According to Philip Bump the data shows that this idea that a bunch of young, white Andrew Tate/ Joe Rogan dudes were the key to Trump’s victory in November is simply not correct. In a way, its something much more disturbing:
YouGov has been tracking Trump’s favorability since early 2016 as part of the work it does for the Economist. The polling firm shared quarterly averages of the president’s numbers since then. What we see is that there has been an upward trend of support among younger U.S. citizens, while the views of older Americans have remained fairly flat.
The increase since early 2021 has been higher among young men than women (18 points vs. 11 points) but that is again a function of race. White men under 30 have gotten three points more favorable to Trump than White women in that age range. Non-White men now view Trump 29 points more favorably, a jump that’s more than 20 points bigger than the increase among non-White women.
He points out that the younger generation is much less white in general which means that these shifts have a larger effect o the overall population of young people than the rest of us but the partisan shift is interesting as well, particularly when it comes to gender:
Since 2016, White men under the age of 30 have gotten 17 points more Republican on net while young White women have stayed about the same. The gap in partisan identity among young White men peaked in 2021 and has since declined, landing just above where it was in 2003.
The shift among young non-White men has been much larger — more than 30 points since 2016. That’s true of both those under 30 and those aged 30 to 44. The shift among younger non-White women has been 25 points on net in favor of the Republican Party since 2016.
Younger non-White Americans, though, remain much less Republican than younger White Americans. We’re describing the change, not the end point. In the 2024 Gallup data, about 58 percent of young White men said they were Republican or Republican-leaning. Among young non-White men, 39 percent did. Among young non-White women, that figure fell to 28 percent.
Ok, that’s good. But why the shift among non-white young people toward Trump in any case? It’s not a gender gap apparently and it’s not about issues:
If we look at policy views — rather than ones centered on politics — the argument that there’s been a significant divergence on gender erodes further.
[…]
“The bottom line is we don’t see a ton of evidence of a rightward shift among 18-29 year olds in this data,” Schaffner said in an email. “Perhaps that’s occurring on other issues that we aren’t capturing here, but even when you look at questions about racial attitudes and sexism there still isn’t anything too dramatic.”
The same holds for recent polling from The Post. On a question about Trump’s efforts to exceed his authority since returning to office, young men are less likely than men overall to say that he was acting within his authority, and the gap between men and women under the age of 30 was lower than any group of respondents aged 40 or over.
[…]
That non-White Americans (and, as the VoteCast and Edison exit polls suggest, Hispanics in particular) shifted to the right in the Trump era is not new. What the data presented above suggests is that the decline in racial polarization explains more of the shift among younger people than does gender.
I find that incredibly depressing and I have no explanation for it. These particular kids aren’t voting like their parents which I guess may be understandable but why in the world are they so enamored of Trump? They don’t agree with him and it doesn’t seem to be about young men going for the macho party or the macho dude. Even the younger Black and Latino women have moved toward him. Is it just because they, like many of their white counterparts, now see him as normal and are just going along for the ride? I don’t get it.
Even if one of his minions actually wrote that under his name, he knows about it because the media here and all over the world picked it up. It was incredibly provocative and caused a huge amount of consternation. His smug look says it all.
It has apparently been decided that the toddler in chief has to be allowed to swing his very tiny hands around so they’ve come up with a framework for a”deal” that will put the revenue from the extracted rare earth minerals into some kind of an investment fund to be shared between the two countries. There are no details and it really adds up to nothing at least at the moment. Trump will say that he won’t offer any security guarantees and treat Zelensky like shit in the meeting if he wants to while loudly proclaiming that he’s the greatest deal maker the world has ever known.
In the end it adds up to nothing new. We knew that when Trump won he would leave Ukraine out to dry and give Russia whatever it wanted and that’s basically what’s happening. But in order to keep him from making things even worse everyone has to pretend that he’s a genius and a God so here we are.
I will say that Trump is so driven by malice at this point that I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulls something worse to stab Ukraine, and specifically Zelensky, in the back before it’s all done. I don’t think he’s done with them yet.
