealth."

This is going to be an infrastructure bill that goes far beyond roads and bridges. It's designed to be a major investment in manufacturing and the technologies of the future, including 5G, a green electric grid, universal broadband Internet access, semiconductor production and carbon-free transportation.

Galston says it's a bill that could transform the country: "A country that has not invested in itself for a very long time. A country that is on the verge of losing its technological and economic superiority to the rising power at the other side of the Pacific."

That means China. Outcompeting Beijing is something that both parties agree on, and it's at the heart of Biden's sales pitch for the Build Back Better agenda.

"If we don't get moving, they are going to eat our lunch," Biden said at a bipartisan meeting of senators in the Oval Office last month, the day after he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

But Biden has a number of decisions to make about how to get that plan moving, such as how and whether to pay for what will be a multitrillion-dollar investment, what pieces of the plan should be introduced first and whether it's possible to get Republican votes, something Biden failed to do on the pandemic relief bill.

"The big question is whether the strategy for passing the COVID-19 bill is a template or whether it's an exception," Galston said.

To pass the COVID-19 relief bill, the White House came up with its plan a $1.9 trillion package. Then the Republicans came back with a much smaller offer at $681 billion. There were a few bipartisan discussions, but the gap was too big to bridge, so in the end the bill passed with no Republican support at all.

To pass Build Back Better, the White House is trying a different approach, inviting Republicans in on the ground floor to craft the legislation. There have already been bipartisan meetings at the White House and in the Senate. In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has instructed her Democratic committee chairs to work with their Republican counterparts to develop infrastructure legislation.

That would be kind of old-fashioned, but there's no one more enamored of old-fashioned bipartisan buy-in than Joe Biden. That was clear after one of those bipartisan infrastructure meetings at the White House last month.

"It's the best meeting I think we've had so far," the president said. "It was like the old days people are actually on the same page," he added.

President Biden and Vice President Harris meet with a bipartisan group of senators to discuss infrastructure on Feb. 11 Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

President Biden and Vice President Harris meet with a bipartisan group of senators to discuss infrastructure on Feb. 11

The latest thinking among Democrats is that there are pieces of an infrastructure agenda that could be broken off and passed as smaller individual bills with GOP votes, including things like universal broadband and anything that confronts China through investments in manufacturing or intellectual property protection.

But Republicans are skeptical after Biden decided to go it alone with Democratic votes only on the coronavirus relief bill.

"The notion is we could get together there because Republicans and Democrats both believe our infrastructure needs help. It's crumbling. It will help the economy if done right," said Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman on Fox News. "My concern is once again they're going to ignore the Republicans as they did this time around."

Democrats hear that and think Republicans will do what they did to President Obama refuse to compromise, then attack the president for failing to get them to compromise. Republicans do not have a lot of political incentives to compromise with Biden, and it's possible that the relationship between the two parties on Capitol Hill is just too broken for bipartisanship. Especially after Jan. 6, when a majority of Republicans voted to overturn the 2020 election, neither side thinks the other is acting in good faith.

In the White House, bipartisanship is seen as something to strive for it's part of Biden's political DNA. But in the end, as long as voters see that Biden tried hard to work across the aisle, achieving bipartisan success is not seen as a political necessity.

"The only thing that bipartisanship really buys you is some protection against the inevitable screw-ups," said Elaine Kamarck, a former Clinton White House aide and author of Why Presidents Fail. "The process of implementation, particularly on big big projects like this, there are hiccups in it. Obviously, if it's bipartisan you weather those hiccups better than you do if you've only passed it with one party. In the end, it doesn't really matter that much as long as it gets implemented."

In other words, the process isn't as important to voters as the product. Whether it's vaccines, school openings or infrastructure jobs, the idea is that voters just want Biden to deliver.

But that might be a misread of the politics, according to Galston, who thinks getting Republican votes is a political necessity for Biden because of his promises in the campaign: "That he could work harder than his predecessors did to restore the ability of the two parties, not only to talk to each other civilly, but also to work together."

