In the middle of all the high stakes political maneuvering going on in Washington, we shouldn’t overlook the importance of a little civil discourse in our own lives. Like the elegantly simple statement being made by the woman in front of me in line at the airport this morning who was nice enough to let me snap a photo.
These simple reminders help people who understand that democracy is on the ballot know that they aren’t alone. They are also seeds that we plant for people who are still trying to decide whether and how to vote.
It’s hard to understand how anyone could still be on the fence, but we don’t have to figure that out. What we need to understand is the importance of meeting people where they are and, rather than expressing surprise that they’re undecided, trying to counter some of the disinformation that’s circulating and may be keeping them on the ledge, with facts.
Last week, one of the favorite Republican political myths, that Biden is too old to be president while Trump is capable and vibrant, resurfaced.
Joe Biden out for a ride on June 1, 2024 in Rehoboth, Delaware.
Seen Trump on a bicycle lately?
Biden is 81 years old. Trump turned 78 on Friday. It’s not a significant difference in age. While both of them occasionally have to reach for a word, as so many perfectly capable people do as they grow older, the similarities stop there. But the narratives being told about the candidates’ age and ability are very different and don’t match the reality that anyone who takes the time to can readily observe.
Biden flew to Europe for the D-Day anniversary, then home, then back to Europe for the G7 Summit, and held up to the rigors of travel well. His foreign policy expertise was on full display as he deftly handled key allies amid Putin’s war in Ukraine.
What did the President’s political opponents make of his trips? Right-wing media outlets circulated video, now all over social media, that makes it appear that Biden wandered off at the G7 summit while all the leaders were gathered. But that’s not what happened. The actual video shows Biden walking over to congratulate parachutists who were part of the celebration.
You might ask fence-sitters to consider, why would anyone do this? If Biden really isn’t up to the job, right-wingers wouldn’t have to make up a story, deceptively edit video, and push it out. If they’d make up a story like that, what else are they lying about? And perhaps most importantly, why are they lying to you?
What was Trump doing while Biden was supporting our key European alliances? His teleprompter went down during a campaign speech in Nevada with awkward results.
“I’ll take electrocution every single time,” Trump said. “I’m not getting near the shark.” Okay. I’ll take the guy who is handling American business over the guy babbling about sharks every time. And maybe if some of the folks who haven’t made up their minds yet knew about it, they would too.
It’s a good time to try out a little civil discourse and encourage people to look up the actual facts and video for themselves—they don’t have to take your word for it. You can explain what is actually happening to them, but tell them to check it out for themselves. One of the benefits of having truth on your side is that you can do that. Trump’s claims about Biden don’t withstand daylight.
The GOP is still beating the “Biden crime family” dead horse when in fact, their efforts to provoke criminal investigation or impeachment have all spectacularly and publicly failed. Their key witness lied to the FBI and faces prosecution—they seem to have forgotten his existence. And despite the strong push to “get” Hunter Biden, which produced the gun charges he was just convicted on and the tax charges he still faces, no evidence surfaced that implicated President Biden in international corruption or fraud schemes MAGA Republicans have been pushing. Last September, three-fifths of American voters believed the unproven but widely repeated allegations that Joe Biden was involved in corruption. Since then, those allegations have gone from being unproven to disproven. There were even suggestions that the failed GOP witness, Alexander Smirnov, was peddling lies for Russia.
Anyone who is turned off from voting because they hear Joe Biden was as corrupt as Trump? Turns out it was all a mirage, a very successful public relations coup for Republicans.
That’s an important point to share. Suggest that your friends examine what they see on social media carefully, because it’s not all true. Concerned about Gaza? It’s worth it for a voter for whom that issue is important to take a look at the differences between Biden’s and Trump’s positions and decide which they feel better serves their concerns. Worried about climate change? Trump’s recent meeting with Big Oil—the one where he asked them to to donate $1 billion to his campaign while promising he would terminate Biden’s policies on electric vehicles, wind energy, and other plans to decrease reliance on fossil fuels—is informative. Do they really want to trust the guy who is calling for a revenge presidency? The guy who blithely attacks Joe Biden for being old, while the press seems to give him a pass on far worse.
The key point is this: democracy is the system that unlocks all of our other rights. In its absence, those rights fade away. How you are able to live your life could come down to the whims of a ruler who has only his own self-interest in mind. People still get to vote this November. They should exercise that right carefully, and cherish it, especially if they want to be able to do it in the future.
A little civil discourse can go along way. Don’t hesitate to practice. And please share the newsletter—it’s free—with folks you think might benefit from being encouraged to think and fact check for themselves.
Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, is a radical Christian nationalist who opposes democracy—and he still might not be extreme enough for his own caucus.
Reading Time: 5 MINUTES
In 2023, Kevin McCarthy made ignominious history by becoming the first Speaker of the House in US history to be ejected by his own party.
It took multiple rounds of voting, with McCarthy groveling before his party’s most extreme members, before he got the job in the first place. But he lasted only a few months before enraging them by passing a bill to prevent a shutdown. For the grave sin of governing, he was kicked out of the speaker’s chair.
Several weeks of chaos and dysfunction ensued as various House Republicans stepped forward to run for speaker and others shot them down. Finally, the infighting exhausted them enough to coalesce around a new speaker, Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson. (I wonder if Johnson won because his generic name made him seem unobjectionable.)
But despite his bland, forgettable demeanor, Johnson is no moderate. As the modern Republican Party keeps finding new depths of political nihilism to sink to, he may be the worst yet to hold the post.
A young-earth creationist
Johnson got his start working for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing legal group. He spent years arguing that abortion should be outlawed and that states should have the right to criminalize consensual same-sex relationships.
He believes that teaching evolution causes school shootings:
During a 2016 sermon at the Christian Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, Johnson said that a “series of cultural shifts” in the United States — led by “elites” and “academics” in the 1930s who were engaging with the theories of Charles Darwin — erased the influence of Christian thinking and creationism from society.
“People say, ‘How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?’” Johnson asked the audience. “Because we’ve taught a whole generation — a couple generations now — of Americans, that there’s no right or wrong, that it’s about survival of the fittest, and [that] you evolve from the primordial slime. Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there’s nobody sacred to whom it’s owed. None of this should surprise us.”“New House Speaker Blamed School Shootings on Teaching Evolution and Abortion.” Nikki McCann Ramirez, Rolling Stone, 26 October 2023.
This feels almost quaint. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a young-earth creationist in the wild. I had assumed most of them had long since moved on to QAnon.