As they deport innocent children, they invite psychopaths back into the country:
Self-proclaimed misogynist social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have been allowed to leave Romania on a private jet bound for the U.S. despite facing rape and human trafficking charges that are still pending, CBS News’ partner network BBC News and the French news agency AFP reported Thursday. Citing sources in Romania, the outlets said the Tates, who are dual U.S.-British nationals, were flying to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Prosecutors in Romania have alleged for years that Andrew, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36, set up a criminal enterprise in the country and in Britain in 2021, along with two women, and used it to sexually exploit multiple people.
As you can see by that video, Andrew Tate is a psychopath who has made his name as a violent misogynist. Trump has intervened to bring him home:
The Financial Times reported earlier this month that the Trump administration was pushing Romanian authorities to return the Tate brothers’ U.S. passports and allow them to leave the country.
Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu told the Euronews outlet recently that Mr. Trump’s envoy Richard Grenell had raised the case with him at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, but denied that he was pressured.
Even some Republicans are appalled:
Governor Ron DeSantis says the Tate brothers aren’t welcome in the state, and his attorney general is exploring legal options:
You may recall, he has a particular advocate in the Trump inner circle:
Trump counselor Alina Habba to Andrew Tate: “Nice to meet you. I’m a big fan” (Andrew Tate is facing trial in Romania for rape and human trafficking.) pic.twitter.com/jtKOmt7xPS
Trump is so insane with anger and resentment that he’s going out of his way to show that there are no limits to his depravity as he seeks his revenge. This one’s for E. Jean Carroll and the other women who accused him. It’s one big fuck you to all of them.
Update: This from Tristan Tate right after the election says it all:
People have been convinced that “woke” is the big problem in our culture. Really???
Supreme Court of North Carolina (Photo: nccourts.gov)
All Jefferson Griffin wants to do is this: he just wants to find 735 votes, which is one more than he needs because he won the state. Got it?
The N.C. Supreme Court is playing a John Roberts hand in overturning the last unsettled election from 2024. The contest is for a seat on their own court. Incumbent Justice Allison Riggs (D) won reelection by 734 votes after multiple recounts. But since Republicans had an overturn strategy in their back pocket for use in case Donald Trump narrowly lost North Carolina, they deployed it instead to ask courts to overturn state Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s (R) loss to Riggs. Citing the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the state constitution, they are challenging the validity of 65,000 early or absentee ballots already counted. The bulk of Griffin’s challenges are based on alleged incomplete voter registrations of voters, some of whom (like most of you) have voted for decades.
This obscure race may seem unimportant to where you live. It is not, because “if Republicans succeed in stealing Riggs’s seat based on HAVA, they will deploy the same tactic wherever and whenever they lose elections going forward.”
The three buckets of contested ballots included those cast by overseas voters who did not submit a copy of their photo IDs, voters who never previously resided in North Carolina and individuals whose voter registrations were allegedly incomplete. Opponents of Griffin maintain that the challenges are baseless and emphasize that affected voters complied with all of the state’s voting rules as required.
A Wake County superior court ruled for Riggs in early February, throwing out Griffin’s protest after the state Board of Elections rejected his vote challenge along party lines. And then last week:
The state Supreme Court has rejected a request to speed up the case Judge Jefferson Griffin brought against the state Board of Elections in his attempt to win a seat on the high court.
The State Board and Justice Allison Riggs wanted the case to go right from the trial court, where they won, to the Supreme Court, skipping the Appeals Court. Griffin opposed the move.
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the Board and Riggs’ request in a 4-2 vote.
Riggs has recused. The case now goes from the trial court to the Court of Appeals for review.
Republicans hold a 12-3 seat margin on the Court of Appeals. Judges hear cases in teams of three.
If the Appeals Court rules in Griffin’s favor, and the Supreme Court splits 3-3, the Appeals Court decision will stand. In a previous order, three of the Republican Supreme Court justices indicated they are open to Griffin’s arguments.
If the Supreme Court had split 3-3 after agreeing to take the case directly from the trial court, the trial court’s decision in favor of Riggs and the Board would have stood.