Galston thinks that promise really mattered to swing voters in the suburbs who made the difference between victory and defeat for Biden. In other words, those voters took the president's promise of bipartisanship seriously and literally.

Biden was asked about his prediction that Republicans would see the light after the election during an interview with ABC News last week.

"They haven't had that epiphany you said you were going to see in the campaign," said anchor George Stephanopoulos.

"No, no, well I've only been here six weeks, pal, OK? Gimme a break," Biden said before going on to talk about how popular the relief bill was with ordinary Republicans, if not GOP members of Congress.

Then Biden revealed how important those voters are to him, eventually landing on a declaration: "I won those Republican voters in suburbia."

The president won't be on the ballot in 2022, but his agenda will be. Democrats need to do better with those Republican voters in suburbia if they are to hang on to their tiny majorities in both houses of Congress. How Biden goes about passing his next big proposal may determine whether his party wins them or not.

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Biden Infrastructure Plan To Test His Bipartisan Promises - NPR

As Peters notes,

Those include laws that would require identification for voters and limit the availability of absentee ballots, as well as other policies that Heritage said would secure and strengthen state election systems.

The other side of this effort to restrict the vote is a full-court press against the For the People Act, which would pre-empt most Republican voter-suppression bills. It kind of feels like an all-hands-on-deck moment for the conservative movement, when the movement writ large realizes the sanctity of our elections is paramount and voter distrust is at an all-time high, Jessica Anderson of Heritage Action for America told The Associated Press.

And in a recording of an address to Republican state legislators obtained by the A.P., Senator Ted Cruz of Texas warned that a voter-protection bill would spell the end of the Republican Party as a viable national party. H.R. 1s only objective is to ensure that Democrats can never again lose another election, that they will win and maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and of the state legislatures for the next century, he said.

Some of this is undoubtedly cynical, a brazen attempt to capitalize on the conspiratorial rhetoric of the former president. But some of it is sincere, a genuine belief that the Republican Party will cease to exist if it cannot secure election integrity.

Whats striking about all this is that, far from evidence of Republican decline, the 2020 election is proof of Republican resilience, even strength. Trump won more than 74 million votes last year. He made substantial gains with Hispanic voters reversing more than a decade of Republican decline and improved with Black voters too. He lost, yes, but he left his party in better-than-expected shape in both the House and the Senate.

If Republicans could break themselves of Trump and look at last November with clear eyes, they would see that their fears of demographic eclipse are overblown and that they can compete even thrive in the kinds of high-turnout elections envisioned by voting rights activists.

Indeed, the great irony of the Republican Partys drive to restrict the vote in the name of Trump is that it burdens the exact voters he brought to the polls. Under Trump, the Republican Party swapped some of the most likely voters white college-educated moderates for some of the least likely blue-collar men.

In other words, by killing measures that make voting more open to everyone, Republicans might make their fears of terminal decline a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Opinion | What Are Republicans So Afraid Of? - The New York Times

LANSING, Mich. Republicans in Lansing are proposing a slew of election bills that would change how the state handles absentee ballots and early voting. The Secretary of State and a number of voting rights groups oppose the measures.

Included in the 39 bills are requirements for voters to submit a photo ID, prohibit the unsolicited mass mailing of absentee ballot applications, and restrict the hours in which people could drop their ballot in curbside boxes.

Former Secretary of State and current State Senator Ruth Johnson (R-Holly) says the legislation, includes "commonsense measures that will protect the integrity of our elections by safeguarding the right for people to vote and ensuring our elections are safe and secure.

"We are taking steps to restore trust and the public confidence that our election systems are secure, that is so critical to the survival of a democracy, right, that that the public trusts the election process. Wee are committed to that and Senate Republicans showed that today in Lansing," says Michigan GOP Communications Director Ted Goodman.

Democrats say the legislation introduced Wednesday would suppress voting, months after some Republican lawmakers falsely claimed the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson issues a statement Wednesday on the package of bills, saying they would make it harder for people to vote.

