Month: November 2021

Your outrage level will go to 11.

Unscrupulous investors use a Jim Crow-era law still on the books to strip distressed property owners of their life’s savings and family inheritances. Nonprofit reporting by Asheville Watchdog, a distinguished group of not-so-retired journalists (some Pulitzer-winners), has exposed how real estate investors use partition or forced sales, a practice banned in 19 states (but not North Carolina), to relieve poor property owners of land and homes that may have been in their families for generations.

Sally Kestin, winner of a 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, writes:

Many were elderly or Black homeowners in distress. Some were vulnerable to a Reconstruction-era property law abused so often that it has been rewritten in other states, but not North Carolina.

And most were left embittered or poorer by their encounters with Buncombe County real estate investor Robert Perry Tucker II, who acquired their houses and lands at far below market rates, a year-long Asheville Watchdog investigation found.

In a review of more than four dozen of Tucker’s real estate transactions since 2014, Asheville Watchdog found his companies have acquired interests in Buncombe properties for as little as $250 — or nothing at all. Many of the sales appear to have generated profits for Tucker while erasing years if not generations of home equity for property owners, nearly half of them Black.

Fewer than eight percent of county resident are Black or African American.

Part 1 of Kestin’s investigation describes the players involved and the schemes used to prey on people hard-pressed to pay property taxes or who fall behind on mortgage payments. In one case, “The family of George G. Wilson Jr., now deceased, wonders how he could have made the full, cursive signature on a notarized deed selling his share of the family house to a Tucker company when he didn’t have fingers.”

Tucker’s attorney insists, “Nothing that has been done has been illegal. Nobody has been coerced in any way, shape or form. These were all voluntary transactions.” 

They are “taking advantage of people who don’t have the life experience and background to protect themselves,” said Molly Maynard, director of the consumer law program at Pisgah Legal Services, a local nonprofit providing “free civil legal aid to people who live in poverty.”

Part 2 of the Asheville Watchdog report describes how a Jim Crow-era law allows the attorney and his associates to force sales of properties after acquiring partial interest in them from family members:

Five hundred dollars was all it took for Robert Perry Tucker II to gain an interest in an Asheville home that had been owned by a Black family since 1918. 

Two elderly heirs signed deeds selling their shares of the home to a Tucker company for $250 apiece. With their ownership in hand, Tucker’s company used a Reconstruction-era law to force a sale of the entire property, and another Tucker company bought it at auction for $3,750.

The eight heirs whose family had owned the property for a century received $445 each, the auction commissioner reported. The Tucker company that bought the property sold it in three months for $55,000.

Part 3 explains how investors exploit partition sales to

Courts often order partition sales by public auction, and the way they’re  advertised and conducted virtually guarantees a below-market price, according to research by Thomas Mitchell, a law professor at Texas A&M University and principal author of the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, a proposed law for states to help prevent abuses.

Family members who want to keep a property have limited options. Banks typically decline to accept fractional interests in properties as collateral for loans. Many heirs are cash poor, and as Mitchell puts it, unable “to outbid even a low-ball bidder.”

Advertising of the auctions typically consists of a legal description of the property in a newspaper — the weekly Weaverville Tribune for D’Ascanio’s land. Many potential bidders do not participate in partition auctions, Mitchell found, because they “never find out about such sales in the first place.”

Some states set a minimum price that must be met. Not North Carolina.

“I would liken it to a scam … If this is legal, it shouldn’t be,” Rep. Brian Turner, a Buncombe County Democrat told Asheville Watchdog. He is behind an effort to ban the practice in the next legislative session:

“For far too long unscrupulous people have been using the partition sales process to cheat people out of the full value of their property,” Turner said. “This has had devastating consequences for too many families in WNC who have seen multi-generational properties, homes, and farms sold for pennies on the dollar.”

This is perhaps the most stunning reporting I’ve seen since the 2018 Times’ special investigation of Fred Trump and the Trump Organization. It is another reason why readers need to be more involved in local politics. This is not something that gets fixed at the federal level.

How to stem the decay by artifice of our democracy? Jamelle Bouie observes, “Not content to simply count on the traditional midterm swing against the president’s party, Republicans are set to gerrymander their way to a House majority next year.”

The trend started with REDMAP in 2010, and with the gerrymandering and designs on the census by the late Thomas Hofeller. What those efforts produced is a 2021 Republican gerrymander in North Carolina in which “Democrats would have to win an unattainably large supermajority of votes” to have representation in Congress proportionate to their numbers in the state. Ten of the 14 new districts are projected to be Republican districts.

Democrats gerrymandered states such as Maryland and Illinois in the past, “but it is also true that the Democratic Party is committed, through its voting rights bills, to ending partisan gerrymandering altogether,” Bouie writes.

What to do, assuming one still believes in democracy as foundational to the republic?

