Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
55 Things You Need to Know About Jim Jordan
Jordan’s combative nature is on display once again this week, as he fights — slowly, and so far unsuccessfully — toward the speaker’s gavel. On Tuesday morning, he lost a second ballot on the floor of the House, gaining even fewer votes than in the first round. But even if he ultimately falls short, it’s clear that Jordan captures something essential about the conservative zeitgeist: Victory does not require a unified party. In fact, for some, that’s the definition of losing. Regardless of whether Jordan manages to overcome the factionalism he helped create, you can be sure that he won’t be throwing in the towel anytime soon.
A gulf of perspectives is growing among US millennials amid war in Israel
Last weekend’s surprise attack has highlighted divides that are the sharpest among such U.S. millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, whose sympathy toward Palestinians has grown in recent years.
A Gallup poll released in March found that, unlike older generations who remain more sympathetic to Israel, millennials are almost evenly split on whether they align more with Israelis or Palestinians. Limited data suggested that members of the younger Generation Z hold similar views.
We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority
If Americans had heard of Leo at all, it was for his role in building the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. He drew up the lists of potential justices that Donald Trump released during the 2016 campaign. He advised Trump on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Before that, he’d helped pick or confirm the court’s three other conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But the guests who gathered that night under a tent in Leo’s backyard included key players in a less-understood effort, one aimed at transforming the entire judiciary.
A college LGBTQ center disappeared. It wasn’t the only one.
As the first anniversary of Sanders’ death approached, the letters L, G, B, T and Q – which adorned the wall outside the door for years – were stripped from the entrance. They came off at the direction of university administrators, who indicated the center would be disbanded after Texas’ Republican governor signed a law banning offices dedicated to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” – or DEI – at the state’s public colleges and universities.
Earlier this year, Texas and Florida’s conservative governors signed two of the most sweeping anti-DEI bills nationwide into law. The bills, brainchildren of two influential conservative think tanks, were part of a flurry of recent legislation that was shuttled through numerous statehouses in tandem. The effort entrenched college DEI programs as a culture-war issue in American politics.
Battle against hate: Violence, bigotry toward Palestinian Americans spiking across US
A U.S. Department of Justice hate crime investigation into the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American Muslim boy in Illinois is one of several incidents of alleged hate being directed at Palestinian Americans, allies and people who look like them since the war began.
DeSantis says US should not accept refugees from Gaza
“I don’t know what (President Joe) Biden’s gonna do, but we cannot accept people from Gaza into this country as refugees. I am not going to do that,” DeSantis, who is vying for the GOP presidential nomination, said at a campaign stop in Creston, Iowa.
“If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist,” he continued.
Who’s up, who’s down, and who’s tanking: 5 takeaways from the latest campaign finance reports
The final Federal Election Commission filing deadline of 2023 passed early Monday morning, with the candidates providing a last peek behind the curtain of their campaigns until January. For Trump, DeSantis and the other Republican hopefuls, that will be after Iowa and New Hampshire have voted and likely knocked some of them out of the field — if they have the money to make it that far.
The reports reflect a critical stretch of the campaign from July through September, a period that includes two GOP primary debates, two new Trump indictments and the start of a Biden battleground-state ad blitz that began in late summer and has continued apace into the fall.
‘Shocked and sickened’: Biden condemns killing of 6-year-old Muslim boy
“As Americans, we must come together and reject Islamophobia and all forms of bigotry and hatred,” Biden continued. “ I have said repeatedly that I will not be silent in the face of hate. We must be unequivocal. There is no place in America for hate against anyone.”
Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement Monday in response to the killing that “hate has no place in America.”
US university professor shoved to ground by rightwing youth activists
Video footage posted by Turning Point, a rightwing youth organization known for its aggressive tactics, shows a cameraman and another person questioning David Boyles, an English instructor and the co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona, last Wednesday after Boyles taught a class on LGBTQ+ youth in pop culture and politics.
In the video, Boyles, who is queer, does not engage with Turning Point’s repeated questions, such as “How long have you been attracted to minors?” and why he hates America, accusing Boyles of wanting to “push sodomy on to young people”. A Turning Point representative walks side by side with Boyles and peppers him with questions, telling Boyles at one point, “You can’t run.”
In the video, Boyles, who is queer, does not engage with Turning Point’s repeated questions, such as “How long have you been attracted to minors?” and why he hates America, accusing Boyles of wanting to “push sodomy on to young people”. A Turning Point representative walks side by side with Boyles and peppers him with questions, telling Boyles at one point, “You can’t run.”
State Department official resigns, citing ‘destructive’ decisions in Israel-Hamas war
“In my 11 years I have made more moral compromises than I can recall, each heavily, but each with my promise to myself in mind, and intact,” the official, Josh Paul, wrote in a post explaining his decision. “I am leaving today because I believe that in our current course with regards to the continued — indeed, expanded and expedited — provision of lethal arms to Israel — I have reached the end of that bargain.”
“I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse,” he added.