"Rather than introducing bills based on disproven lies and copied from other states, lawmakers should be codifying what worked in 2020," said Benson. "Michigan voters demonstrated they want our elections to be accessible in 2018 when they enshrined new voting rights in our state constitution, and again in 2020 when millions exercised those new rights. Everything we do should be based on protecting the right to vote, and too many of these bills would do the opposite.

The Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, Michigan League of Women Voters and the Promote the Vote Coalition joined the Secretary of State in opposition to the bills.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Republicans propose dozens of election reforms, Secretary of State opposes bills - Fox17

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There may be no politician better suited for a moment when democracy is under attack than Stacey Abrams. A decade ago, when few saw any chance of Georgia becoming a Democratic state, Abrams pushed to invest in turning out Black, Latino and Asian American voters, who had long been overlooked by politicians campaigning in the state.

And when she ran for governor in 2018, Abrams made voter suppression a centerpiece of her campaign, underscoring the way that America fails to live up to the promise of its democracy by denying the right to vote to so many eligible citizens.

Now many of the issues Abrams has been raising for years have exploded and are at the center of American politics. The Guardian spoke to Abrams, who is widely expected to run again for governor next year, about this uniquely dangerous moment in American democracy.

How is what were seeing now similar to and different from what weve seen in the past?

The coordinated onslaught of voter suppression bills is not the norm.

Whats happened over the last 15 years has been a steady build where weve seen bills passing in multiple state legislatures over time. It was absolutely voter suppression, but it was this slow boil. Its that terrible analogy of the frog in the water as the water starts to boil. Unless this is what you do and unless this is what you pay attention to, folks like me were watching, but it was fairly invisible to the untrained eye that voter suppression was sweeping across the country, especially beyond the boundaries of the south.

What is so notable about this moment, and so disconcerting, is that they are not hiding. There is no attempt to pretend that the intention is not to restrict votes. The language is different. They use the veil, they used the farce of voter fraud to justify their actions. Their new term of art is election integrity. But it is a laughable word or phrase to use. It is designed based on anything but a question of integrity. The truth of the matter is there is no voter fraud. The truth of the matter is we had the most secure election that weve had.

And therefore, their integrity is really insincerity. They are responding to the big lie, to the disproven, discredited and, sadly, the blood-spilled lie of voter fraud. And they are responding to it by actually doing what the insurrectionists sought, doing what the liars asked for.

In your view, how linked is this to race? Would we be seeing these kinds of restrictions if there wasnt that kind of explosion of turnout among Black voters that we saw in the election?

Well, I would say its inexorably linked to race, but I want to be really clear. Black voters are of course at the center of the target, but what is happening in Arizona, what is happening in Florida is also attacking Latino voters. They are attacking the energy and enthusiasm of Native American voters. They are attacking Asian American voters. While Black voters are of course at the center because of the historical animus that seems to exist towards our participation in elections, this is also about attacking other communities of color. And we are seeing it being done with an assiduousness and an attention to detail that is, as we said before, unparalleled, except for when you look at the actions of Jim Crow.

And then the corollary is that they are also attacking young people. Because it wasnt just the increase in voters of color. It was the increase in young people and its that cross-pollination of young people of color that I think is also ginning up a great deal of this anger.

What we are seeing are also bills that are designed to thwart young people taking possession of the power that comes with their generational might. They are the largest cohort. And they showed signs of leveraging that in the 2020 election. And now we are seeing a reaction to that, a response, that is lumping them in with every other undesirable voter class, which primarily is driven by race, by age and by income.

What would the implications for our democracy be if these measures pass and are enacted and upheld by the courts?

It would be the exact intention of voter suppression. Which is that we shut duly eligible citizens out of participation in setting the course of the country.

We will not have effective responses to challenges that disproportionately harm communities of color. We will not tackle the existential crises that we face as a nation, as a world. We will not hear conversations in the legislative body about racial injustice, about climate action, about bodily autonomy.

When you can cordon off and extricate entire communities from participation, their voices are not only silenced, the policies that have allowed their participation in just our larger civic life are also chilled.