Four Republican justices voted against having the case skip the Appeals Court.
In John Roberts fashion, the Republican justices don’t want their robes soiled by overturning a free and fair statewide election, especially by throwing out thousands of votes from a mix of Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliateds. They would draw national condemnation and ignite a firestorm locally. They prefer to let the state Appeals Court do the dirty work. That’s why they rejected the request by the State Board and Riggs to take the case directly. This gives the court conservatives a shot at a 3-3 split on a ruling that lets an Appeals Court decision in Griffin’s favor stand … after taking a Roberts court amount of time to prove how serious their deliberations were. Having the state Supreme Court take the case directly might have been Riggs’s best shot but a Supreme Court nightmare.
About those alleged incomplete registrations, Griffin, his attorneys, and consultants allege that the bulk of those 65,000 ballots were from voters “whose registration records lacked either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number,” reports WUNC. But do they? (emphasis mine)
Griffin’s lawyers have argued that counting the challenged ballots violates state laws or the state constitution. Lawyers for Riggs and the board have said the ballots were cast lawfully and that Griffin failed to comply with formal protest procedures. A board attorney recently said that at least half of the voters that Griffin challenged over driver’s license or Social Security numbers actually did provide one.
That data simply doesn’t appear in the voter database Griffin’s consultants searched.
NC Associate Justice Allison Riggs
The Student Voting Rights Lab at Duke and North Carolina Central Universities reached 23 students among the over 700 Duke and roughly 400 Central students whose votes Griffin challenges. They found an even higher percentage:
But research by the Student Voting Rights Lab into the voter registration histories of student voters reveals the absence of negligence on their part. We have thus far located 23 Duke students in the Griffin challenge who either retained copies of their original voter registration forms or who requested copies of them from the Durham County Board of Elections after learning they had been challenged.
Given the fact that all of them are listed as having incomplete voter registrations in North Carolina’s voter registration database, we expected most of them to have left the Social Security number section blank in their voter registration forms. What we discovered, however, was striking and consistent. Of these 23 students, 22 correctly listed the last four digits of their social security numbers. Our research is ongoing. But the compliance rate to the Social Security number requirement – at 96% — is stunning.
The 23rd student had provided her driver’s license number when she first registered. That makes 100% compliance in the small sample.
The lab’s founder and co-director, Gunther Peck, a Duke professor of history, said in a Feb. 17 interview that Griffin is trying to have it both ways. Griffin insists that overseas ballots are invalid for not including a photo ID that was not required for overseas absentees. But he’s also insisting that ballots from early voters whose digital records do not include a driver’s license or Social Security number are invalid even though those voters had to present their photo IDs to vote. Griffin wants them disenfranchised over clerical errors.
Griffin’s challege heavily targets four large North Carolina counties that lean heavily Democratic. For some reason, Peck notes wryly. Plus, his challenge offers challenged voters no remedy for addressing what he claims is a registration deficiency, just disenfranchisement in his race. The state certified the rest months ago.
Since his initial shotgun approach to mass voter disenfranchisement, Griffin has honed in on about 5,500 overseas military voters who did not submit a photo ID with their absentee ballots and roughly 500 eligible voting-age citizens born overseas who never lived in North Carolina. The latter are treated as residents under state and federal law based on where their parents last lived. Griffin wants them disenfranchised as nonresidents nevertheless. Conveniently for Griffin, these are voters not likely to testify in court.
In ruling against Griffin and for the State Board and Riggs regarding “Incomplete Voter Registrations,” the “Never Resident” voters, and the “Lack of Photo Identification for Overeas Voters,” the Wake County judges ruled in each category that “The Court concludes as a matter of law that the Board’s decision was not in violation of constitutional provisions, was not in excess of statutory authority or jurisdiction of the agency, was made upon lawful procedure, and was not affected by other error of law.”
What starts in Atlanta doesn’t stay in Atlanta
This scheme is coming soon to an election near you. Even if the Republican attempt to steal this North Carolina state supreme court seat fails, expect to see this tacic reappear in other close red state races.