Needless to say, the idea that belief in God prevents violence is a blackly comical absurdity. Not only is that not true, it’s the flat opposite of the truth. Human history is a bloodstained chronicle of devout believers slaughtering each other for believing in the wrong god—or believing in the right god, but worshipping it in the wrong way. Just imagine trying to tell people from the era of the Inquisition or the Crusades that religion is a force for peace that teaches us to treat all life as sacred.
The Bible records a campaign of genocide enthusiastically carried out by the Hebrew tribes against their pagan enemies. Medieval Europe is an endless battle of Catholic-versus-Protestant warfare, Christian-versus-Muslim warfare, and everyone killing and persecuting Jews. Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have clashed again and again. Western nations have subjugated, colonized, enslaved and killed indigenous “heathens” from all over the world in the name of spreading the gospel. The ongoing Israel-Hamas war is a battle between two religious sects that both believe they have a God-given right to possess the same land.
In addition to his anti-evolution views, Johnson ticks every other box on the list of Christian “antis”. Like all fundamentalists, his worldview is defined by what he’s against: He is anti-abortion, anti-gay-rights, anti-feminism, anti-climate-science. He’s even anti-divorce—believing, as many religious conservatives are starting to, that it gives women too much power. In a bid to shore up the crumbling walls of patriarchy, he wants to abolish no-fault divorce so they’ll be forced to stay in unhappy or abusive marriages.
A Christian nationalist
But, above all else, Johnson is a Christian nationalist. Like all Christian nationalists, he believes (falsely, based on right-wing pseudo-history) that America was founded as a Christian nation, and therefore a Christian view of law and morality should rule.
It hardly needs emphasizing that, when Johnson and his ilk speak of a “Christian” view, they don’t mean a generically Christian, ecumenical, big-tent view. They mean their own interpretation—a hardcore right-wing, patriarchal, anti-science, literalist reading of the Bible. They believe that this fundamentalist theology should reign supreme over every other interpretation of Christianity, not to mention all the other religions, philosophies, and worldviews in our multicultural melting pot.
The most disturbing aspect of Johnson’s view is that, because he believes America is a Christian nation, he holds that evangelical Christians like himself are entitled to rule regardless of elections. That’s why he’s against democracy.
That’s not a polemical attack. He says so himself!
Yes, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, second in line to the presidency, is an avowed opponent of democracy.
These aren’t empty words. Johnson has acted in line with them. He was one of the Republicans who voted unsuccessfully to overturn the 2020 election. He wrote a brief in support of Texas’ toweringly arrogant lawsuit to throw out the results of elections in other states that voted differently. He spread bizarre conspiracy theories about Hugo Chavez writing voting machine software.
All of this isn’t an aberration. It flows from Johnson’s Christian nationalist theology. In this monarchical worldview, Christians like him get to be in charge, no matter what. If the voters say something different, too bad for them. He believes in throwing out the “wrong” votes and handpicking the person who “should” have won.
Johnson’s anti-democratic, election-denying views mirror the general trend toward authoritarianism among conservative Christians. They were only ever in favor of democracy as long as they thought they’d win every time. When that stopped being the case, they started wanting to change the rules to suit them. From Kristin Du Mez:
I think what has escalated things in the last decade or so is a growing alarm among conservative white Christians that they no longer have numbers on their side. So looking at the demographic change in this country, the quote-unquote “end of white Christian America” and there’s where you can see a growing willingness to blatantly abandon any commitment to democracy.
It’s really during the Obama presidency that you see the escalation of not just rhetoric, but a kind of desperation, urgency, ruthlessness in pursuing this agenda. Religious freedom was at the center of that. And it was, again, not a religious freedom for all Americans; it was religious freedom to ensure that conservative Christians could live according to their values. Because they could see this kind of sea change on LGBTQ rights, they could see the demographic changes, and inside their spaces, they have really played up this language of fear that liberals are out to get you, and you cannot raise your children anymore.“He Seems to Be Saying His Commitment Is to Minority Rule.” Katelyn Fossett, Politico, 27 October 2023.
For all the danger Johnson presents, the one thing he’s not is unusual. This election-denying, freedom-refuting ideology, once the fringe of the fringe, has swallowed the entire Republican party. Anyone the party might be expected to support would hold these same beliefs.
Johnson’s elevation isn’t an aberration, but a punctuation mark. It’s a sign that, for the foreseeable future, this is the course the Republican party has committed itself to. Elections in America are no longer a choice between two points on the same political spectrum. They’re a struggle for the continued existence of democracy over those who favor fascism and authoritarian rule.
Not extreme enough
As bad as that is, there are hints that even Johnson isn’t extreme enough for some members of his caucus.
For all his repugnant politics, he has an adopted Black son. Johnson has spoken frankly about the racism his son faces and said there’s a need for “systematic change”. He’s also said George Floyd was murdered by the police: “I don’t think anyone can view the video and objectively come to any other conclusion.”
For these remarks, perpetually-furious conservative pundits have already labeled Johnson a disgrace, a fraud and a secret Democrat. The right wing has done so much to nurture their own sense of grievance, there’s a chance that they’re truly ungovernable. No human being who could run for office and win could ever satisfy them.
If that’s true, then Johnson, for all his radicalism, might not end up enjoying a longer or easier tenure than his predecessor.
In recent months, Donald Trump has been talking about bringing back the anti-Muslim immigration ban from his single term in office.
His white evangelical fanbase loves it. Almost ten years into their decline, they are more touchy than ever about losing credibility and cultural power.
Say whatever you like about Donald Trump. If it’s negative, it’s probably true. But don’t say he doesn’t know how to work a sympathetic crowd. In recent campaign speeches, Trump has been telling his crowds of followers about how he plans to handle immigrants from, presumably, Muslim-dominated countries: he’d keep out those who “don’t like our religion” and “hate America.”
This flatly illegal, completely unconstitutional, human-rights-violating promise appears to have played well to his fanbase, who are overwhelmingly white evangelical Christians who claim to adore the rule of law, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. They certainly haven’t rejected him on the basis of that promise! It demonstrates well their priorities amid their religion’s ongoing decline: to defend what turf they can, and grab what temporal power they can before their cultural power fades too much to grab anything with it at all.
Donald Trump and the last screech of white evangelicalism
“I will implement strong ideological screening of all immigrants,” the former president vowed. “If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you don’t like our religion (which a lot of them don’t), if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country and you are not getting in.”“Trump Says He’ll Ban Immigrants Who ‘Don’t Like Our Religion’,” Ryan Bort, Rolling Stone
The idea of “ideological screening” should alarm any American who cares about human rights. This is a religion test, which our laws specifically do not allow. But the kind of people who support Donald Trump don’t care. For all their fetishizing of America, its Founding Fathers, its history, and its laws, somehow his fanbase is totally fine with this kind of screening.