The larger ethos is this. There are those who say, Well, OK these communities get harmed, its a dismal reality, they will not be moved by that. But as I keep repeating, when you break democracy, you break it for everyone. Because while they may start with communities of color and young people and poor people, there are intersections in terms of policymaking that affect those who want to be benefited by these processes. And benefited by these policies. Theyre not going to stop with simply poor Latino voters. Theyre also going to attack wealthy Latino voters who may need to vote in a different way because of the way they make their money.

When you break the machinery, you break it for everyone. When that happens, the durability of our democracy is immeasurably weakened to the place where we become just as vulnerable to authoritarian regimes, just as vulnerable to majoritarian instincts and just as vulnerable to the collapse of democracy as any other nation state.

You were quoted the other day about the need for businesses to come in and play a larger role in taking a stand against some of these measures in Georgia and elsewhere. Have you been disappointed to see the muted stances companies have taken?

As someone who served in the legislature, I am very aware of the delayed engagement that tends to happen with the business community. And so Im not surprised by the current reticence to be involved. But I am challenging the intention to remain quiet.

We are obliged at this moment to call for all voices to be lifted up. And for the alarm to ring not only through the communities that are threatened directly, but by those businesses that rely on the durability of our democracy.

Thats my point, the fact that no one can escape the scourge. We know that the consequences of a disconnected democracy, the consequences of a lack of civic participation are that we have a weakened civil society. That costs money. When people arent invested, when they feel that they have been pushed out of participation, they have no reason to trust or to conform.

And so for the business community, it is a danger to their bottom line, to see a disconnection develop and be embedded in state laws that essentially say to rising populations that you are not wanted and therefore we are not going to countenance your participation. Because if you tell someone they arent wanted theyre going to assume you cant say anything else to them.

It is a dangerous thing for the business community to be silent.

We have a conservative supreme court, were about to undergo another round of redistricting where Republicans have a clear advantage in the states again, a green light to use partisan gerrymandering. The filibuster in the Senate. I think a lot of people look at that and its so hard for them to have hope that any of this is going to get fixed or that there is a path to fixing it. Im curious what you see when you look at those institutions and how people should think about them as obstacles to achieving full democracy?

Id begin with the most efficient tool. And that is the filibuster.

There is a credible argument to be made that the exceptions that have already been accepted for the filibuster should apply to protecting democracy.

It is unconscionable that given the visible and ongoing threat to our democracy, that had its most tragic example in the insurrection on January 6, it is unconscionable that we would not treat the protection of our democracy as an absolute good that should be subject to an exemption from the traditional filibuster rule.

Every other mechanism will take time. Every other mechanism will require the inevitability of demographic change. This is one piece that will ensure that rather than 100 years of Jim Crow, which is what we had to survive last time Congress abdicated its responsibility with regard to election law, that rather than 100 years of stasis and paralysis and ignominy, that this is an opportunity for us to get it right.

This interview has been condensed and edited

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Stacey Abrams on Republican voter suppression: 'They are doing what the insurrectionists sought' - The Guardian

Harvard researchers found that partisan sorting the geographic segregation of individuals belonging to different political parties occurs not only on the regional, state, and county level, but even within cities and neighborhoods.

Using voter file data of 180 million voters and spatial data computational techniques, Government Ph.D. candidate Jacob R. Brown and Government professor Ryan D. Enos determined that city- and neighborhood-level sorting between Democrats and Republicans is present throughout the United States. The phenomenon limits many Americans from gaining exposure to people with differing opinions, potentially fueling polarization within the United States.

The study published in Nature Human Behavior this month found that an average of just three out of 10 interactions in a residential environment for both the median Democrat and median Republican will be with a neighbor belonging to a different political party. Ten percent of Democrats have virtually no exposure to Republicans, according to the study.

It seems that, on average, a Democrat or Republican who live in the same town still have noticeably different neighbors, Brown said. The Republican within that town will cluster around a few more Republican neighbors than the Democrat will, and the Democrats around a few more Democratic neighbors than the Republican will.

