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Category: Politics

1918 Germany has a warning for America

1918 Germany has a warning for America

Jochen Bittner writes: It may well be that Germans have a special inclination to panic at specters from the past, and I admit that this alarmism annoys me at times. Yet watching President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign since Election Day, I can’t help but see a parallel to one of the most dreadful episodes from Germany’s history. One hundred years ago, amid the implosions of Imperial Germany, powerful conservatives who led the country into war refused to accept that…

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Why it’s reasonable to describe Trump as a fascist who attempted a coup

Why it’s reasonable to describe Trump as a fascist who attempted a coup

Eric Levitz writes: Trump’s “coup” was surely quixotic. But it delegitimized our electoral system in the eyes of a large minority of the public, while also creating incentives for Republican officials to administer elections in a more partisan manner going forward. Before November 3, Georgia’s Republican secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, was a rising star in GOP politics. After the Peach State went blue, and Trump cried fraud, both of Georgia’s GOP senators called for Raffensperger’s resignation, all for the…

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Sociology’s race problem

Sociology’s race problem

Robyn Autry writes: With Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests spreading across the globe this year, this ought to be a moment when sociologists cast valuable light on how racist thinking affects everyday life. Sociology is, after all, deeply invested in its Others; racial others, gendered others, economic others, indeed every other other, is at the focal point of the discipline, even if too narrow a lens is applied when studying some of these social others. Sociology should matter now more…

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Rev. William J. Barber II: Healing the soul of the nation will take more than a return to ‘normal’

Rev. William J. Barber II: Healing the soul of the nation will take more than a return to ‘normal’

Adam Harris writes: On November 7, after four days of counting votes, Democrats celebrated the end of a “long national nightmare.” And when former Vice President Joe Biden took the stage in Wilmington, Delaware, to deliver his victory speech that Saturday night, he quickly extended a hand to President Donald Trump’s supporters, who may have felt demoralized by the loss. “I understand the disappointment tonight,” Biden said. “I’ve lost a couple of times myself. But now let’s give each other…

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An inverse relationship between Trump’s success with rallies and his ability to win votes

An inverse relationship between Trump’s success with rallies and his ability to win votes

Dante Chinni writes: As the 2020 campaign wound down, President Donald Trump held rallies across the country to fire up his supporters and get them out to vote. Many saw the rallies as a sign of big enthusiasm for Trump, but the data suggest the visits did not produce the desired impact for the president. Comparing Trump campaign stops over the last two weeks of the race to election results shows that in the overwhelming majority of cases, Trump underperformed…

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Trump says Georgia’s voting system is ‘very fraudulent’; GOP fights against loss of faith in that GOP-run system

Trump says Georgia’s voting system is ‘very fraudulent’; GOP fights against loss of faith in that GOP-run system

CNN reports: At a Saturday campaign stop in Marietta, Georgia, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel attempted to persuade Republicans to vote in the Georgia Senate runoff elections, even as voters expressed ambivalence about expanding “money and work when it’s already decided.” Incumbent Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are facing tough reelection battles in two January runoff elections that could determine control of the US Senate. “It’s not decided. This is the key — it’s not decided,” McDaniel told…

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A scorched earth strategy on Iran

A scorched earth strategy on Iran

Barbara Slavin writes: When Israel engineered the assassinations of a half-dozen Iranian nuclear scientists from 2010 to 2012, supporters of these killings argued that they would help slow a nuclear program at a time when multilateral diplomacy was showing little progress. The killing on Friday of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, comes in a very different context. Iran is again producing a large amount of uranium, but it is not close to the level needed to produce a nuclear…

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Eschewing Occam’s razor, China seeks to change Covid origin story

Eschewing Occam’s razor, China seeks to change Covid origin story

The Observer reports: Nearly a year after doctors identified the first cases of a worrying new disease in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the country appears to be stepping up a campaign to question the origins of the global Covid-19 pandemic. State media has been reporting intensively on coronavirus discovered on packaging of frozen food imports, not considered a significant vector of infection elsewhere, and research into possible cases of the disease found outside China’s borders before December 2019. The…

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In key states, Republicans were critical in resisting Trump’s election narrative