Bouie examines a clause from the Constitution that could provide a remedy:

In Article IV, Section 4, the Constitution says that, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

[…]

As James Madison explains it in Federalist No. 43, it means that “In a confederacy founded on republican principles, and composed of republican members, the superintending government ought clearly to possess authority to defend the system against aristocratic or monarchial innovations.”

He goes on: “The more intimate the nature of such a Union may be, the greater interest have the members in the political institutions of each other; and the greater right to insist that the forms of government under which the compact was entered into, should be substantially maintained.”

How would that work in practice?

The Supreme Court ruled in Luther v. Borden in 1849 that Congress is charged with that responsibility. Therein lies the problem. The court has ruled in several instances (and Chief Justice John Roberts agreed in Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019) that gerrymandering complaints are “‘more properly grounded in the Guarantee Clause,’ but that the court ‘has several times concluded’ that the clause ‘does not provide the basis for a justiciable claim.’”

Sans passage of new voting rights guarantees through Congress, Bouie still finds room for hope:

Still, a broad understanding of the Guarantee Clause might be a potent weapon for Congress, if a Democratic majority ever worked up the will to go on the offensive against state legislatures that violated basic principles of political equality.

The fight to fully realize American democracy will require a vision of the Constitution that emphasizes the ways in which it facilitates democratic practice, rather than one that sees only limits — a vision rooted in the hopes of freedmen rather than the fears of a moneyed elite. And it is to that end of democratic expansion that the Guarantee Clause holds a great deal of power and potential.

But for that to happen, Republicans will need a “come to Madison” moment or else Democrats will need future congressional majorities (sans filibuster) sufficient to invoke Article IV, Section 4 to protect against “aristocratic or monarchial innovations” in each state. Except extremist state legislatures are right this minute committed to installing government by Republicans no matter how small their voting bloc in the state.

“Republican in name only” now applies to the entire GOP.

Does the “Populist Right” care about this, do you suppose? I doubt it:

A Republican senator faces serious allegations that he illegally loaned his campaign millions of dollars from his company. But the senator in question—Republican Mike Braun of Indiana—says he can’t fully answer the government’s questions because one of his key staffers “vanished.”

The Daily Beast found him within minutes.

On Wednesday morning, the Federal Election Commission released its audit of Braun’s campaign committee, alleging a litany of serious financial reporting errors, as well as millions of dollars in allegedly improper loans Braun used to finance his 2018 bid—including $1.5 million routed from the candidate’s former company.

However, the campaign claims it cannot fully comply because its former treasurer “vanished,” and they have not been able to locate him in three years.

But the campaign must not be looking very hard. It only took The Daily Beast minutes to identify and locate the man. His mother said in a phone call that she would pass along a request for comment.

The campaign’s Oct. 4 response to the audit explains that the treasurer in question, Travis Kabrick, “was, at least ostensibly, an experienced FEC compliance professional who had worked for many federal candidate committees over many years.”

However, the response adds that “at some point during the 2018 election cycle this individual began making mistakes and failing to perform his services as warranted (and for which he was being paid). He ultimately vanished, and he has not been able to be located since the end of 2018.”

In a hearing with FEC commissioners on Wednesday afternoon, Chris Gober, a lawyer for the campaign, confirmed that the campaign had still not reached Kabrick, who, Gober said, “effectively just up and left and disappeared on the committee.”

And Kabrick, Gober argued, is critical. Without his cooperation, Gober said, “we haven’t been able to obtain all the documents truly needed to address all findings.” He added that the “inability to make contact or get a response” was in fact so extreme that the campaign asked the FEC to subpoena Kabrick, though it is not clear when the request was made, or whether the agency has taken action.

An hour before the hearing, The Daily Beast had confirmed Kabrick’s current job in a phone call with his employer, as well as his location, contact information, and three social media accounts. (Twitter has suspended an account connected to the personal Gmail address Kabrick listed on campaign registration documents, but a company spokesperson did not say when or why the account was restricted.

Going by the audit’s findings, Kabrick appears to have good reason to keep a low profile. But his absence alone would not seem to cover all of the allegations, which include allegedly illegal loans from Braun’s former company.

The auditors found that Braun’s reports show more than $8.5 million in “apparent prohibited loans” to his 2018 campaign. That includes $7 million in direct loans and lines of credit—with no collateral—“that did not appear to be made in the ordinary course of business.” The FEC also “identified two checks from one corporation totaling $1,500,000 that were reported as loans.”

Those checks came from Meyer Distributing, which Braun founded, and where he served as CEO. The auditors say that fact makes them corporate contributions, which are illegal. The campaign reported them three different ways: first as “compensation” to Braun, then as redeemed stock, and finally as loans.

But that’s just the beginning. The report cites an array of violations, including millions of dollars in misreported contributions and disbursements, as well as reporting errors for another nearly $2 million in donations. The audit also flagged hundreds of thousands of dollars that the campaign paid back to Braun, claiming those repayments exceeded the legal limit—another misstep that would appear difficult to pin on Kabrick.

