Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
How NFL Great Aaron Rodgers Lost Touch With Reality
It stands to reason that the parade of indignity that visited Aaron during the biggest moments of his public life might have eaten away at him. Made him on edge. Conspiratorial. Disappointment can’t become your way of life, not when you’ve spent it forging yourself into a football-slinging machine. It needs to be something else, something… mysterious working against you. Soon, your whole mindset is overcome by this fear, and boom, you find yourself in a sweat lodge, seeking the holy cure for Covid-19.
In Doppelganger, her book (in part) about feminist firebrand-turned-online wacko Naomi Wolf, author Naomi Klein suggests that Wolf’s descent into conspiracyville came from the failure of the political project she worked in, Clintonian liberalism. Bush won against milquetoast Al Gore, made things way worse, Obama did very little to contend with the degradation of American civil society, and disappointment with her team metastasized into a broader paranoia about the lever-switching forces that dominated the world. The same thing might have happened with Rodgers, but instead of the shithouse of American life presided over by Donald Trump, it was just the shithouse of the Green Bay Packers, presided over by Mike McCarthy.
Half of Americans agree with Trump’s ‘poisoning the blood’ immigration rhetoric
On Sunday, CBS News presented the results of a new poll conducted by the polling firm YouGov — results that offered a stark example of this pattern, of how even extreme right-wing arguments are now barely outside the norm.
Respondents were asked by YouGov whether they agreed with Trump that immigrants entering the United States illegally had the effect of “poisoning the blood” of the country. This is not just right-wing rhetoric, mind you, but a reflection of some of the most extreme racial politics in modern history. It is an explicit depiction of immigrants as dangerous, but specifically in the context of posing a threat to national identity. It is the language of fascism.
Nearly half of Americans agreed with it.
Trump attacks Haley while referring to her by her first name Nimarata
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday went after Nikki Haley while referring to her by her first name, Nimarata, in the latest example of Trump using racist dog whistles to attack his GOP presidential rival.
Haley is the daughter of Indian immigrants and was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She took her husband Michael Haley’s last name after they married.
Trump misspelled Nimarata as “Nimrada” as he attacked her in a new post on his social media platform Truth Social.
“Anyone listening to Nikki ‘Nimrada’ Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary. She didn’t, and she couldn’t even beat a very flawed Ron DeSanctimonious, who’s out of money, and out of hope,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Mike Johnson Forced to Answer Whether Biden’s Election Was “God’s Will”
“The Bible says that God is the one that raises up people in authority,” Johnson continued. “I believe that God is sovereign. By the way, so did the Founders. I quoted the Declaration of Independence—they acknowledge that our rights don’t come from government, they come from God. And we’re made in his image. Everybody is made the same.”
“So, if you believe all those things, then you believe that God is the one that allows people to be raised in authority. It must have been God’s will, then,” Johnson noted, adding that the nation made the decision to elect Biden collectively but he expects it will make “a much better choice” in 2024, before slyly dubbing the upcoming presidential election a “regime change.”
Trump tells SCOTUS kicking him off ballot would ‘unleash chaos’
Donald Trump laid out his legal arguments at the Supreme Court for why he should remain on the 2024 ballot, urging the court to “put a swift and decisive end” to lawsuits that say he is ineligible to serve as president because of his efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election.
The challenges to his eligibility “threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans” and “promise to unleash chaos and bedlam” around the nation if they proceed, Trump’s lawyers wrote in a legal brief submitted Thursday evening.
Trump’s Angry Rant About His Legal Mess Reveals an Ugly MAGA Truth
But there’s more. What if this openly telegraphed intention to strain the boundaries of the law in office—or even to commit crimes—is not merely an incidental by-product of Trump’s legal defense but has become a key feature of his political appeal? There are strong indications that Trump is intentionally trying to raise expectations among his core supporters for just that—a presidency unbound by the law. And there are even signs it’s having exactly that effect.
To be clear, Trump’s demand for immunity—which is being decided by a federal appeals court—is weak and likely to fail, as I recently detailed. Indeed, this is exactly why Trump is loudly calling on the Supreme Court to rescue him from accountability by enshrining the notion that post-presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed in office:
States Fights
Iowans weigh Trump’s legal woes as they decide who to back in caucuses
Trump – and his myriad legal troubles – have loomed large over the GOP presidential primary, especially as Republicans in the Hawkeye State make their final decision on who to back in Monday night’s caucuses. Polls have shown the former president with a commanding lead over the field both in Iowa and nationally, even as he faces four indictments and awaits a Supreme Court decision over efforts to remove him from the ballot in Colorado.
Trump consolidates evangelical vote in Iowa
Just as the Sunday morning service started here at Soteria church, a top Donald Trump surrogate and Arizona firebrand, Kari Lake, walked in.
To any political observer, it appeared to be an obvious troll. In a metro area rich with churches, Soteria has hosted several Republican presidential candidates in the past year. But the Baptist church, with its 1,300-member congregation, also has a well known parishioner: the Iowa social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats, who endorsed Ron DeSantis and angered Trump and his allies in doing so.
How a man accused of rioting with election deniers came to oversee Maryland elections
Maryland’s nomination process didn’t stop a man who federal prosecutors say participated in the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol from being appointed to the board that oversees state elections, despite vetting and background checks.
Carlos Ayala of Salisbury was arrested on Tuesday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Authorities say they identified Ayala among the crowd of rioters and that his actions along with others interrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Why Rural Republicans Defied Greg Abbott and Put Their Communities First
For years, a coalition of activists, deep-pocketed donors, and Texas politicians have campaigned to divert public education dollars into the hands of parents who can afford to send their kids to private schools. These activists have framed their efforts as part of the “parental rights” movement that has swept school districts and state governments across the country. Their latest proposal in Texas, for a form of school vouchers euphemistically called “education savings accounts,” appears to have died late in the fall—in large part thanks to the principled stand taken by rural Republicans in the state House of Representatives and by their constituents in small towns all across Texas.