What matters immediately is which slice(s) of voters the Appeals Court uses to rule for Griffin (if it does) and how many votes that shifts in his direction.
All Judge Griffin wants to do is this: he just wants to find 735 votes, which is one more than he needs because he won the state. Donald Trump premiered that shtick in Atlanta. It didn’t end there.
In the meantime, Democratic members of Congress also hold town halls and meetings. Here is @RepPaulTonko from New York. His constituents aren't happy, as they want him to do more to stop the destruction of government.#DemsUnited#DemVoice1pic.twitter.com/aPKF0V9Of4
Fox host and loyal Trump ally Sean Hannity told a listener who was pleading for the jobs of military vets in the federal government that “there will be other opportunities.” The caller elaborated on their experience: “One of our tenants just recently got laid off from the USDA, and he’s a stable vet, multiple deployments overseas. And yeah, the guy is without a job now, and I’m just afraid that, you know, stuff like this is going to get out there.” The caller noted Hannity’s “soft spot for military and police and EMS and all those guys” and said that it’s “just a little concerning that we don’t let these guys, you know, fall off the wagon here and get neglected, because they’ve done so much for our country.” [Premiere Radio Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show, 2/21/25]
Another caller to Hannity’s show asked him to stand up for “rank and file” agents: “This appears to be a misstep in the wrong direction.” Hannity responded by saying, “There are going to have to be hard questions for rank and file members in terms of their priority and whether or not they challenged some of the higher-ups.” [Premiere Radio Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show, 2/5/25]
A listener called into The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show to say that they are “not happy with his [Trump’s] recent comments on Ukraine.” Travis appeared to cut the caller off, asking of Russia’s war with Ukraine, “How do you think this should end?” [OutKick, The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, 2/21/25]
A caller into Hannity’s show who described themselves as a “strong supporter of this administration” pleaded for advice with the firings: “How do you make life decisions?” Hannity responded by saying, “The main focus is going to be on limiting the bureaucracy. How many of these jobs are redundant? … Just make yourself as essential as possible.” The caller elaborated: “Mr. Musk talks about cutting, you know, $2 trillion. Well, that’s beyond what the entire discretionary budget every year is, you know, roughly 1.7, 1.8 for discretionary. You would have to eliminate everything, the entire federal government to hit that.” [Premiere Radio Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show, 2/6/25]
A caller to The Alex Jones Show accused Trump of “lying” about birthright citizenship: “If they want to pass this, we’re going to get rid of 150 million U.S. citizens.” Jones responded by asking the caller if they like the “Chinese flying here one week before they have their baby, getting all their health care paid for?” The caller expressed that their “concern is I was born in this country.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 2/20/25]
A Canadian listener called into Hannity’s radio show to discuss boycotts there against the U.S.: “You’ve disrespected us to this point, and we have to respond.” The caller told Hannity that Canadians are “buying Canadian” and are not going to Florida for vacation, concluding that the “boycott’s already begun.” Hannity retorted: “Who would be hurt worse by” a “boycott war” between the U.S. and Canada? [Premier Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 2/25/25]
A caller told Hannity, “I cannot agree with you on the Gaza situation.” They continued, “As far as making those people leave their land and not being able to return, that’s just totally wrong.” Hannity defended Trump’s plan as “rebuilding Gaza, creating jobs, [and] building innovation,” to which the caller responded “that’s not innovative. That’s racist,” because “the president said those people cannot return” and “most of these people don’t have anything to do with Hamas.” When Hannity claimed that “the people in Gaza voted in Hamas’ leadership,” the caller told him that “what you’re saying is that everybody there is a terrorist, and that’s racist.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 2/13/25]
A listener called into Hannity’s show to discuss their child’s cancer diagnosis and advocate for cancer research funding: “With the lack of funding, basically, all you get is parents like me who have had a kid with this, starting organizations and coming up with money to carry on the research for them. So that’s why I wanted to call and … advocate for research.” Hannity responded by arguing that “most of the solutions for cancer are going to be found in the private sector, not with public money.” The caller noted that “with such a small number of kids getting this [cancer diagnosis], yeah, it’s definitely something that doesn’t get looked at as much.” Hannity responded that “even if the government spent … $300 million on this particular cancer tomorrow, it’s not going to be your answer.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 2/12/25]