I assumed it was mostly at a higher level, he added.

Partisanship is correlated with density, with Democrats typically living in more densely populated regions and Republicans living in more rural and suburban areas. The study not only supports this idea, but illustrates the severe extent to which people are isolated from voters of the other party.

Enos said the unexpected finding that partisan bubbles were forming at lower levels was particularly interesting because within smaller localities, density is typically constant.

The effects of people living grouped by partisanship remains unknown, but the negative consequences of people grouping by race and religion have been documented in studies, per Enos.

We know that when groups are segregated, that its associated with a lot of negative outcomes, he said. It can be things like whether or not they cooperate, whether or not they remain peaceful, or whether or not they like each other.

Brown said he thinks it is important for Americans to be exposed to different views in their daily lives.

We dont want to limit that kind of information and we want a clear perspective on both sides, whether its through your online network or day-to-day geographic network, Brown said.

You can imagine if you dont get to interact with Democrats as a Republican you dont interact with Democrats in your day-to-day life you might rely on nationalized stereotypes when thinking of the other party, he added.

Enos said segregation tends to be a self-perpetuating feedback loop, which complicates the question of how to best address the issue.

The thing about segregation is once segregation starts, it actually tends to accelerate, it tends to become more severe, and it becomes self-reinforcing, Enos said.

The study is part of Brown and Enoss larger Partisan Segregation Project that seeks not only to produce empirical evidence about geopolitics, but also tackle questions such as why the parties are separated and how this phenomenon has changed over time.

We want to know everything about why its happening and then as much as we can about the consequences of it, Brown said.

Staff writer Kate N. Guerin can be reached at kate.guerin@thecrimson.com.

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Democrats and Republicans Live Segregated Even within Neighborhoods, Harvard Researchers Find | News - Harvard Crimson

Millions of elderly Americans are still hunting for appointments to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Millions of younger Americans are waiting impatiently for their turn in line.

But theres one group whose members are far more skeptical about the vaccine and in some cases are actively refusing to get jabbed at all.

That group is Republicans, especially GOP men.

In a recent NPR/PBS/Marist survey, fully 49% of Republican men said they do not plan to get vaccinated a higher share of refusers than any other demographic group. Among Democratic men, the number saying no was only 6%.

The finding, which has been confirmed in other polls, has confounded public health professionals.

Weve never seen an epidemic that was polarized politically before, Robert J. Blendon, a health policy scholar at Harvard, told me.

For months, Blendon and his colleagues expected vaccine hesitancy to be a problem mainly among African Americans, whose history has been marked by neglect and abuse by medical authorities. But Black Americans, after some initial hesitance, now say they want the vaccine at the same rate that white people do.

Republicans, on the other hand, have become more resistant especially since a Democrat became president.

They dont trust the federal government and they trust it even less since Joe Biden came to the White House. They dont trust scientists, and they especially dont trust Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bidens chief medical advisor.

Many tell pollsters theyre worried that the vaccine might not be safe. Such fears have been fed by Fox News, whose star polemicist Tucker Carlson has frequently accused authorities of lying about the vaccines safety and effectiveness.

Blendon said he expects many of those Republican skeptics to come around once they see friends and relatives get immunized without ill effects.

We have to find a way to depoliticize this issue, he said. Instead of hearing Joe Biden or Tony Fauci tell them to take the vaccine, they need to hear it from physicians in their own states people who have never worked in Washington.

But some GOP politicians have decided to make resistance part of their political brand. As many as half of the 211 Republicans in the House of Representatives have refused to get vaccinated. So have at least four GOP senators.

A few, like Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, have asserted that they dont need an injection because they contracted COVID-19 the natural way. (Scientists disagree, recommending that COVID survivors like Paul get booster shots.)

In perhaps the least devastating insult of the year so far, Paul dismissed Fauci last week as a government worrywart.

Others, like freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, have defended the right not to be immunized as an exercise in individual freedom.