I’m not surprised. Donald Trump’s entire existence as a political candidate is predicated entirely on his biggest fanbase’s complete hypocrisy.
Donald Trump is still pandering about ‘our religion’
For months now, Donald Trump has been making the rounds at political rallies. He wants to be president again. That means he needs to raise support in the only real core fanbase he has: white evangelical Christians.
This group comprises somewhere between 5%-35% of Americans depending on who you consult, but they are reliable voters. According to Pew Research, he received 77% of this group’s votes in 2016, then 84% in 2020. Obviously, lots of other sorts of people also voted for him, but they tend to be the understanding sort who don’t mind him pandering so hard to this one group.
In May this year, he went off the rails ranting about immigration. Again. That’s always been a concern for conservatives generally, and white evangelical Christians in particular. Considering their stated beliefs, it’s ironic in the extreme that they’d oppose immigration and despise immigrants like they do. In fact, one 2015 evangelical-run study discovered that 90% of evangelical respondents didn’t base their beliefs about immigration on the Bible at all. (Franklin Graham even drilled down on this exact point in 2017. In response, the Washington Post humiliated him with a Bible study. Other Christians have written similar rebukes.)
Here as elsewhere, evangelicals’ unstated beliefs speak far more loudly than any vocal belief statements they could ever issue. They don’t want a Pastor-in-Chief. No, they want a tribalistic strongman who will prevent more non-Christians from entering the United States, since such immigration only dilutes their numbers and power. They want a ruler who flouts behavioral rules, flaunts his degeneracy and ignorance, and says out loud all the horrific stuff they dare not whisper.
Most of all, they want a ruler who will raise them to the rulership over America that they think they deserve, and one who will punish their enemies until they are strong enough to do it themselves.
As he did almost ten years ago, Donald Trump promises to be that ruler.
When ‘our religion’ is only the religion of a shrinking percentage of Americans
As noted earlier, the percentage of evangelicals in America is very far from a majority. Depending on the definition you use and the authorities and studies you consult, they range from 5% of Americans to 35%. But they vote very reliably. That fact makes them a desirable bloc to own for conservative politicians.
Most desirably of all, they respond extremely well to fearmongering, fake news, and tribalistic jingoism. In their own minds, they’ve got a lot to be afraid of—their own increasing cultural irrelevance most of all.
Christianity itself is cruising quickly toward losing its majority status in America. At present, about 63% of Americans claim Christian affiliation. When Pew Research modeled religious switching in future decades, though, they found that most estimates had that percentage dropping to 35-46% by 2070. Meanwhile, the percentage of “Nones” (the religiously unaffiliated who claim “none of the above” as their religion) only continues to rise. In Pew’s model, they go from 30% currently to 41-52% by 2070.
Add non-Christian immigration to the mix, and white evangelicals become irrelevant even more quickly. So I can easily understand why white evangelicals bitterly oppose immigration, even if it clashes hilariously with their stated beliefs in a literal, inerrant, completely timeless and divine Bible.
Donald Trump knows that white evangelicals don’t want no meltin’ pots
Kristin Kobes du Mez, a brilliant writer whose work I adore, linked evangelicals’ opposition to immigration to “militant masculinity” in 2018. It’s not in me to gainsay her. She’s got a deep understanding of that exact facet of white evangelicalism. As she wrote:
It is incredibly difficult to disrupt a cohesive worldview of this sort, particularly one that is inherently suspicious of opposing views and is fueled by a victimization narrative, one backed by a multi-billion-dollar spiritual-industrial complex, and one that has direct and exclusive avenues of communication to hundreds of millions of eager consumers.“Understanding White Evangelical Views on Immigration,” Kristin Kobes du Mez, Harvard Divinity Bulletin
I’d just add this: That “cohesive worldview” is not just militantly macho. It also reflects white evangelicals’ increasing sense of tribalism.
In sociology, it is not a good thing for a group to behave in tribalistic ways. Such a group tends to be dysfunctionally authoritarian. That means that it cannot fulfill its own stated goals, nor even protect its own members from in-group abuse. Instead, the group is a conduit for power. Its followers cluster around a chosen charismatic leader who dispenses power to those lower on the power ladder. Those below the leader jockey and infight for favor.
To maintain their hold on power, the leaders of these groups need to flex their power often. They do this in a variety of ways:
Betraying those who are no longer useful
Visibly disobeying the group’s rules and allowing favored underlings to disobey them as well
Painting outsiders to the group as their mortal enemies
Stomping on critics and apostates with both feet
Being inconsistent with rule enforcement and creation
Destroying any heretics’ reputations and relationships as they leave the group
Making followers do things they don’t want to do, from church chores to abusive sexual favors
But this flexing works best if group members feel they can’t ever leave. If they’re sure they’ll never recover emotionally or financially from such a move, then they’re far less likely to take the risk.
So in a lot of ways, tribalism in Christianity works best in an environment where the local tribe leaders wield a lot of cultural power. If their power gets too diluted, people feel safer in leaving. And the more non-Christians enter the United States, the more diluted white evangelicals—along with their vision of ideal American culture—become in the population as a whole.
The last thing tribalistic white evangelicals want is a melting-pot America. Rather, they desire a solidly Christian America (full of their own preferred kind of Christian, naturally) that turns non-Christians of all kinds into pariahs until they bend the knee.
Compassion and empathy destroy tribalism
Another serious problem evangelicals have with immigration is simply the way that knowing people from the outgroup can destabilize a dysfunctional-authoritarian ingroup. Right now, Trump can frighten his fanbase by identifying Muslim immigrants as terrorists. He can paint them as scary Others who don’t know how to America right.
But once Americans get to know outsiders, they stop being outsiders.
By now, there are about 3.85 million Muslims in the United States, according to a 2023 Pew Research report. In the past 20-ish years, the number of mosques has grown from 1209 to 2769. (And, as they always have, Republicans tend to think they, as a group, face more discrimination than Muslims do.) Muslims are also running for—and winning—public office. They’re far more visible now than they ever were. A 2017 Pew Research survey even found that most Americans were significantly warming up to Muslims, though the war in Israel might now be changing things for the worse.
Still, that visibility has to be scaring the knickers off of white evangelicals. They don’t want to see Muslims praying on their knees on public sidewalks, or to take college classes alongside women in headscarves, or see their kids making friends with Muslim kids.
(I can’t think of evangelicals encountering headscarves without thinking of that cringey side plot from the first “God’s Not Dead” movie involving a young Muslim convert who adores Franklin Graham—who if you’ll recall is very anti-immigration.)