Paul worked for State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, according to his statement and his LinkedIn profile. The office manages defense relationships with U.S. allies and oversees the transfers of weapons and arms
Our Leaders’ Shameful Response to Islamophobia’s Fatal Resurgence
Corey Saylor, the research and advocacy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, broadly concurred, pointing to the climate created by political leadership and media coverage following the attacks in Israel. “Human beings are human beings,” Saylor said in a phone interview. “We’ve had two decades of people consuming material that implies that Muslims are somehow inherently violent, which is not true, but it just takes something like [the attack on Israel] to flip that bias switch back on.”
There’s a clear message that’s filling the leadership vacuum: Muslims and Arab Americans aren’t worthy of wider sympathy or even consideration in the discourse. Just like after 9/11, we’re the bad guys. In the Middle East, it doesn’t matter whether we’re terrorists or not, whether we’re women or children. Our blood is cheap, and our deaths are part of the costs of wars in which we’ve never fought.
War between Israel and Hamas raises fears about rising hostility in the US
While it’s too soon to say with certainty whether anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish crimes have increased during the war, hate crimes overall increased in the U.S. last year. In its annual report released Monday, the FBI estimated that hate crimes increased by 7% to 11,634 cases in 2022 compared to the previous year. With 1,124 incidents, anti-Jewish attacks were the second most reported hate crime, after anti-Black cases. There were 158 reported incidents of anti-Muslim attacks, and 92 reports of anti-Arab cases, according to the report.
Trump ‘does not have the right to say and do exactly what he pleases,’ Judge Chutkan says, issuing gag order
The order restricts Trump’s ability to publicly target court personnel, potential witnesses, or the special counsel and his staff. The order did not impose restrictions on disparaging comments about Washington, DC, – where the jury will take place – or certain comments about the Justice Department at large, both of which the government requested.
“This is not about whether I like the language Mr. Trump uses,” Judge Tanya Chutkan said. “This is about language that presents a danger to the administration of justice.”
House Republicans are making a gamble with a possible Jim Jordan speakership
The party would be ending its two-week speakership debacle, but it’d be elevating a ringleader in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election into a position that is second in the line of succession behind President Joe Biden.
A Jordan speakership would represent a huge victory for Trump, given the Judiciary chairman’s record of using his power to target Democratic presidential candidates, including Biden and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton. Before the midterm elections last year, for instance, Jordan said at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he’d use probes into the Biden administration to “frame up the 2024 race” for Trump.
For children's books on LGBTQ, race, Scholastic had a solution. Librarians weren't happy
Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, is separating some books with LGBTQ themes and discussions of race in a special book fair collection, which elementary schools can opt into – or out of.
Jordan’s speakership campaign on its last legs
After halting voting for nearly a day in hopes of securing more Republican votes, Jordan instead lost two more votes on the second ballot. The House then went into another recess, at Jordan's request, before a possible third vote. The GOP is expected to hold a conference meeting Wednesday afternoon as it keeps searching for a way out of its speaker mess.
The Corrosive Impact of Unconditional US Support for Israel
In an op-ed published by the Irish Times last weekend, Levy and human rights lawyer Zaha Hassan stressed three points: Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians was unconscionable; Israel’s collective punishment of people in Gaza—notably the cutting off of water, food, and electricity—was as well; and that “one must address the context of occupation and apartheid in which this is unfolding.” Without that broader view, they wrote it is not possible “to maintain integrity and be able to plot a strategy going forward in which both Palestinians and Israelis can live in freedom and security.”
Levy and I spoke on Monday evening just before it was confirmed that President Joe Biden would be visiting Israel on Wednesday. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mariannette Miller-Meeks says she got death threats after pulling support for Jim Jordan
Miller-Meeks, a Republican who represents the 1st Congressional District in southeast Iowa, supported Jordan in the first round of votes on Tuesday but cast her vote Wednesday for U.S. Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, a Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee.
"Since my vote in support of Chairwoman Granger, I have received credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls," Miller-Meeks said in a statement Wednesday night. "The proper authorities have been notified and my office is cooperating fully."
Facing death threats, some House Republicans are meeting the MAGA monster they created
A number of House Republicans who refuse to support right-wing Rep. Jim Jordan for House speaker are suddenly learning the true language of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, a movement they have either tolerated or nurtured for years. While MAGA fury is usually directed at liberals, this time it's hitting him like unfriendly fire.
Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, after voting against Jordan, said he received an email that read: “Go f--- yourself and die if I see your face, I will whip all the hair out of your f---ing head you f---ing scumbag.”
States Fights
Virginia Democrats Push for DOJ Investigation After Voters Were Wrongfully Removed
The announcement, which came with early voting already underway for a pivotal state election, said that it had identified at least 270 errors. But Democrats are warning that the total could be far more after Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R-Va.) administration removed more than 10,000 voters last year in a purge effort.
Judge rejects latest attempts to toss Georgia election subversion charges as first trial approaches
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee denied eight motions from co-defendants Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, pro-Donald Trump lawyers who are the first to go to trial.
Chesebro is accused of helping orchestrate the fake electors plot and Powell is charged with crimes stemming from the Coffee County voting system breach. They are the first of the 19 defendants to go to trial, because they invoked their right to a speedy trial.