The survival rate [from COVID-19] is too high for me to want it, Cawthorn, who is 25, explained.

But theres a flaw in that argument: The hazards of refusing the vaccine dont confine themselves to the individual refuser. Vaccine resisters are putting the rest of us in danger, too.

Unvaccinated people who contract COVID-19, even if they dont become seriously ill, can pass the virus to family and friends.

And resisters are making it harder to achieve herd immunity, the point at which the virus can no longer find new hosts to infect. Thats when the pandemic will come to an end.

Herd immunity against the coronavirus will require between 70% and 85% of the population to be vaccinated, Fauci estimates. Its a new disease, so nobody knows the precise level, and new variants of the virus could push the number higher.

If a significant number of people do not get vaccinated, that would delay where we would get to that endpoint, Fauci warned recently.

And the longer it takes, the more people will get sick.

Paul, Cawthorn and their colleagues are casting themselves as courageous individualists. In fact, theyre acting as epidemiological moochers. Theyre free riders, relying on the rest of us to protect them by helping the country reach herd immunity.

Their relatives and friends, especially those 65 or older, should give them a wide berth. And their voters should treat them as what they are: dangerous to the health of their communities.

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Half of Republican men say they don't want the vaccine - Los Angeles Times

According to the strict rules of masculinity, manly men should not recycle, lean in a certain direction, or wear a face mask. Now, evidently, the latest unnecessarily gendered action is receiving the life-saving COVID-19 vaccine and becoming immune to a contagious illness that has killed nearly 3 million people worldwide.

With each day, more Americans become eligible for vaccination, but certain demographics are more hesitant to take advantage of the shot. According to a new NPR/Marist study, 41% of self-identified Republicans, 34% of Independents, and 11% of Democrats say they do not plan on becoming vaccinated. Americans were also broken down by race, generation, education level, and voting history, and Republican men comprise the most anti-vaccine group. Compared to 34% of Republican women, 14% of Democrat women, and only 6% of Democrat men, 49% of Republican men say they will not get the vaccine.

According to Nigel Barber, PhD, men have always been more likely to take life-threatening, deliberate risks than women. This can explain why men were more hesitant to mask up, too. Men were more likely to say masks make them feel not cool. Mask-wearing represents a stigma for men, Barber wrote in Psychology Today. Wearing a mask expresses vulnerability. As a sign of risk aversion, it is perceived as unmanly. He also wrote that men believe themselves to be lower-risk for COVID-19 than women, which is factually inaccurate.

Melissa Deckman, a Washington College politics professor who specializes in gender, told The Lily that some men just dont find vaccines manly and that succumbing to vaccination might mean admitting they are not invincible. Lots to unpack here!

Republicans have also refused the vaccine for a variety of reasons, including distrust of Joe Bidens administration, fears that the vaccine was rushed, and the belief that the virus was never life-threatening in the first place. According to Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist, some Republicans feel that by turning down the vaccine, theyre supporting their political party. Being against vaccines has been seen now as a badge or as a sign of loyalty to the Republican Party, Hotez told PBS News Hour.

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This is also very publicly apparent. Conservative pundits like Tucker Carlson have expressed doubts about the shot. Donald Trump whose voters are overwhelmingly uninterested in inoculation, according to the NPR poll got his vaccine in January, although he declined to do so publicly, and didnt even share that he had received it until this month. I would recommend it to a lot of people that dont want to get it. And a lot of those people voted for me, frankly, he recently said on Fox News. But again, we have our freedoms, and we have to live by that. And I agree with that also. (One might think Trumps supporters would be clamoring to receive the vaccine, seeing as hes repeatedly stated it was his doing. Still, 47% of his supporters dont want the beautiful shot.)

Public health officials say that between 70 and 85% of the population must take the vaccine in order to reach herd immunity, and Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned that the vaccine needs bipartisan support. The numbers you gave are so disturbing, how such a large proportion of a certain group of people would not want to get vaccinated merely because of political consideration, Fauci told Meet the Press. Weve got to dissociate political persuasion from whats common sense, no-brainer, public health things.