White evangelicals don’t want any reminders that they no longer represent the cultural standard of America, nor are even its Designated Adults. What they want is quiet, effortless mastery and recognized superiority, not having to share and play nicely with the other children on the playground.
Even if it destroys their witness, to use the Christianese, they can’t let go of their tribalism. Jesus’ direct orders be damned! Bible blahblah is all well and good, but this is real life we’re talking about. Like everyone else, white evangelicals know that when real life starts happening, they have to step into the real world to deal with it.
The new age of evangelical power-grabs
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a sharp change in how white evangelicals present themselves and sell their only product (active membership in their own group).
Just a decade ago, evangelicals tried to engage outsiders in one-sided non-versations. They traveled to schools to deliver sales pitches. They ran pseudo-charity efforts like Beach Reach that were really about indoctrination. Online, they seemed acutely aware that they were selling something. Sure, very few people cared to buy it anymore. But they still felt compelled by Jesus to SELL SELL SELL WITHOUT MERCY.
To an extent, they still do that stuff, yes. But they’ve really shifted their emphasis. Now, they seem much more like an overtly theocratic, totalitarian political group with a thin coat of Jesus frosting. Aware that nobody wants to buy their product on its own merits, they have turned from wheedling and fake non-versations to outright insults and sneers toward those who reject their control-grabs. This behavior seems to bolster their own self-image, even as it wrecks their tribe’s credibility every time they act out.
When I encounter them, I can’t help but think that my first pastor, a genial old Pentecostal leader in our denomination, would have had their hides for mistreating people the way they do.
Again, this is real life we’re talking about, though, not Bible blahblah. Evangelicals may give lip service to Jesus’ sheer power and miracle-working all they like. In the real world, they’re aware that if they don’t punish their enemies, Jesus sure won’t do it for them.
I’ve known this about evangelicals for a long, long time. In a way, I’m glad Trump has come along to unmask them.
I suspect that the further white evangelicals decline in cultural power and credibility, the more and the worse they’ll act out. I just hope the rest of the world is ready to listen when they tell us who they truly are.
Move over Mike Pence, Mike Johnson is in the big chair—and in a position to try to enact all of his Christian nationalist dreams.
Reading Time: 5 MINUTES
The challenge of Christian nationalism has resurfaced over the last week with a tale of two Mikes. The first concerns conservative Christian Mike Pence dropping out of the race for president. The charisma black hole that is the former vice president under Donald Trump never really stood a chance, even against the aging Joe Biden. Sometimes reality is unassailable.
But while Pence was debating with himself whether to continue his campaign, another Mike was throwing his hat into the political ring. It got to a point where congressional Republicans were keenly aware of the embarrassing situation of not having a majority leader in the House of Representatives. After a number of potential candidates failed to get enough support, including the controversial Jim Jordan, it appears that the GOP lawmakers ran out of patience. The first person to come along who appeared to be a safe pair of hands would command quite an advantage.
Appearances can be deceptive. Dangerously so.
It is amazing how much a calm voice, a pair of spectacles, and a nicely tailored suit can do for a politician. (I am reminded of the book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work including the chapter, “The Case of Dave: Would a Snake Wear Such a Nice Suit?” Not to cast aspersions…) He seems such a sensible person, and his voice is so moderate!
That’s his physical voice, not his political voice. The tone of his speaking belies a now rather typical MAGA-style conservative Christian agenda. So much so that controversial MAGA frontman Matt Gaetz said of Mike Johnson in an interview given to Steve Bannon, “If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.”
Don’t be entranced by the slippery gyrations of “MAGA Mike.” This cobra has a very poisonous bite.
Former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki dropped her own mic on her MSNBC show: “Another deeply religious conservative Republican just ascended to the speakership… The problem with Johnson isn’t at all his faith. He is entitled to his personal beliefs as everyone is…even if they come from the 18th century.”
Ouch.
The problem, as she points out, is when those beliefs encroach on the rights of others. Christian nationalism in a pluralist society is something of a headache in a secular country. This might be Roe v. Wade, which Johnson believes “gave constitutional cover to the elective killing of unborn children in America. Period.” He believes that if women were able to bring more “able-bodied workers” into the world to foot the bill, then politicians wouldn’t need to slash Social Security and Medicare:
He even blames school shootings on abortion, as Irin Carmon sets out in the New York Magazine:
At the time, Johnson was a lawyer defending Louisiana’s abortion restrictions — purported safety regulations designed to shut down clinics — in court and had just been elected, unopposed, to the State House of Representatives. I remember thinking how anodyne the office was, like a small-town personal-injury firm, as he cheerfully told me that soon the pro-lifers would outnumber the pro-choicers who aborted all their babies. I no longer have a recording, just a 27-page transcript, but my memory is that he kept his voice smooth and pleasant as he said, “Many women use abortion as a form of birth control, you know, in certain segments of society, and it’s just shocking and sad, but this is where we are. When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.”
He has also supported legislation to limit the teaching of race-related topics in schools, and Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. His blend of Christian nationalism looks very much like a white one: He has also often repeated promotion of the “Great Replacement Theory.” Usefully, Politico have released a piece detailing where he stands on many political issues.
Beware the quiet man. When he addressed his colleagues on the first day of being the new Speaker in the US House of Representatives, Johnson shared the following: “I don’t believe there are any coincidences. I believe that scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority, he raised up each of you, all of us. And I believe that God has ordained and allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment and time.”
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following him. In 2016, he said, “You know, we don’t live in a democracy . . . It’s a constitutional republic. And the founders set that up because they followed the biblical admonition on what a civil society is supposed to look like.” And very worrying to those of us who find the separation of church and state crucial to the political operation of the United States, he added: “Over the last 60 or 70 years our generation has been convinced that there is a separation of church and state . . . most people think that is part of the Constitution, but it’s not.”
He has also expressed his belief that the founders wanted to protect the church from the state, not the other way around, and that the US is indeed a nation with Judeo-Christian roots under threat from secular forces.
In case anyone was in any doubt, Johnson confirmed his moral-political worldview in an interview with Fox News: “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”
Same-sex marriage is also another talking-point issue where Johnson appears to be on the wrong side of history but the right side of the Republican Party. As Time reports in their piece “The Christian Nationalism of Speaker Mike Johnson“:
As an attorney working for the Alliance Defense Fund, now known as Alliance Defending Freedom (founded by leaders with similar Christian nationalist commitments, like James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, and Bill Bright), Speaker Johnson opposed the decriminalization of homosexual activity through Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 and in 2004 proposed banning same-sex marriage.
