Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
Evangelical Christians need Republicans. Does the party need them?
Many politicians who are pro-life do not know how to properly discuss this topic, which is so important to the people in this room, so important to millions and millions of people in our country.”
It also offered a glimpse of the dilemma facing evangelicals as they push the Republican field to embrace their extremist agenda in next year’s presidential election.
Anxiety ripples through the Democratic Party over Biden
This series of political vulnerabilities — along with House Republicans announcing an impeachment inquiry and the Justice Department indicting Biden’s son on gun charges — is now sending waves of anxiety through parts of the Democratic Party, as some fret about whether the man who helped oust Donald Trump from the White House may not have the vitality, at 80, to successfully prevent a return.
Non-White Americans are much more confident in democracy
Interestingly, the groups that were most likely to say that democracy was working well were Asian Americans and Black Americans. In each case, a majority of respondents said that democracy was working at least “somewhat well,” with only a third of Asians and 4 in 10 Black Americans saying it was working “not so well” or worse.
Among Hispanic Americans, views were evenly split. And among Whites? A majority said that democracy wasn’t working well.
Legal Experts Say Donald Trump Just Threw His Own Legal Defense ‘Under The Bus'
Donald Trump doomed one of his legal defenses during his interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that aired on Sunday’s broadcast of “Meet the Press,” legal experts said.
Trump told Welker it was his decision — and not that of his lawyers — to challenge the 2020 election result.
“Were you calling the shots, though, Mr. President, ultimately?” Welker asked Trump. The ex-president replied: “As to whether or not I believed it was rigged? Oh, sure … it was my decision. But I listened to some people. Some people said that.”
Here’s the scary way Trump could win without the electoral or popular vote
The abstruse and elaborate mechanisms of the US constitution relating to elections, which used to be matters for historical curiosity, have become more and more relevant every year. In 2024, there is very much a way for Donald Trump to lose the popular vote, lose the electoral college, lose all his legal cases and still end up president of the United States in an entirely legal manner. It’s called a contingent election.
A contingent election is the process put in place to deal with the eventuality in which no presidential candidate reaches the threshold of 270 votes in the electoral college. In the early days of the American republic, when the duopoly of the two-party system was neither desired nor expected, this process was essential.
The Ex-‘South Park’ Writer Taking On Moms for Liberty
For Morton, what started as comic relief is morphing into a fundraising campaign, one that will create pages for each state. “My plan is to disrupt this hate group for as long as possible with billboards, pamphlets, background information and other tactics,” Morton said. “They have no interest in truly educating children and would rather actively prevent them from learning the true history of our country. I have a lot of support around the country so I’ll continue updating my website about this group in each state so people are fully aware.”
Elon Musk likes to think he saved us from Armageddon. He’s just brought it closer
Not the precis of a favourably reviewed work of dystopian fiction but a scenario presented as though it happened, in a biography of Elon Musk and its press campaign. Although neither Musk nor his biographer can get the story straight, it is true that the multibillionaire CEO of X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) refused to extend the coverage of his Starlink satellite communications for the Ukrainian armed forces last autumn.
Musk did so because Russians (sometimes he says Putin) told him that a Ukrainian attack on part of Ukraine’s own territory (the Crimean peninsula, occupied by Russia) would lead to a Russian nuclear response. This was a lie. Ukraine has carried out dozens of operations in Crimea, some of them quite spectacular. It seems absurd to have to write this sentence, but none of them led to nuclear war. The net effect of such operations was de-escalatory, as such attacks reduce Russia’s capability to attack Ukrainian territory.
California Dems consider unique approach to getting Trump off ballot
Nine California lawmakers wrote a letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta over the weekend, arguing that Trump isn’t eligible to be on the ballot for inciting an insurrection when a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The move, which comes amid several lawsuits to keep Trump off state ballots across the country, is unique because Bonta could use his standing as California’s top law enforcement officer to expedite a state court ruling on the matter. Should the effort succeed, California could be the first state to bump Trump off its ballot, even if the ruling is ultimately overturned.
'Fight this battle piece by piece': Concerned moms are shaping culture wars and 2024 race
Moms for Liberty, an organization founded in 2021, says on its website that it's dedicated to “unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”
But the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the organization as an extremist group over accusations of harassing community members, advancing misinformation about LGBTQ people and fighting to remove materials about diversity from classrooms. Leadership of Moms for Liberty denies such accusations.
But resistance groups have formed against Moms for Liberty. One such group, Defense of Democracy, founded by two moms last year, is aimed at advocating for “a public education system that supports and enhances our shared experiences," fighting against efforts to target local schools, libraries and other spaces for kids.
Anti-affirmative action group sues West Point over race-conscious admissions
While the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it exempted military schools. A footnote in the high court’s June opinion acknowledged that the United States government contended that “race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s military academies.”