In other words, toxic masculinity is now a public health crisis. Literally.

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Heres The Fun New Way Republican Men Are Threatening Public Safety - Yahoo Lifestyle

President Trump lost California by a margin of nearly 30 percentage points to Joe Biden last fall. But four Republicans not only won their congressional districts in California but also flipped their districts red. Among them, Representative Young Kim, one of the first Korean American women elected to the House. Shes a Korean immigrant, a mother of 4 and one of Yahoo Finances The Next: 21 to watch in 2021.

I believe I'm the future of the Republican Party, she told Yahoo Finance. I want to be able to use my common sense background and be able to stand up for what I believe is the right thing to do.

Kim still says she thinks Trump was "a great president" and credits him with "helping our economy," but she has also shown her willingness to break ranks with Republicans, including in her vote to remove Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments.

I am my own person. And I've always run on my own record, she said. President Trump is very unique, to say the least; he's very opinionated. I supported his policies, but not necessarily his rhetoric, or his attitude or the way that he delivers his remarks.

UNITED STATES - JANUARY 4: Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., on the House steps of the Capitol. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Kim is particularly forceful in rebuking Trump for his inflammatory language about COVID-19 and Asians. "When he called it 'Kung Flu,' I said enough is enough. Leaders' words have consequences. And the leader has to be very sensitive about what they say. That comment was very insensitive and I called him out on that. And I wanted to make sure that, you know, we love immigrants, we love diversity. And this pandemic was not caused by any one ethnicity or any group of people. I wanted to make sure that my community knows that I'm with them; I understand. And that message had to be sent," she said.

While Trump continues to try to assert his grip on the GOP, Kim is striking a more moderate, common-sense approach that helped her win her seat, gaining fans on both sides of the political spectrum. Shes one of the more moderate Republican members of this freshmen class and one of the few to join The Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group in the United States House of Representatives that includes 50 members, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

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I am very focused on finding common ground, Kim said. When I was first running in 2018, I had learned about Problem Solvers Caucus. And so I had known about the work they did, how the Problem Solvers Caucus was able to negotiate a bipartisan relief efforts in December of last year. This is exactly what I went to Washington, D.C., to do. I came to Washington to get things done in a bipartisan way. So I kept my promise by hitting the ground running with my like-minded members on both sides of the aisle.

Kim is looking for areas of agreement in Bidens $1.9 trillion stimulus plan. She sees consensus for proposals on $160 billion for vaccine development and vaccine distribution.

We're not going to agree on everything, 100% of the time. ... Remember what President Ronald Reagan said You don't have to agree on everything. But if you agree with someone at least 80% of the time, that is a damn good thing. We can get a lot of things done. And I learned early on, if you don't care who takes the credit, you can get a lot of things done.

Check out more of Yahoo Finance's THE NEXT 21: 21 to watch in 2021.

Jen Rogers is an anchor for Yahoo Finance Live. Follow her on Twitter @JenSaidIt.

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Rep. Young Kim: 'I'm the future of the Republican Party' - Yahoo Finance

Students were asked if they would choose being a Republican or Democrat in a civics class. The answers were publicized, with conservative students being bullied.

INDIAN TRAIL, N.C. A Union County mother is calling for change to the curriculum after her daughter was allegedly asked if she was a Republican or a Democrat in a civics class.

During the third week of February, students in a civics and economics course at Porter Ridge High School in Indian Trail were asked, "If you had to pick: are you a Democrat or a Republican? Why?'"

Students answered the question. The answers were then posted for the class to see, the mother said, and her daughter was bullied for being a Republican.

"My daughter was worried. She said, 'I just want to cry,'" the mother said. "'Everybody is being so mean to me.'"

The mother did not want to be identified, worried about further bullying or threats to her daughter.

"These threats that, 'we'll show them!' Or, 'I can't wait until I see her,'" she said as she explained some of the threats her daughter received after the answers quickly spread around the high school.