Chris Stigall, host of The Chris Stigall Podcast, noted that he’s received “quite a bit of outreach from you federal workers.” He read one email from a listener who remarked that “it’s difficult to get beyond your disrespect and disregard for federal employees.” Stigall noted that the email is “not the only one of these that I got on both X and in email.” Stigall responded to the reader’s email: “I’m going to talk to you like an adult here for a minute. Grow up. Grow up. If you work for the federal government, you need to grow up, respectfully.” [The Chris Stigall Podcast, 2/24/25]
A caller to Fox host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show accused Trump of trying to “bribe” people with DOGE dividends. The caller noted, “The last tax break that Trump gave was $1.9 trillion and 65% with the people making over a $130,000 a year. … If you’re going to get after the excess spending, you have to go after a military waste and the rich — make the rich pay. Instead, he’s trying out for a $5,000 bribe to people.” [Fox News Radio, Brian Kilmeade Show, 2/21/25]
A caller to Fox host Mark Levin’s radio show makes impassioned plea concerning the legal status of his fiancé: “We’ve been planning on getting married now for a few months. And it seems like I’ve read on the news now that, if you were paroled into the United States, you can’t file any forms, for immigration.” The caller also expressed concern with people turning against Ukraine, where his fiancé and her family are from. [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 2/19/25]
It’s interesting because these shows have screeners so I assume they wanted their audiences to hear these complaints so that the hosts could knock them down. I don’t think they actually did. Those retorts are lame and I would guess that a lot of listeners get that.
The best way to make people understand what’s going on is to relay real stories of real people being affected by this chaotic purge. I’m surprised they are even letting them on the air. They have to realize that even allowing them to voice their pain is a mistake but it’s entirely possible they are so filled with bravado and hubris that they think their lame rationales will be convincing. And in fairness, they probably are to quite a few of their listeners. But I doubt it’s convincing to everyone.
House Republicans are becoming weary and wary of in-person town hall meetings after a number of lawmakers have faced hometown crowds angry about the Trump administration’s push to slash government programs and staffing.
Party leaders suggest that if lawmakers feel the need to hold such events, they do tele-town halls or at least vet attendees to avoid scenes that become viral clips, according to GOP sources.
A GOP aide said House Republican leaders are urging lawmakers to stop engaging in them altogether.
The town halls, and the rash of negative headlines, have been the first bit of public blowback for members who face voters next year. And the new reluctance to hold them indicates there are bubbling concerns about the impact the cuts could have on the GOP’s chances of holding its thin majority in the House next year.
The viral nature of video clips spreading from one district to another means a bad confrontation in safe Republican territory could influence voters in battlegrounds.
Good luck with that. Pissed off people are not going to be silenced. They should know that having been the beneficiaries of the Tea Party back in 2010.
By the way, in that mid-term, the Democrats lost 53 House seats and six Senate seats. That was after Obama had won by a huge margin compared to Trump last November. I don’t know that such a landslide can be possible in these days but you never know. I certainly wouldn’t bet on them holding their majority in any case.
Trump has been fixated on snapping up minerals. He doesn’t just want Ukraine’s resources, which include lithium, titanium and uranium. He’s also interested in getting access to Russia’s geographical wealth, including so-called rare earth elements like neodymium and promethium. (He appears to mistakenly believe that Ukraine has big stores of rare earth minerals as well.)
“I’d like to buy minerals on Russian land too if we can,” Trump said on Tuesday. “They have very good rare earth.”
But is Trump overestimating the importance of these minerals? Rare earth metals have been touted as critical to producing components like magnets and batteries for high-tech applications. And geopolitical hawks worry that China is by far the world’s biggest supplier of materials like yttrium.
But Bloomberg Opinion’s Javier Blas argues that they aren’t as essential as is commonly perceived (a myth that he says was spread in part by Ukraine last year):
At best, the value of all the world’s rare-earth production rounds to $15 billion a year — emphasis on “a year.” That’s equal to the value of just two days of global oil output. Even if Ukraine had gigantic deposits, they wouldn’t be that valuable in geo-economic terms.