In key states, Republicans were critical in resisting Trump’s election narrative

The New York Times reports: The telephone call would have been laugh-out-loud ridiculous if it had not been so serious. When Tina Barton picked up, she found someone from President Trump’s campaign asking her to sign a letter raising doubts about the results of the election. The election that Ms. Barton as the Republican clerk of the small Michigan city of Rochester Hills had helped oversee. The election that she knew to be fair and accurate because she had helped…

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Trump’s already gaming out a 2024 run — including an event during Biden’s inauguration

Trump’s already gaming out a 2024 run — including an event during Biden’s inauguration

The Daily Beast reports: In the twilight of his presidency, Donald Trump is discussing different ways to disrupt the impending Joe Biden era, chief among them by announcing another run against him. According to three people familiar with the conversations, the president, who refuses to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election as he clearly did, has not just talked to close advisers and confidants about a potential 2024 run to reclaim the White House but about the specifics of a…

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EPA’s final deregulatory rush runs into open staff resistance

EPA’s final deregulatory rush runs into open staff resistance

The New York Times reports: President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency was rushing to complete one of its last regulatory priorities, aiming to obstruct the creation of air- and water-pollution controls far into the future, when a senior career scientist moved to hobble it. Thomas Sinks directed the E.P.A.’s science advisory office and later managed the agency’s rules and data around research that involved people. Before his retirement in September, he decided to issue a blistering official opinion that the pending…

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How Democrats suffered crushing down-ballot losses across America

How Democrats suffered crushing down-ballot losses across America

The New York Times reports: Just a few seats shy of a majority in the State House of Representatives, Democrats in Pennsylvania this year zeroed in on Republican-held suburban districts, where disdain for President Trump ran hot. One of their prime targets was in the North Hills suburbs outside Pittsburgh, which are home to big brick houses, excellent public schools and “the fastest-trending Democratic district in the state,” according to Emily Skopov, the Democratic nominee for an open seat there,…

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Withdrawal from Afghanistan may be Trump’s gift to Joe Biden

Withdrawal from Afghanistan may be Trump’s gift to Joe Biden

Mark Perry writes: You’d have to be a fool not to listen to Bob Gates. The former head of the CIA, retired defense secretary and tough, outspoken, nose-to-the-grindstone amateur historian, is viewed as a sage observer of all-things-Washington. His judgments are regularly quoted, celebrated, admired and repeated. That’s important just now, as President-elect Joe Biden mounts his transition to the Oval Office, a room he’s regularly frequented, but never inhabited. Is Biden prepared? Bob Gates doesn’t think so: Biden, Gates…

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In Trump against Biden, Native American voters played a crucial role. It’s time to recognize that

In Trump against Biden, Native American voters played a crucial role. It’s time to recognize that

Julian Brave NoiseCat writes: On Election Night, CNN broadcast a table showing the results of an exit poll that broke the national electorate down into racial demographics. It read: White — 65 percent, Latino — 13 percent, Black — 12 percent, Something else — 6 percent, Asian — 3 percent. Almost immediately, that second-to-last category, “Something Else,” provoked an online uproar among the digital denizens of Indian Country. We were outraged that CNN had, rather clumsily, grouped the First Peoples…

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‘Voters, not lawyers, choose the president’: Appeals court shoots down Trump suit in Pennsylvania

‘Voters, not lawyers, choose the president’: Appeals court shoots down Trump suit in Pennsylvania

Politico reports: A federal appeals court panel forcefully rejected the Trump campaign’s effort to throw out millions of Pennsylvania ballots, declaring its allegations of misconduct meritless and its suggested remedies as “breathtaking” and undercut by a lack of evidence. “Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections,” Judge Stephanos Bibas — an appointee of President Donald Trump — wrote for the three-judge 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals panel composed entirely of GOP appointees. Bibas’ opinion, delivered just…

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Why did so many Americans vote for Trump?

Why did so many Americans vote for Trump?

Will Wilkinson writes: President Trump’s disastrous mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic probably cost him re-election. Yet it seems mind-boggling that he still won more votes than any incumbent president in American history despite his dereliction of responsibility at a time of a once-in-a-century health crisis and economic devastation. Why are President-elect Joe Biden’s margins so thin in the states that clinched his victory? And why did the president’s down-ticket enablers flourish in the turbulent, plague-torn conditions they helped bring about?…

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