The report raised eyebrows among campaign finance experts.

Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at campaign watchdog Common Cause, said the allegations cover “massive violations,” including breaking a law more than 100 years old.

“Federal law prohibits candidates from receiving contributions from corporations. This law has been on the books for more than a century for the purpose of preventing politicians from being in the pocket of big corporations,” Ryan told The Daily Beast. The audit, he said, “shows his campaign likely committed massive violations of federal law through receipt of more than $8.5 million in corporate contributions.”

Ryan explained that candidates can borrow money from financial institutions in the ordinary course of business and on standard lending terms. However, he said, auditors discovered more than $7 million in unsecured loans—without Braun putting up “the typically required collateral to assure the loans would be repaid.”

As for the $1.5 million from Braun’s own company, Ryan said the loan exemplifies “special treatment from financial corporations” that “undermines the integrity of our campaign finance laws.”

“Senator Braun and the corporate lenders should be held accountable for any violations,” Ryan added.

The media loves Braun. They turn to him for “common sense” regular Good Republican. And I guess he is — he’s just a garden variety multi-millionaire crooked GOP Senator.

Campaign Finance is sadly a joke. The FEC is toothless and these rich guys will just pay fines, no sweat. It only applies to the little guys. Same as it ever was.

What the hell is this?

“Today, my Envoy Ambassador Ric Grenell visited the Kosovo-Serbia border to highlight this important agreement.”

Envoy Ambassador? Huh?

The agreements he’s apparently talking about are an economic normalization agreement from September, 2020. This is my favorite part of the CNN story about it:

Trump hailed the agreements between Serbia, Kosovo and Israel as step toward “peace with the Middle East,” although neither Serbia nor Kosovo are in the Middle East, nor have they ever been at war with Israel.

During the ceremony, the President said that Serbia committed to “opening a commercial office in Jerusalem this month and to move its embassy to Jerusalem in July.”

Trump said this agreement will make the world safer and said he looks forward to visiting both countries in the “not so distant future.”

September 2020 was a very tumultuous time and Kushner, Grenell and others were working feverishly on their ” Abraham Accords” and Trump was clueless about what they were. Apparently, they snowed him into thinking that this agreement was part of their phony “middle east peace” initiative and they tacked on the move to Jerusalem as part of it.

What “Envoy Ambassador” Grenell is doing there is anyone’s guess but I assume all parties know that he has no official role in anything at the moment. I’m not sure Trump knows that however. He seems to be living in his own world.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Chance for Peace” speech, 1953

Endless money for wars? No problem. Endless money for tax breaks for the rich? No problem. Endless money for corporate welfare? No problem. But when it comes to providing a $1,200 direct payment to the working class during a pandemic, somehow we can’t afford it. Not acceptable.
– Bernie Sanders, 12/10/20.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan finally, officially ended in August 2021 after nearly 20 years. The Pentagon lowballs the cost at a nonetheless stunning $825 billion. The “Costs of War” project from Brown University puts the costs at $2.313 trillion and estimates the costs of all U.S. post-9/11 war spending at $8 trillion, which includes future obligations in veterans’ care and financial debt for roughly 30 years. The project also estimates the human costs of the ‘global war on terror’ at 900,000 deaths. Meanwhile, Afghanistan reconstruction was allocated $145 billion, however:

an October 2020 report presented a startling total for the war. Congress at the time had appropriated $134 billion since 2002 for reconstruction in Afghanistan. but SIGAR [the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction] was able to review $63 billion of it – nearly half. They concluded $19 billion of that – almost a third – was “lost to waste, fraud, and abuse.”

That’s pretty appalling, but looking at the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all the “post-9/11 war spending,” it’s hard not to conclude that a large portion if not most of that $8 trillion (and much more in related costs) won’t have been a waste. Afghanistan has been called “the graveyard of empires” because of all the supposedly mighty powers that have failed to conquer it. Unchecked military spending, endless wars, unnecessary wars and unnecessarily prolonged wars, could aptly be called the graveyard of democracy for how they rob time, energy, money and lives that could be spent in far more worthwhile pursuits.

Going to war should require a high threshold. That is the position of basic sanity and wisdom. Some war advocates do make their cases sincerely and soberly. But bad faith and bullying are endemic to the pro-war, prolong-the-war crowd. As a 2013 post on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War covered, the Bush administration absurdly claimed that the war would cost as little as 1.7 billion. More damningly:

It also isn’t rare, even today, to hear conservative pundits insist (often angrily) that the Bush administration didn’t lie in making the case for war, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary (and plenty of misleading, dishonorable rhetoric besides). Sure, one can quibble in some cases whether those many misleading false statements were technically lies versus bullshitting versus the product of egregious self-delusion, but in no universe were they responsible. Meanwhile, it’s disappointing but not surprising that the corporate media, who were largely unskeptical cheerleaders for the war and prone to squelching critical voices, would be reluctant to revisit one of their greatest failures in living memory (let alone doing so unflinchingly).