He argued how both will “de-emphasize the importance of traditional marriage to society, weaken it, and place our entire democratic system in jeopardy by eroding its foundation,” and that “experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic
As the same article points out, “Americans who embrace Christian nationalism are more likely to support anti-democratic tactics and approve of political violence if an election does not return favorable results.” It is wholly unsurprising, then, that Johnson was a pivotal figure in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential elections. He wasn’t shy of repeating debunked Dominion voting machine claims and even wrote an amicus brief for a case concerning Texas having results thrown out.
There is enough to worry about when surveying the world’s democratic backsliding—seeing institutions and mechanisms, checks and balances, being repealed and pulled down— without having to worry about the corridors of power in the US Capitol.
In a time of growing pluralism, the only sensible map to navigate this increasing diversity is secularism of the sort envisaged and enshrined by the founders. But pluralism and diversity, difference and understanding, are not the purview of Christian nationalists. And it appears very obvious indeed that Mike Johnson is a staunch Christian nationalist. This should be of grave concern. Time finishes their article as follows:
It is critical to recognize the influence of Christian nationalism on Mike Johnson’s vision for the US. “Christian nationalism” isn’t a political slur. It’s a term that accurately describes an ideology that is antithetical to a stable, multiracial, and liberal democracy—an ideology clearly guiding the now-ranking Republican in the US House of Representatives.
Political polarization and division are more pronounced than they ever have been. It appears that the Republicans have not changed tack after the 2020 elections or the fallout to Dobbs v. Jackson but instead have doubled down, piling into culture war issues and divisive policies.
It appears that now more than ever, the nonreligious and secular need to be on their guard. Now more than ever, constitutional foundations must be secured and supported. Now more than ever, the quiet man must be listened to. Every single word.
Don’t lean too close, though. That snake can bite.
From an unpromising beginning, Joe Biden has become one of the most progressive presidents the U.S. has ever had.
Reading Time: 3 MINUTES
I’m not ashamed to admit it: Joe Biden has exceeded my expectations.
When he was running in the 2020 presidential primaries, I wasn’t thrilled by him. I thought Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren were better options. Both of them represented a bold progressive spirit that America sorely needed—while Biden, I believed, was at best a reiteration of the status quo. I thought he stood for more of the same bland, watered-down, just-barely-left-of-center politics that have defined the Democratic Party for decades.
But I was wrong.
Enter Dark Brandon
I never expected to write these words, but Joe Biden is the most transformative Democratic president of my lifetime. Despite having only a nailbiter majority, he’s racked up a long list of big, significant wins.
At the top of this list is the Inflation Reduction Act, far and away the most ambitious law ever passed to fight climate change and build a better future for our children. He brought the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement and shut down the Keystone XL pipeline. He won ratification of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, phasing out hydrofluorocarbons that are a major cause of global warming.
He’s passed a series of less world-historical, but still big and badly needed, infrastructure bills. He’s made several other progressive wishlist items a reality, like enshrining Juneteenth as a federal holiday, ending the forever war in Afghanistan, forgiving student loan debt, giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices, capping insulin costs, and outlawing forced arbitration and NDAs in workplace sexual assault cases.
He’s been a steadfast supporter of arming Ukraine to defend against Russia’s savage war of aggression. He oversaw the appointment of a special counsel that’s now moving forward with the well-deserved prosecution of Donald Trump. He’s confirmed a record number of federal judges.
President Joe Biden made history Tuesday when he visited a picket line in Michigan in a show of loyalty to autoworkers who are striking for higher wages and cost-of-living increases.
Biden, who is looking to polish his pro-labor persona, is the first sitting president to appear on a picket line.
Speaking through a bullhorn, he told the striking autoworkers in Wayne County, “You deserve what you earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid now.”“Biden makes history by joining striking autoworkers on the picket line.” Peter Nicholas, NBC News, 26 September 2023.
I was, frankly, shocked to hear that Joe Biden is the first sitting president ever to show up on a picket line. Barack Obama, when he was a candidate, said he would do it but never did.
Even in the golden age of American unions, presidents like Eisenhower or Kennedy never took a step as audacious as this. But after all, why not?
Republican presidential candidates speak to evangelical churches, because they know that’s their base of support. If there’s anything that Democrats have consistently stood for, it’s the working class and unions. In an age of gross inequality and concentrated corporate power, politicians should take a stand for labor against capital. The moneyed classes may throw a tantrum over it, but there’s no more natural alliance than a Democratic president and organized labor.
Hot Labor Summer
It’s been a year of renewed labor power and activism. And for the most part, unions has been winning.
The Writers’ Guild of America just won their strike against the Hollywood studios. The Teamsters got a new contract with UPS, securing wage raises and air conditioning in their delivery vans (!!). Although Biden and the Democrats attracted criticism for blocking a railroad workers’ strike, they came back to help them get the sick leave they asked for.
Now the United Auto Workers have gone on strike against the Big Three automakers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (Chrysler). Among their demands are for a 40% raise—the same percentage that company executives have granted themselves over the past few years. That’s the kind of cheeky negotiating tactic I can get behind!
By appearing on the UAW picket line, Biden has put a very large thumb on the scale on the side of the workers. He’s shone a national spotlight on them and given legitimacy to their demands.
Granted, this is a symbolic gesture. But symbolism matters.
The “bully pulpit” is both the president’s most underappreciated power, and in some ways, his broadest. By design, the president isn’t an all-powerful king. His hands are tied by existing law. He can’t force Congress to pass legislation or choose how the courts rule. But, more than the other branches of government, he has power to persuade. For better or for worse, he defines the national mood and chooses what to focus our attention on.
In a strike, where public perception and sympathy plays a large part in deciding the outcome, that matters. When corporations know that the public mood is against them, they have an incentive to settle labor disputes as quickly as possible. That’s a huge gift both to the UAW and to union power in battles yet to come, and we have President Biden to thank for it.
Donald Trump is and has always been a fraud, a con man, and a flimflam artist in it for the quick buck and to satisfy the basest of his selfish needs.
There is never any joy in having to remind ourselves of this truth. Instead, there is a sadness in having to face the fact that such a man became president of the United States — and may become president again.
But face it we must.
Evidence for these harsh conclusions about the man is overwhelming and longstanding and comes in many forms, the latest installment making waves yesterday courtesy of a civil trial in New York. There, the Trump business conglomerate and those who run it — including Trump, members of his family, and longtime associates — have been in the investigative crosshairs of the state’s attorney general, Letitia James.
After reviewing the bank and insurance paperwork that Trump and his associates used to obtain favorable terms, a New York judge ruled that the documents “clearly contain fraudulent valuations which the defendants employed in their business.” And that’s how the words “Trump” and “fraud” found themselves in close proximity in blockbuster headlines across the country this week.
