“President Donald Trump’s tweets attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election might not sway the outcome — but they might sway Americans’ faith in democracy.
A study by political science researchers from Stanford and five other universities found that exposure to those tweets “erodes trust and confidence in elections and increases the belief that elections are rigged among his supporters.” However, among those who oppose the president, the study found that their trust in elections actually increased after seeing his tweets, albeit by a slightly smaller magnitude.”
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“people’s self-reported views may have less to do with their actual opinions and more to do with staying in line with their party. Previous research has shown that survey respondents often follow partisan cues: Politico, for instance, found that Republicans’ and Democrats’ views on whether the economy was improving flipped after Trump’s 2016 win, but that those shifts in reported attitudes only sometimes affected people’s actual behavior.”
“The women—all white, all from the greater Phoenix area—had been repelled by Trump in 2016. None of them voted for Hillary Clinton. But over the past four years, as they watched their party fall to Trumpism, their disgust sent them all in the same direction: the Democratic Party.”
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“This suburban shift has been especially clear here in Maricopa County, the 9,000-square-mile of beige housing developments and lush golf courses around Phoenix, which accounts for more than 60 percent of Arizona’s votes. The candidate who wins Maricopa—one of the most populous counties in the nation—nearly always wins Arizona, and no Republican nominee has ever won the White House without Arizona since it became a state in 1912. But the state has become much more hospitable to Democrats since Trump’s election. In the 2018 midterms, which were seen as a repudiation of Trump, especially in the suburbs, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won Maricopa and became the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Arizona in 30 years. Sixteen percent of Republican women in Maricopa broke with their party to vote for Sinema that year, exit polls showed.”
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“Overall, most white Republican women supported Trump. But nationally, “we’ve not seen this amount of defection from the Republican Party in 20 or 30 years,” Christopher Weber, a professor at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy, told me.
The suburban shift went well beyond Maricopa. Through organizing by activists of color and the leftward tilt of white, college-educated women, Biden was able to capture many of America’s other big suburbs, including Cobb County, Georgia, outside of Atlanta, and the counties surrounding Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Detroit; and Houston.
For many of the GOP defectors, it came down to the president’s personality—his flagrant racism and misogyny, his bullying, his insult comedy.”
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“the women were careful to note that it’s not just Trump’s personality that turns them off. It’s his antipathy toward the issues that feel most urgent to them. That attitude helps make them prime targets for the Democratic Party. These women are conservative, yes: They believe in low taxes, limited government, free trade, and “the responsibility of individuals,” as Andersen put it. But they also crave action on climate change. They want affordable health care for all Americans. They want a humane immigration system. They want policies to promote equality and address police brutality. For many Republican women in America, the starkest example of Trump’s failure has been his administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, his refusal to encourage mask wearing, and his blasé attitude toward the crisis, experts told me.”
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“Since he won the Democratic primary, Biden has tried to forge a healthy partnership with Bernie Sanders–aligned members of his party. He’s accepted their counsel on issues such as climate change, and he’s adopted several progressive policy positions. But all along, leftists have questioned just how genuine his commitment is. That’s why women like Andersen and Skousen scare them: They worry that the addition of anti-Trump Republicans to the Democratic coalition will nudge the former vice president back toward the ideological center, a place where he’s traditionally been most comfortable. They fear that the moderates and former Republicans who helped him win in crucial swing states will be the voters he most wants to appease in office. They worry that he’ll stock his executive branch with Bill Clinton–era Democrats and corporate executives, and fill his Cabinet with Republicans such as former Ohio Governor John Kasich.”
Optimistic View: What Trump will do. Lone Candle. 11 11 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttw8tSXNesk&feature=youtu.be The biggest problem with Donald Trump as president Lone Candle. 7 22 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PexQGJj3C8w&feature=youtu.be More pain than gain: How the US-China trade war hurt America Ryan Hass and Abraham Denmark.
“In 2016, white voters propelled Trump to the presidency, with 54 percent voting for him and 39 percent voting for Hillary Clinton, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center study. And though the end result might be different in 2020 — exit polls are by no means comprehensive or exact — early evidence shows that white people’s voting patterns look much the same: 57 percent of this group voted to reelect the president while 42 percent voted for Democratic challenger Joe Biden, according to Edison Research’s exit polls of 15,590 voters conducted outside their polling places, at early voting sites, or by phone. That makes white people the only racial group in which a majority voted for Trump”
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“Trump appears to have gained about 3 percentage points each with Black, Latinx, and Asian American voters since 2016 (exit polls appear not to have broken out Indigenous voters, instead lumping them into the category of “other”). And pointing out that none of these groups are monolithic is an important corrective to the inaccurate idea that “people of color” are homogenous or always vote as a bloc.”
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“the majority of white Americans voted for Trump, even after a recession and a botched response to a pandemic that has left more than 200,000 dead.”
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“The focus on voters of color started on election night. Trump took Florida, one of the first states to be called, creating the impression among many liberals that Biden was on the edge of losing. Many were looking for answers, and one that got a lot of attention was the fact that Biden had underperformed Hillary Clinton in Miami-Dade County, home to many Cuban-American voters.
In the last two days, we’ve seen numerous examinations of what happened in Miami-Dade, as well as lots of focus on Trump’s gains among Black men nationwide. The fact that Trump appears to have picked up votes since 2016 with every racial group except white men also got a lot of attention (though what appears to be a small gain among white women has been less remarked upon).”