For the Iraq War especially, it was fairly common for war advocates to go into full Joe McCarthy mode, accusing war skeptics of being traitors and un-American or even threatening them with violence. For the most part, these weren’t momentary lapses of reason, but the banality of jackassery, with obnoxious hacks feeling gleefully entitled by what they felt was a pro-war climate to act like assholes toward people they had always hated. Most of their later efforts at apology were weak, self-serving or even downright insulting. (The 2013 post has a more comprehensive account, but examples one, two, three, four and five are pretty representative.)

Such ugliness should give us pause, but the lying by government officials is arguably more troubling and almost certainly more damaging. The Bush administration lied to the American public to sell the Iraq War. The Pentagon Papers revealed that, on the Vietnam War, the Johnson administration “systemically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance.” (Nor was Johnson’s the only administration to do so.) Vietnam veteran and then-Senator John Kerry made the point more starkly when he said, “Half of the soldiers whose names are on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after the politicians knew our strategy would not work.” More recently in 2019, The Washington Post (which also published the Pentagon Papers) published The Afghanistan Papers, stating, “A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

This behavior is disqualifying. On the Afghanistan War specifically, we could talk about how pundits crawled out of the woodwork in 2021 to condemn finally ending the war and the way withdrawal was handled. Coverage on Afghanistan exploded in August 2021 after being relatively low for six to eleven years, and far too much of the new coverage omitted crucial context. For example, the Bush administration could have ended the war all the way back in November 2001, not long after the initial invasion. Why did it drag on for almost 20 years? Meanwhile, the Trump administration took several actions that forced an abrupt departure. Surely that merited mentioning when discussing withdrawal? Afghanistan has a complicated history most Americans don’t know, and the U.S. strategy failed to deal with competing factions and corruption in the country. Although some people continue to be sincerely concerned about the well-being of the Afghan citizenry and refugees, most of the pro-war, pro-occupation crowd has never seriously considered such issues and planned for them; they only seem to care about the Afghans as props in bad faith arguments. Withdrawal was very popular with the American public, but not with military contractors and many in the Beltway crowd. Guess which viewpoint dominated the coverage? (For more, see Digby one and two, Tom Sullivan, driftglass one and two, the Poynter Institute, The New Republic, Emptywheel, Strangely Blogged, First Draft, Jon Perr and Jim Wright.)

Criticizing the withdrawal and the Biden administration is fine, but denying essential context is not – and providing context would have flipped much of the criticism. Advocates for withdrawal were definitely challenged in a way advocates for staying largely were not. How many journalists and moderators pushed the pro-war, pro-occupation crowd with something like, “You’ve had 20 years, three presidents, 2.2 trillion dollars, and you still haven’t been able to get the job done in Afghanistan. Why should we believe you’ll get it done now? Why should we give you any more time and money?” Or perhaps, “the Afghanistan papers show that U.S. officials have been lying to the American public and have known for years that war cannot be won. Given that, how can you justify staying?” Or even, “Considering all the blood and treasure your views have already cost, why should we give your criticisms of the withdrawal any weight?”

To be fair, some critics focused on the nature of the withdrawal and did not criticize withdrawal itself. Yet while U.S. intelligence agencies did predict a collapse, they were surprised by how quickly the Taliban took over Kabul. And too much coverage focused on the nature of the withdrawal and sidestepped whether withdrawal was good or necessary, and also sidestepped that any withdrawal was going to be pretty messy. This lead to strikingly imbalanced, context-free coverage, where somehow Biden could be pilloried (perhaps justifiably), but Bush, Obama, and Trump mostly got a pass. Responsible journalism requires explaining who created and exacerbated the mess and not pretending the previous 20 years didn’t happen. If that weren’t bad enough, in many media discussions, there were still pundits arguing that the war was “sustainable” and the U.S. was wrong to leave. “Yeah, U.S. officials completely lied to the American public – and knew the war was unwinnable – and this has cost us trillions of dollars already – but it’s still wrong to withdraw” would be an honest argument, but obviously not a convincing one. Those factors are awful on their own, but together they are utterly damning. Once you lie to the public this profoundly and pervasively about an issue as important as war – which, ya know, causes people to die, which is a fault that cannot be undone – you have lost all credibility and just need to shut the hell up. And even if we eliminate all the many liars and hacks, the act of pressing for war, or to continue war – especially with no end in sight – should be a weighty affair. War advocates should be pressed hard and held to account. As it is, advocating for war is typically granted an undeserved veneer of respectability and seriousness, even when its very real human costs are never discussed. The shallow and dishonest war advocates far outnumber the serious ones. And in some Beltway circles, being excited for a war others will fight and die in is socially acceptable or even encouraged.