The ruling could lead to a major financial hit. It is also a direct threat to the Trump brand and business. He could lose control of multiple New York properties, including his garish namesake tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. And further ripple effects could spiral from there, creating centrifugal forces that will further pull at a wobbly enterprise.
Of course, this isn’t the only legal threat the country’s most famous multiply-indicted defendant finds himself confronting. Reading yesterday’s news reports, it was amusing how reporters tried to explain to readers that this case was different from all the others they are trying to follow.
What all these cases have in common, however, is a return to where we started: Trump is a fraud and a liar. Whether it’s absconding with classified documents, paying hush payments to a mistress, strong-arming election officials in Georgia, or inciting a violent attempted coup, the common denominator is that Trump is only out for himself, and he will do whatever is necessary, as dangerous as that course may be, to keep his lifelong con going.
In trying to contextualize yesterday’s news, one can’t help but think back to the NBC reality show “The Apprentice.” The portrayal of Donald Trump as a decisive leader, successful businessman, and respected member of New York society was always a fiction created through scripting, marketing, and editing. At the time, the charade was treated as harmless enough, just another offering in a form of lowbrow entertainment featuring those who sought fame and fortune at any cost. Hindsight sadly provides a much clearer — and more troubling — picture.
Trump is a showman without shame, which just so happens to be the perfect attribute for thriving in reality television. He already had decades of experience lying about the reality of his business empire, which often teetered on the brink of collapse. But now he was aided and abetted by a team of producers, editors, and writers (plus no doubt a ton of hair and makeup help). If Trump looked good — no matter the truth — everyone stood to make a lot of money. What no one could have predicted at the time was that these years of Trump’s primetime propaganda would lay the groundwork for the most unlikely and arguably the most damaging president in American history.
Another truth that emerges from these court cases, as with the television show, is that Trump could not have done any of this by himself. At every turn, he has had help. The idea that people would do business with him or serve in his administration after all that we have seen is a sad testimony to what greed and a thirst for power and personal advancement will drive people to do.
Time and again, those who should know better could have tried to stop him. Far too few in his orbit stepped up to the challenge. That dynamic now includes most of the Republican Party.
For years, those who saw the truth about Trump have desperately waited for the one revelation that would finally cause his rabid supporters to understand the full scale of the grift. It has become clear now that if the events leading up to and cresting on January 6 couldn’t do that, then nothing will. But perhaps the fraud ruling in New York and other challenges Trump faces can chip away at the edifice.
Ultimately, “The Apprentice” became a shadow of its one-time popularity. As its ratings dropped, Trump and the producers became more and more desperate for shticks that would lure viewers. Acts can get tired, especially when they lose the luster of success.
Trump has always been fiercely afraid of accountability, because he knows it shines an ugly light on his false reality. It’s why he lies about crowd sizes, vote totals, and his own body weight when he is booked in jail. It’s all related. Pull back the curtain of his threats, projections, and cheap bravado, and you’re left with a frightened man desperately trying to outrun reality, and now the law. There’s nothing quite like seeing a con man get backed into a corner by the truth.
The questions are, will any of this resonate with Republicans? Influence independents? Or drive Democrats to the polls?
A professor at a university in Utah issued an appeal this week: Is there a resource that he can present to students to dispel them of the idea that the 2020 election was stolen?
Why people believe that the presidential contest was tainted by fraud is often complex and fundamentally detached from the available evidence. It must necessarily be; there is no good evidence that anything more than a scattered handful of fraudulent votes were cast. But the point is well-taken. As someone who has tracked scores of claims over the past 22 months, I am not aware of any compendium explaining that lack of evidence.
I’ve broken this out into three sections: Why claims of fraud emerged, why we can be confident that the election wasn’t stolen and why we can be confident that the election wasn’t “rigged.”
Why claims of fraud emerged
It’s useful to begin by explaining how this all started.
In spring 2020, the coronavirus shutdowns began just as political primaries were gearing up. States concerned about causing outbreaks of infections began bolstering mail-in voting systems, immediately triggering a backlash from Donald Trump. If the country were to increase mail-in voting, he said in late March, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
This began a months-long effort to undercut and disparage mail ballots as inherently suspect, lest more Democrats cast ballots. Numerous articles and analyses debunked the idea, but Trump — trailing in the polls — amplified it repeatedly.
As Election Day neared, Trump’s complaints crystallized into a quiet plan. Having helped widen a partisan divide in how people voted — Democrats by mail and Republicans at polling places — Trump and his allies recognized that Republican votes would be counted more quickly in many states and reported first. That would give the impression that he had a big lead that was only later eroded by votes for Joe Biden, allowing Trump to claim (as Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) had in 2018) that the election was being stolen. So if things were close, he’d just announce his victory at the outset.
The election was relatively close. Trump and his allies tried to claim that vote counting should stop, according to the plan, but it didn’t work. As it turned out, though, his incessant claims about fraud had made it easy to convince his base that the election was stolen anyway — facilitating his multipronged effort to retain power despite his loss.
His argument about rampant fraud was so successful that, in polling conducted by Fox News this month, half of Republicans say that they have no confidence at all that votes were cast legitimately and counted accurately in 2020. Republican primary candidates found it useful to echo the idea that the election was stolen both because it often earned a Trump endorsement and because it’s what the Republican primary electorate wanted to hear.
In other words, a lot of the claims of fraud are inherently self-serving and cynical. Consider Don Bolduc, the Republican nominee for Senate in New Hampshire. During the primary he was adamant in arguing that the election was stolen. Then he won the primary and moved to the general election. In short order, he repented.
Claims of fraud, seemingly propagated in this case for political utility, had served their purpose.
Why we can be confident that the election wasn’t stolen
Let’s now assess those claims more broadly.
The best starting point is to note that there has been no — zero, nada, none — demonstrated, credible example of even a small-scale systematic effort to illegally cast votes. There have been a few dozen isolated arrests, generally of people illegally casting ballots for themselves or family members. In fact, the Associated Press contacted elections administrators in each swing state more than a year after the election, learning that, at most, there were a few hundred questionable ballots cast. In total. Across all of the states. Out of millions cast.
There are few better examples of the proper use of Occam’s razor than to therefore dismiss any idea that rampant fraud occurred. The idea that some systemic, multistate effort to rig the election occurred without detection nearly two years later — in an environment where there’s millions to be made exposing one — is simply noncredible in the face of the alternative: There was no such effort.
Of course, there is no shortage of claims about alleged fraud floating out there. These fall into one of three categories: claims that depend on vague statistical analyses, claims that depend on unseen evidence and claims that have already been debunked or explained.