The justices said that because no military academy was a party, the opinion did not address the admissions issue at these schools “in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”
Why Republican voters believe Trump
Former President Donald Trump has solidified his lead in the GOP race by convincing most Republican voters to view his four criminal indictments as a politicized “witch hunt” aimed not only at him, but them.
Trump’s success in selling that argument to GOP voters has some immediate causes, key among them the choice by all of his leading competitors in the race, as well as most prominent voices in conservative media, to echo rather than challenge his contention. But the inclination of so many Republican voters to dismiss all of the charges accumulating against Trump also reflects something much more fundamental: the hardening tendency of conservatives to believe that they are the real victims of bias in a society irreversibly growing more racially and culturally diverse.
Takeaways from the combative House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Merrick Garland
Judiciary Committee Republicans peppered Garland with questions about the Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden, charging that Garland and the special counsel investigating the case, David Weiss, were doing the bidding of the Bidens by offering Hunter Biden a plea deal that fell apart amid scrutiny from a judge.
Garland forcefully pushed back against the criticisms, saying he did not interfere in the investigation and that Weiss was given all the resources he asked for in the probe. He repeatedly declined to engage on specifics of the probe, however, frustrating the Republicans.
Georgia Trump electors argue they acted under federal authority
Lawyers for three of those electors who were charged in a sweeping indictment along with Trump and 15 others made their first appearance in court Wednesday with a very different argument: that the electors were acting as federal officers, empowered by the U.S. Constitution and federal law — and therefore immune from state-level prosecution. At the very least, the lawyers argued, the three are entitled to prosecution in federal, not state, court.
“By federal law, these people were not ‘fake,’ ‘sham,’ or 'impersonating’ electors,” Craig Gillen, one of the lawyers, argued Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones. “They were contingent electors when they did their duty on Dec. 14, 2020.”
States Fights
The Race for Romney’s Senate Replacement Looks Like a MAGA-Fest
After Hatch retired, 12 candidates jumped in to fill the Senate seat that Romney ultimately won by a large margin. Now, virtually every member of the Utah House delegation, along with Lt. Gov Deidre Henderson, seems to be mulling a campaign to replace Romney. Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson created an exploratory committee for the seat in July, and Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs declared his candidacy in May.
Dark money: The backstory of Alabama’s redistricting defiance
APR has now identified connections between Alabama officials who led the 2023 redistricting process — which disregarded the U.S. Supreme Court’s order — with far-right power broker Leonard Leo’s dark money network, described this past week by Politico as “a billion-dollar force that has helped remake the judiciary and overturn longstanding legal precedents on abortion, affirmative action and many other issues.”
APR’s reporting shows the extent to which Alabama’s calculation to defy the Supreme Court was made not simply by state legislators in Alabama but has been driven by nationally connected political operatives at the center of the well-documented right-wing effort to reshape the composition and jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and to overturn the remaining key protections established by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
For State House, Louisiana GOP endorses Christian pastor charged with child cruelty
The Louisiana Republican Party has officially endorsed a candidate for State House who has been charged with four counts of criminal cruelty against children.
But he’s Christian. So I guess that makes it okay.
Just over a year ago, Pastor John Raymond, the head of Lakeside Christian School in Slidell, was arrested after he allegedly brought three students into his office to reprimand them for talking in class… then proceeded to literally tape their mouths shut after wrapping the tape around their heads.
University of Florida, New College, stumble in latest national rankings
The new standings, tweaked this year by the organization, knocked University of Florida out from its coveted position as a top-five public university — a status that has been highly touted by DeSantis and state leaders who have sparked substantial changes recently to Florida’s higher education system.
Mitch McConnell Will Not Go Gently Into the Senate Goodnight
He is perhaps the most successful congressional operator since Henry Clay and a man who wouldn’t turn on a light switch unless it somehow helped Republicans win political power. Whether or not McConnell wants to retire is irrelevant; from his perspective, he probably can’t. That’s because his home state of Kentucky has a Democratic governor, and a law McConnell helped engineer to limit that governor’s choices on McConnell’s replacement is probably unconstitutional.
Maine Is in an Epic Battle Over Its Future
Politics in Maine has felt like a slack tide recently, especially around issues of climate and energy. Opposing forces of progress and regression are churning away at each other. The main fight centers on a November ballot measure that would turn the state’s private utilities public. If that happens, it would be a huge step toward dealing with the climate crisis, and a model for other states.
Texas teacher fired for showing Anne Frank graphic novel to eighth-graders
The eighth-grade school teacher was released after officials with Hamshire-Fannett independent school district said the teacher presented the “inappropriate” book to students, reported KFDM.
The graphic novel, written by Ari Folman and illustrated by David Polonsky, adapts the diary of 13-year-old Anne Frank, who wrote while hiding in an annexe in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
Vocal Locals
Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?
Six months earlier, two of Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition (AP Lang) students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.
The students wrote in emails that the book — and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism — made them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of their race.