It’s also worth considering U.S. military spending in general. There’s a saying that the United States is “an insurance company with an army.” United States military spending in 2020 was a staggering $778 billion. The next closest nation was China, at $252 billion. In third place was India at $72.9 billion. The U.S. routinely outspends the next 10 or 11 nations combined every year, and some of those are U.S. allies. To use another metric, the 50th anniversary of the moon landing in 2019 lead to many great stories about the space race, and some pieces mentioned the cost, roughly $25.8 billion. But at least one commentator pointed out that during the same era, the Vietnam War cost about as much in a single year as the entire space race. It’s estimated that the Vietnam War cost the U.S. $141 billion over 14 years. So the space race was much, much cheaper and produced research and innovation that had countless civilian applications and spurred many other developments. The Pentagon has never passed an audit and waste is endemic; it simply fabricates numbers but receives little pushback from Congress. This is not a new problem; Chuck Spinney started called out wasteful military spending in the 1980s and continued until his retirement in 2003. Decades earlier, Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose military credentials were impeccable, memorably warned in his 1961 presidential farewell address:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

To pick one noteworthy example, the F-35 jet is a much criticized and expensive aircraft, and the costs of the F-35 program (some of which may be hidden) keep escalating. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in April 2021 that the Department of Defense “plans to acquire nearly 2,500 F-35 aircraft for about $400 billion. It projects spending another $1.27 trillion to operate and sustain them—an estimate that has steadily increased since 2012.” Despite criticism for years, the program’s astronomical spending just continues.

Just imagine if military spending were reduced, still leaving the U.S. as number one, but say, to beat China and not most of the world. Just imagine if the Pentagon could pass an audit and eliminate waste. Just imagine if military spending prioritized technology more likely to have civilian applications. Imagine spending less on widgets and armaments and more on military personnel themselves, investing in salaries, education, and training, all of which could benefit both them and the country when they transitioned out of the armed forces. Imagine more investment in better health care for active duty military personnel and for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Conservatives believe in military spending for creating jobs and economic growth, but other domestic spending, more in the spirit of the New Deal, would deliver many more jobs and far more growth. Imagine investing in teachers, doctors, nurses, general education, libraries, parks, the arts, or any sort of human or physical infrastructure. Imagine if military budgets had to be justified and not rubber-stamped, despite the staggering amounts of money involved. Even the most ambitious proposed domestic programs typically cost a small fraction of annual U.S. military spending. Imagine if public discussions of domestic programs (such as the recent “build back better” framework, or universal health care, or many other measures) discussed the benefits to the American public and the country and didn’t focus almost exclusively on the cost. Imagine if the dynamics were flipped, and we could have rational and wise discussions of the U.S. budget and what the public really wanted and needed. For years, the Pentagon has been saying that climate change is a risk to national security. Imagine if some (or much more) of the current military spending was reallocated to fighting climate change and developing green energy. That would actually accomplish the Defense Department’s supposed mission of protecting the country while providing a host of other benefits as well. The U.S. is not lacking for better policies and better choices. It’s lacking in political will.

Bill Moyers once observed that “plutocracy and democracy don’t mix.” Unrestrained military spending and imperialism dovetail with plutocracy quite easily and dangerously, especially in the United States. Imperialism and democracy don’t mix, either. Strengthening American democracy requires confronting right-wing extremism domestically. But it also requires confronting unchecked military spending and endless wars if we’re going to avoid the graveyard of democracy.

The Pew Research Center did one of their deep analyses into the political attitudes of the American public. It’s voluminous and well worth taking some time to read it through. I thought I’d just take a quick look at the Republicans:

​The Republican coalition 

The Republican-aligned groups in the political typology are united by shared preferences for a smaller role for the federal government, a strong U.S. military and a rejection of the view that the country needs to do a great deal more to address racial inequities. But when it comes to several other issue areas – particularly views of economic fairness, immigration and foreign policy – there are stark differences between several groups under the GOP umbrella. 

Although GOP-oriented groups generally are united in placing importance on securing U.S. borders, groups within the coalition hold starkly different views about the extent to which illegal immigration is a problem in the country, as well as over the nation’s approach to legal immigration. And there is a cleavage in the coalition around views of the economic system itself: Two typology groups who both hold highly restrictive views about immigration – Faith and Flag Conservatives and Populist Right – differ over corporate power, economic inequality and taxation of large businesses and wealthy individuals. 

Ambivalent Right, the youngest GOP-oriented group, diverge from other groups in the coalition in both their weak attachment to the party and their more moderate views on social issues like samesex marriage, abortion and marijuana legalization. At the same time, Faith and Flag Conservatives, one of the oldest segments of the party coalition, are characterized by a strong Christian affiliation, extremely conservative social views and a view that government policies should bolster religious values and beliefs. 