Before presenting examples of each variety, it’s worth pointing to one of the most robust assessments of fraud claims. In July, a group of Republican officials released a lengthy report documenting and debunking each of the lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies in the wake of the election. It covers a lot of ground. The odds are good that if you’ve heard some claim about fraud or “rigging” (see below), it’s addressed in that document.
Now, instead of debunking each of the common allegations about fraud, I’ll simply list them and link to places where you can read more detailed analyses of why each is inaccurate.
There was nothing odd or unexplained about how votes were counted in Wisconsin or other states on election night. These analyses often depend on willfully ignoring the day-of-vs.-mail-in partisan patterns mentioned above.
The odds were not “1 in 1 quadrillion” that Biden could win as more votes were counted. (This one also ignored the partisan pattern.)
There is no evidence that foreign actors somehow changed votes over the internet, as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has repeatedlyclaimed.
There is no evidence that nonprofits collected illegal ballots that were then distributed to drop boxes by paid staffers, as alleged in the film “2000 Mules.” The purported evidence that was presented in that film is either false, contrived or misleading.
Various audits of electronic voting machines have found no evidence of improprieties. In fact, swing-state counties in which Dominion Voting Systems machines were used mostly voted for Trump.
Claims that have already been debunked or explained
There are probably examples I’m forgetting. If so, please email.
One common response to delineations like this is that of course the media/the government/the FBI are going to claim that their analysis showed no fraud. After all, you can’t have a healthy conspiracy without a gaggle of conspirators.
So we back up a step. To assume that I’m in on the con along with all of the other sources linked above is to postulate a system involving thousands or tens of thousands of people, all of whom have agreed to stay silent simply to protect Biden. Or, at least, that hundreds of people in the government have all kept quiet about agreeing to mislead the public, despite the obvious financial and moral rewards for revealing a part in such a scheme.
Occam’s razor. Who has more reason to make dishonest claims about the election, the guy trying to get people to watch his movie claiming fraud or the guy who works for a privately owned newspaper? Who is more credible on the likelihood of fraud, independent researchers or a former president eager to maintain his grip on his base?
Why we can be confident that the election wasn’t ‘rigged’
Because Donald Trump’s claims about fraud were so hard to defend, a different narrative emerged among those wishing to appeal both to Trump voters and to reality. The election may not have been stolen, exactly, but it was rigged.
The argument has two prongs. The first is that states intentionally loosened voting rules and encouraged turnout in ways that hurt Trump. The second is that the whole system — technology companies, the media, the left — arrayed against Trump to hurt his reelection chances.
It is obviously true that states made it easier to vote remotely in 2020. We’ve been over this; there was a new virus spreading and state leaders wanted to limit the number of crowded polling places. The argument, though, is that the virus was used as a pretext for making it easier to vote.
This, by itself, is revealing. There have been various arguments made about how states or counties or outside groups created opportunities for more people to vote. Sometimes, the intent is explicitly to poison perceptions of the election, as with the insistence on calling funding for expanded voting access from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg “Zuckerbucks,” as though Facebook itself was trying to influence the outcome. But at their heart, these arguments depend on the idea that having more legal voters cast ballots in good faith is bad. That putting a drop box that hadn’t been approved by the legislature in a place where fewer people tend to vote — and where most voters are Democrats — is a grotesque effort to steal an election. Instead, of course, one might see it as an effort to unrig a system in which barriers to voting are removed and democracy bolstered.
In some cases, state officials instituted new processes for voting that were challenged by Republicans or the Trump campaign as being in conflict with state constitutions or legislative authority. This was often cited as a reason to reject the election results. But as the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court put it when such a case was presented to him: “there has been too much good-faith reliance, by the electorate, on the no-excuse mail-in voting regime” to warrant tossing out the ballots. In other words, it’s silly to suggest that people told they could legally vote using mail-in ballots should see those votes thrown out and the overall results overturned because the loser of the election later raised an objection.
Then there’s the claim that the system worked against Trump. At times, this is argued with specifics, such as that the decision by social media companies to limit sharing of a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop affected the results. (This claim is often tied to a partisan, loaded survey.) But often it’s just offered generally; how could Trump win with the entire political and media culture arrayed against him? This is essentially unfalsifiable, so there’s not much more to say about it other than that this perceived bias itself often crumbles on close consideration.
There are various other after-the-fact claims about impropriety that have been debunked (there were no secret illegal ballots stashed under a table in Georgia) or dismissed (covering windows as votes were counted in Michigan was a function of a law barring videotaping the process). This was obviously part of Trump’s post-election plan, too: generate enough reports of smoke that people assumed there must be a fire. It was long the case that Trump would make contradictory claims about a situation, throwing out a large number of assertions with the understanding that he only needed people to believe one to take his side. The post-election period had thousands.
Those should not distract from the simple truth at play.
Donald Trump had reason to claim that the election was going to be stolen and later that it was.
There’s been no evidence of any large-scale effort to steal votes. There have been no rampant arrests; no one has come forward to expose such a system. This is true despite the enormous amount of scrutiny paid to the election results in nearly every state.
At the same time, there’s an obvious explanation for why Trump lost: People turned out in record numbers to vote and often did so to express approval or disapproval of Trump himself. How did Biden get 18 percent more votes in 2020 than Barack Obama did in 2008? In part because the population grew by 9 percent. But in part because Donald Trump was deeply polarizing and, as in 2018, voters wanted to send him a message.
Philip Bump is a Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter How To Read This Chart and is the author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. Twitter
I’d encourage my friend Stanley to take the time from his busy farming responsibilities and frequent carousing with Alabama Republicans, to learn the truth about Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville. I’d suggest starting with this video.
Here’s the link to this article. You might also want to read this article titled, “Alabama’s attorney general says the state can prosecute those who help women travel for abortions.”
Alabama’s attorney general says the state can prosecute those who help women travel for abortions
Abortion bans, anti-vax ideology, and other right-wing culture-war issues are creating a mass exodus of doctors from red states. Conservative voters will end up paying with their lives for the policies they wanted.
Bonner General Health, the only hospital in Sandpoint, announced Friday that it will no longer provide obstetrical services to the city of more than 9,000 people, meaning patients will have to drive 46 miles for labor and delivery care.
… “The Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care,” the hospital’s news release said. “Consequences for Idaho physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines.”
The abortion bans springing up across red-state America force physicians into a cruel dilemma. If a pregnant person comes into the emergency room, hemorrhaging or suffering sepsis from a miscarriage or dying from preeclampsia—but the fetus still has a heartbeat—doctors could face criminal charges if they intervene. Their only chance is to hope that the fetus dies before it’s too late to save the mother.