Students took pictures of the answers that had the names of the students next to them, according to the mom. It wasn't long before students in other classes began to bully her daughter.

"I think in this climate right now, people are too politically charged up," the mother said. "People's emotions are in this. It's just creating a toxic environment."

She claimed at least one other student received threatening comments after answering 'Republican' as well.

"That teacher put a target, he outed these children," she said.

Union County Public Schools responded Thursday afternoon, confirming the lesson did happen.

"Union County Public Schools staff is aware of the parents concerns," a spokeswoman for the district said. "The discussion was a part of a Civics and Economics class in which students are learning about political parties. School administrators have addressed this matter with teachers and they will continue to have conversations about best practices for instruction."

This mother spoke with the teacher who apologized multiple times. She said she accepted his apology but she hoped there are lessons to be learned.

"He's in the best position to create peace between people who have different opinions and to kind of bridge the gap, as opposed to creating more division," she said.

She believes party affiliation is a private matter and maintains it should have never been asked in the first place.

"Most of us know that not even adults can get along about this," she added. "I don't know why we would think that teenagers would be more mature about this than we are."

The school district said the school's principal spoke with students about respecting each other and each other's opinions, but did not say if any disciplinary action was taken.

The district maintains that politics is an important lesson to teach high school students and will continue to have it in the curriculum.

The mother of the student who was bullied hopes future lesson plans in civics will start with civility.

"It doesn't have to be a hateful or dangerous environment because someone thinks differently than you," she said.

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Union Co. teacher asked students if they're Republican or Democrat in class, mom says - WCNC.com

Although the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa already announced their upcoming commencement ceremonies will be virtual and are well into planning them a Republican lawmaker is sponsoring a bill requiring Iowas public universities to hold in-person spring graduations.

House Study Bill 246, proposed this week by Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, would force the regent universities to hold traditional in-person spring commencement ceremonies during the regularly scheduled times in May and June two and three months from now.

The bill requires the campuses allow at least two guests per graduate which could mean many thousands at some of the larger ceremonies, like for undergraduates of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The universities may establish protocols for the control and prevention of COVID-19, as deemed necessary, according to the proposal.

While the UI and UNI at the start of the spring semester announced their plans, Iowa State University has said it wont announce a decision until Monday.

The campuses have reported thousands of positive COVID-19 cases this academic year and have offered a blend of virtual and face-to-face classes.

COVID-19 case numbers have been lower this semester across the campuses, which also have canceled their spring breaks to prevent high-risk travel.

All three regent universities held their spring and fall 2020 graduations online, and UI officials acknowledged the disappointment in losing the in-person experience when they announced plans to nix it again in May and June.

We know how much these ceremonies mean to our students and their families, the earlier UI announcement said. While May seems a long way off, we feel it is the right decision to make now to maintain the health and safety of the entire campus community.

ISU has reported its Commencement Advisory Committee is evaluating multiple options for commencement with a focus on safety for students, faculty, staff and guests that appropriately honor graduating students achievements.

When the campuses last year canceled the in-person spring ceremonies and far less was known about how the COVID pandemic would play out officials projected it would be a one-time change. Promising to honor graduates just the same this spring albeit virtually UI administrators recognized many of last springs graduates had planned to participate in-person this year instead.

We acknowledge the disappointment of our graduates who were unable to attend an in-person commencement ceremony in spring or fall 2020 due to the pandemic and planned to participate in May 2021, UI officials said earlier. The university will reach out to these graduates regarding opportunities to be recognized at future in-person programs to celebrate their accomplishments.

The UI graduated 5,473 undergraduate, graduate and professional students last spring; ISU graduated 5,094; and UNI graduated 1,422.

On large gatherings, the Iowa Department of Public Health references recently-updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance urging against events and gatherings. However, in a Feb. 5 health order, Gov. Kim Reynolds lifted restrictions on the size of gatherings but said I strongly encourage organizers to take reasonable measures under the circumstances to mitigate spread of the disease.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com

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Republican bill would force Iowa universities to hold in-person graduation - The Gazette