Still, GOP-oriented groups are more united than divided over issues related to race and gender: For example, majorities across the Republican coalition say that the country has made a lot of progress on addressing racial and ethnic inequality over the last 50 years and that, looking forward, little or nothing more needs to be done. Similarly, most reject the contention that White people in America benefit from societal advantages that Black people do not have. In the same vein, majorities across GOP-oriented groups say that “people too easily taking offense to things others say” is a major problem for the country, while far fewer think that “people saying things that are very offensive to others” is a major problem. 

The most deeply conservative group in the political typology – Faith and Flag Conservatives – make up 23% of Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party, making them one of the two largest groups in the GOP coalition. Conservative across the board, they are one of the most politically engaged typology groups. Fully 88% of Faith and Flag Conservatives say their political views are conservative, including 35% who describe themselves as “very conservative.” They are overwhelmingly White and Christian and stand out for their views on the role of religion in public life. They are among Donald Trump’s strongest supporters – both while he was in office and today. Most say Trump definitely or probably is the legitimate winner of the 2020 election,  despite official counts showing that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner. And 79% say there has been too much attention paid to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

Committed Conservatives are one of the two smallest groups in the political typology; they constitute 15% of Republicans and Republican leaners. They are loyal Republicans with probusiness views and are staunch advocates of limited government; most (73%) identify as conservative. However, they differ from Faith and Flag Conservatives and Populist Right in prioritizing U.S. relationships with allies in foreign policy and in taking a less restrictive approach to immigration. While they hold positive views of Trump and nearly all voted for him in 2020, they are not nearly as enthusiastic about the former president as the two other conservative groups. And when asked to name the best president of the last 40 years, they are much more likely to say Ronald Reagan than any of his successors.

Populist Right – 23% of Republicans and Republican leaners – are one of the two largest groups in the GOP coalition, along with Faith and Flag Conservatives. They also are deeply conservative and reliably vote Republican. Yet they differ from Committed Conservative on two key dimensions: They hold hard-line immigration views and are highly critical of the economic system. They are the sole Republican-oriented group in which majorities say the economic system in the country unfairly favors powerful interests, that businesses in this country make too much profit and that taxes on household income over $400,000 should be raised. Like Faith and Flag Conservatives, Populist Right strongly support Trump, and most (81%) would like him to remain a prominent political figure, including 57% who say he should run for president in 2024. 

The other Republican-oriented group in the political typology – Ambivalent Right – also are the only GOP coalition group in which most do not identify as politically conservative. With their combination of political values, they are cross-pressured politically: While they hold nearly down-the-line conservative views about the size of government and the economic system and lean more right than left on issues of race and gender, they are far more moderate on immigration and on social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization. Only half of Ambivalent Right say the GOP represents them well​.​ Reflecting this cross pressure, a quarter of Ambivalent Right identify as Democrats or Democratic leaners.

Still, Ambivalent Right make up 18% of all Republicans and Republican leaners. They are considerably younger than those in other GOP-oriented groups and less politically engaged. They are much less likely than other groups in the coalition to say the Republican Party represents them well or to feel like they have options to vote for political candidates who represent their views. And, unlike those in other GOP-oriented groups, they have more negative than positive feelings about Trump, with 63% saying they would prefer he not remain a major national political figure. 

Stressed Sideliners, despite not having a clear partisan tilt, make up small but significant shares of both the Republican and Democratic coalitions (15% of Republicans and Republican leaners, 13% of Democrats and Democratic leaners). This group is financially stressed and relatively unengaged with politics. They generally have attitudes that place them near the center of overall public opinion, tilting more conservative than liberal on some social issues and more liberal than conservative on economic issues. And while they vote at significantly lower rates than other typology groups, 43% of them cast ballots in 2020 – with roughly half of them voting for Trump. 

It’s hard for me to see much of a difference between the Faith and Flags and the Populist Right. It’s clear that the F&Fs don’t really care about their religious teachings of patriotism. And I doubt they care much about corporations either just as the Populsts hate corporations to the extent they think of them as “elites” and that translates in all their minds as “liberal” or “woke.” I think they are essentially the same people.

The others are more interesting. The Committed Conservatives are a vanishing breed and it’s hard to see any revival on the horizon. It’s the Ambivalent Right where opportunity lies with Democrats. They are younger and, I would guess, identifying as Republican mostly doe to family and community ties. They might just be gettable with the right message.

There’s much more analysis at the report and it’s fascinating. For instance, we’ve all been fretting about the Hispanic vote moving toward the GOP and this is what they found:

Hispanic Republicans are more likely to be Stressed Sideliners than they are to be Faith
and Flag Conservatives or Populist Right. About a quarter of Hispanic Republicans (27%) are Stressed Sideliners, while just 16% are Faith and Flag Conservatives and just 14% are Populist Right; 12% are Committed Conservatives, roughly the same as the overall share of Republicans in this group, while 21% are Ambivalent Right.

I’m not quite sure how to interpret that except to say that religion and populism don’t seem to fully explain it.