This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. In Oklahoma, a woman with a molar pregnancy—a cancerous, nonviable fetus—sought medical attention, but was told the hospital couldn’t do anything to help her. Staff suggested she wait in the parking lot until she was about to die so that they could act. She gambled on traveling out-of-state instead, and got the care she needed. But it’s only a matter of time until we have an American Savita Halappanavar.
This is an impossible position for doctors and nurses. They either desecrate their professional ethics by standing by and watching someone die whom they could have saved, or else face criminal charges. Understandably, many of them are voting with their feet. They’re leaving these barbarous and backward places in favor of progressive states where they won’t be jailed for practicing medicine.
Sandpoint, Idaho is a case in point. It used to be a medical hub for north Idaho, Montana and Washington, with an ob-gyn ward that delivered hundreds of babies each year—until the fall of Roe and the enactment of abortion bans.
In March, Sandpoint’s obstetrics department completely shut down as doctors fled. Idaho women with high-risk pregnancies now have to travel much further for medical care, like St. Luke’s hospital in Boise. But that one may soon be closed too. It has only six doctors left, most of whom are near the end of their careers. Two younger, recent recruits have already left the state.
Texas is an especially sharp example of the problem. Doctors are fleeing the state, worsening a shortage that was already at critical levels:
Almost every provider I spoke with for this story has thought about leaving their practice or leaving Texas in the wake of S.B. 8 and Dobbs. Several have already moved or stopped seeing patients here, at least in large part because of the abortion bans. “If I was ever touch a patient again, it won’t be in the state of Texas,” said Charles Brown, chair of the Texas district of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), who stopped seeing patients last year after decades working as a maternal fetal medicine specialist.
…In 2022, 15 percent of the state’s 254 counties had no doctor, according to data from the state health department, and about two-thirds had no OB-GYN. Texas has one of the most significant physician shortages in the country, with a shortfall that is expected to increase by more than 50 percent over the next decade, according to the state’s projections. The shortage of registered nurses, around 30,000, is expected to nearly double over the same period.
In addition to abortion bans, right-wing persecution of transgender people is worsening the problem. Dell Children’s Hospital in Austin had a world-renowned adolescent health clinic, which treated conditions from eating disorders to menstrual and hormonal problems.
But in May, Texas opened an investigation into the clinic for providing gender-affirming care to trans teenagers. In response, all its doctors quit. The clinic was effectively shuttered, and kids who had been relying on it were left without care.
In another high-profile case, Dr. Jake Kleinmahon, a nationally recognized expert in pediatric transplant surgery, announced in August he was leaving his home state of Louisiana for New York. Dr. Kleinmahon is gay, and he decided that the state’s hostility toward LGBTQ people and families was intolerable:
“Tom and I have discussed at length the benefits of continuing to live in the South, as well as the toll that it takes on our family. Because of this, we are leaving Louisiana. Our children come first. We cannot continue to raise them in this environment,” Kleinmahon wrote.
The decrease for OB-GYN residency applications, 5.2%, was seen in all states, regardless of abortion laws. That percentage dropped by almost double—to a 10.5% decrease—in applications in states with near-total abortion bans.
If the surveys bear out, there could be a serious shortage of OB-GYNs in states with the tightest abortion restrictions. These states already tend to have higher maternal and infant mortality rates.
Another study gives similar numbers:
Our recent study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine begins to answer this question. In a survey of more than 2,000 current and future physicians on social media, we found that most (82.3%) would prefer to work or train in states with preserved abortion access. In fact, more than three-quarters (76.4%) of respondents would not even apply to states with legal consequences for providing abortion care. The same holds true for states with early or complete bans on abortion or Plan B. In other words, many qualified candidates would no longer even consider working or training in more than half of U.S. states.
…The reasons for physicians’ practice location preferences include, but are not limited to, patient care. While 77.8% of respondents report that their preferences are influenced by patient access to abortion care, others also prioritize preserved access for themselves or their partner (56.1%) or other family members (42.5%). This should not surprise us: physicians are human beings, too, with healthcare needs and personal lives that are not wholly defined by their career choices.“How Overturning Roe v. Wade Changed Match Day 2023.” Sarah McNeilly, Morgan S. Levy, Simone A. Bernstein, MD, Jessi A. Gold, MD, MS, and Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP. MedPage Today, 20 March 2023.
At the very least, red states will have to pay more to attract and keep medical practitioners. That means taxes and insurance premiums will skyrocket in these states—for everyone. Conservative voters are going to be hit squarely in the pocketbooks by these spiteful, regressive bans they wanted. It’s also likely that wait times will increase and quality of care will decrease, as these states may be forced to take practitioners who can’t get jobs anywhere else.
Heaping more weight on the pile
The U.S. was already facing a shortage of physicians. However, entrenched conservative hostility to science and medicine is making the problem worse.
Then COVID-19 came along. As the pandemic raged, Republican politicians nurtured a hydra of conspiracy theories. They displayed a bitter resistance to masks, vaccines, lockdowns, and every other policy created by people who were trying to save lives. They loudly proclaimed that “freedom” sanctified their right to get sick, infect their neighbors, and die slow, agonizing deaths. They accused doctors and hospitals of murdering their loved ones.
They paid an awful price for their obstinacy. During the pandemic, conservative voters died at disproportionate rates compared to pro-science Democrats. COVID deaths dragged life expectancy in Missouri down to a four-decade low. So many people died in Alabama that the total population shrank for the first time on record.
Their partisan rejection of science didn’t end with the pandemic, either. It’s spread to become a mistrust of all vaccines. As a result, long-vanquished diseases like measles, whooping cough and polio are making a comeback.
The people who live in red states are confronting a dire scenario of their own creation.
Republican voters are demanding policies that directly harm themselves and their loved ones. In the name of lower taxes, they forced their own hospitals to close. In the name of freedom, they refused vaccines that would have saved their lives during a pandemic. Now, in the name of banning abortion, they’re heaping even more weight on this pile. They’ve passed laws which ensure that their wives, their daughters, and they themselves won’t have medical care in a crisis. Their culture-war victories are purchased at the cost of their own lives.
The people who live in red states—especially white conservatives who live in far-flung, poverty-stricken rural areas—are confronting a dire scenario of their own creation. In the very near future, they’ll have to travel hundreds of miles for routine care, if they can get it at all. The reddest, most impoverished areas will be reduced to medieval conditions. They’ll regularly suffer from outbreaks of disease, dying from conditions that modern medicine could have cured.
by 
by 
by 
The Pencil Driven Life 