Say that Ukraine was able, as if by magic, to produce 20% of the world’s rare earths. That would equal to about $3 billion annually. To reach the $500 billion mooted by Trump, the US would need to secure 150-plus years of Ukrainian output.
I quoted from a piece in the Telegraph a while back comparing the Trump mineral deal to the treaty of Versailles, and it contained this, which I didn’t focus on in the piece:
Talk of Ukraine’s resource wealth has become surreal. A figure of $26 trillion is being cast around for combined mineral reserves and hydrocarbons reserves. The sums are make-believe.
Ukraine probably has the largest lithium basin in Europe. But lithium prices have crashed by 88pc since the bubble burst in 2022. Large reserves are being discovered all over the world. The McDermitt Caldera in Nevada is thought to be the biggest lithium deposit on the planet with 40m metric tonnes, alone enough to catapult the US ahead of China.
The Thacker Pass project will be operational by next year. The value of lithium is in the processing and the downstream industries. Unprocessed rock deposits sitting in Ukraine are all but useless to the US.
The lithium bubble has long since burst. Shanghai lithium carbonate price per tonne:
It is a similar story for rare earths. They are not rare. Mining companies in the US abandoned the business in the 1990s because profit margins were then too low. The US government was asleep at the wheel and let this happen, waking up to discover that China has acquired a strategic stranglehold over supplies of critical elements needed for hi-tech and advanced weapons. That problem is being resolved.
Ukraine has cobalt but most EV batteries now use lithium ferrous phosphate and no longer need cobalt. Furthermore, sodium-ion and sulphur-based batteries will limit the future demand growth for lithium. So will recycling. One could go on. The mineral scarcity story is wildly exaggerated.
Recall that Zelensky himself offered up a mineral deal last September as a way to get American buy-in to support the cause over the long term. Lindsey Graham persuaded Trump that it was an amazing deal for America. The Ukrainians wanted a security guarantee for the deal and it doesn’t appear they are going to get it. But on the other hand, they may have played the greatest dealmaker on earth about the minerals in the first place.
Trump will claim that he just made a thousand trillion dollar deal that will make America rich and end the war and bring peace on earth or whatever. But in reality, it looks like it’s much less than meets the eye.
If it guaranteed continued support for Ukraine, it would definitely be worth it. But as it stands it’s just another fluff job to make Dear Leader feel like a winner. But since Trump’s almost completely drive by a seething desire for revenge against people he believes have wronged him (and Zelensky is one of them) maybe it makes sense for Zelensky to pretend like he’s been forced to grovel and capitulate to Trumps demands in order to at least keep him from making things worse.
Lawyers for President Trump in line to take top jobs at the Justice Department sparred with Democrats on Wednesday over whether the administration could simply ignore some court orders — an early skirmish in a larger fight over the White House’s efforts to claim more sweeping presidential powers.
The debate, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, unfolded as three nominees testified during a confirmation hearing to join the upper ranks of the Justice Department. Two of the nominees, Harmeet K. Dhillon and D. John Sauer, have long worked as personal lawyers for Mr. Trump.
The third, Aaron Reitz, selected to lead the Office of Legal Policy, was questioned about an old social media post in which he suggested that Mr. Trump follow the example set by President Andrew Jackson, who ignored a Supreme Court order in 1832.
“There is no hard and fast rule about whether, in every instance a public official is bound by a court decision,” he said Wednesday. “There are some instances in which he or she may be lawfully bound and some instances where he or she may not be lawfully bound.”
Mr. Sauer, who has represented Mr. Trump before the Supreme Court and is the solicitor general nominee, was pressed on the same point. He replied, “It’s hard to make a very blanket, sweeping statement about something without being presented with the facts and the law.”
I thought there was a chance that Trump wouldn’t go so far as to ignore the Supreme Court but since Musk is on the warpath there’s a good chance he might. Musk knows how to rev him up good.