I’ll take a look at the Democrats later. It’s equally interesting.

Paul Waldman observes that Republicans just love vigilantes, especially when they are baby-faced white boys with AR-15s

From the moment Rittenhouse killed [Joseph] Rosenbaum and [Anthony] Huber, he has been embraced by the right as a hero.

The Trump administration immediately distributed talking points to federal law enforcement officials to use if asked about Rittenhouse, in which they were instructed to say that he “took his rifle to the scene of the rioting to help defend small business owners.”

Conservatives quickly raised much of the $2 million for his bail….

On Fox News and other conservative media, one personality after another rushed to his defense….

Rittenhouse “should walk away a free and rich man after suing for malicious prosecution. That would be true justice in this case,” said Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire. “Kyle Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to clean up the filth left by the rioting Biden voters,” said Tucker Carlson….

So try to imagine what will happen if Rittenhouse is acquitted. Trump will issue a statement somehow taking credit for it. Fox News will fly Rittenhouse to New York for triumphant interviews. Social media will erupt with joy, as millions of conservatives cry “Suck it, libs!” He’ll appear on T-shirts and bumper stickers; maybe he’ll speak at the next Conservative Political Action Conference. And don’t be surprised if Trumpist candidates start seeking Rittenhouse’s endorsement and asking him to appear on the campaign trail with them.

There will be some Republicans who will respond to questions about Rittenhouse by saying the whole thing was an unfortunate episode and we should just put it behind us. But they will be drowned out.

Maybe I’ve missed it but I haven’t even heard that. Is there any evidence that any of them think what Rittenhouse did was even slightly misguided?

Maybe someone should ask the newest Great Whitebread Hope, Glenn Youngkin, what he thinks. After all, he is the new avatar of the Good Republican who surely understands that it is reckless and deadly for a 17 year old to illegally obtain a semi-automatic rifle and then wade into a street protest? Wouldn’t a nice fleece-vest wearing, (vastly wealthy) suburban dad like him admonish people not to do such a thing? I’m sure nobody will because there seems to be a huge media investment in portraying the GOP as reverting to normalcy based upon that one race in Virginia.

If Rittenhouse gets off, as appears likely, it will embolden Republican extremists all over the country. Of course it will.

My overall sense is that this guy is not unsmart. In debate, he is well-prepared, a fast-study, and quick on his feet, metaphorically speaking. But he’s sorely undereducated and pretty-boy overconfident and unflappable. Which leads him to believe the David Bartons of the world.

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The New York State Executive Mansion has one of FDR’s wheelchairs. “Another FDR wheelchair can be found at Roosevelt’s birthplace in Hyde Park, New York,” according to the website.

Two of four known FDR’s wheelchairs are reported in the National Park Service’s collection, one in Hyde Park at FDR’s birthplace and another at the “Little White House” in Warm Springs, Georgia.

The fourth appears to be at the FDR Library and Museum in Hyde Park.

A recent video referencing FDR’s wheelchair has no connection to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum or the @USNatArchives For more information about the FDR wheelchair in the Library's collection, visit: https://t.co/Cdcq3fjoAc.

— FDR Library (@FDRLibrary) November 10, 2021

The Instagram post is tagged Wallbuilders (nice name, right). Its website shows that it is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving its interpretation of the founding fathers' ideals, as well as preserving America as a Christian nation. They appear to have a private museum.

— Yancy (@Yancy10005) November 11, 2021

No doubt Wallbuilders found a fifth FDR wheelchair along with Jesus’s signature on a suppressed copy of the Declaration of Independence.

With the ascension of Donald Trump, conservative think tankers realized (if few would admit) that the Republican rank-and-file never believed all that limited government, low taxes, and family values hokum they churned out. With “supply-siders and national security hawks,” writes Jennifer Rubin, evangelicals made up movement conservatism’s strategic triad in its never-ending fight against godless communism, gays and abortion.

With help from conservative commentator and evangelical Christian David A. French, Rubin finds that gays and abortion now join family values as issues no longer animating evangelicals as once supposed. Surveys show that gay rights and abortion no longer have the bite they once did:

So what, then, do these voters want? Many essentially see politics as a great battle between White, Christian America and the multiracial, religiously diverse reality of 21st century America. They want someone to help them win that existential fight. Government is there not to produce legislative fixes to real-world problems but to engage their enemies on behalf of White Christianity.

“Ethnoreligious identity has become the primary battle line in the culture war,” finds PRRI’s Robert P. Jones:

Among voters who hold an unfavorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement, believe the U.S. criminal justice system treats all people fairly, or believe that racism is a minor problem or not a problem at all, more than eight in ten voted for Donald Trump. At the national level, the divides produced by these attitudes are stronger than the divides over abortion. Among those who believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, 76% voted for Trump.

