Miscellany - a mix

The Hill  

Nov 1, 2021 

Highlight:  "The poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute paints a troubling portrait of a growing segment of the public that is increasingly unmoored from reality as it embraces conspiracy theories about child abduction and stolen elections. 

The poll found about three in ten Americans, 31 percent, believe the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, including two-thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82 percent of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet. "  

MSNBC

Oct 31, 2021

Highlight: "Whether it’s restricting voting, restricting reading lists in schools, or restricting what public employees are allowed to say and do when they’re off the clock, NBC’s Mehdi Hasan argues that the bigger picture we cannot lose sight of -- the dark bow that ties it all together -- is that Republicans are doing everything in their power to turn the U.S. into the world’s next authoritarian regime."   

Rolling Stone

Oct 24, 2021

Highlight: "As the House investigation into the Jan. 6 attack heats up, some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in Washington, D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. 

Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent. 

Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. 

This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is also the first account detailing their purported role and its scope. The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence."  

Mother Jones

Dec 13, 2021

Highlight:  "This is the story. We are in a moment of true peril for democracy (and true possibility too—more on that later). 

And yet, as the media scholar j. Siguru Wahutu has pointed out, from following mainstream political coverage “one might be forgiven for thinking that the most important issues right now are whether the former president is going to run again, whether or not Vice President Harris’ staff is difficult to work with, or even whether the current president will run again in 2024.”

Case in point: that day just a couple of months back when we learned about Trump lawyer John Eastman’s coup memo. It is a staggering document, straight out of Weimar circa 1932.

And few choices are as important in our business as which stories we elevate to that BFD, 24/7 coverage, volume-cranked-to-11 status.

MassPolitics

Sept 3, 2021

Highlight: “The backlash” begins an opinion piece in Newsweek by Parents Defending Education outreach director Erika Sanzi, and these may be the most accurate two words published by those who are attacking “wokeness,” gender studies, and Critical Race Theory. 

The sad fact is that white backlash has a proven record of effectiveness in American politics and it is once again being employed in the service of right wing corporate interests.  The narrative is that grassroots parents groups have discovered the threat CRT poses to their children in schools and have arisen organically across the country to form local parent groups, a movement noticed and captured by websites and the powerful Fox News. 

The truth is that of an oligarch-funded and coordinated campaign using time tested techniques. The end product desired has less to do with CRT than with spreading disruption, fear, and chaos across America’s most important democratic public institution, schools.  

Over the past five years I’ve been following “education reform” groups created by billionaire investors with names like Families for Excellent Schools, Massachusetts Parents United, and National Parents Union which have presented diversity as their public face while attacking teachers. 

Pew Research Center

April 24, 2021

Highlight: " In the months since the 2020 election, partisan conflicts over election rules and procedures – both at the state and federal levels – have become increasingly contentious.   

Among U.S. adults overall, sizable majorities favor several policies aimed at making it easier for citizens to register and vote, as well as a requirement that voters be required to show government-issued photo identification before voting.  

However, there are substantial – and, in some cases, growing – partisan divisions over many of these policies, largely because of changes in opinions among Republicans. 

For example, since 2018 there has been a decline in the share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who support automatically registering all eligible citizens to vote (38% today vs. 49% in 2018).   

In addition, the share of Republicans who say any voter should be allowed to vote early or absentee without a documented reason has fallen 19 percentage points (from 57% to 38%). 

Democrats and Democratic leaners are far more supportive of automatically registering all eligible citizens to vote (82%) and no-excuse early voting (84%); their views are virtually unchanged in recent years.  

The Atlantic

Oct 22, 2021

Highlight: "Four Hours at the Capitol, a new HBO documentary, is a vivid, terrifying picture of violent insurrection.   

In the days and weeks after the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, commentators and media outlets grappled with the question of what to call that event. 

Language is sticky; it clarifies and obfuscates the truth depending on who’s wielding it. 

January 6 was described as or likened to a “riot,” a “tourist visit,” an “insurrection,” a “peaceful protest,” and a “coup attempt.” 

And yet, watching Four Hours at the Capitol, Jamie Roberts’s tight, unsettling new HBO documentary about that day, another word seemed more appropriate to me, one that most of the participants interviewed in the film might agree on. 

More than anything else, January 6 was war."   

FiveThirtyEight

Oct 26, 2021

Highlight: "The United States is in the middle of a once-in-a-decade process: redistricting. And although it’s early yet — 19 states aren’t expected to finalize their maps until next year — a number of states have proposed maps, and there are debates happening all across the country over which ones to pass. Six states have finalized maps.

But Americans aren’t necessarily confident that the process will be a fair one. Just 16 percent of U.S. adults said they thought their states’ congressional maps would be drawn fairly, while 44 percent said they thought the maps would be drawn unfairly, per an August . 

Another 40 percent of adults said they were unsure if the maps will be fair. That might be one reason why independent commissions, which aim to empower ordinary citizens to draw map lines, which have grown since the last redistricting cycle. In that same YouGov/Economist poll, 50 percent of Americans said they thought independent commissions should be responsible for the redistricting process in their state.

However, it’s unclear whether independent commissions will be enough to help build trust in the redistricting process. 
For some, the redistricting process is simply “the most political activity in American politics,” according to Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College and author of “Redistricting and Gerrymandering in North Carolina: Battlelines in the Tar Heel State.”  And Bitzer doesn’t see that changing anytime soon." 

FiveThirtyEight

Oct 22, 2021

Highlight: "In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California discusses why he thinks American democracy is in trouble, an issue he explores in his new book, “Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.”  

Washington Post

Dec 1, 2021 

Highlight: "In last year’s election, Americans did not punish Republicans for their radical, anti-democratic turn with a resounding electoral defeat. 

Now, more than a year later, we can clearly see horrible and potentially irreversible implications of that. Was Nov. 3, 2020, our last and best chance to save our democracy?

In the weeks before last year’s election, it seemed possible that Joe Biden would carry states such as Iowa, Ohio and Texas to win more than 400 electoral votes, Democrats would win substantial majorities in the House and Senate, and state-level Democrats would make major gains. 

Such a sweeping victory would have made it easier for Democrats to govern, certainly, but perhaps more significantly it would have forced Republican leaders to reconsider the party’s path. It would have also further cemented the reality that America has become, once and for all, a true multiracial democracy. 

Instead, Biden won decisively but not overwhelmingly, Democrats lost seats in the House and barely won the Senate, and made few gains at the state level. That limited victory had three huge negative implications for American democracy."