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“But an increasingly clear picture is also emerging of Black voters in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania helping push Biden to victory — and of Latinx and Indigenous voters in Arizona and elsewhere making a big difference as well. And while much attention has been paid to the minorities of voters of color who cast their ballots for Trump, there’s been less acknowledgment that according to exit polls, the majority of those voters — 87 percent of Black voters, 66 percent of Latinx voters, and 63 percent of Asian American voters — chose Biden.”
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“Despite his gains among voters of color, Trump’s base has always been white people. That didn’t change in 2020, when a majority of white voters backed him. And since white voters comprise the majority of the electorate — 65 percent according to Edison Research — they make up by far the largest bloc to support him. Black and Latinx voters, meanwhile, make up 12 and 13 percent, respectively.”
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“Trump actually lost some ground with white men in 2020 relative to 2016. However, he still captured a majority, with 58 percent of this group voting for him compared with 40 percent for Biden.”
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“white youth were the likeliest to support Trump, with 43 percent of white voters between ages 18 and 29 voting for Trump, according to exit poll data analyzed by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. By comparison, just 9 percent of young Black voters, 13 percent of young Asian voters, and 21 percent of young Latino voters backed Trump.”
“Given the narrowness of Biden’s presumed victory, it seems unlikely that Trumpism has been dealt anything resembling a death blow. The GOP will have little reason to shun Trump; on the contrary, given the results in 2016, 2018, and now 2020, one could make the case that the Republican Party performs better with Trump’s name on the ballot than without it. Those in the mainstream media who continue to fail to understand Trump aren’t going to get off easy: They just plain have to get better at this, or they will continue to lose ground to their challengers in the alternative media.”
“Six days after President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified food safety groups that it was proposing a regulatory change to speed up chicken factory processing lines, a change that would allow companies to sell more birds. An earlier USDA effort had broken down on concerns that it could lead to more worker injuries and make it harder to stop germs like salmonella.
Ordinarily, a change like this would take about two years to go through the cumbersome legal process of making new federal regulations. But the timing has alarmed food and worker safety advocates, who suspect the Trump administration wants to rush through this rule in its waning days.
Even as Trump and his allies officially refuse to concede the Nov. 3 election, the White House and federal agencies are hurrying to finish dozens of regulatory changes before Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20. The rules range from long-simmering administration priorities to last-minute scrambles and affect everything from creature comforts like showerheads and clothes washers to life-or-death issues like federal executions and international refugees. They impact everyone from the most powerful, such as oil drillers, drugmakers and tech startups, to the most vulnerable, such as families on food stamps, transgender people in homeless shelters, migrant workers and endangered species.”
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“these final weeks are solidifying conservative policy objectives that will make it harder for the Biden administration to advance its own agenda”
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“The Trump administration is on pace to finalize 36 major rules in its final three months, similar to the 35 to 40 notched by the previous four presidents”
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“In 2017, Republican lawmakers struck down more than a dozen Obama-era rules using a fast-track mechanism called the Congressional Review Act. That weapon may be less available for Democrats to overturn Trump’s midnight regulations if Republicans keep control of the Senate, which will be determined by two Georgia runoffs.”
ProPublica is tracking those regulations as they move through the rule-making process.”
“Many Vietnamese Americans — particularly first-generation, older immigrants with low English proficiency — had become more radically conservative, or were exposed to and sympathetic with these pro-Trump views.
From my reporting on immigrant Asian communities, I found that some Vietnamese immigrants who might not understand the nuances of racism in America felt threatened by the social unrest and looting in cities. A few even became counterprotesters at local Black Lives Matter rallies.”
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“many first-generation Vietnamese were already conservative to begin with. Having left behind a communist-led country, they may be averse to liberal politics, deeply religious, and invested in the idea of the American dream. Guided by a tide of Vietnamese- and English-language misinformation, however, these radical right-wing views are now quietly held by a not-so-insignificant minority”
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“Some Vietnamese Americans don’t align themselves entirely with other immigrants. Many are wartime refugees who fought against the communist North Vietnamese army alongside American soldiers, my mom explained. They had no choice but to leave their home country.
The way she sees it, Vietnamese people deserve to be here, but America shouldn’t just accept anyone. “A country is like a home,” she told me in Vietnamese. “You can’t just let anyone inside your home.”
But this line of thinking — that they are “good” or “special” immigrants — fails to recognize how Trump’s immigration policy actually hurts some Vietnamese families, especially newer arrivals who are navigating the green card process.
Those who fled Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon tend to remain strongly opposed to big government policies, are suspicious of any socialist-sympathizing politicians, and are blatantly anti-China, haunted by China’s imperialist agenda in Vietnam and the South China Sea. Many are religious, and hail from patriarchal households where the male breadwinner makes all the important family decisions.”
“The Permian Basin is one of the most prolific oil and gas plays in the world, responsible for more than a third of the United States’ oil and one-sixth of gas production last year.
The formation in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico that has minted fortunes and transformed the country into a global petroleum supplier is also ground zero for the worst oil and gas air pollution in the country.
“You don’t know what you’re breathing,” said Gene Collins, a minister and community activist in Odessa, Texas.
It could get worse.
The US Environmental Protection Agency in August rescinded controls installed by the Obama administration to curb releases of methane, a potent, planet-warming gas leaked during oil and gas production, processing, and transportation.”
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“Experts say it could lead to higher emissions of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and hazardous air pollutants — chemicals that cause smog and are linked to cancer, respiratory illnesses, and a growing list of other ailments.”
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“The change will likely worsen air pollution and harm people’s health. But the EPA didn’t bother to estimate the potential extent of the damage, despite what’s at stake for people living in communities like Odessa.”