Jones echoes my long-held thoughts on how the left approaches these facts:

I’ve always thought the “What’s the matter with Kansas?” thesis—or at least the cocktail party version of the book’s thesis that was so seductive to so many progressives—was condescending and wrong-headed. The assertion that people vote “against their interests” is offensively paternalistic. It betrays a lack of intellectual curiosity that fails to imagine that “interests” can be racial and religious and cultural and not just material.

As someone who grew up as a Southern Baptist on the white working-class side of town in Jackson, Mississippi, it was always implicitly clear that status, the sense of one’s place in the community and in the country, was not primarily about money.

Crudely put, it is about pecking order, about who is above whom on the social ladder. And about power: who has it and who is unwilling to share it.

Rubin writes about how hyphenated Americans give the right the heebie-jeebies:

In this context, White evangelical Christians’ attraction to the thrice-married philanderer Trump is understandable, as is their support for the cruelest immigration policies (e.g., child separation) and the anti-Muslim travel ban. It’s all about race and religious identity, not policies founded in Christian values and certainly not about finding a role model for civic virtues. Trump was determined to protect White evangelicals against people of color and the decline in Christian identification; that was all they could hope for in a politician.

For these voters, government is a means of enforcing (they would say “preserving”) domination of Whites and Christianity as essential to America’s identity. That’s why they support politicians who demonize Black Lives Matter, demand that corporations meekly accept voter suppression, express outrage over a publisher’s decision about Dr. Seuss titles or fixate on saying “Merry Christmas.” It’s also why insurrectionists marauded through the Capitol on Jan. 6 bearing Confederate flags and wearing T-shirts mocking the Holocaust. They keep telling us who they are and what they want, but well-meaning Americans and the media often refuse to accept that their fellow Americans’ motives are so antithetical to American values.

“Well-meaning” Americans’ aversion to seeing what’s in front of them has allowed Christian Reconstructionists to move into positions of power unnoticed. “Christian patriots will own and rule this nation,” North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson declared recently. He’s serious, and so are the thousands who came to hear his speech.

Like people who assumed the Earth was flat when it went unchallenged, Christian nationalists assumed this country was their God-given dominion until they saw their cultural grip slipping. Donald Trump’s fixation on being treated unfairly when he does not get his way resonates with the feeling among White evangelicals that having to share power with Others is deeply unfair.

Rubin continues (emphasis mine):

Jones underscores that this MAGA resentment translates into “fears about the rising number of Latino Americans, fears about Islam, and anti-Black attitudes tied to a ‘law and order’ mentality where African Americans are associated with criminal activity and lawlessness in major cities. You won’t need to search far to find each of these interpretations made painfully explicit in former President Trump’s speeches and in the content of the 2016 and 2020 Republican National Conventions.”

The fixation on race and Christian nationalism has serious ramifications for American political life. First, White evangelical Christians are fighting an impossible crusade against demographic inevitability (their minority status is what has fueled the MAGA movement). Because they can never win (at least in a democracy with free and accurate elections), their political venom will not abate.

Second, the aims of White evangelicals run smack into the American ideal that “all men are created equal” and constitutional protections that allow no bias against any particular religion or racial group. In that regard, they have become deeply antidemocratic.

Finally, a Democratic Party committed to social justice and racial tolerance is never going to win over the hardcore White evangelical base of the GOP. There is nothing Democrats can “give” them (e.g., jobs, cheaper health care) to satisfy their need for White Christian ascendency. That puts a premium on Democrats’ ability to organize a broad ideological coalition that is firmly grounded in democratic ideals and racial/religious inclusion.

This is not to say that Democrats should not be marketing their real accomplishments as hard as Trump does his phony ones. Democrats may not be able to win over the GOP’s hardcore White evangelical base, but in many rural places shaving GOP voting margins may be enough for Democrats to gain control of state legislatures that have become incubators for the right’s worst, most un-American impulses.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is trying to block the release of official photos of him taken on Jan. 6 as supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl told Stephen Colbert that he saw the images while working on his new book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” and said they are “wild.”

“He was in a loading dock in an underground parking garage beneath the Capitol Complex,” Karl said. “No place to sit. No desk, no chairs, no nothing. He was in this concrete parking garage.”

One photo shows Pence reacting to a tweet from Donald Trump attacking him in the middle of the siege.

“You can see, it kind of looks like Pence is grimacing,” Karl said. “But you can never really tell.”

Karl asked Pence if he could publish the pictures ― which were taken by the official White House photographer as part of his taxpayer-funded job ― but Pence blocked their release.

“I have a suspicion that the Jan. 6 committee is going to want to see the photos,” Karl said.

“Those aren’t his photos,” Colbert added.

“No, they’re your photos. They’re everybody’s photos here,” Karl replied, gesturing to Colbert and the audience.

“We paid for those photos,” Colbert added.

I guess the pictures must show him looking weak? Or angry at Dear Leader? What else could it be?

Pence is such a piece of work …